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The Pinball Show Ep 128: Harry Potter & The Squirt Of Passion

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 55m·analyzed·May 23, 2023
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TL;DR

Jersey Jack Pinball secures Harry Potter; Matrix rumored; Stern shuffles production; dealers frustrated with accessory shortages.

Summary

The Pinball Show Episode 128 covers major pinball industry news including the confirmed acquisition of Harry Potter pinball rights by Jersey Jack Pinball (after Joe Kamenkow's sour grapes Facebook post), rumors of JJP also acquiring The Matrix license with Steve Ritchie as designer, Stern production schedule updates, dealer frustrations with accessory availability and communication, and discussion of new pinball company startups teasing announcements.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has acquired the pinball rights to Harry Potter from Warner Brothers

    high confidence · Joe Kamenkow's Facebook post confirmed this; corroborated by multiple sources on the Loser Kid podcast and Nap Arcade reporting

  • Stern Pinball was originally the frontrunner for Harry Potter but missed a key deadline, allowing JJP to win the license

    medium confidence · Craig Bobby reports this as rumor from Loser Kid podcast and Nap Arcade, but expresses skepticism about its accuracy

  • JJP has also acquired rights to The Matrix, being designed by Steve Ritchie

    medium confidence · Craig Bobby emphasizes this is strictly rumor but describes it as 'a hot one' from Nap Arcade sleuth reporting

  • Stern Pinball production is currently running Jurassic Park Premium and Iron Maiden Pro this week, with Foo Fighters Premium and James Bond Premium delayed

    high confidence · Zach Many provides real-time dealer updates from Stern's production notifications

  • Expression Lighting Kit production has severe supply constraints; Flippin' Out Pinball received approximately 1-10% of their order

    high confidence · Zach Many discloses minimal fulfillment of their large accessory order despite early ordering

  • Two new pinball company startups are being teased: one with a keychain/sign at Texas Pinball Festival and Pinfest, and Hexa Pinball launching Space Punt in France

    medium confidence · Craig Bobby reports on teaser keychains and European startup announcements

Notable Quotes

  • “If my sources are accurate on this, and trust me, my sources are always accurate, the most hallowed and sought-after pinball license in the land of muggles and wizards has been in fact acquired from Warner Brothers by none other than the good old folks over at Jersey Jack Pinball”

    Craig Bobby @ ~20:30 — Dramatic confirmation of Harry Potter acquisition by JJP; establishes Craig's confidence in his sourcing

  • “I wanted to quit this week, didn't I? I wanted to quit.”

    Zach Many @ ~35:45 — Expresses dealer frustration with accessory supply chain chaos and customer communication burden

  • “I don't think it's a market strategy... I think that's just not where the core of their business is, and they probably just deprioritize it, not out of maliciousness or strategy or anything. It's just they make pinball machines”

    Dennis @ ~40:15 — Diagnoses Stern's accessory distribution issues as deprioritization rather than deliberate FOMO strategy

  • “Either your buddy is Craig Bobby's Mahogany Table or they're just fucking lying to you.”

    Zach Many @ ~37:30 — Running joke reference; expresses frustration with misinformation from unverified dealer claims

  • “Headline pinball, Cam and Cal goes kapow for Harry Potter.”

    Zach Many @ ~52:00 — Characterizes Stern's loss of Harry Potter license to JJP as decisive competitive defeat

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyHarry PottergameJoe KamenkowpersonJack GuarneripersonThe MatrixgameSteve RitchiepersonStern PinballcompanyZach ManypersonCraig Bobbyperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's accessory business perceived as deprioritized within core machine manufacturing operations; dealer communication gaps creating operational burden

    medium · Dennis analyzes that Stern still mentally operates as 'we sell to operators' model; Zach describes dealers spending hours fielding unanswerable customer inquiries

  • ?

    community_signal: Dealer communication issues creating community frustration around transparency; Pinside forum becoming unofficial information hub for production schedules

    medium · Zach describes forum activity on Pinside with dealers chiming in with updates; expresses concern about manufacturers not responding to dealer inquiries

  • ?

    competitive_signal: JJP's acquisition of Harry Potter represents major competitive victory over Stern in licensing battle; described as 'outfoxing' by Jack Guarneri

    high · Craig Bobby frames JJP as winning through superior WB relationship vs. Stern's missed deadline theory; Zach uses 'kapow' to dramatize Stern's loss

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Harry Potter pinball acquisition by JJP represents major licensing victory; described as 'once in a lifetime' IP deal. Stern allegedly lost due to missed deadline (rumored), enabling JJP's WB relationship advantage.

    high · Joe Kamenkow's Facebook post confirmed JJP has license; multiple sources corroborate; Craig Bobby emphasizes competitive intensity of license acquisition

  • ?

    licensing_signal: The Matrix rumored as second major JJP acquisition with Steve Ritchie designing; characterized as emerging from spotlight attention to JJP after HP success

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.347

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:13
The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. The Pinball Show is here again to save you from silver ball boredom and ghastly inaccurate information. On episode... I'm sorry for the pinformation thing. On episode 128, Dennis and I give you stern pinball production updates. Stevie is back and peppier than ever. We talk Kamekau going kapow for Harry Potter. We deep dive into what we know about Harry Potter pinball and what we may see in the future. Ooh, and Pin Clash Godzilla Edition. The Great Reproduction Debate. 2.0. The Art of Saying Nothing While Using a Lot of Words and Actually Killing with kindness. Pinball market trends. The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom for clickbait purposes. Deals of the Week and much more. You can't buy this kind of passion, people!
1:07
Come on, son. Let's finish this the way we started. Pinball is a gamer's skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle.
1:18
Only I can live forever. It's time for the Pinball Show. It's pinball With personality. Welcome back, everybody. This is the Pinball Show, Episode 128, with your host, Dennis Creasel and Zach Manning. Hey, Dennis. You're a wizard, Zachy. I would not be a great wizard, I don't believe. You'd be a Ron-style wizard? Yeah, who the hell called me? Somebody called me Weasley lately.
1:52
No, not Weasley as in the... Oh, Weasley. Yeah, I had to say. No, like the character, they were like, you're the Ron Weasley to, I think they called the great bone the Harry Potter. And I feel more. You're the sidekick. Yeah, and I feel more Potter-ish. I feel more Potter-ish than Weasley when it comes to. I mean, I guess like in the realm of pinball, you are involved in more things. So you're maybe more of the main character. But think about all the editing work and stuff that you do for this show and for Straight Down the Middle. Like, Harry didn't do any work. Like, he was a bad student. That's like Hermione stuff. Okay, so maybe a Herm... No, that's more your thing. I think somebody called you the Hermione. Yes, someone did, but we're not going to go into that.
Dennisperson
Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
Hexa Pinballcompany
Space Puntgame
Rushgame
Whirlwind 2.0game
Nap Arcadecompany
Warner Brotherscompany

medium · Craig Bobby explicitly frames as rumor from Nap Arcade reporting; emphasizes unconfirmed status but describes as 'hot' rumor

  • $

    market_signal: New pinball company startups announcing via teaser campaigns at major festivals; Hexa Pinball from France launching European title

    medium · Craig Bobby reports keychain/sign teasers at Texas Pinball Festival and Pinfest; Hexa Pinball France announcement for Space Punt launch

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Steve Ritchie rumored transitioning to design The Matrix for JJP, representing high-profile designer opportunity outside typical industry arrangements

    medium · Rumored involvement in Matrix project; Ritchie described as 'godfather of pinball' suggesting significant career move

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern production schedule continuously shuffling with Foo Fighters Premium, James Bond Premium, and Rush Topper delays; Iron Maiden Pro now on line instead of originally planned titles

    high · Zach Many provides real-time production updates showing mid-week schedule changes; multiple shipment cancellations/pushes reported

  • ?

    product_concern: Whirlwind 2.0 artwork criticized as generally poor quality with specific elements (Sui monster, Mac and Me reference) raising creative questions

    medium · Dennis and Zach recorded Patreon exclusive segment with strong critical takes on visual design; identified questionable artwork choices

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Expression Lighting Kits experiencing severe production/distribution bottleneck; Flippin' Out Pinball received minimal percentage of large order despite early ordering

    high · Zach Many discloses receiving 1-10% of order; expresses strong frustration; describes hours spent answering customer questions with no answers

    • 2:37
    I'd even take Snape. I feel more akin to a Snape. But Ron Weasley? Eh, I don't see it. What's the blonde girl who's all like, look at how the moon is and stuff? Isn't that Weasley? It's still Weasley. I think it's Weasley's sister. No, no, no, no. The blonde one. The weird Luna or whatever her name was. She wasn't in the first half of the bathroom. Look, I don't know this. I didn't read the books. Wasn't there a dead girl that was the track? Yes, there was. That was like a weird ghost water baby thing. We don't count that.
    3:08
    You know what I found fun? Then we'll get into the pinball news this week, Dennis. But I found it very interesting when we did a Patreon exclusive for the pinball show, our takes on the Scare Bros and the WorldWin 2.0. A lot of people hear that because a lot of people are part of our official TPS club. But it was interesting to then listen to other media creators give their takes on WorldWin 2.0, having many of them not heard our takes. I enjoyed that thoroughly. Yes, it's been interesting. Because sometimes, you know, just whether it's subconscious or consciously, you pick up on things when you hear other podcasters, and it bleeds into maybe your interpretation. But some of them were fence-sitting. There wasn't any strong, strong takes. And I'm like, that's pretty easy to take a strong take on this. EGP being the only one because you had, you know. But, you know, but I knew what we had said because while I hadn't actually listened to that bonus content, I was there to record it. So, you know, I was already informed, perhaps in part by knowing your positions on it, because we had talked about it already. You know, that's sort of an interesting thing. I've had this discussion from time to time, not related to Whirlwind, but about this, like, content and podcasting. And, you know, there's been a lot of – no, that's probably not accurate. But let's see. There's been some, I don't know, accusations, but there's, you know, the discussion, like, the fence-sitting thing. And I've had this conversation with a few people because, to me, there's like a line. Think of it like the line in the middle of a highway or on a road, right? That striped line, okay? You don't want to be, in my opinion, you don't want to be someone who's just like trolling for the sake of trolling, calling out things, calling out individuals in particular, and just like running them through in a hobby.
    5:02
    I think it's pretty distasteful. On the flip side, when you're in a really small hobby like this, sometimes people get into, when you're not used to it, when you're not, say, you're not professional media and stuff, and you start doing all of this, you have this opposite reaction where you only want to say the positives about everything. And so when something's not good, the closest you can really get is to kind of stay in the middle or fence it as you had expressed it. And I don't think that's very healthy for the consumer. So I've always, and again, this is my own philosophy, I've always tried to be on the striped line. Like, I don't like calling out individuals. I don't like criticizing. Like, if I think a game is bad, I think I need to say a game is bad because I think I do a disservice to people if I don't give my honest opinion on it. But I'm not there to try and tear down the people who made whatever the product was because they're professionals and they're trying to do the best that they can. But you can't, I feel, you can't get away with, you do a disservice if something's not good and you act like, well, maybe it's okay still. It's like, no, if something's bad, people need to know that it's bad. But it's also, you shouldn't call something bad just for sport. No. Does that make sense? Not for the sport. Yeah, yeah. So that's where, and I see that in all sorts of hobbies, you know, video games and everything else. This all, you know, this sort of thing comes up. The struggle that we have here in pinball, I think, versus a lot of other more established hobbies, hobbies with more people in them, I should say, is we don't have a professional media that can serve as a touchstone for that.
    6:32
    It might be different if we really did. Like if there were real journalists always covering everything about pinball and actually doing like investigative pieces, because you could always say like podcasts would all be, because we are entertainment. We have to remember that we're not journalists. Infotainment. Right, infotainment. Well, some. Some might go different directions entirely and just want to be pure entertainment, and that's fine. but without the ability to have journalism as a touchstone, I think things can spin out of control and people can get lost really easy in knowing what is and isn't objective. And that's sort of a, I don't know, I'm getting a little philosophical at this point, so I'm going to shut up. No, I like it. I think it's a good story. Long story short, it didn't surprise me that you see a lot of people when they, and I can't speak for them because I don't know what their stances were because of what they said, but when they're normally positive people and then they are kind of milquetoast on it, it often suggests to me that maybe they hate it, that they didn't want to say it. But I don't know for sure. I think the ultimate tell, generally, there's a couple tells for Fence Sitting, and one of them has to be, we could go through a list, but one of them has to be, I'm really looking forward to playing it.
    7:44
    Oh, I'm probably guilty of using that one a lot, too. I'm really looking forward to playing it. Because, again, and if I haven't played it, like, I haven't played Worldwide. It's like, well, what if it's, you know, there's still the what if. Now, I might think the what if is a 2% chance that's going to change my mind, but, again, you want to be fair. If the only positive thing you have to say is, yeah, I'm really looking forward to catching it at a show and getting my hands on it, that's your tell right there that the person may not be that into it. I felt, I questioned our analysis on it. Listener, if you have not heard that as part of the official TPS, you've got to go listen to it. I think it's called, the exclusive content is called Suey and Me.
    8:25
    And I had so much fun, Dennis. I haven't had that much fun on a podcast segment in a while just because we were rolling. Like, it was good. We were back and forth. It was like Abbott and Costello, and it was genuinely funny, good stuff.
    8:42
    But you always like it when it, you know, shows often, we often go a few episodes where there's just not a topic that works like that. That's right. And we were riffing. It was hard to force it. Yeah, and it was all improv. It was all extremely fun. But the takeaways from that, I had a couple people message me laughing about our discussion of Sui. Basically, listeners, the shit and piss monster that features in the whirlwind 2.0 version of The Greens.
    9:11
    A pretty well-known pinballer did mention they caught my, they liked my, what was it, Conker's Bad Fur Day reference. That's right. which is a little rare video game throwback for you folks. And I was so upset that not one media person talked about, after watching that trailer video, that there was a damn Mac and Me stolen from that series. I went and researched Mac and Me after the episode. That movie didn't do well. No, that's what I said. It's such a shit movie. Why would you steal from that? But that's the thing, Zach. You can't be mad because they probably didn't see it. It was, like, if you weren't there at the time in the 80s when Mac and Me came out, this is not a film you go back for. But it's like a cult classic. This is like you and the Croods 2.
    10:04
    No one cares but you. It was so good. So for all you fence-sitters out there, I've got your number. Whenever I hear you say, look, you know, props to them for bringing something to market, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on playing. We were tough. We were tough on Whirlwind 2.0 because, frankly, this is not too strong of a take, but it just looks horrible. But pretty much every aspect of it, except for one or two choice titles, one being the multi-ball title of something about the storm and the other being total chaos. Besides that, I'm pretty sure everything else is just really bad. But you've got to go back and listen. There's no replicating it here. It was a blast. It was hooey. You know what else can't be replicated?
    10:54
    Craig Bobby. He's back? You know what? I've heard that he saw the Craig signal up in the sky. It was the symbol of the Rush pinball machine that he has sold Canadian without.
    11:06
    Wax, and he came to our aid. I thought it should be, like, just a fresh lighted signal into the sky of, like, a mahogany desk. Yes. That's what it should look like. I want to make a whole line of, like, things in pinball offices that Craig could disguise himself as. We sell them as toys. We call them Craigformers. Yes.
    11:30
    Furniture in disguise. Yes. Craigformers. Serving as our spies. What will you do when Craig will come for you and steal all of your pinball secrets? for The Pinball Show.
    11:58
    Yes, hello everyone. Good to be back and welcome to The Pinball Show's Top Stories. I'm Craig Bobby. My God, where has that time gone? Remember the old saying, miss a day, miss a month? Well, nothing could be more true right now in the pinball world, as you may recall way back in February this year, prior to the Texas Pinball Festival, it was literally raining new game announcements from every game manufacturer out there. And in the past couple of weeks, we've been swamped yet again, this time with new game rumors, new pinball company startup news, companies canceling titles without notice, RIP Rush, and yes, more new title rumors. So let's not beat around the bush with more chitter-chatter. Let's get at her.
    12:47
    First up, can we please all rise and salute and address the pinball equivalent of the massive two-ton elephant in the room? Yes, Harry Potter pinball will in fact be made. Hold on. Okay. Holy Spirit, activate. Oh, no. Holy Spirit, activate. Activate. All right, let's go. If my sources are accurate on this, and trust me, my sources are always accurate, the most hallowed and sought-after pinball license in the land of muggles and wizards has been in fact acquired from Warner Brothers by none other than the good old folks over at Jersey Jack Pinball, and they are rolling it over in their hot little hands right now, trying to figure out how many millions of dollars they can make off this absolutely blockbuster of a pinball license that literally only comes around once in a lifetime. This is the stuff legacies are made of, people, so trust me, J.J.P. knows exactly what they have and are setting out to do this title right. Joe Kamenkow certainly knew how big the pot of gold was that he had just lost, which would seem to explain his bombshell of a Sour Grapes Facebook post last week preemptively announcing to the world that in fact J.J.P. had acquired the pinball rights to the Harry Potter film franchise. Folks, if you don't think acquiring these licenses are an absolute dogfight and that the competition isn't as stiff as anything you've seen on TV or the movies, you haven't been paying attention. Now, rumor has it that, in fact, the Stern-Kamikau bid was originally the frontrunner in this fight. However, thanks to the most recent Loser Kid podcast and an online article published by the leading pinball industry news site, Nap Arcade, It is rumored that the Cam and Cal bid was later thrown out after someone at Stern missed a key deadline which opened the door for JJP to leverage their good relationship with Warner Brothers and swoop in and snatch that Harry Potter license right out from under Cam and Cal. Now, do I believe that story?
    14:52
    Not really. I just have such a hard time believing that Warner Brothers would be that tight that they would exclude the world's leader in the pinball world over a missed deadline. No, my suspicions is that in the end, J.J.P. won this based on their previous great relationship with Warner Brothers and that that silver old fox cam and cow was simply outfoxed in his own hen house by his chief competitor and wily sales veteran and founder of Jersey Jack Pinball, Jack Guarneri. Now, speaking of Warner Brothers, no sooner had the Harry Potter rumor spell been cast by Joe Cam and Cow taking the pinball world by storm, when along came another almost equally as exciting rumor, once again, thanks to Nap Arcade's sleuth reporting, not only had J.J.P. acquired the rights to Harry Potter, but in fact they have also acquired the rights to the second of the Holy Trinity of pinball licenses, with the third being Back to the Future, which Stern and Joe Camacal already have. Yet, J.J.P. is rumored to have the rights to, wait for it, the Keanu Reeves sci-fi trilogy The Matrix is being designed by former longtime Stern designer and godfather of pinball himself, Mr. Steve Ritchie. Say what? Now I'd like to emphasize that this Matrix news is strictly a rumor, but a hot one nonetheless, as this is what happens when the spotlight gets on a company and people start nosing around and putting their Neo and Morpheus cosplay outfits on. Shit gets weird, yo. And all manner of rumor and speculation and news starts popping out. Well, I'm so exhausted from following these massive rumors online that I'm almost too tired to talk about not one, but what appears to be two separate teases for new pinball company startups. The first was seen on a keychain that was being handed out during the Texas Pinball Festival this year, which read, An amazing machine is coming! With the image of a flipper turned on its end with an electrified pinball underneath it to make it look like an exclamation point. Weeks later, the same message was posted on a sign at the entrance of Pinfest in Allentown. Hmm. Not to be outdone, a second new company, Hexa Pinball, from across the pond in Europe in the southwest of France of all places, is promising the launch of their new unlicensed pinball title called Space Punt at the Salon de Pontenac in France on June 10th and 11th of this year. So stay tuned for more information on this wacky title that has appeared out of nowhere. Well, I wish I had the energy to report on more, guys. Always lots going on, but I do need to call Zach Many here and get him to update his notes waiting list information to see if I can get on a bunch of different waiting lists now. The first list I'm getting on is for the last run of Rush, which you hear to hear first, we'll be getting one last run from Stern Pinball, And then I'm getting on J.J.P.'s Harry Potter and Matrix pinball. I really hope Zach hasn't blocked my number yet. For the pinball show, I'm Craig Bobby. Catch you on the flip side.
    18:06
    Thanks again, Craig. Appreciate that. It's good to have you back, buddy. One more week and you're about to get fired.
    18:13
    Oh, poor Craig. He brought some goods there. He did. Most of which we're going to discuss. We'll jump into the big story this week is Cam and Cal going kapow for Harry Potter. That's my Parker headline. Yes, yes. We're going to stay true to the pinball show, and we're going to talk about Stern Pinball first. People want to hear them updates. They want to hear what the king is doing. Yes, production is always the key question that comes in. Yeah, and the king is confusing me. That's what they're doing. Last week, they had some Jurassic Park premiums moving out of the factory, which I wasn't expecting for a couple more weeks. So they're shuffling things up just a bit, but Jurassic Park Premium is probably rolling out this week as well. We've seen some last week. Dennis, we'll see some more this week. It feels right now like Stern Pinball has five production lines, the way that different titles are flying out each day. Friday I got a notice from Stern and my shipping broker that two different titles were shipping to me from Friday. It was going to be, I was getting some James Bond premiums and Jurassic Park premium. And then right before that, I got some James Bond pros. And I believe this week in Friday's production video on social media for Stern Pinball, they were showing some Foo Fighter premiums. I'll probably be getting, flipping out pinball, some Foo Fighter premiums come in. And so there's just a number of different titles that are going off the line, coming on the line, going off the line, coming on the line. I don't know how they keep track of all of that, not to mention the accessories line as well with things coming in and out.
    20:04
    Okay, you heard it here. hot off the press right now. I'm receiving information that Stern Pinball continues to switch up their production schedule just a bit. Where we originally seen some Foo Fighter premiums on the line in last Friday's video, those are actually being bumped yet another week. As well as James Bond's premium. We're not going to see James Bond's premium this week. That's going to be the following week, hopefully, as well. This week is going to continue to be Jurassic Park premiums and how about this? Iron Maiden Pros. The plan is for Iron Maiden Pros to be hitting the Stern line this week. Stern still has some lingering Foo Fighter Limited Edition games that they want to complete. They're hoping to do so by the end of this week.
    21:00
    But what about Rush? Rush was discontinued. Who cares? What about that? Who cares? All right. What about expression lighting on that accessory line, Zach? This last week, I about quit. Really? Whoa. I just wanted to hang it up, man. It's been like my energy's not here. It's been hell being a pinball dealer this last week. Yeah, it's just been horrible this week. I feel bad for customers because they're expecting products, and sometimes when the schedules change for these manufacturers and things don't come out when we think they're supposed to, or some come out, which leads everyone to think that all of them have come out. It puts dealers in a very precarious situation. I know there's been a ton of excitement for the expression lighting kits. They're very popular. So let me ask you, and obviously say you choose not to disclose if you want to not disclose. So you mentioned the issue about not all customers being able to receive. Did you – I assume you have a certain quantity ordered with Stern. I think that – is that how it works? Yeah, I think it would be safe to say that flipping out pinball purchases, probably one of the largest quantities of accessories from consumer dealers in the country. Okay, all right. We buy a shitload of toppers. Okay, yeah, yeah, I've seen your wall. So, all right, did you get 50% of your expression light order? I see where you're going.
    22:33
    I'll say we... I'm only going to ask two questions. That's the first one. Okay, no, we didn't. All right. Did you get 10%? Oh, see, there's where I... Something is going on with this fresh and light. All right, let me change the second question. Did you get 25%? I wanted to quit this week, didn't I? I wanted to quit. Did you get 1%? I got 1% at least, yeah. Okay, okay. What's really tough for me, and not that I'm being a whiny dealer, But a lot of time is spent, and I put this, there's a nice thread on Pennside that talks about what's on the line at Stern this week. And sometimes those dealers will chime in there to kind of give updates to people if they're quite, like, I wonder what's this. I wonder when this is coming. So if we have the information, sure, we'll jump in there. And I've seen Tilt in there. I've seen other people in there. We'll jump in and clarify some questions maybe. So I'll do that as much as possible. Well, what is difficult sometimes and feels like lack of communication from some of these manufacturers, like, okay, well, when are you making some? How many am I going to get from my order? The reason we're asking, Stern, is because we are being bombarded from customers, rightfully so, probably, where my product is that I ordered. The problem is Stern Pinball probably isn't going to respond to every dealer because it is very inefficient. Now, there's still a balance to giving some communication out there, but the problem for dealers is if there's one customer that asks me, where am I at in line on Foo Fighters Premium? Where am I at in line on Godzilla Premium? Where am I at in the line for the Rush Topper? When is the Rush Topper coming out? Have you received any more information regarding the Godzilla Topper? Hey, I remember that I went on the rumored list for fucking Bon Jovi. Can you tell me where at on said rumored list I'm at? So what I'm saying, Dennis and listener, is oftentimes I'm spending hours as a dealer answering questions that aren't leading to anything. There is no information. If there was information, it would be dispersed out. So a lot of my job is really tough and excruciating because instead of being able to do, you know, getting shipping going or fixing a website or doing other dealer things, I am answering questions, the same damn question with the same non-answer. At this time, we have not been given any information. Your guess is as good as mine. If you're telling me that your buddy's dealer said this, I don't know because dealers haven't been given this information. So either your buddy is Craig Bobby's Mahogany Table or they're just fucking lying to you. It takes so much time to answer all of these questions, and I feel horrible because I don't have the answer as to why, you know, if you order a lot, you don't get as many. Or if you don't order many, you only get one, but it looks like you ordered a lot. I don't know what the answers are. But, yeah, I wanted to throw it all away this week. So the answer is you didn't get all that many out of your order. Yeah, we got a nice bundle of rest toppers.
    25:42
    And I'm going to be honest with you. Here's the problem. We got a decent amount of rest toppers, but it is hard to understand why customers aren't getting their toppers if they ordered the first day that the product was launched, right? Yeah, I can see that. I agree. If I ordered the first day a product was launched and I see all of these people getting their toppers, Some of these people may be ordering weeks upon weeks later, or Marco Specialty is having something in stock, you know, a month after announcement. Yeah, it is tough. I have no answer for it, though. What do you do in that situation, Dennis? Because I pull my fucking hair out. Master carries heavy burden. So push comes to shove. The Rush Hoppers are coming out. The Specialty Lighting Kits are coming out. They're trickling out.
    26:24
    And none of these accessories will ever come as quick as possible. Do you think that is on purpose? Maybe that drives up the FOMO a little bit, Dennis, or do you think it is legit a part? No. I don't think it's a market. Because there's so many distributors. There's not a marketing reason that I can come up with for Stern to deliberately trickle out accessories. I think that's just not where the core of their business is, and they probably just deprioritize it, not out of maliciousness or strategy or anything. It's just they make pinball machines, and they're still – I don't think – if I were a batting man, Zach, it would be they're still not fully comfortable with this idea of making and selling accessories. I think they're – Stern in particular, I think, is still very much stuck in this we sell the operators, right, kind of mindset. Well, and I think pinball machines make more money. There's only so many things that can work on the product. I mean, the margin on – I don't know what the margin is on a, say, topper versus a pinball machine, But the raw dollars of profit, I would assume, is much higher on the pinball machine, even if the margin was lower. Like, let's say they made a margin of 50% on a pinball machine and 60% on a topper, but the raw dollars would still be there on the pinball machine. Yeah, so it's tough. The other information I have for you listeners is that when it comes to current accessories like the Rush topper, I'm not sure when they're going to do their next big run of Rush toppers. when it comes to expression lighting kits. I've been told that they're still in the process of that run. So we had some that arrived to us that we got out. We will be receiving more in this run. When that second run is for expression lighting kits, I don't know. I haven't been told, and I don't know any information on Godzilla toppers, and I don't know any information on 007 toppers that they announced. I have no damn clue. Who would have thought that toppers were going to bring me down, Dennis? It's almost ironic.
    28:20
    Ironic. Isn't there like an old fable or something that the person that's obsessed with something is the thing that ends up killing them? What is that? Yeah, there's probably something like that. Is that Rumpelstiltskin? No, no. That had to do with like baby theft and gold weaving and, you know, historic medieval European values. I trying to think what like now I thinking of I got a blueberry for a daughter A stupid gum that turned into the blueberry Yeah those are just disobedient little brats
    29:01
    Speaking of disobedient brats, let's talk about Harry Potter and his wizard friends over at the Warner Brothers lot. I mean, they were kind of, like, disobedient. They were, right? Yeah, I mean, I kind of felt bad for Snape at the end. Because they were, like, always sneaking out of class and, like, traipsing around, causing trouble. You fuckers.
    29:23
    I could have taught you how to brew evil, but you skipped class. Oh, that one real quick. I hated that one teacher. She did such a good job because she seemed like such a shit. McGonagall? Maybe. She's just a bitch, man. She's just a bitch. Dark Arts. I think she stole that from Snape. She was teaching that class or something. I don't know. It wasn't the big googly-eyed girl. I liked her.
    29:50
    You know what I'm talking about? Yes, I know. She just had thick glasses. I call her googly-eyed. This is the extent of my knowledge when it comes to Harry Potter. You know the redhead kid? You get the ginger, the googly-eyed, and the bitch teacher.
    30:08
    Headline pinball, Cam and Cal goes kapow for Harry Potter. You know what? I had to say it again just because I thought it was clever. This has been all the talk, Dennis. Everyone's talking about Harry, Mother Truck, and Potter. Harry Potter becoming a pinball machine. You said it would never happen.
    30:27
    What? Are you sure? You have to roll that tape back. Maybe I mildly suggested that it was a total impossibility. I don't know if I'd ever say never, but. It came out from a Joe Kamenkow post on Facebook. The kids still use Facebook. Joe Kamenkow came out and posted essentially saying, guess what, kids? JJP has Harry Potter. It is what it is. You guys don't have to speculate any longer. They got it. They locked it in. Fuck off. And then you heard exclusively on the pinball show episode 127.5 Myself kind of tell you I think that was not a trolled account That was not a hacked account That sources that I was hearing saying, yeah, that's very much true Jersey Jack Pinball has the license to produce Harry Potter pinball Yeah, Zach, I don't think I think they have the license to produce Harry Potter For? Oh.
    31:40
    What was that? The Prisoner Asked a Man? No. Wait, maybe it was. I don't know what four was. Six is the bad one. Don't do six, because that's the one where they live in the tent. Oh, God. Harry Potter and the Tent. That was a bad movie. Like, I'm going out there to say that. Four was The Goblet of Fire.
    32:01
    Okay, Goblet of Fire was decent. That works. Are you talking about the Half-Blood Prince? The Order of the Phoenix was five, Half-Blood Prince six, Seventh was Deathly Hallows, part one and two. Yeah, part one is the worst of the, I'd say part one, so number six movie was probably the worst, not probably, it was the worst Harry Potter movie followed by number, no, everyone will agree with that. They might disagree with my second one, which would be Harry Potter number two movie. Oh, Chamber of Secrets. Yeah, with the basilisk. That was not a very good movie either. I'm a fan of the Prisoner Ask Me One is a classic Of course it's the starts of all That would be an obvious one The theme around Three, four, five and seven Which one had the Mac and Me rip off Dobby Or the Gollum You voiced him as a Schmeagle Yeah I thought he kind of sounded like a Schmeagle hack Dobby Dobby's crooked what give me your sock Dobby that's my dress I need it hurtless it did magic wand oh my gosh so Harry Potter was a thing and then with brooms Dobby sorry I'm transitioning all of our discussion into a good set of films but let's go back to Harry Potter. Well, Harry Potter's great. Actually, I enjoyed it. I didn't read the books, but I did enjoy it. Like, as a series, I enjoyed it. And getting back to my never ever, not ever, never, which, okay, maybe I did say that like, you know, eight or nine times.
    33:46
    But I did emphasize, at least in one of those times, I did emphasize that was solely based off of the totally non-substantiated report that J.K. Rowling was totally anti-pinball. And I also acknowledge I have never seen the evidence for that. Yes, you have, yeah. But if it was true and she was dead set against it, then it was never going to happen unless she changed her mind or she no longer controlled the rights anymore. Those would be like the two things that could shift the, you know, move the needle, shift the tides. and on Cam and Cal's post there was a rendering of a Stern machine with a cloak, if you will, of Harry Potter artwork. Now, we thought, well, that's weird. That's why people thought maybe it's a fake. Nobody knew what to think. The media and pinball were going back and forth. You had media say, no, it's fake. It's all bullshit. This is just Cam and Cal trolling. No, this is just... It was what it was. Now, as to the motive of why Joe Kamenkow did that, we can discuss that here in a minute, but let's dive in more to Harry Potter as a pinball theme. Okay. I think it is safe to say that Jersey Jack Pinball has secured the license for that. Now, what makes us question things, Joe Kamenkow has kind of teased Harry Potter and being close to WB and working to try to get this license and him coming out and throwing the gauntlet down, saying that they have secured that. We thought that if anybody's going to secure a big old license like this, it would be Stern Pinball, especially Stern Pinball. Or Spooky, hell, I mean, shit, Spooky, not JJP. Then last week on the Looter Kid Pinball podcast, they had on Christian Line and Mrs. Pin. Christian Line used to do a podcast called Super Awesome Pinball Show, with Christopher Franchi, who is an artist in pinball. Why am I telling these people to listen to pinball podcasts? Chris Franchi's close to Kapow and close to Joe Kamenkow,
    35:58
    so much so that I made the assumption that Christopher Franchi did that rendering. And Christian Line had some interesting information being close to Chris Franchi and did say on that podcast, Christopher Line confirmed that the mock-up was, in fact, Franchi's artwork. and it was going to be used as a Stern machine prototype to sell to Warner Brothers as a machine that could be made. It was taken to Warner Brothers and to J.K. Rowling. Christian Line went on and believed that Kamikau was able to loosen up the J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers group to the idea of licensing Potter for Pimble. He said, quote, how it got from Stern to Jack Winery, there's the mystery. End quote. Winery and J.J.P.
    37:17
    Well, we had that troll post from Jack Winery on the launch of Godfather, which is just ridiculous timing. I still especially because this Potter game would be so far out. That still, I think, was a big, big, big mistake. But saying that aside, it just reminded me of don't take this listeners, don't take this as too judgmental, but take it quasi-judgmentally. Y'all's ability and willingness to bend yourselves into ridiculous logic pretzels never ceases to shock me. And the number of you who, on the doorstep of the already built Godfathers in cardboard boxes about to show up at shows, were convinced that it was going to be Harry Potter.
    38:04
    This is why I don't pay attention to a Pennside thread with 2,000 posts that claim every single possible conspiracy theory, because some of these go way, way, way off the deep end. Yes, they do. And what a shock when it was still Godfather. How it mysteriously didn't magically transform into Harry Potter. I guess magic is fake. I'll push to also say that some people are asking, well, when did they get this license? had they had it for years upon years, I'm going to venture to tell you listeners that this feels very recent to me. I agree. It feels very recent. And honestly, if it was all that far back, it would have been a part of the weeks we had with all the other confirmed games. So let's not. We do know there was a backstop on this. And in hindsight, whenever we did have a picture of Jack Manieri trolling like that, I think that was him probably speaking out when he shouldn't have, that he was in discussions with Warner Brothers. And that was him basically saying, hey, you guys might crap on Godfather as a theme, but look who Papa G is talking to. This might be a possibility. He didn't want to confirm it or anything, but he wanted to take a picture because he was feeling pretty good about maybe discussions thus far. That's what I would guess. I mean, it's a huge license that would definitely be something to be excited to get. And I think that KamenKal blasted this out in a way that he did. Many calling, not me, but many calling unprofessional. I think he blasted it out out of frustration. And I said in 127.5, keep in mind, there may be frustration toward JJP from KamenKal. Maybe possibly. But I also would encourage people to think of other possibilities as to why he may be frustrated. Now, if you go to Nap Arcade, Nap Arcade made an update on this whole posting and this whole thread that says, quote, I heard through the grapevine that Cam and Cal laid all of the groundwork for a Harry Potter pinball machine, but someone at Stern dropped the ball, didn't get their bid in in time. So Jack used his good relationship with Warner Brothers to swoop in and snatch the Harry Potter license out from under them. and crow.
    40:18
    Now, I have no information as to the swooping of this, almost as if it was all said and done. Someone swooped in to get it from under them, which, as I read that, kind of feels, I don't know. I think of the whole Godzilla thing all over again. Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking of. And I don't know if that was the case. And, you know, and that's where I'm not going to weigh in on whether or not someone who worked on licensing, who isn't actually, you know, an employee of Stern or JJP, you know, was or wasn't unprofessional. I didn't see a lot of, quote, unquote, unprofessional accusations when Spooky got all pissy about Stern getting Godzilla, you know, swooping in and getting Godzilla and threw a pit about it. And saying that they didn't get Godzilla because Stern got it. I mean, they were, remember that? It was, I mean, it was probably the most.
    41:15
    I would say it is the most negative I think I can recall ever seeing Spooky officially as like a company going out after someone else. Because, you know, normally they're all posting like all this happy stuff. Look at how we share shipping containers and all of this stuff that no one really cares about. And then with this, though, they were mad. They were like, I mean, the way they described it, I remember in my mind, you know, in the memory palace of what I'm envisioning. The way they described it, I just envisioned Spooky sitting, you know, in a bunch of flannel around this mahogany table, which was probably Keurig Bobby in disguise, with all these suits representing Toho, these long-term, you know, Japanese masters of kaiju movies, and then, like, Gary Stern and Jodie Dankberg, like, 300 Spartan, kicking open the double wood doors, coming in, throwing down a pile of cash, and picking up the license, which was like a literal Godzilla figurine. That's how it's symbolized because Japan's very into symbols, and walking out with it. That's how I envisioned it, and everyone else is like sitting there, like jaws on the table. And Craig's like, get your jaw off of me. Guy Liner? There's got to be Guy Liner on Jodie Dankberg at that point. Look, it's just like they go in, but Gary and Jodie go in with their three-piece slick Chicago suits, and as soon as they get out of there, Gary rips his off and jumps on the back of his Harley, And Jody tears his opening. He's got like a five-finger death punch T-shirt on instead. And he goes to the nearest concert. That's how I envisioned it, the way Spooky told the story. Anyway, back to Harry Potter. To me, this is a bad case of the old passion squirts.
    42:58
    And Spooky, whenever your passion bin gets full, it's going to squirt out. Now, there are in life good squirts and bad squirts, right? We all know the bad squirts and we all know the good squirts. I'm not here to tell you what kind of squirt it is, but it's a passion squirt. That's what happened to Joe Kamikow. He had a bit of a passion squirt. He cared about it. It was so close, and it didn't happen. If the grapevine report that Nap Arcade shared is valid, I mean, I can understand. Can you imagine, listeners, can you imagine if you just worked really, really, really hard putting something together, and someone else failed you, failed the whole project, and all of your work was not only wasted but went to a rival. Oh, wow. Man.
    43:44
    I think that the pinball show Patreon Club is going to get really interesting in the future because this is my life, Dennis. I've been through all of this. I get the passion scores. I understand.
    43:55
    Now, the side effect, though, of it was really interesting. What, babies? I thought you were talking about the side effect. You're talking about the side effect of the squirts. I'm talking about the side effect of this announcement, this information, regardless of how it came out, that it's been leaked out, essentially. You know, the interesting thing about that coming out, I thought on the Triple Drain Pinball podcast that Travis Murray had a really good take, a take I agreed with, which is why I think it's really good. Of course. That, yeah, obviously. So about, like, because some people I saw initially when this came out, they're like, well, Joe did this to hurt JJP. And it's like, but that's not how this works. Like, if people are now pulling money out of buying pinball in order to save for Harry Potter, that doesn't just hurt Godfather sales. It hurts everyone, and it hurts Stern the most. It does hurt Stern, yeah. Because Stern has the biggest market share. There are plenty of people that aren't, like, just quote-unquote JJP fanboys that only buy JJP games. There are people that could have been very well, like, saying, I was going to order Foo Fighters, but I want Harry Potter. Harry Potter's a dream thing. This money's off the table now because not only do I now believe that it's definitely going to happen, it's going to be JJP. So you know it's going to be expensive. Or it's a perception thing, too. Like, it's a brand perception thing, too. I thought Stern was the king. Like, what happened there? And I thought Joe Kamikow was the one that gets everything. Nobody can defeat Kamikow when it comes to licensing.
    45:22
    Yeah. And I can see where Joe might, obviously, that's going to affect maybe, you know, that's where egos and personal perception and what the public thinks. I don't know how much of the pinball collector community really knows much about who goes for what licenses. I will say, JJP does have a track record of having good licenses. It's not like a, I mean, again, when we heard for years that they had Toy Story, the whole negative reaction was that when we found out they ended up doing Toy Story 4. It was like Toy Story is a legendary, really big deal. Really big deal. Especially working with Disney and Pixar. Yes, absolutely. But they have slipped lately. Toy Story 4, eh. Decisions made there are interesting. Well, we could see interesting decisions made, quote unquote, what we would as collectors call mistakes with Harry Potter. We just don't know yet. That's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering, Dennis, when it comes to this license and JJP potentially having it, might there be a reason why Stern didn't lock it in?
    46:27
    If Stern had, like, right of first refusal, I can't think of a good reason not to get Harry Potter. I just can't. I can't think of it. What would you, like, do you have one in mind that you could prime me with? Things that come to my mind are no assets, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean that Jersey Jack did. It didn't stop Stern from doing Jurassic Park, so I don't buy that one.
    46:53
    Pricing. Pricing is a better one, but again, they did the million-dollar licensed Beatles, and if it's a Kamikawa-range thing, my assumption was going to be it's going to be a Kapow collaboration. That means no pro model and an SLE model. So there's plenty of opportunity to gouge up that pricing. And again, we never heard historically like the problem with getting Harry Potter was Harry Potter licensing is really expensive. We see Harry Potter with other things like slot machines and stuff all the time. What about philosophy of rant?
    47:25
    Political stances? That's an interesting one. I was thinking about this the other day and then today I for some reason wasn't. It depends. I would think that if anybody said we don't give a shit about politics and business, it would be Stern. But Stern has posted a lot of things that sometimes can be interpreted as very political. Yes. Here's the, I mean, so I'm of two minds of it. One is this is the company that still, and I've been in the hobby so long, so I know this is a while ago, but it's the company that released Woe Nelly. And so part of me is like, are they really that sensitive to, let's say, progressive concerns? I'm going to stop you there. I think their presentation in the last two years is significantly and drastically different than how they present themselves to the company back in Wonelly time. I agree. That said, however, there was recently a Warner Brothers-endorsed Harry Potter video game. And online, there was a lot of pushback because of J.K. Rowling's political views, a lot of calls for the game to be boycotted, things of that nature. And that game has done incredibly well financially. I have not played the game, but the game has done incredibly well financially. Looking at that, I would think Stern would say whatever controversy there is around J.K. Rowling, it's not enough to actually impact the sales. What about if it was the assets to the new Max streaming series of Harry Potter and not the films itself? And that kind of gets back to your first point about no assets, so the discussion of different assets. And I just, again, because of other games that they've done, like Deadpool being based on the comic, Harry Potter, I would imagine.
    49:13
    Remember when Jack Danger was doing the free marketing advice on Facebook of, hey, could you guys get behind the novel Harry Potter? Remember, like, that was just by happenstance, him being curious.
    49:24
    Well, and that's the thing. Like, I would have assumed that if, for some reason, it's too hard to say, what's the big barrier with the movies would probably be, like, actor licenses if they have individual control. That's where, because it gets complicated. I would assume if Harry Potter can be licensed, they could at least do art inspired or based off of the books. And I think that's still a green light because the books were just massive. I haven't read them, but a lot of people do. Yes, I think they would, too. But if it was the Max series, I don't know. I'm playing devil's advocate here. There are some. You've raised some good hypotheticals. I just ultimately, I still, like, if you were telling me pick between all these options you've listed out or pick between the grapevine option that they just didn't get the bid in, I'd still pick the bid. Okay.
    50:11
    It's such a, this license is a cash printing machine. It's the same reason why when we've heard, again, we don't know if it's true or not, but all the reports are you can't do anything with the movie assets with Jaws, and people still want it. They just want the ball to be the shark. What if they put their bid in, but they were outbid by Warner Brothers and or J.K. Rowling just liking the portfolio of a Georgia Jack product? Sure. That could be it. The best reason, especially if there is a, let's say that, again, we never saw, like, we never read an official conference. I never did. But let's say that JK, what we'd always heard was she didn't like pinball. Not that she hates the game of pinball, but that pinball is something that children like to play, but then it shows up in bars. So let's run with that. That's a good theory. Let's say Stern got their bid in, JJP gets their bid in, and JJP goes, Hey, by the way, look at our pricing model. We've abandoned our standard edition games. We don't target operators. These are for homes. And look at Stern Pinball pushing barcades like no other right now. And Stern with the Insider Connected and their whole production model, even though they've gotten more and more homeowner, Stern is all about trying to get those pinball machines on route wherever they can. And that has become mostly bars at this point, not arcades. And Jersey Drive can still push a lot of family-friendly, like, you know, So here's what we're doing, Wizard of Oz. Look at this trailer we did with a little girl and the excitement when she did good on Toy Story. This is what Jersey Jack is a homeowner's experience. And then they point and they say, look at how affordable. You can make money at a dollar a game on a Stern. You can't do that with a JJP. Sterns are about bars. As we discuss all this, it's always good for the listener. At the end of the day, I don't know what happened, but I think Jersey Jack Pinball has a license. I think they have probably, I don't know about full assets, but they have the film assets. I think it's going to be based around the film, and I think that's what it's all going to be about. And probably enough so to be even more so than the wizarding world of like a Jurassic Park by Stern. I think they probably are going to get music. I think they're going to get pretty much everything. How to execute it, that's what I'm worried about because I worry that I just fucking love Stern games. And I worry that if I'm JJP, I know this has been discussed by other people, by forums and such, but I'm honestly going to agree and say that I, in Jersey Jack's position, if I had this license, I would push Warner Brothers and JK team to milk this damn thing for multiple product releases. I really would. Minimum of three. And my idea, Dennis, would be the following. Make them different. Because J.J.P., they don't build games fast, fast. So you could spread this out to where consumers, potential consumers, would want to purchase multiple products as part of a set if the games are different. So you release the first one covering the first film or the first two films, the second one the middle range of this franchise, and then the last one being the whole, you know, those we don't speak of battle at the end in the Deathly Hallows, and all three games being different, but being able to access certain portions of the game if you achieve certain things throughout the three different products. Thus, maybe a wizard mode that you can only reach if you've reached the wizard mode of the other two or other three games. Boy, oh boy, wouldn't a new connectivity launch from Jersey Jack Pinball be huge using this as your launching pad? The Harry Potter theme and license? Yeah, I mean, I see the potential for it, but this is getting a multicolor Wonka Ball territory. I know. I think that's way beyond their capabilities. I would juice this thing. And while I see the idea, and I don't think it's a bad strategy to, say, try and do a trilogy, especially given the breadth of the content, I expect there to be just one game. I think this is wishful thinking. I think there's a lot of gambling that, not gambling in the J.K. Rowling fear concerns.
    54:32
    That's the bar, so you didn't have a problem with slot machines. But, I mean, because I've seen some people, you know, true Potterheads that are like, I want there to be seven games, which is just ridiculous. And then there's two Potterhead. Yeah, and I see, you know, okay, the idea of three, but there's so much, I mean, there are some risks with that. I get it because it's like, well, this is such a hot theme. There's two things going for Harry Potter. It's such a hot theme, and it's never been done before. Like, Star Wars is a hotter theme, but we've had multiple Star Wars pins. But I don't think you really need to have multiple versions to, quote-unquote, maximize the profit. That's true. Because you also run risks. Like, okay, well, let's say JJP becomes the Harry Potter company for the next three years because they're making three games, one a year.
    55:21
    So now you've written off everyone who's not into that theme. Their price point, assuming they don't make some dramatic shifts, like bringing back a standard, which, again, I've heard speculation about. I don't think they do that. In fact, I think these prices go up because they know that the license is going to move units. I just think it's a long time to stick with just one theme. And what happens if the first game is not seen as very good? You could try and point and say, well, we've got different designers and different coders on the next one's coming, but have you burned too many bridges? and the number of whales that are going to be in the position to drop $45,000 to have all three of them is not significant enough versus the fact that they can go, well, yeah, that's great, but, you know, we go ahead and we do, you know, something else like Goonies we can sell out of CEs as well. So why stick with just Harry Potter and run, you know, there's risks with it. Yeah, and if the second game came out, people would go, well, I can't buy that one because I don't have the first one. So, yeah, that's kind of weird. I mean, it's just, I mean, but that's a really, really interesting idea. So my personal guess will be this will be one game. It will be based off of multiple films. I don't know if it will be based off of all of them. Did you want to speculate on who's going to do it? Yeah, let's do all of that. Standard body or wide body?
    56:35
    Standard. I hope so. Yeah, I think they're done with wide bodies. I know they talk up that they could go back to it, and that's true, but I just don't think they will. A lot of other podcasters and speculators in the hobby have said that, like, you were kind of insinuating the price is going to shoot up. It'll rocket up. Well, rocket is, I mean, I guess it depends what you think about rocketing. But, yeah, I'll go ahead. I'm willing to put out a prediction, and I'll say no standard edition, just like there haven't been for the last year. I think they're done with that. Ooh, okay. And, again, that feeds into that strategy as well. If they were telling, hey, you know, our games don't show up in bars, you can't be offering a sub-$10,000 iteration. I think LEs go up to 15 and CEs go up to 20 at least. So both see an increase. Yes. I am going to disagree.
    57:27
    Gaspi sounds. I'm with you. I see no need to do a standard. They'll stick with a two-tier model. And I think ultimately pricing the correct answer objectively is pricing is going to come down to the market at the time of release Ultimately that what going to happen These are bombs high enough where they making a profit as to what they price these things at It going to come probably within two months of them launching a product Does that sound weird, listener? It's true.
    58:03
    It's going to be a big difference between if this game comes out in a year and this game comes out in three years. Because if the market is, for some reason, super hot, okay, they might go up. But if the market continues to kind of soften even more so, I can see them actually reducing the price of the LE. I can see it. To get into more households? Let's not joke ourselves. They're not making $5,000. Well, they make close to $5,000 GNR if not all of them. So I can see that. But I can see the CE going up. Absolutely. They're going to push on that. They're going to get that thing up to as much as that CE. That's what they're going to do going forward in any company going forward. They're going to juice that CE for whatever they can. But for the other model, I think they're kind of seeing Godfather sitting and Toy Story 4 sitting and GNR sitting. I don't know if they pull the trigger on a 12. No, and this is where I'm going to, again, you're right. And if the market changes enough, I think what your prediction is would actually be valid. I'm drawing a line in the sand on what I think is going to happen. Here's why I think it's going to be the way I'm saying it is. I think they realize that they misread that the market was not going to continue to go to the moon at the end of the pandemic. And they raised their prices too much. However, it looks too bad to lower them back down. So what I think they're doing is they're going to try as hard as possible to hold the current pricing until Harry Potter. and then they'll say, well, we need to do an inflation adjustment at this point. I could do that too. With the fact that they should never have gone to 12 and 15. It was way too high. They misread what the market was going to do. They thought everything was going to be like GNR, and it's just not. So you don't think this is coming out next by Steve Ritchie?
    59:51
    No. In fact, I think they give this game to Mark Seiden. Whoa! Oh, whoa! The Metroid pinball guy. Wow! The new guy? Absolutely. What better? What? What better license? It's going to print money no matter what. Let your new guy go in. Let him build his confidence. It's going to be a successful game. He's going to feel great about himself. Not on Harry Potter. Yes, he's going to be able to bring his idea. Because here's what's going to happen. I think on Triple J and everyone said, Eric, Eric, Eric. And then there are probably some people who want to see Richie do it. And it's like, people think they know what you're going to get when you get either of them. You bring in the new guy, get blown away by his new ideas, and it's going to be a winner no matter what. Builds up confidence in your new designer. I think it's a smart move. Do it. What about Professor Lawler's name coming out of retirement? He's never coming back. No? He might want to. He's never coming back to JJP. He might want to. I don't think JJP ever brings him back. Holy moly. Absolutely not. I don't think it's worth discussing.
    61:01
    Seiden's a nice dude. But what do you think? You clearly don't think that Seiden would be who they decided. No fucking way. Are you in the Seiden Harry Potter? Wow, Dennis. Have you been dropped on your head as a baby to come up with that idea? No, it's a great argument. I thought I had a really strong argument. It is. But at the end of the day, the passion squirts say no fucking way. What? No way. Even Mark Seiden would say, hell no, I ain't touching that. What? No. Oh, come on. Mark Seiden saying, give me a hot title. This is a hot title This is smoking hot I can see the argument for theme's sake But there are a couple themes No Most games don't sell off the designer They sell off the theme He's a peacock Let him fly Mark, I don't think you're listening But if you listen, I believe in you You can fly, you can do this Don't let these naysayers put you down I don't think Steve Ritchie Would do it either I don't think they would get the same. What about that? Someone posted a meme where Steve Ritchie was like in wizard robes. I saw that. I think Steve Ritchie would do it, but I think timing-wise, if I'm guessing, I would say we get a Steve Ritchie at the end of the year. It's not Harry Potter. What did you think about it? Maybe you hadn't seen this rumor. It was amongst all the rumors because all the rumors are there. All the rumors are rumoring. And the rumor was Steve Ritchie is a Potter fan, and he was promised Potter if he would jump ship to JJP. and after what happened to him with Led Zeppelin, that's what he did. I'm saying no to that because... I think it's wrong in multiple areas. Yeah, I think it's wrong just because I think Harry Potter, the lightning, So you're going to say what everyone else says. You're going to say Eric.
    62:46
    You're going to say Eric Menier. I think Eric Menier for timing because they're going to want Harry Potter to get out of here. They have Mark Seiden, I think, I would guess, after Steve Ritchie and probably to your argument of probably a really good title that sells itself and we give it to Seiden. I'll get behind that. I agree with you that Richie is next and Richie is not Harry Potter, and I think it's Mark after that. What about a new designer?
    63:15
    Mark is new. I'm talking about a new J.J.P. designer. Have they hired anyone recently? What about a veteran designer from a different company that comes over to J.J.P.? Now, look, Steve Ritchie is not a spring chicken. Yeah, but you just said bring a veteran designer over to J.J.P. Like, they have three designers right now. They have plenty of designers. They don't need any more. How long do you think Steve Ritchie is at J.J.P.? I think probably five years or less. Which equates to one to two titles or less. Yeah, but they only put out one to two titles a year. Twelve-month cyclist, plenty of time for a designer in today's era. For whatever reason, I think Steve Ritchie has two games tops at JJP, if not just one. I think that fits with my timeline of five years or less. Don't forget, he's been there a year and a half already. I'm saying that when Steve Ritchie leaves, they're going to have more than two designers. I think that they... And I wonder who that next person's going to be. I don't know necessarily if they bring in the replacement before he leaves or not. They wouldn't have to. I mean, Eric's got a lot of experience at this point. They don't need, like, Steve to train up the newbie. But they're trying to pump out two a year? I understand that. You think that Pete Bell would ever work at a different company? Eric and Mark can maintain that pace while they train up the third person between the two of them. Honestly, the person probably goes under Eric for two to lead because Eric's got a lot more experience. I don't think Borg would ever leave Stern. He's just so in it. He'll retire there. I don't think they take a Stern designer. Is that what you're suggesting, a Stern designer? I wonder if they've ever pushed for a Stern designer.
    64:50
    Steve? I know. That's what I'm saying. I wonder if he's the only one. I mean, maybe they've had discussions. It's just, like, if you're getting a share of game sales and stuff, it's like Stern's just a better place, I think, to be. I don't think Jack Danger will leave because that's like Stern builds, no? No, I don't really think any of the Stern designers. Well, there's no spooky designers. No Chicago gaming designers. No, no, you don't need to qualify for that. Who else? We got the whistling bird in the mine cart. They could bring Balser back. Hell off. They could try and maybe Steve says, hey, Mark had a lot of fun doing Pulp Fiction. You want to bring my brother over? Then how long does he last?
    65:35
    He's been very happy over at Play Mechanics. Sure. Other than that. Nordman's not going over there. Why not?
    65:46
    No. Why not? I think JJP gets it by now. No. Why not? Because, man, GTF is why. The last five years, ten years of his career is why. But, no, Home Corps is why. No, Elvira's House of Horrors is a very successful, popular game. It's not much so that they don't like making it.
    66:06
    That's a stern thing because they just don't like rotating toys. I don't know why. That's why all those carousels on Batman 66 break. They don't like those either. I think we see Harry Potter in 2024 late or summer of 2025. Yeah, I think 2024. I think it's next year. Wow. It would be perfect timing for Mark to release it.
    66:29
    Do it. To wrap it all up here, Nap Arcade posting his article on Facebook, and who chimed in? Oh, yeah. Dennis Norman? No, the passion squirt, Joe Kamenkao. He comments. He starts commenting on people like, oh, yeah, you're not a fan of me, huh? Not only was he bold enough to make this post, but days after, everybody was like, oh, it was a drunk post. Well, he's been on a bender for a while then because he's still shooting off Scorch of Passion here and there. He responds to Nap Arcade talking about whether this is true or not and said, you're right on all accounts. Or are you? Do you think you know the story? One day I'll do a fireside chat with Rob Burke. And as Paul Harvey says, and now you know the rest of the story. It's fun to speculate, but only I know the key to why a Harry Potter game will ever be made by someone. Stay tuned. And then he goes on to post after other people have liked saying, oh, it's a professional. He'll post, is it?
    67:35
    He's all in, man. Well, you know, in a way, I kind of get it. I mean, it's not like any of us, like any pinball buyers or anything. Like, we don't, like, he doesn't work for us. He can kind of do what he wants. It's like he's not with any of these companies. If he's, like, a freelance licensed person, it's interesting to do the unprofessional claim. I get it. I get where people are coming from because it feels like he's undermining all the businesses that he works with. But, I mean, I guess we find out whether or not they want to work with him anymore. Or, you know, honestly, though, from his perspective, I'm assuming he doesn't really need the pinball side at all. He's doing pretty good. I think he's what we've termed in the past an episode here at the Pinball Show. He's got that BPE, man, that big pinball energy, and he doesn't give a fuck. But, you know, it gets interesting. I'm going to use a little story time with me because, well, you know, like one of my least favorite things is having an accusation of unprofessionalism, especially if I think it's inaccurate, which if it applies to me, I think it's inaccurate. So and this was, you know, professionally, we had something, you know, there's some there's some health things that were going on. And I went I was I didn't I shouldn't say I went to the media. I was getting media calls a lot at this point because there were this was in the pandemic and there were lots of updates people wanted. And in one of them, I I criticized one of the one of the advisory teams that I was put on. It was this big, like 30 people, and I didn't call any individuals out. But I said we were moving too slow, and we should have been done by now. We should have had our recommendations out. And one of the organizers of that group got very upset with me and said that she felt that I should have gone to them and talked about it internally rather than being unprofessional and talking to the media about it, which did not go over well with me. I don't even remember what I said in my 10-minute rant back, but it was probably worse than what Kamikow posted.
    69:40
    The thing was, though, that this person who was speaking to me who came from a different perspective, I think from a nursing background, and I came from a public administration background, is we have a professional obligation to share things with the public. It's actually part of the code of ethics. and nurses obviously come from a different environment where privacy sort of reigns supreme and there are rules about that. So sometimes, you know, we just have different views of what is and isn't professional. So I just kind of throw that out there. That's a nice way to put it. It was. I'm pretty kind of you. You're pretty esteemed for it too. Yeah, I don't know about this. I was a little surprised with these posts personally because I'm just kind of like, I'm not seeing like the, there's not a public need to know any of this stuff. As much as I criticize pinball for, in my mind, being in the dark ages with this whole, well, let's keep all the licenses secret until we reveal the game like a big surprise. And I'm like, I get the arguments. You know, I've heard like the Josh Farquhar arguments about you want to maximize what's on the line currently. But the more and more this goes to homeowners, this is like video games and people buy the license. And in video games, you find out about games years ahead of time, and it's not a big deal. Yeah, and if I'm in this situation of Joe Cam and Cal, and I want to be known for being one of those large figureheads in an entire industry regarding especially licensing, and I didn't get and not affiliated with one of the most sought-after licenses in an industry, this is probably what I would do to stay relevant.
    71:07
    I wouldn't hide. I would come out and just start giving passion squirts. Sorry, I've got to stop talking about squirting. I didn't see anywhere, and maybe you did because I didn't follow all these Facebook posts. Some people sent me some screenshots. But did he anywhere, like, say this didn't happen because someone at Stern dropped the ball publicly? Because I didn't see that. This is just, this is coming. I, you know, I've heard all sorts of theories from the, he thought, you know, that this would sabotage Godfather sales to, he didn't want podcasters to be able to milk this as a rumor and report. And so he's just like, I'm just ending it. There's no reason to draw it out. I think he's just using us podcasters as the stepchildren. We're pawns. I think we're just pawns. Slapping us around. You're projecting. Stop, Joe. Stop. Ouch. who pinches? You're a grown man.
    71:59
    Okay, that's Harry Potter pinball. You know what, Dennis? For whatever it's worth, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on it at a show and playing it.
    72:09
    That's a beautiful fence you've built. And I wish all the best for all the companies. That's right. There's the other one. I just hope it's successful. I hope you have lots of success. I'm rooting for him. I am rooting for them.
    72:25
    I haven't said this in a while. I've said this before. I never really got a lot of pushback because I think people understood where I was coming from. But I actually don't root for companies.
    72:34
    I don't. And, again, I don't mean in mean. Yeah, like if they were to hire me, I would care. But I don't work for them. So their success or failure is irrelevant from my perspective. I want there to be good games. and if there were no more pinball companies we could still have a hobby and we would just celebrate old games so that's how I see it I'm not wanting anyone to lose their job or anything but it's just like when I guess it's one of those things when you think about it a little bit it's like gosh but don't you really hope that Bond does well for Stern I don't care I don't want it to work or not work I'm neutral to it I'm neutral I'm neutral to the success of Foo Fighters and I'm neutral to the success of Godfather and I think one plays better than the other, and I think both are good games, but I'm not like, not really, like, it's not a sports team. I'm not rooting for it. That's why people put you on a pedestal in this hobby. I don't think they put me on a pedestal. They do. I was cracking up this last, well, the last couple weeks I was reviewing some of Knated's stuff and he was shitting on me for something about sponsoring shows and that's bad now or something because of my company sponsoring shows. Well, like Expo and stuff? No, like the different podcasters. Oh, podcasters, okay. I'm saying, you know, oh, they're in the back pocket of bullshit, all this stuff. He's a fucking marketer but doesn't understand sponsor, whatever. I call it hashtag being smart in business. But it cracks me up because then he said a couple times, I don't think he realized he's saying it. I'm like, dude, you can't, like, that's not part of your narrative. He's like, yeah, and I wasn't going to shit on Pony Factory or Pinball Adventures because the owner was part of my Patreon club. So I was holding off, but now that he's not, now I can shit on him. I'm like, dude, what? Like pushing me is biased, but then nobody sees that. All right. Oh, I see what you're saying. Now you can shit on it because he's not paying you. Like that's the definition of bias, but let's talk about Pin Clash. No bias in there. Godzilla edition. There was potential bias for me, and I should say that Flippin' Out Pinball was a premier sponsor and supporter of IU Pinball's Pin Clash, and proudly so. So you better not say anything mean about Pin Clash. No, I would say things mean because I, me, Zach, as an enthusiast, is different than my company, Flippin' Out Pinball. Does it get murky? Yes. Does it get me in trouble? Sure. But it is. If Pincash sucked, I'd be like, yeah, sorry, Carl. I think it's fucking blown. No, it's – That's where – I bet you're talking about them doing Mr. Castle. That's back where earlier in the episode where I was talking about how, you know, the line in the middle of the road. And for me, it's like you just want to – and my approach has always just been I just want to be honest. I'm not – I don't want to be mean to any entity, but I'll say the things I like and the things I don't. I don't feel like I need it to be balanced. Like if there's one thing I like and 12 things I don't, then there's, you know, I don't like it. And that's how it is. But it's not personal, and that's where I think it's important to not go around and say, oh, look, they dropped the ball on the Harry Potter license. Let's start calling out names on shows and saying they should be fired and stuff like that. That's not appropriate. That's being a shitty human being. You're trolling for clicks and stuff. I call it shitty human being. I think it's unhealthy for the hobby. But it's also unhealthy for the hobby to be like, I hope you do really well with your turd monster. I'm rooting for him. When I don't mean it. I can't root for a company that's stealing Mac and me. But. You let that go. Mac needs all the exposure he can get. Not let Mac and me go. That's probably a positive. All right. But anyway, we're talking about Pen Clash. We're not talking about Mac and me. Another very successful rendition of Pen Clash. Did you watch any of it? No. I watched some of it. No, you sponsored. You had to. You know, it didn't matter. But I've watched some of it. And for competitive pinball, it's enjoyable. I like the format conceptually. It does work better as a viewing experience, but I just don't generally watch competitive. I actually played in my first tournament this year yesterday. Whoa, how'd you do? I've been really bad. I don't know how I ended. I mean, I won my money back, so I guess I did okay. And that is about the extent, listeners, as to how interesting competitive pinball is on podcasts.
    76:56
    Oh, I don't know. If you didn't win, I really don't give a shit how you did. No. Yeah. I won my $5 back. There you go. All you need to know. It is very professionally done. I love the tutorials prior to the different tasks because I'm not a big fan of this whole going head-to-head time base. I don't like that.
    77:19
    But, you know, to each their own. I'm not probably the target demographic here. So, see, that's negative about Pin Clash. ZMAC, Zach McCarthy, edged out Escher Lefkoff to win this thing. And spoiler alert, if you haven't watched it now, that's your own damn fault then.
    77:37
    So the young guns yet again, Z-Mac edging out after. And then shout out to our friend Ray Day who finished third place. Nicely done. Congratulations to all three of them. I feel bad for Ray Day because he was so young. He didn't even drink. He wasn't even old enough to drink. I don't even know if he could sign up to the military when we first met him. Is he old enough to drink yet? Now they won't even take me in the arm. He feels like he's in the awkward teen phase. And these babies are out here just winning over the field. Hang in there, Ray Day. I'm still rooting for you.
    78:16
    Some great TPN, that is the Pinball Network, representation as well. We'll get you on a stretching plan, Ray Day. Don't be like us. We'll keep your back healthy. We're in the AARP. Welcome. Welcome, my friend. Send him the card. Yes, let's knock him off early. Well, it's like professional sports, man. Once you hit, like, 25, it's like, you old. You need to retire. It's like, unless you're a quarterback, you done. That's right. Yep.
    78:45
    It's not like they're thoroughbred. We're not going to take you out back and shoot you. But you're going to be a stud here in a minute. Some great TPN representation as well on Ping Flash, Godzilla edition this year. Madman Robert Byers finishing 16th place. I think he's still part of TPN. Hotty, hotty, hotty. Coming in in 17th place, Mr. Silver Baller himself, Mike, finishing 19th. And the Stephanie. I just call her the Stephanie because that's Stephanie Traub finishing 22nd. Wow. I didn't realize there were that many in the pin clash. Well, you know what? We are the network. That's true. Well, we are a network. I think there are multiple networks. What? Multiple networks? Mm-hmm. Fucking Tenet? What is this? Inception? I haven't seen Tenet. I haven't either. Don't spoil it. You know what? I haven't either, and that's a bad Christopher Nolan fan of me. I have not seen it yet. My son kept pushing, and he pushed it so hard that I was like, you know what? It's actually kind of turned me off. You want to eat on it? I've done that before. Yeah, it kind of turned me off. I don't really want to watch it now. And I heard, because you've bitched about the audio being, you can't hear it. The audio mix was really bad with Inception for the theater. I heard Tenet was even worse. Really? Yeah. I don't know. Someone in editing is messing it up.
    80:03
    It's not that the music and sound effects are bad. It's the balance. Get Jason from Pinball Party on it to fix it. The cinema, audio, video nerd in me.
    80:14
    There's actually fixes that different production companies are instilling in streaming services to fix this. And manufacturers of TVs. There are different settings called fixing fucking dumb cinema imbalances. settings where they'll boost up vocal levels and dialogue levels so that they balance out better.
    80:37
    There are streaming services and manufacturers that are trying to correct that now because, for example, in my living room, I can't watch a film. I cannot watch a film unless I'm pressing up and pressing down on volume, up and down between effects and audio. I'm getting old, and it's not just you, but I'm getting old where I can't hear the dialogue. I can't make out what they're saying. It doesn't matter really how loud I put. I just, I don't know if it's the acoustics in my, you know, in my living room, but I can't fucking hear it. And then the booms are really loud. My problem is my old eyes, Zach. And some of these films, when they activate the HDR mode, if it's in dark environments, I can't see anything. It's like all black. See, I'm visually, I'm like an eagle. I've been messing with the set. Well, it's a settings thing because the HDR is like okay in certain things. So, yeah, I've been playing with the TV settings because it's like I'm usually okay with audio unless you go on YouTube sometimes, you know how it is. You'll find some channels, some upstarts or whatever, and they don't know sound mixing yet. And it's really bad. Like they put in the music and it's over the vocals and there's nothing you can do to fix it. You can turn it up to hear the vocals and the music will hurt your ears. I can't do that. And I'm not getting out an equalizer and fixing it that way. We're the pro at a lot of things. One of them, you know, is pinball. the other maybe audio, video, and stuff. Maybe the other is the other gaming devices like yourself with EGP. But we're also master debaters. I had to segue that way. Yeah, I see that. And what, you know, an episode or two ago is what people are, look, I didn't give it this title, but people are talking, and they're calling it the great reproduction debate, Dennis. They're talking about you and I's back and forth regarding CGCLE versus the original and what real collectors want. Yes, and the people were quite split on this. They were. They really were. We did get an email that I found interesting from a Mark. He said, hey, guys, first up, love your show. Now, Zach, an original, he didn't put a sign there. I'm just doing it for effect. But he said an original is and always will be preferred option for a collector. It has nothing to do with incandescent lights or rules. You fuck. He didn't say you fuck, again, for emphasizing for effect here. Fact is, it is a copy. Remake is just a nicer word for people who cannot get the real thing. Whoa, Mark, easy here, bud. So I'm already pissed off at this so-called fucking Mark guy. He says, I'm talking about original and mint condition, of course. Oh, how convenient now, Mark. He goes on to say, I had an MM, listeners, probably Medieval Madness, in virtually out-of-the-box condition. Of course I put in LEDs and mods. That does not make it not original. What? No, okay, arguments can be made. He goes on to say, at the time, I sold my MM for $16,500. And my friend sold his remake for just under $10,000. The guy who bought mine saw the remake ad advertisement as well and said he would never have that, his word, imitation in his house. Who always says numbers don't lie, question mark. Oh, what a fucking asshole, Mark. Cheers, guys. Mark. And he says he's from, like, France or something like that, which makes the whole pricing thing irrelevant. I don't understand it. Okay, Mark, if that's your real name. First off, who spells their name Mark with a C rather than a K? but I digress. Nothing that you said here really made much sense or furthered your position or point of view, and may I just say that your snarkiness in here is picked up on and not appreciated.
    84:28
    What is this guy getting on? It was missed. I just found this very pretentious, and I loved it at the same time. I thought it was funny. And we had someone, they mentioned it on Pinside, we had a discussion on our Patreon Discord as well. Discord was hot on this thing. Yeah, well, because I got myself in a little bit of verbal trouble because I used the phrase real collector. That's where I was getting to. I was getting frothy. Well, now, in my defense, Zach, the sole reason I used that term and then didn't define it was because I knew it would piss you off. So that was bait. That was neat. That was red meat. And listeners, I'm sure most of you, even if you disagreed with what I was saying, I think most of you sympathize and understand that I needed that, right? I need to do that from time to time. You just got to push. Zach has got buttons, like we all do, that trigger him. And one of his triggers is the notion that he is not at the upper echelon of the hardest core of collecting in pinball. So that's why I use the phrase real collector. He just tickled the button. He didn't have to push it. Yes. Well, whereas what I was getting at, though, was kind of what Mark in his email was getting at, which is, you know, when you think of a collector and there are different ways you can do it and there are different ways of collecting. And as I even noted in that episode, I personally, in my pinball collection, would rather have the remakes for a lot of the reasons you listed, Zach.
    85:58
    When it comes to collecting of the historic artifacts or whatnot, we usually think in terms of originality.
    86:09
    And so now for some people, they don't think that that's applicable in pinball the same way it would be with, I think someone on Pinside used the example of baseball cards or coin collecting or whatever. Correct, because they said that you play them, and I agree. Yes, and I agree with that as well. But our whole discussion, which I think a lot of our listeners on both sides of it lost sight of, was we were talking about in the whole context was why didn the classic editions do well for Fathom and all the CGC games versus all the enhanced screens and stuff And that because if you willing to consider a remake and I was describing that as you weren after the quote real collector or I should have said the original collector mindset, why wouldn't you get all the bling and stuff in the remake? Because the classic is still just a copy. So if you're like, I want it to be as original as possible, if you're a collector of originality, then you just want the original in the first place. That was what I was trying to say. while also goading you.
    87:09
    I rate my performance on that at 70%. I still think I did pretty well. My only blunder in my view was saying real collector and not original collector as the phrase. Yeah, but you did that on purpose and it worked. I did. But on retrospect, I think I would have won more listeners to my side had I said original. And I think I still could have pissed you off. Yeah. But I'm not sure. It really worked. I'll have to think on that. But not too much. because honestly, I'm kind of done with this discussion. Yeah, so am I. Because I think we wrote it as far as it can be written. Very true, Dennis. So much so that in Discord, even, after they were all going back and forth, and it was good, I was chomping some meme popcorn, but then I was like, honestly, I think I'm just going to side with Dennis now because I'm tired of talking about it. Yeah, but no one believes that you really sided with him because you're like the Galaxy Quest people, never give up, never surrender.
    88:03
    Snape. He's in that movie, too. By Grapp Thor's hammer. What a savings. Sorry, Hans Gruber. Do you think Hans Gruber's going to be in Harry Potter? Do you think it's his likeness, even if he's passed? No, but who's going to do the diehard pinball machine we should have gotten in the 80s? Don't even fucking bring up Christmas. I don't have the time today. It'd be the perfect December release. I don't have the time today.
    88:27
    You know what? Talking about collectors and who's real collectors or not, I have to be a real collector, Dennis, because if I wasn't, there's no way that I could create a new segment that I'm calling Collector's Corner. And you can hear that exclusively on Patreon. I was going to say, I can hear the song, too. Collector's Corner.
    88:49
    Collector's Corner. Zach's got the collection before Dennis did. So if you guys sign up to the Pinball Show, which is a Patreon membership, You can go to patreon.com slash the pinball show. Sign up for $10. You can hear this exclusive content as well as being a part of our private club membership Discord channel. It's a lot of fun. Or you can jump up to the $25 level, get even more perks, including a decal, a private monthly hangout with us. You can also pick a topic and stuff and other things. Or bump up to the $100 level and get yourself a paywall polo. You can come on the show. You get your own nickname. Oh, my gosh. People are loving those things. And you get one-on-one private behind-the-scenes, dirty, filthy industry gossip news and NDA-worthy information between just yourself, myself, and Dennis. It's private. Don't tell. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. But, yeah, if you guys want to hear Collector's Corner, sign up now and then jump into Discord to discuss. We also, while we're talking about it, Dennis, I'm going to give some shout-outs to our Screaming Goat Club members that helped make some of this possible. And that is a big thank you to the Bob Kemp.
    90:04
    Rodney Steve. I tried to attack my wife. Don't shoot that fucker. To the Panther. Thanks, Rob. Kineticist Colin.
    90:15
    The Falcon. Frankie. The Shaker. The OEM Shaker Motors. The OEM Stern Shaker Motors. From David, the fox.
    90:28
    From Sweet Joe, the bell. Oh, Charlie, love you. And one of our newest members, Jabs himself, Mr. Steve. Now, the votes are in, Dennis. Remember last episode we said we don't know. Should we go with the wolf? Should we go with the bumblebee? Bumblebee! Or should we go with the maestro for Steve J? So we gave it to the official TPS Club members to decide.
    90:55
    We put that on Patreon as a poll. And Dennis, do you know the results of this? I don't. Okay, so surprise for you as well. Well, listener, we do have some results, and the results are a lot of votes, actually. We had the majority of our club members voted, which thank you, team. they voted a split decision 50-50 between the bumblebee and the maestro. None of them voted for the wolf.
    91:24
    Okay, so. 50-50, wow, okay. So we're split. Did you see the clever thing that I did the last episode whenever I did play the maestro what song I played?
    91:34
    It was Flight of the Bumblebee. Yes, yes, I thought that was great. Nobody messaged me and I thought, fuck, that is really a lot of work on my part if I get no recognition. So I'm pulling a camera cow there. But I do have a tiebreaker because I went back through and I put this in their Discord as well. And I'm so neurotic that I made sure that people voting in our Discord, Dennis, wasn't replicated. Oh, wow. Look, I don't like to be wrong. I understand. And people, as a side note, if I'm going to argue something, I'm right. Just stop. What about where you gave up and agreed with me? Oh, I guess I was a lie. You're my horcrux there, Dennis. There was one person who did vote in Discord that did not vote on the official Patreon poll.
    92:18
    And they didn't vote for the wolf. So they are making a decision here without even knowing it. That person was none other than Craig Bobby. Say what? Whoa. Catch you on the flip side. Flip side comes in and votes. Bubble Bee.
    92:37
    Bobby. So, at this point, he's got two nicknames. Jab, you're going to get Bumblebee. I don't know. So, thank you guys for all the support. As a reminder to the listeners, our next TPS live Zoom hangout is going to be, for those part of the pinball show, Screaming Go and Nordman Levels, on May 31st, 8 p.m. Central. Mark your calendars. Be there. Let the juice loose. It's good stuff over there.
    93:05
    All right, Dennis, we had a lot of Harry Potter talk. I wonder if any of us are going to show up in this week's Pinball Market Trends. This is Bobcat Techno Boy.
    93:17
    Dennis, you probably thought two years ago that Pinball Market Trends was just a little bit of fad. And then a year ago you thought, God, this thing's got to die down. But it's still red hot. Pinball Market Trends is still in the mouths of many. It's still in the ears of a lot. People love the pinball market trends. Do you think the segment ever gets old?
    93:40
    Yes. Not subjectively, but like objectively. Numbers don't lie. We only report facts here. Well, I mean, no. I mean, when anything's based off of like a market thing like that, it would always be evolving because the market's always evolving. So, no, not from that context. So it continues the trend. Can we put it behind the paywall? It's like a $1 tier. No, no. There's your $5 tier right there.
    94:04
    there's still some people holding out they're like wait a minute i will not i'm holding strong five dollars all day long ten dollars you're a stepchild to me i'm not gonna do it and side note i want to thank you dennis because you could have made my editing so much easier two weeks ago when a lot of people may or may not know that when i'm editing this show the drop-ins just bumblebee Like, that drop-in alone takes time because you've got to find it. The different sound effects, you've got to find them out there. You can't just Google something and it pops up the perfect thing. It takes some time to find it. Then you've got to clean it up a little bit and put it in there. If I would have just listened to you, Dennis, you told me where to find that Bumblebee drop. But me, not paying attention, I listened for 45 minutes. I'm so sorry. I just had to reiterate it. Sky LaBeouf and Bumblebee Interactions. I tried to search engine everything to find that little fucking call, that one little one-second call out of Bumblebee. And then I about gave up. I really about gave up. And then I went back and listened to you, and you were like, in the second film trailer, I'm like, if that fucking guy, there's no way that he is right. And he's referencing the trailer to the follow-up film, Transformers. And I went there and damned if it wasn't there. And only there. I could find it nowhere else. That was a very informative trailer. I just remember it quite well. So I kicked myself in the ass. I lost an hour there. But, yeah, inside baseball here. So trending up Bumblebee? Trending up is JJP. Oh. It rhymes. JJP is training up. I can't train up Bumblebee yet until I see this latest Transformers film. Have you seen it yet? No, I have not. I haven't seen any in the theater since the third one, I think. Look at you. Support jazz more than I do. I didn't go see that.
    96:17
    JJP. I've got to train up JJP this week because they secured that Harry Potter license. Come on. Just when I thought they failed me with maybe, you know, a lesser than theme of Godfather or Toy Story 4. They totally redeem themselves unless they fuck it up. But I think we're good. I think we're good here. I don't know what the next title is or if that will be worthy, but I know Harry Potter works. So I've got to give it to J.J.P. and Jack Winary for securing this license. If it's true, who knows?
    96:51
    It's true. What if when we're all saying it's about to come out And then we hear that it's going to be Godfather. Oh, my God.
    96:59
    Just turn in and work on it. Speaking of Godfather, I didn't talk about it in the bulk of the show there, but I'm thinking that Godfather, we're going to start seeing those roll out in the next couple weeks as well. Have those not gone out yet? No, not yet. Oh, good. Not yet. I think Jack originally said spring, so, yep. We're closing out on the spring here. I think it's going to happen. And also trending out this week is Joe Camencal. Wait a minute. How can he trend up if J.J.P. is trending up? He's the one that didn't get the license and made the spectacle of himself on social media. Well, look, whether it's for the right reasons or not, who am I to say? He's still trending up. And like Dennis was saying, is it unprofessional? Eh, I don't know.
    97:39
    He's informed the people. He's giving you more information than any manufacturer ever would. He's got a giggle or two out of me. It's all a matter of perspective a lot of times. That's right. He's passion squirting here, there, and everywhere And I'm not going to be left with my mouth open That's all I can say Also turning up this week is the legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom That's a thing, I guess The whole Tears of the Kingdom thing Have you played this? No, I don't own a Switch Oh, fuck, here we go with that Isn't there a platform buy-in? You can't play Zelda on the other stuff I know, it's like you can't play a JGP game on a stern cabinet. I get that. Well, it's kind of different since you don't plug a JGP game into a cabinet on your phone. My head when it comes to gaming is still cartridges.
    98:30
    So the PlayStation CD does not fit into the Nintendo 64 slot. Yeah, right. And that's still basically true. Do they not do the whole downloading thing? They do, but you can go to the store and buy a card that it comes on. How much space does it take to download a game? I would think you'd need, like, servers. I mean, some of the games are getting up to 100 gigabytes at this point. Okay, then what's the standard storage on a PlayStation 5?
    99:00
    You know, I don't know what they're... I think the different SKUs come with different size drives, but let's say around a terabyte, so 10 gigabytes. So not much. I mean, you're not... No, no, no. It's, yeah, it's... Like, with my Xbox, I think my Xbox has half a terabyte, so 500 gig. And then I have another 2-terabyte external drive I have plugged into it that stores games. Is it like my Mac, and it almost shuts itself off? It's an external hard drive. It's getting close to full storage? No, it's not some crappy Apple product, so it works. Easy now. Easy. It actually... And in full disclosure for biases, I do actually own stock in Microsoft, and I do not in Apple, so... Some of these things might be to advantage my own investments. Be careful.
    99:43
    Be careful. I didn't even know that about you. No, that's a recent stock purchase. You know what? People oftentimes talk about you and I being opposites, the Abbott, the Costellos, the Kirk and Spock. I think that's pretty accurate. We are very much an Apple PC because I am. I never thought it was that way. I'm a Mac lover like no other. I was going to say, you're a Mac and I'm a me.
    100:12
    That's why you're the greatest. Legends of Zelda. I think I probably would like this game. Oh, yeah, no, it looks fun. Yeah, I just, everybody's talking about it. We've lost all of our pinball coders from working over the last week or two. You know what? Because they all seem to be playing this. The same thing happened last year with Elden Ring. It did. Which I also didn't play.
    100:33
    You are right. Sekiro Shadows Never Die Twice or whatever pissed me off too much. I'm like, I'm done with you FromSoftware and your nonsense. What is it with you? Every time I listen to EGP, y'all are playing the most fucked up games. I'm like, can you not at least make it a little bit more mainstream game play-wise for me? Oh, I'm going to have some good ones for the next episode. I play three new games and they're all weird. Oh, it's going to be fun. I played a game that I downloaded on my phone. It was a free app. I'm like, what? Who plays this junk? Play mainstream stuff. The little guy needs help, too. They need support, too.
    101:08
    It's all about mainstream, baby. go big or go home. Disney everything. That's where I've been stuck on. I'll train it up. Training up this week. Disney documentaries. I've been watching how Disneyland was created. A lot of archival video footage of Walt Disney. I've been watching that. I don't know if I've been on a Disney thing in this life. Have you ever been to Disneyland? I haven't, but I really, really want to go. I want to go to all the Disney. So, Tokyo, Paris, I want to go to all of them. Yeah, that's interesting. And I want to tour behind the scenes in all of them. I just love theme parks and how they're engineered and how they're owned. I just love it. I'm such a nerd when it comes to that. There's a whole YouTube channel about theme parks. I know. And, like, gone ones. Have you seen Defunctland? Yeah, I've seen all of it. That's a lot of fun. I just love all of it. Okay, where am I at now? Okay, I'll trend something down. You're trending a lot of stuff up. All right, trending down this week is the 2.0. Oh, no. Not all 2.0 systems. You know, it's just the idea of 2.0. To me, it's fantastic, Dennis, but here lately, you know, the Whirlwind 2.0, the Funhaus 2.0, even the Totem Tales of Arabian Nights 2.0, they've all been duds. I feel like they're ruining such a great idea. The only people able to do it wonderfully thus far have been Haggis, with Fathom Revisited, and Chicago Gaming, to some extent, with the real collector's versions of the LEs and SEs. What I'm saying is I haven't lost hope, but some of y'all are harsh in my mellow.
    102:43
    I'm killing my buzz, man, on some of this 2.0 stuff. Don't mess up my whirlwind. Fuck off, Stewie. You're still macking me. We got issues. Don't get me started with Punny Prison holding captive Don Knotts and now talks of other pinball companies coming out. I don't know. I'm kind of tired of anything coming out in new pinball that just doesn't have past pinball. We should call this .5 pinball. I'm all for new companies and new products that are badass. But some of this stuff, it doesn't take a psychologist that can read people to know, or a marketing guru to realize that they're half-baked ideas. They're not great ideas. And I've always said it. If you're going to take precious time out of your life to do something, damn it, do it great. Or don't do it at all. So trending down this week is Whirlwind 2.0. Also trending down this week is Pinball 2.000. It's Pinball 2000. Have you seen the prices on Star Wars Episode I and Revenge from Mars? More specifically, SW1. Prices are falling out on these games. You can get them for like the upper 2000s. This is a fully functional, pretty badass pinball platform. Pinball 2000. It's antiquated, sure. Looks dated. I get it. But it's still very much everything pinball. and pretty damn good layouts on both of those games. Pricing is dropping on the Pinball 2000 platform right now in the secondary market. Like I said, Star Wars Episode I, which, in my opinion, is hated on more than it deserves. I'll take that game alone more than I would some newer titles. But, yeah, you can get that in upper twos right now. Even Revenge from Mars in the threes? Lower threes? Wow. It's summertime, so your ice cream scoop is softening in general, but it's melting quick on this one. All is trending down this week a bit as JJP. I know the company is trending up, but Guns N' Roses right now is trending down a little bit. A lot on the secondary market. We bring up GNR a lot here on PMT. But right now there's a GNR LE that's sitting in the low eights on the market, just sitting. CEs you can get now easily in the 13s, sitting. I think one of the most interesting stories in the next two to three years is going to be the story of Jersey Jack and what they bring to market, how they present it to the world, and how and if their products and games evolve in this industry. It's going to be awesome to be a part of. And this week's Steal the Week. Buy, buy, buy! Save a buck or two. There's a Star Wars premium. It's probably sold by now, but it's in Memphis. $7,000 on Pennside. It's got 20 plays. It's a brand new Star Wars premium. $7,000. Ridiculous. If shipping wasn't so expensive, then I'd buy that and resell it. Damn. $7,000. It's one of the Sturm's greatest games ever made. And you know what? I'm not going to do a training down, but Ron Hallett.
    105:33
    It seems like we were talking more and more about Slantilt each and every week. And then they talk about us. So, you know, we're cozying up with those fellows over there. Ron Hallett, I thought he and I were close. I thought we were what the kids called bros. But he said something this last episode that turned me a little sour, Dennis. We know that he loves Star Wars, the Stern game. He always has to defend it to usually wrong Bruce. And he does that so well. But this last week, he shit on Star Wars Premium. He said the Pro is the better model, and basically the Premium was shit. And he lost me there. I loved Ron Howlett before that, and then he just lost me. Because Star Wars Premium is worthy of owning. We're a Star Wars Pro. I'm not saying it's not worthy of owning. It's just you're missing out on one of the greatest mechanisms and payoffs in pinball history. The Jetstar egg that cuts open to reveal its Yoki center. It's not even really that toy. It's the mechanism of... It's the Hyperloop. I know. You're a Hyperloop fan. To feel the sound of the materials, the effects, and the payoff of hitting it with time, you know, collapsing on you, it's pinball perfection. and you can't shit on Star Wars Premium without me saying something. But that's the deal of the week. Another deal of the week this week, courtesy of Flippin' Out Pinball, is a Godfather.
    107:01
    A Godfather. Ellie came in and used. There's not that many plays on it. I think I had it marked all the way down from 12,000 news, marked down to 10,700 or something like that. Courtesy of deals of the week, we're going to knock that thing down all the way to $99.99.
    107:20
    Wow, but you got it, but the only way you get that is if you tap the save. It was a Deals of the Week on the Pinball Show. And you don't have to be a Patreon follower. Preferred, but you don't have to be. Deals of the Week. Got my Spider-Man in, so no bounty on that. Still looking for Dolly Parton, Radical, and Congo. Only Minty. And as always, Dennis, I'm just here to report facts because numbers don't lie and neither do I. Apparently, Ron Howlett does. This is Pinball Market Trends.
    107:50
    Poor Ron. Where can people catch you, Dennis? They can always reach out to me at collectorgamerspodcast.gmail.com. It's the easiest way to send me a message. Oh, that works. It does. They can talk to you on Discord if they follow us through our membership on Patreon. It's patreon.com slash thepinballshow. It's good stuff in there. Discord, yeah. Yeah. No, but why are you pushing shit? You can email us at thepinballshow at gmail.com. The Pinball Show Facebook. We've got a TikTok. We've got a Discord.
    108:26
    Straight down the middle. Go follow, like, and subscribe to the video series there. Flippin' Out Pinball helps support this show. And the product showcase this week is the Stern Headphone Kit and Shaker Motors. I have both in stock over at Flippin' Out Pinball. You can go to flippinoutpinball.com or email me at Zach, C-A-C-H-F, flip, the letter N, outpinball.com. or you can text me, 812-457-9711. The Stern Headphone Kit. Dennis, do you have these on your game yet? No, I don't play with headphones, though, so I never look at them. Someone told me that you can use it as an external volume control, too. I thought that was kind of cool. Oh, that's interesting, yeah. Yeah. So I haven't had these in stock for a couple years. Finally got some back in stock, and people do love them. They're easy to install right on the coin door there. A lot of people put them on all their Spike games. So, listener, if you don't have one of these, maybe try one out. And then if you do have one but they're not equipped on all your games, get fully equipped.
    109:24
    Are you fully insider connected? Yes. Is it warm? Jurassic Park Premium, they've got a couple of them in stock. The Godfather LE, new and used. James Bond Pro and Premium, new and used. Even the 60th Anniversary Edition, new and used. Alien LV, still on sale. Jurassic Park Home Edition, Star Wars Home Edition Oktoberfest Deluxe One left In the vault We still have that Black Knight Sword of Rage Limited Edition Vinyl Y'all are going to be left without it And be looking for one Might as well buy it now And also recently added to the vault Was the Stranger Things Replacement Projector People love those Got a couple of them So get them while you can Toy Story 4 LE New and used I got a CE still New Ultraman Halloween's new Ready to go Turtles Pro is used. Mandalorian Premium new and used. I have Turtles Premium new. A couple left. Star Wars Pro. Here we go. Star Wars Pro. Led Zeppelin Pro and Premiums. Insider Connected kits. I got it, baby. Order an Escalera. Tune in to Flippin' Out with Friends. Flippin' Out with Friends, I think, on a hiatus the next two weeks because Joel is on vacation or a work function. Maybe both. I don't know what he's doing. He's got a beard. TPN last week. TPN last week, yeah. We had episode 29 of Pinball Party Podcast. That's an episode with Rachel and Kale. I think Rachel shares a lot of really interesting information. She was, yeah, well, those boys got to watch out. They're going to lose their shoulder. That was a good one. And then episode 6 of Pinball Innovators and Makers Podcast. That was the interview with the Fast. Aaron Davis, yes. Yep. Love Fast. Then we had episode 30 of Silver Ball Chronicles. That was the episode focused on Wayne Nyans. And his career is so long, it's only the first part of it. I've got to be honest, didn't load that one up yet because, eh.
    111:18
    I had an interesting life. I enjoyed that episode quite a bit. And then episode 37 of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, which was the, it was billed as the discussion about the Harry Potter rumor, but there actually was a tremendous amount of discussion about tournament pinball at first. Oh, yes, there was. That's right. A lot about the European tournament coming up. Oh, and lunchboxes, because I guess they have lunchboxes. We've got lunchboxes now. No thermos, though. Oh, this is... Lunchboxes. They pulled that old day fixer, didn't they? Where are those lunchboxes? Where are my galactic tank forces, Dennis? Shit. Have they got the mod yet to stop the drop or the targets from airballing? I'm waiting for the mod for them just to respond back to the dealers to tell us when we're getting the games that we've paid for. I don't know. Oh, okay. Well, you have your priorities and I have mine. Oh, my gosh. Come on, AP. We're done. I got to stop saying that. King Cromwell's back now. Fuck. Even if King Cromwell's back, I'm still in tribute. Now, what am I going to say instead of it, you know? Maybe we say nothing. We stop that. We're done. Zach, you want to stop? Should we stop that? Sure.
    112:32
    It hurts your brain to think up stuff anyway. That's true. Well, I could say what's wrong and say. You can have last word, Dennis. And always remember folks Believe in Mark you can do it Harry Potter is yours No There's no way Yes I will will this And do for wisdom This is not going to happen Let me have this one thing No J.P. I've never asked anything from you And yes I've never bought any of your games But let me have this one thing Yeah Give it to Mark Do it And always practice safe pinball And look I get it It's tough It's hard, and it may hurt, but when push comes to shove, try to hold in your passion squirt.
    113:17
    Give them hell, Kamekal. Hey, Dennis, you know how difficult it is to find a good pillow? I'm just trying so hard not to assume it's like impression right now. No, I don't, actually. The last time I needed pillows, I just went on Amazon and clicked on highly reviewed ones and ordered them. Really? That works?
    113:47
    I mean, that's how it worked for me. I've become very particular when it comes to, what would you call it, pillow preferences. I had a great pillow, and my wife stole it. Now, ever since then, I've been searching for the perfect pillow again. Can you not read the label on what she took? Yeah, it doesn't have any labels. Oh, you cut the label off. Yeah, it tickles my ear. So, I've been on the search, and I've gone through six pillows until I found one, and last night was the first night that I slept on it. A little off-gassing, so that's probably creating cancer. But I think I might have a winner. Maybe. But I'm very picky. It can't be too fluffy, and then your head stinks into it, and you feel like you can't breathe. It can't be too firm, because then what are you doing? You almost, why don't people measure, it almost has like the L in your shoulder and head. They should measure that. And that should, like a shoe. I think pillows should be measured like shoes. There, I said it. But yeah, I have to get the ones with the gel. Have you had the pillows with the gel yet? No, I've not done gel. Memory foaming in the gel to keep your head cool. A lot of people also say a silk pillow case so it doesn't rip out your hairs. My precious hairs. I don't know. I didn't know that the cotton ones were, like, shredding people's heads. They're, you know, they're not as good. I use linen, like flax linen pillowcases. I was waiting for you to say, I use burlap.
    115:20
    I sleep on a stack of potatoes. The only problem is when the eyes start to grow out. Like a scarecrow? Thank you.
    115:28
    Yes, like a scarecrow. you