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BDYETP 90: Evil Dead Revealed, WTF AP/Stern, Games We’ve Loved (or not)

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 53m·analyzed·Dec 22, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Evil Dead strong theme execution but reliability concerns; Stern vault strategy questioned amid weak market.

Summary

Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball discuss Evil Dead's reveal by Spooky Pinball ($9,999 base, $11,400 with premium topper, 888 units), noting strong theme integration but concerns about code support and hardware reliability. They critique Stern's new 'Vault' program as a Disney-inspired scarcity tactic, discuss poorly-selling recent Stern games (John Wick, X-Men), and analyze the confusing Insider Connected Pinball Cup as a grindy, poorly-executed engagement tool. The market appears weak, with Evil Dead failing to sell out despite initial positive reception.

Key Claims

  • Evil Dead sold 500 of 888 units announced shortly after reveal

    high confidence · Announced on Facebook, hosts reference this as evidence market has cooled significantly

  • Spooky has only 3 servos in cash box as replacement solution for known servo failure issues

    medium confidence · Kevin's critique of Spooky's approach vs Multimorphic abandoning servos entirely

  • Spooky is still updating code on Halloween, Ultraman, Scooby, and Looney Tunes games without full completion

    medium confidence · Kevin notes they're building a backlog of games never reaching ultimate vision

  • Evil Dead's swing mech on front is 3D printed, raising durability concerns

    high confidence · Direct observation of design choice with noted concern about eventual failure

  • Stern's Vault program requires minimum 2-year absence before rerunning titles

    high confidence · Official announcement quoted directly in episode

  • John Wick and Uncanny X-Men are not selling well for Stern

    medium confidence · Kevin references owner complaints on Pinside; hosts discuss this as evidence of market weakness

  • Insider Connected Pinball Cup achievements don't display on-screen when achieved

    high confidence · Kevin's direct experience navigating the app during recent event

Notable Quotes

  • “They do a good job with a theme. I mean, they take a theme and they really design a game around it... this matters. This helps sell games.”

    Nick Lane @ ~10:40 — Acknowledges Spooky's strength in thematic design despite reliability concerns

  • “it's like, you brought it home, that's when you might be in a world of pain. Now, that's not everybody. It's all over the board.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~11:20 — Encapsulates the gap between Spooky's design appeal and real-world ownership experience

  • “The market is terrible. It's really bad. People are not buying new games like they were years ago. So I think that says it all.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~18:45 — Blunt assessment of current pinball market conditions

  • “I think it's price fair in terms of where the market is and everything like that. So it speaks volumes. I thought this was going to sell out.”

    Nick Lane @ ~18:30 — Evil Dead's failure to sell out despite strong first impression signals market shift

  • “So I think they're scrambling to run something... maybe they're using this as a tactic to say, yes, these other games that we're producing, like Wick and X-Men, they're incomplete. But you better grab them now because we can vault them any minute, right?”

    Kevin Manning @ ~25:30 — Suggests Stern's vault strategy as pressure tactic for struggling recent releases

  • “It is a grind fest 2024. It is the grindiest of the grindiest fests ever.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~37:00 — Harsh critique of Pinball Cup's execution as purely play-time dependent

  • “Trying to navigate the Insider Connected app is a nightmare.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~33:50 — Direct criticism of Stern's app UX design and usability

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyEvil DeadgameStern PinballcompanyNick LanepersonKevin ManningpersonBuffalo PinballorganizationChris FranchipersonMultimorphiccompanyJohn Wick

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern appears to be running incomplete games (John Wick, X-Men) while scrambling to fill production capacity with older titles and vault strategy

    medium · Kevin: 'I don't think their games...John Wick or Uncanny X-Men...I don't think they're doing well at all. So what are they running?...they're scrambling to run something'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's Vault program appears designed to create artificial scarcity and FOMO, mirroring Disney's historical vault strategy; hosts skeptical of motivation

    high · Kevin: 'reminds me of Disney vault...going out of production...trying to kind of generate demand in a soccer market'; notes CEO Seth from Disney; suggests vaulting recent failures (Wick, X-Men) may be pressure tactic

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinside forums showing significant owner dissatisfaction with recent Stern releases (John Wick, X-Men) based on owner threads

    medium · Nick references Pinside owner threads: 'those owners are upset'; Kevin notes abundance of 'avoid Spooky' comments on Reddit pinball subreddit

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Pinball Cup structured as pure grind-fest with no meaningful differentiation between casual and competitive play; only play volume matters, not skill

    high · Kevin: 'grindiest of grindiest fests...keep on playing...whoever plays the most will get up on leaderboard...meaningless'; 'top lists are just people who are no lifers'

  • $

    market_signal: Evil Dead failed to sell out 888 units despite strong initial positive reception and limited production run; only ~500 units sold shortly after announcement

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.341

0:00
All right, coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, the magical Christmas episode, we've got Evil Dead has been revealed, games we've loved or not in the past five or so years, a Pulp Fiction review. We also talk about the latest shit show over at American Pinball. All that and more coming right up. Double Super Jet Pod!
0:30
I need a rapper. I need a ruler. I want party talking heads. I need to be good. I need to go with you. I'm just fine with my life.
0:47
That's right. Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka! That's right. You get the gift of us this year, your holiday season. If you're traveling to Grandma's house with your family in the car, maybe don't listen to this. But, you know, once you drop them off and you're cruising around trying to get away from the family, then you'll listen to Birdie even talk to them all. I dare you to put this out with your family in the car. I double dare you.
1:47
If you don't know by now what you're going to get with this show, then it's on you. You know what I mean?
1:54
All right. Let's talk about what do we got? We've got to thank our partners. Why don't we thank our partners?
2:02
game
Uncanny X-Mengame
Star Warsgame
Insider Connectedproduct
Pinball Cupevent
Foo Fightersgame
Godzillagame

high · Kevin: 'they sold 500' and 'haven't gotten to that 888 point'; hosts surprised it didn't sell out day one; direct statement 'market is terrible'

  • $

    market_signal: Evil Dead's $11,400 total cost (with premium topper) places it in Stern LE/JJP pricing tier, raising questions about boutique manufacturer pricing sustainability

    medium · Nick: 'So, you're looking at, you know, $11,400 all in on this game. So, you're getting into, like, Stern and Ellie territory'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Spooky building code update backlog; still working on complete versions of Halloween, Ultraman, Scooby, and Looney Tunes without full vision achieved

    medium · Kevin: 'they're still working on Halloween and Ultraman and Scooby and Bugs...as far as I know, they're not 100% code...building up this backlog'

  • ?

    product_concern: Spooky's continued use of servos as known failure point despite other manufacturers abandoning them; 3D printed swing mech raises durability concerns

    high · Kevin: 'servos...common failure point', 'Multimorphic...we're not putting them in anymore', describes Spooky's 'cash box replacement' approach as inadequate; 3D printed mech noted as 'going to be problematic eventually'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Market demand has shifted sharply from 2020-2021 scarcity mentality to current buyer's market; secondary market flipping and early game discounting now common

    high · Kevin: 'Scooby was up like 1,900...they're still not selling out'; 'changing face of where we are with pinball right now'; hosts note secondary market availability and early-flip discounting

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern's Insider Connected app has significant UX failures: confusing terminology ('Connections' vs 'Friends'), non-intuitive navigation, unclear achievement feedback

    high · Kevin's extended critique: 'nightmare to navigate', took 15+ minutes to understand Pinball Cup, took 'couple minutes' to find friends list, achievements don't display on-screen when achieved

    • There you go. Do the honors, Nick. All right. We want to thank, starting off with our premier partners, Pinstidium Lights, Pinstidium.com. Go there for your lighting kit, needs, and accessories. Get those lights on your games. Be able to actually see what's going on, especially if you like to play in a dark environment, or you just want to juice up the lighting. And who doesn't, right? More is better. Save 10% with discount code, coupon code, Buffalo. Big shout-out to Penn Stadium. I can't say enough. They have supported Buffalo Pinball for many, many years now. They always do giveaways. We love Penn Stadium. Scott's great. And his customer service, it's like he's got like a Scott bot because every time I ping him, he gets back to me in like five minutes. So shout-out to Scott over at Penn Stadium Lights. And then flipping out pinball. Of course, once you go ZAP, you never go back.
    2:53
    Flipandoutpinball.com. If you're going to buy a pinball machine, why the hell would you go elsewhere? Go to flipandoutpinball.com. They've got everything. They'll even sell you, like I like to say, a barbecue.
    3:05
    I don't think they sold many of those, but they could. No, no, no, no. In theory, he could. He sold it to, I think, at least two miserable souls.
    3:14
    There's no returns on those. I think he probably makes that abundantly clear, and he even probably has you sign a waiver that you are in a fine state of mind and you're willing to buy that game. You're not under duress. You're not being held hostage. Yes, you really want a barbecue pinball. Zach will sell it to you. I mean, Zach is a good guy, right? Where else do you go to a business and you say, I'd like this product, and the owner is like, ooh, really? Are you sure you want this product? I'm not kidding. Zach has said that to people who try to buy the barbecue game. That's how you know he's a good person. FlippinOutPinball.com. And then shout out to all of the other supporters, many of who have been with Buffalo Pinball for many years and keep the show going. Comet Pinball, maker of LEDs. We're going to have to put in a bunch of orders for the club game soon. Titan Pinball, known for their silicone rings, but also many other products. They've got to keep on code BUFFALO to save 10%. PinballLife.com, love Pinball Life. Been going to them since 2011 to buy pinball parts. Child to Scott Denise over there, great guy. and Terry, of course, the owner.
    4:16
    Playfieldprotectors.com Playfield-protectors.com I highly recommend, if you've got a classic pinball machine which are not clear-coated and you want to not only preserve it, but just have the ball roll smoothly and play like it's new, go to playfieldprotectors.com. Very reasonably priced. I think most of their protectors are around $100. Pinslide.com, my go-to source for news, for fights, for the market. I go to Pinslide these days almost every day now to check on what's going on. Love those owner threads with the newest Stern games like John Wick and Uncanny X-Men. Man, those owners are upset. We'll talk about that later. That's going to be fun. And then Multimorphic.com, Multimorphic, the P3, which everybody in my friend group of me owns a P3. I hear they like them. I hear they're a good product. Check out Multimorphic. We love Jerry over there. They actually release games with code. It's quite amazing. They don't wait a year and maybe you'll get good code. 23 games on the one platform now they're up to 23 games on the P3 you can play which is a hell of a deal that is a platform that gets better every year and the value on that platform goes up every year in the right direction for the consumer amazing so there you go thank you partners for making this happen for 90 whole freaking episodes and however many years it's been a few years alright for now let's switch it over to this and we'll get our proper intro for the news. And now, the Hall & Oates of Pinball Podcasting. Oh, no, they're all talking at the same time. Oh, yeah, they're screwed up. Boom shakalaka. There you go. You get all of the sound effects all at once because I don't remember how to push the buttons. It's the latest pinball news. And coming up first, we're jumping over here, and it's Evil Dead. This is the big news of the month. Evil Dead revealed by Spooky Pinball. this is uh they're only doing one version of this game it's a you know they listed it at nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars but it's it's ten thousand dollars everybody ten thousand dollar game 888 units made uh it's based on evil dead one and two uh if you want the topper so see this cool topper that's in the flyer and everything uh well that's actually an extra $1,400.
    6:37
    So, I think it comes with, like, a basic topper. Yeah. But if you want the actually animated really cool one, it's another $1,400. So, you're looking at, you know, $11,400 all in on this game. So, you're getting into, like, Stern and Ellie territory with that. Or J.J.P. Ellie with all that. So, yeah. Have you watched any footage of Evil Dead, the pinball machine? What are your first impressions of what we've seen so far? So, first impression, I think they knocked it out of the park with the trailer of the game. I mean, first of all, this is, you know, spooky caters to the horror theme, and it was a matter of time before they got to Evil Dead. It's a great theme to pick up. I'm a fan of Evil Dead. It's more so like Army of Darkness and Ash vs. Evil Dead than the first two per se, but still a fan of it, still a Bruce Campbell fan. So very good trailer. The topper's amazing. They really hit on the theme in terms of toys. You got, I believe, Chris Franchi artwork. So a lot of love and thought went into the aesthetic, the design, and the mechs on the game. I think they did a great job, right? It always remains to be seen on how the game plays, how it shoots, and the code. I watched a little bit of gameplay from Spooky, like less than 10 minutes. I saw some repetitious call-outs. Who knows how the rules are? This is where Spooky typically struggles. Well, they struggle in two departments, right? Quality of the game, right? The things falling apart are just kind of cheaper parts or whatever you want to say. And I know that there was on a podcast they said, you know, they stepped it up. They always kind of say that. But hopefully they have. and then, you know, rules and software. But very, very, very positive first impression. I'm not a spooky buyer, not interested in the game. Maybe if somebody else made it, I would. But I think that people who do like spooky games and are happy with what they produce, there's a lot of reason to be excited about this, especially if you're an Evil Dead fan. And it's got guns on the game. Look at that.
    8:55
    Guns all over it. I can't imagine how devastating it is going to be for people to have guns on a pinball machine. I mean, the world is coming to an end. How will they survive? This is going to crash society with a gun on a playfield art. You should tell George Gomez that it's able to be done. Yeah. No, but I've got to say, Lynn, I always, you know, I'll criticize Spooky, but I'll try to be objective and fair. They do a good job with a theme. I mean, they take a theme and they really design a game around it. And I think they're good at nailing the themes. And that's an important thing, guys, for all the other companies. Like, this matters. This helps sell games. Yeah, so I agree. And, like, they put a lot of features into their games. I agree with you. You know, I brought this. I was browsing Reddit, the pinball subreddit, and there's a thread about, like, first pin manufacturers to avoid. and not surprising a lot of people are like you should avoid Spooky and American Spooky seemed to be the most frequent company, modern company that comes up, they were from Spooky so it's like they've developed this reputation right where yeah they can make these very intricate theme integrated games but do they hold up? Are they gonna last? I think especially on location they struggle in a home environment they're getting less play they'll probably hold up better there are still servos in these games so it's like those have been proven to be a common failure point across manufacturers and you know Multimorphic is like alright we're not putting them in any more games because they're causing too many problems for the end user so I don't know why Spooky continues with that like it's they're just like oh we'll throw like three extra servos in the cash box and then you're on your own to replace them when they go bad. I don't know. I don't think that's a good solution. And to your point about code, it's... They have a very small team over there, and I feel like they promise a lot and don't always deliver. I mean, they're still working on Halloween and Ultraman and Scooby and Bugs, the Looney Tunes game, and all these games, as far as I know, they're not 100% code. So they're building up this backlog of games that never kind of got to their total vision, you know, their ultimate vision of what the game would be.
    11:29
    So it's, like you said, they knock it out of the park on first impressions. The art is really good. Theme is good. It's what their buyers want, right? Evil Dead's a theme their audience has been clamoring for for years. And hopefully it all comes together on this one. It looks really cool. yeah so I mean like King this is anytime we talk about quality right inevitably in the comments somebody's like I had this game I never had any issues right like it's like good dude I'm happy for you that's not if you look at overall and averages right like that is that's not the case it just makes sense they're like a boutique company they're doing this you know it's not Stern manufacturing right and even like the best manufacturers who are more professional they have issues with their games so pinball is complicated these smaller manufacturers are generally going to have more issues and especially as Spooky has a game that has a lot of things going on in it which good for them I mean this is great but there's just now more things to go wrong by the smaller manufacturers so it's always like a word of caution right like it's like I'm not saying don't buy the game or buy the game it's just you got to go into it eyes wide open and be willing to assess it properly there's a lot of things that Spooky does very well and I think it's a testament to them of how good decision-making that they've made, that they've been able to start up as a pinball company, this small startup, and 10 years into it, they're continuing it and getting a lot of hype and doing a really good job of picking themes and building games around the theme. They crush it. Other companies can look at that and recognize what they're doing, and they should implement it more. They're way better than Stern in terms of embracing the theme from what's on, what's on the game a lot of times, right? Like I see like more passion from the Spooky team in developing a game around the theme than Stern, who seems like a cookie cutter. However, it's when you get the game, as Kevin says, and you bring it home, that's when you might be in a world of pain. Now, that's not everybody. It's all over the board. So we'll see. We'll see how the game is. And I expect that Spooky should get better over time and, you know, and then that. But, again, Kevin, you brought up a good point. They just don't have a huge design coding team. This is where code is always the other thing, the other side of the coin, too. So we'll see. And everybody has different demands on what they expect out of code. I mean, if the thing keeps score for some people, that's enough, right? Right. Whether the score makes sense or anything else, they're just happy that their game got made. So anyways, congrats to Spooky. I think it's a great start, great theme. and really congrats on them for just being able to survive in pinball for so long. Yeah, I think they just have, you know, they don't have as many resources as a company like CERN, right? So if they wanted to go back and support, and they have done, you know, to the comment in the chat, they do update code, but it's a lot harder when you have a smaller team to maintain support for older machines, especially we've noted in the past, like they're updating their board sets frequently. I don't know what this one is running on, but it's like it gets harder and harder to keep supporting all these different revisions of hardware and going back and updating software when you just don't have the resources of a Stern, right? One other thing I'll point out, too, is like if you look at this Mac, it's like this is the swing Mac on the front of the house, and it's really cool and theme integrated, but it's also 3D printed. So it's like you know this is going to be a problematic part eventually. Hopefully it holds up. And ideally this is a low-impact area, but it's like little things like this, you know, it makes you kind of wonder, like, where are we going quality-wise in general with this game? Because they do have a lot to produce. Although, you know, to the point of where the market's at right now, they're only making 888 of these. And they announced on Facebook I think the day after or two days after that they had sold 500. And as far as I know, they haven't gotten to that 888 point. So they've dramatically reduced the number of games that are limiting this. Like Scooby was up like 1,900 or something like that. They have that, and they're still not selling out. So it just shows you kind of where the buyer's market is for pinball right now. Especially with a game, you know, the way Spooky produces games too, they take all these orders up front and then it takes them like a year to put them all out and then inevitably before people even start receiving their games, people are trying to flip the games or flip their spots so if you want to buy one you can get one from somebody else or somebody gets an early game and they decide they don't want to keep it so you can end up buying it cheaper so I think their model of how they roll these out is actually kind of coming back to hurt them a little bit too now that demand isn't as high as it was during 2020 and 2021 when people were like, yep, line me up, get it to me when it's ready, and come on out.
    16:41
    It's kind of like the changing face of where we are with pinball right now. Yeah, I thought it was going to sell out like day one. Yeah. And that was my first thought. So I was surprised when it isn't. I'm surprised it's not sold out.
    16:55
    Now, I think it's just really more of a testament to where the market is right now. The market is terrible. It's really bad. People are not buying new games like they were years ago.
    17:07
    So I think that says it all. Even when you have such a positive first impression, a good theme, limited, that's a very realistic limited number. I thought this was going to sell out. Yeah, same. I think it's price fair in terms of where the market is and everything like that. So it speaks volumes. Okay. All right. So Chris the Pinter, and it's funny you say this, Chris. This is directed to Kevin, not me. But this is a concept that I came up with. Yeah. So could you consider a segment where you grade your grades like three to five years later? For example, Mando upgraded final grade. Well, Chris, you got your Christmas wish because what has been planned as a segment for this podcast is we're going to go back and talk about the games that we bought in the last five years and what our thoughts are on it today and if they're still in our collection and all that. So we're going to get there. We're going to do the five-year retrospective on our collection. So here we go. But first we've got to do the news. People demand the hot news. All right. Number two on the list.
    18:06
    Stern Pinball doing an extremely limited production runs of Beatles, Stranger Things, Black Knight, and December Plus Contract Manufacturing. Nick, what were your thoughts on this?
    18:19
    Yeah, this is not a major story. I'm surprised Black Knight's still running that game. I guess didn't sell well, so I picked up Steam, which is nice to see it getting its due.
    18:32
    Surprised, like, they say, like, limited Jaws Pro and Premium, so it sounds like that game has cooled down, even though it's not been out for a year. I believe that game sold pretty well. The Beatles, I would have expected The Beatles to have been sold out years ago. It's surprising it's not.
    18:46
    Stranger Things just kind of holds on in there. So, yeah, I mean, this is whatever. I mean, it's more like a PSA that I put this in there as a show note rather than anything truly interesting.
    19:00
    I think we can also, I mean, give your thoughts on it, but we can also talk about, in the same breath, certain vaulting games. Yeah. So it looks like Star Wars Comic Edition has been on the line, and X-Men, they're still running that, even though it's a hot pile. We'll talk about that later.
    19:17
    They're still cranking out Godzilla. I do wonder with Beatles if when that game came out it was like a call for pricing situation remember that I wonder what they're going to price these games at if it's going to be a more realistic thing or if they're still like oh my god it's the Beatles people are going to like lose their minds and pay whatever we want for this game so I'll be curious to see what they go for with pricing on that but yeah Stranger Things whatever Black Knight I'm surprised there's still demand for Godzilla but it feels like they've run that a bazillion times but hell they remade Metallica and Metallica they made a million of too so I guess there's just not enough supply for the demand there at least yeah so we could talk about the vault so CERN went ahead and redefined what the vault is so now They used to talk about games where they would vault them, where it's like, Iron Man, it's coming out of the vault, we're running it again.
    20:23
    What are some other examples of games they've vaulted? I don't know, like, ones they've defined, hey, we're vaulting this game. They've rerun games, right? Yeah, but it was like, yeah, there was, like, Vault Edition games. I remember Iron Man was one of them. They had the shiny side art. Oh, maybe, I mean, didn't they rerun? Spider-Man, yeah, because it had the Spider-Man version. ACDC, okay, yeah. ACDC, yeah, thank you. Thank you. This is with a chat, right? Chat coming through.
    20:52
    Yeah, well, King Pinball brings up a good point. I noticed this too, King Pinball. Are you guys going to talk about Foo Fighters getting vaulted so quickly? It's like, yeah, that game's a – surprise their vaulting back. It's just weird to see that game on the list because that's the most recent game.
    21:07
    But, I mean, I guess that game ran scores. I think a lot of people bought it when it came out. They played it. They're tired of it. So I think there's a good number of them on the market. It's a solid game.
    21:16
    Whatever. They're not going to run it for two years. Okay. We'll see. So here's the announcement from Stern. It says, as 2024 comes to a close, we bid farewell to some of our titles as part of the new Stern Vault program. Vaulted titles are removed from active production versus when they would vault them and they would be put into active production. Titles put into the vault will remain in the vault for a minimum of two years, and many will never return. So it doesn't mean these games are never going to be made again. It's like they're just going to not be made again for a while, which is kind of what they always did, but now they're calling it a thing, which it reminds me of, I don't know if you remember growing up, they would put movies in the Disney vault when they were on VHS and DVD, and they were, like, going out of production. So when the games came back out of the vault, it was like, oh, my God, for a limited time I've got to run out and buy this DVD, otherwise it's going to be unavailable. That's kind of what this smells like. Like they're trying to kind of generate demand in a soccer market, And with Seth being from Disney, not exactly a surprise tactic they're trying to pull here. So the following titles will officially enter the vault at the end of 2024. And the list is Deadpool, Iron Maiden, Star Wars, Star Wars Comic Art, Avengers Infinity Quest, A Virus House of Horrors, and Foo Fighters.
    22:37
    So yeah, Foo Fighters is the most recent game. from what I've read that game has not done real great on location so maybe that's why maybe like demand just kind of like cooled off after the collector's market like everybody got them for their home they played them in their home and they're like this is cool and maybe on location it's not doing so great so I don't know what do you think about this do you think this is actually going to drive purchases at all I mean look there's plenty of these games on the secondary market there's no sure I mean you want this game you can find on the secondary market. I'm surprised some of them are still being run, to be honest. So it's kind of like a non-story to me. You know what I mean? But also I'm like, okay, so they've got all this facility in the production lines. What games are they running? You know, I don't think things are going great over at Stern because of where the market's at. So it's an interesting time. I don't think their games that they came out with, like Wick or Uncanny X-Men, I don't think they're doing well at all. So what are they running? I mean, they're dipping back. We just talked about previously a little bit of Jaws, a little bit of Beatles. It seems like they're scrambling to run something. But at the same time, maybe they're using this as a tactic to say, yes, these other games that we're producing, like Wick and X-Men, they're incomplete. But you better grab them now because we can vault them any minute, right? Like, I have no idea. Yeah, because it's like, okay, we made up this thing, and we can pull these games out whenever we want. And who's to say, like, so for Star Wars, they said, like, Star Wars and Star Wars Comic Edition are in the vault. Who's to say they can't make a Star Wars, you know, 3D edition or something with, like, lenticular art and that's an all-new thing? And, you know, they've done this BS all the time with black and white Godzilla. Okay, we won't do an LE because we said we're not going to do LEs anymore, but we're going to do this premium black and white version instead. So I don't know, man. Yeah. I must be on the same way, Chris the Pinter, because I was also surprised to see Rush wasn't vaulted either. I would almost think that that would fall under kind of the same category as Foo.
    24:47
    Interestingly enough, maybe they just don't even talk about that game. Who knows? People love that game, though. It does well. I'm going to keep mine for the near future. I'm busy opening up the Outlands and turning it into a non-baby game. Nice.
    25:02
    So while we're talking about Stern, the Insider Connected Pinball Cup. Have you participated in the Pinball Cup at all? Dude, so Stern's been going on and on about the Pinball Cup, and it took me a long time to just dig into the rules or understand what the hell this is. It wasn't obvious to me. I probably had to spend 15 minutes just searching for it. Maybe I'm particularly a slow individual in life. But it wasn't obvious how it worked. Trying to navigate the Insider Connected app is a nightmare. Let me just give you one example. I wanted to see who I'm friends with and look at some of their stats. It took me a couple minutes to find out. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it took me longer than it should to find out who my friends are. One problem is Stern calls it Connections. Now, that's cute and all. I know it's Insider Connected. Just fucking call it Friends.
    25:52
    You're not making this easy, guys. That app is still a nightmare, and I know they improved it. I will say something nice about the app that I like, Kevin, is if you can find where it is in the app, and it will probably take you some time. I couldn't even tell you how to get there. But when you go through, like, your stats, you can see all the games you played at Insert Connected, and you can see all your scores on various models. And it will be like, oh, you're in the top. Your score, your best score is in the top 10% of all the scores on it. Or, like, some games I'm in, like, the top 1%. Like, oh, that's cool. You know, I really like that functionality. That says something. But, yeah, I looked into the cup, and let me just tell you guys what it is. It is a grind fest 2024. It is the grindiest of the grindest fests ever. It is like every game – this is so convoluted. Every week, like, all the games have different objectives, and you've got to dig through the app to figure out what the objectives are for the games, which is a pain in the ass. They range from, like, easy to harder, and you get, like, an easy objective might be, like, get five million on Mando, and you get five points. And a harder thing on Mando is, I don't know, start, probably not even Wizard of the World, but start, like, this and do this, right?
    27:10
    However, the thing is, it doesn't appear on the screen when you've achieved that objective, so you've kind of got to mentally, like, be tracking if you achieved it. what you want to do is after you play it, you can see what points you got, and you probably don't even know what the points were for because you would think that the screen would show you, but it doesn't, which is bizarre because they did this big update three weeks ago for this event, and I would think that the screen would communicate that. Anyways, I'm a little wound up, but I had some caffeine today, guys. Here we go.
    27:42
    But here's why it's a grind fest. You can keep on playing that over and over and over and over again all the games, and you keep on getting these achievements that week over and over and over again. And basically, whoever plays the games the most will get up on the leaderboard. So who gives a shit? Like, obviously, if you're a good player, you will get to that more efficiently. But at the same time, you just grind through and play it. It's meaningless. I'm glad they're doing something, but when you look at it, it's just not that interesting to me personally as a player.
    28:11
    You know, there's people out there who like collecting badges. Badges aren't for me. There a million badges that Stern gives out for like just playing a game on a certain day or having a pulse Like it just I don know man A lot of times they aren even achievements It just we playing a game on National Taco Day or something Right And it's like National Popcorn Day. Oh, I played pinball on National Popcorn Day. Give me a badge. I get that they're trying, so I don't want to knock it for trying, but the execution of it just seems like they lack anything to really engage most players. Yeah, the appeal of badges for most people, I feel like, is like their completion. and they want to get all the badges, right? So that if you just, like, keep doing these, like, one-off exclusive badges and I don't have to be around Elvira House of Horror on the 13th, the Friday the 13th or something, and I don't get that badge, there's, like, no way I can get that badge. So, like, it takes away all the incentive I could possibly get to try to 100% this thing. So, I don't know. Yeah, I agree. Like, I like that they're trying new things. It'd be more interesting for players, I think, if there was something at the end other than badges. Maybe, like, if you're in the top 10%, you get invited, we'll fly you out to CERN and we'll have a tournament or something. You know, something like that. Something. Something to keep you going other than this small percentage of people that will just grind and grind and grind. Like, the top lists are just people who are no lifers. I'm sorry, guys. I'm being a dick. We love you. But, like, Siri, I look at him like, man, how – and I say this out of jealousy because you guys are playing pinball all day and I don't have the time for it. That sounds great. Keep on playing pinball. But it's like, man, you're just – this is a grinding list. Like, who has the fortitude to just grind and grind and grind? That's all it is. Yeah. Doesn't seem fun to me. I like that they're, like, adding different little objectives to do. Like, that's really cool. Like, I feel like getting badges or achievements, that's how it should be done. Like, give me something interesting to do in the game that I either don't know to do that's already in there or is in addition to the rules. So I like that part of it. But the structure of the tournament is super grindy. And not to mention the fact that, you know, people could just take the glass off at home and all that, like, usual bullshit that comes into play with these online competitions with pinball.
    30:35
    Donnie in chat nailed it. Stern just wants our data. Yeah, they're data farming. This is great. They probably were like, listen, we need more data on all these games. How can we do that? Oh, we'll just have a bullshit competition in quotes, and we'll just data farm. Right, plus when this is over, they can say, like, look at all these people who are using Insider Connected. In the meantime, it's like Billy Joe and Jimmy in, you know, western Minnesota just playing a million times a day. But they got their numbers up, man. It's award-winning TM Insider Connected. Let's go. And by the way, it's not fun playing the game like that. I try to do this just so I can experience it and talk about it, and I just didn't have fun. I just want to play the game, and that's it. Well, listen, again, one point for trying, minus two for execution. I hope you guys figured out how to use Insider Connected in a meaningful way to engage the community. Maybe me and Kevin are just, again, in the minority here, and, like, everybody's enjoying it, and it's great. Something's better than nothing, so don't miss that part of my message. It's just not compelling to me whatsoever. My favorite use case of Insider Connected is when you're playing competitively, scanning in so you don't have to remember what player you are. That is a good case. It puts your name up on the screen. That's why I like to use it. And I do like the Papillonian ding when I get an achievement. Yeah. I mean, who doesn't like that? I like that. Everybody likes that. Reward. Ding. Yeah. All right. That's enough stern. Let's go to JJP. They did a good thing. And I think we can take a little bit of credit for this one. A little bit. Code Update 1.0, the final wizard mode, Break the Curse. It's in there. You know, shortly after we reviewed the game and said, it's not a 10 because there's no wizard mode. So I'm not saying it's because of us, but it probably didn't hurt. You know what I mean?
    32:26
    It is. It might just be a coincidence, but three months ago we went hard in the pain against Jersey Jack, giving him shit. And then three months later we got it. So there you go. You guys are welcome. We're doing the Lord's work here.
    32:44
    So congrats. Thank you to Keith and anybody on the team that might be jumping out. Thanks to Jersey Jack for finally finishing this masterpiece.
    32:55
    You know, Jersey Jack games typically are like 97% done, 98%, 99% done, right? Like, especially like the games that Keith would work on, so much content, so much in the game, and it was just struggling to have that cherry on top, which is the wizard mode, which is a different problem than Stern's having right now where their games are incomplete, just totally incomplete. Right? Now, but the problem with Jersey Jack is it took them, well, six, seven years to put that last 1% of whatever you want to call it into the game.
    33:29
    Yeah. It would have been a tragedy for a game this awesome to not have that final polish. This is an amazing game. We love it. It's well regarded all the way around.
    33:43
    Let's make it the masterpiece it was destined to be. We got the wizard mode in there. Now I'm going to play the hell out of this game. I did not do the baby game cheater thing during testing to play the wizard mode because I want to earn it. And the point of the wizard mode to me is that it's this carrot out at the end that you're chasing to give you motivation to keep playing the game, right? And then when you get there, from what I've heard, this is a really cool wizard mode with lots to do. So it's not one of those things where it's like, oh, you get unlimited ball save for 15 seconds to go crazy and get a bunch of jackpots and it's over. It sounds like this is a really cool theme integrated wizard mode. It's got new movie content featured during the wizard mode, so I'm interested in seeing that.
    34:28
    I did, so if you're not aware, during testing they put out two versions of this in beta where you could hold the action button when you started the game, and then if you shot the chapter start shot, it would go into the wizard mode. So I did the thing. I just tested it. I was like, I held the button, the shot lit up, I shot it in there, and it said break the curse wizard mode, and then I ended the game because I didn't want to actually see it. I just wanted to know it's in there. So it's in there. Nick, have you played it yet? Have you been chasing it down? Oh, as soon as I knew it was in there, I wanted to see it. So I went straight to it just to see what's in there, if it was worth the hype. And I think even then, maybe in the beta, it wasn't. I think it still needs some work. So there's probably more that is now in it now. But, yeah, super glad. I just had to prove to myself it's actually in there, Calvin. I had to see it. I did this for you guys. I played it, like, once, and then I moved on because Eric wanted me to test it out a little bit. and just kind of see it. So I did. But, yeah, I've got to fix my game still. I had to buy it. I'm hoping it's a power supply issue. I'm going to do that over the Christmas break and then really start playing that game and enjoying it. I just want to also say, speaking of code, this is my chance to jump there. So I was being a little bit of a dick when Stern posted about the games going to vault, and I wrote on their Facebook post, you guys are going to start releasing games with full code anytime soon. you know once in a while i was having a bad day i was just fucking done with everything you know and uh and i just like some of these comments just like the stern apologist will call them uh i'll read two of them this is from from kirk leonard nick lane it's it's a good thing that they don't close development off on release day code updates have taken player feedback and as someone who has played through a few machines from early to 1.0 it makes for better games overall If you're really so good, you can get to the wizard mode on day one. I guess you'll just have to go play the other 1,000 machines while you wait for X-Men Co. to be done. First of all, I wasn't even talking about X-Men, so that's in your head, sir. By the way, I would be able to get to wizard mode on day one if the fucking game actually had it in there. So, you know, I can't do that if it's not done. That's the problem. That's my whole point, Kirk. You're not getting it. Also, Stern doesn't have 1,000 games. I hate to tell you in their catalog. They've got a lot, but they don't have 1,000 games. And then maybe Charlie Clark has my favorite comment, though. It's really good, Charlie. Imagine complaining about code to the only company you can expect to continuously support their code. What? Oh, Stern is supporting their code when they have updates every other week. That's supporting it. Dude, do you not get it? Stern is releasing unfinished fucking games. Like, John Wick is missing at least two mini Wizard modes. I don't think the Wizard Mode's in there. It's a hot mess. X-Men's a hot mess. They're not continuously supporting it. They're finishing. It's a work in progress. That's why people are upset after spending all this money and the prices are tanking. By the way, go drop that comment into the Pinside Owners Club and see how well that goes over. Okay? That's my recommendation. I don't even own those games. I'm just looking at what's out there trying to warn people and trying to hold the company accountable for releasing games that are far from finished. I mean, just far from finished. That's the thing. That's why the code is like .86 or .84 when they're even admitting it that the fucking thing's not done. It's not .99 when it comes out. Not even close. But go ahead, Charlie and Kirk. Do you guys buy these games? Are you happy with it? Do you own X-Men and Wick? Probably not. And honestly, if you do and you're happy with it, then that's good. That makes life easier. It seriously makes life easier for you that you're happy with what Stern puts out. Nothing wrong with that if that makes you happy, but try to understand for a minute, just try to think about this, how other people might feel, and how it ultimately will impact Stern in sales going forward by taking this shitty approach. Right, especially when, like we've talked about, like pinball sales are down. So these companies should be doing everything they can to make the product as good as they can to boost up those sales. it's not a crazy concept as far as I'm concerned but quick question in chat from Borg Doggies speaking of wizard modes you got the four white horses so that's on Princess Bride absolutely not that game is hard as hell I've gotten like nowhere even close that game that game's tough there's a lot to do in there challenging modes the timers are tight so if you're not making your shots you're gonna pay so no not even close again a nice well you know actually we have a segment called what the fuck stern we'll talk more about code so this is this is my favorite rants right like this is every episode now it's stern's code is terrible and uh american pinball stupid uh we'll get to all that i come on the next couple topics i'll probably be back in time but bathroom break number one coming up like i said i had coffee and the pound in the water i'm fired up for the christmas episode i'll be back let's take a bite in it by night there he goes bathroom break all right we'll talk if jjp has this other thing um so they've partnered with diverted river uh to create pinball xp uh i'm reading this from the news release a groundbreaking new pinball experience developed in collaboration with jersey jack pinball uh they've debuted it i iapa 2024 pinball xp transforms traditional pinball into an immersive, modern attraction perfectly suited for today's family entertainment center. Let me see if there's a good picture of this. Nope. I should have loaded up some other photos. So you can kind of see it behind this group photo here.
    40:11
    But it's this massive wall of TVs, and under each TV there's a pinball machine, and using some cameras you'll be able to see the play field up on the screen, and then there's also like you're playing together to build up this ticket jackpot. So envision this at a Dave and Buster's or an arcade, an amusement center sort of thing where it kind of puts pinball it increases the spectacle of what pinball is on location. Try to draw some more attention.
    40:46
    So, I don't know. It seems like a good idea if you can get family entertainment centers to go for this.
    40:54
    But I don't know how many of these they're going to sell because, like, family entertainment centers want you to put, like, four bucks in a Billy Big Bass, spin the wheel for 15 seconds, and then move on. They don't want you sitting there playing pinball as long as you can. And I think these games are probably going to be timed and things like that. So if you think back on Jersey Jack, they had originally done tickets on Hada and Waz. There were these little dongles you could buy, and then you could mount a ticket dispenser on there. and it actually added some different play modes that were timed, and you tried to get the most points you could in the short amount of time, and then based on how you did, you would get a number of points. So I imagine the experience is going to be similar to that.
    41:37
    But here's some of the features of the Pinball XP. So you get five of the latest JJP games, 65-inch displays showing the play field, digital ticket awards, XP progression system with leaderboards, integration with capitalist systems, so if you want to, you know, swipe cards and things like that. Diverted Rivers to Hoka platform, whatever that is, and then jackpot ticket opportunities for outstanding play. Nick, did you see any of the Pinball XP stuff?
    42:07
    Do you think it's going to make a dent in the market at all? So I did a cursory. Basically, no. It's like a redemption thing, right? For public? Yeah, it's like, you know, for Dave and Buster's, you'd have five JJPs under these screens and building up to jackpots and things like that.
    42:24
    I hope it works out for them. You know, I'm not – this is not for us, you know. That's the way I look at it. Yeah, it's a location thing. I mean, anything you can do to try to boost pinball on location is a good thing. Yeah. Hopefully it works out. Let's get more – if it gets pinball into, like, Dave and Buster's style places, then it's a win. Yeah. And they had – Multimorphic had done this with a heads-up. They had a trial, I think it was at the Austin David Busters, and it did really well. So maybe this will have similar success on a wider scale. So good luck to them. All right. So what do we got next? Oh, Butch Peel. He's the great journeyman of pinball, Butch Peel. He's on to yet another company, so he used to be with JJP. Then he went to Chicago Gaming. Now he's at Barrels of Fun. So Butch Peel does some of the craziest best manuals out there. If you remember some of the early JJP manuals that were super thick and well-detailed, things like that, Butch is over working with Barrels of Fun.
    43:25
    I guess good luck to him. What do you think on this one? Yeah, good luck to Butch. I think he's well-respected in the industry and well-liked, so I'm glad to see that he's still in the industry. And I think that that's a great pickup for Barrels of Fun. Yeah. I do wonder, like, is it just there's not enough to do at Chicago Gaming?
    43:52
    That they're like, okay, we don't need somebody here doing manuals and stuff full time. And is there going to be enough to keep this guy busy at Parallel's Fund? Like, who knows? But good on him for landing another gig in the industry, I guess.
    44:04
    All right, quick update on Multimorphic. We mentioned earlier they're up to 23 games. There's another. So if you have the Heist Playfield, let's see, Neil Wilson released a game called Young Martial Artist. Totally not Karate Kid. This is Young Martial Artist. And it's free. So this is his first game for the platform. Free add-on game for the Heist Playfield. I've not had a chance to check it out yet because I've been, like, we'll talk about this later, I've been road tripping and buying machines all week. I'm sorry. Can you just scroll up a little bit? Yeah, yeah. I'm just looking at this picture. Yeah. Is that a person in a wheelchair who's a, what's that, orange belt? Yep. Okay. How do you do, somebody let me know how you do karate in a wheelchair. That's impressive. I don't know. Maybe there's a division or something. I don't know. Yeah, interesting. So, yeah, it's basically you're just, like, training your karate youth, young martial artist to be a black belt, I guess. I don't know. Like I said, I haven't played it. A lot of the chatter in the P3 Discord has been really positive about it, so I'm looking forward to trying it. Starting today's my first day off, I'm off for almost two weeks, so this is on my to-do list over the next two weeks to check this out.
    45:25
    Huge shout-out to Neil. Congrats on your first game. I'm looking forward to throwing it in my game. A free game. Who can shout Who can argue with that, right? That's free. Yeah, man. All right. So let's move on to Nick's favorite segment, WTF Stern. What's that? That's not my favorite so much.
    45:47
    WTFAP is my favorite one. But, you know, we talked about code a lot because we couldn't even wait to get this section. So this is, again, kind of like, yeah, what is going on? And it's also a caution to new pinball buyers. Like if you want a new in-box game when a game releases from Stern, they should worry less about vaulting games right now and getting their shit together. But let's look at the last two games that have come out. Anybody who's not gone over to the pinball owner's section on Pinside and you want to waste some time, and you think about just buying a game in general from Stern, I would go into the John Wick owners group and the X-Men owners group, which I spend a lot of time in because I'm really just curious what's going on. And those folks are not too happy.
    46:37
    What's to say? I mean, we can break down both games. Somebody made a comment the other day. It's like, hey, I've been a John Wick owner. I just bought an X-Men, so I've been in both groups. And, like, we should just have one giant group of upset customers. because these games need a lot of work, right? Like, WIC has been out since May. Those owners are not happy with the state of affairs of the code. And why I actually care about this is I still want a WIC. I'll get one WIC. I saw the chat talk about it. There's other folks like myself. They want a WIC. That game shoots great. I played it again in League last week. I absolutely love it. I love, like, the atmosphere of the game, the music, the vibe of it. But I think Elliott crushed it. And I think that's the commonality between these two games. The pinball designers deliver good layouts that are fun to shoot. I think Jack Danger did a good job. I think Elliott did a good job. They're fun to shoot.
    47:35
    Where these games are crashing and burning, and literally crashing and burning, there was a WIC LE that sold for $9,000. Home use only. 40 plays on it. $9,000. Now, that game has been out for less than a year. This person purchased it for $13,000 new. Took a $4,000 hit on it because these games are a mess in code. Almost everybody in the owner's chat, especially Wick, love how the game shoots. And I think that's part of the problem. If the game was just a dud how it shoots in the code, then move on back to the next game. What's aggravating to people is that these code teams are not getting complete games out there. And I think the commonality between these two games, you've got Tim Sexton doing rules for Wick. You've got Wason doing rules for X-Men. Both of these guys I don't think are great rules in general. Sorry to say, they've yet to prove themselves. Wason's been with the company for more than 10 years. And I just, you know, if I see him attached to a game, I'm like, oh, I can't. I struggle to think of a game where I really love the rules on it. same with Tim when he's doing solo rules and not paired with Ray Day. And I think what people are quickly learning is it's not like this is a game developed by Jack Danger, this is a game developed by, you know, now Elliot or whoever else or Brian Eddy. It's not just the guy who did the layout. What people need to pay attention to, and a lot of us have known this for years and years have been the hobby, but maybe people new are learning it, it's who's doing the rules on the game. It matters. You know with Elwin's team what you're going to get. Their rules are pretty consistent. When they launch, they're really close to being done. They're polished. They're longer playing games. I don't really like them that much, but you know what you're going to get, and you can buy with confidence if you like their previous games. Well, with all these other rule designers, man, you just wonder, A, are they just not good at designing rules? B, are they good but they lack some vision? Is there not oversight going on at the company? Are they not given the resources to complete these games in a timely manner? I honestly have no idea what's going on. I don't want to be unfair to the rule designers, but I can fairly say that when I look at Wastings Games or Tim Games, where they're the lead on it, I don't like those games. These games are not selling well. They're not doing well. The owners aren't happy. Same with Black Knight. A lot of owners, I think Black Knight is passable, serviceable, and fine, but there are people who are not super loving the rules on that either. So long exposition.
    50:19
    Last two games that Stern delivered on, there's something going on with that company where they're just cranking games out. The rules aren't there. Owners are mad. I mean, again, just go over to those owners' thread. I would caution anybody to buy a new in-box game from Stern. You are really rolling the die. and I see this cope going on all over and over and over again. Oh, just look at Bond. You know, it took him two years, but look where it's at. They'll do it, guys. They'll get it done. There's no guarantees in life.
    50:54
    There's none. So the answer is this. If you want to buy a new in-box game, just know that you're going to get an incomplete game and you've got to deal with it. or two, go ahead and just wait these out to see when the game is actually done and if you like the game or the code-wise is. Also, if you do the second option, you're going to get these games much, much cheaper, like the LE for $9,000. I know that's an anomaly. Maybe the price is maybe in the market right now $10,000 for a WIC LE, but X-Men games are plumbing as well. Those people are really upset. In fact, X-Men is in a worse case than WIC in some ways because there's a lot of mechanical issues on X-Men. It sounds like maybe they're getting straightened out, but people have talked about an auto-plunge issue on X-Men, a flipper hop, the mouth is falling off the sentinel, the code is basic as fuck. Right, like, WIC doesn't have those kind of mechanical issues in the game. The game mechanically seems pretty damn good. It's a code issue. X-Men's just a mess. So that is a cautionary tale for anybody going out and looking at a game. If you're going to get these games and you want it, highly look at buying them used. You're taking a risk, too. But Stern, man, I don't know what's going on over there. This is like back in the 2016 days. Remember this, Kato, where people were like, where's the code movement? They were getting really upset about the code. Stern seems to be getting into that mode again where these games are just woefully lagging behind on code. Yeah, I'm glad you circled back to the hardware issues on X-Men because, yeah, originally you said the layout was good and all that, but I think the layout is actually quite problematic on, on X-Men. It tries interesting things, which I appreciate, but it doesn't do them either. Like they're not being assembled to the position that they need to be, or the design was off. It didn't take these things into consideration when it was designed. Right. So like, it's got to the point where CERN has issued this update and they're actually going to send out new parts because people's, people's plunging isn't working. And actually in the latest update, they added a quote unquote skill shot for when you soft plunge, which was like insulting because it's like the game is not doing what it's supposed to do. And now I'm getting an achievement for it. It's insane. So it's, there's that there's like lots of stuck balls and you know, I was playing it at James's house. and when I shot the ramp and it was coming back on the left side it just like flew off the ramp and went right down through the danger room and out into the out hole it was like there's a lot of geometry issues with this and I feel like at home it's going to be better because you can dial it in the way you want but on location this game is just going to be a mess and I think you saw that that's probably part of the reason why Foo Fighters didn't do as well on location either because that game had really weird geometry and it does cool things, but if it's not set up right, like, you plunge the ball and it doesn't go where you want it to and things like that, or the little kicking target up top doesn't send it where it should. So things like that where the game can be fun if it's set up right, but if it's not dialed in perfectly, it's going to be a problem. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the market right now on Candy X-Men, right? A game that came out in, what, September? It's only been out a few months. $13,000 new for LE. Games are selling home use only $10,500.
    54:29
    That's insane, right? Like, that is a hell of a hit to take on these games. Just brutal. Pros $6,100 or best offers is James right now. Like, only a few months, guys. This is terrible, terrible, terrible. Your game has failed when things tank like this. And I was asking someone in the industry, when they say they're going to make 1,000 LEs, do you think they actually make those?
    55:00
    And he was saying, yeah, I don't know, but I'm guessing no for something like WIC. When they say they're going to make 1,000 LEs, there's no way Stern cranked out 1,000 LEs. So there's not 1,000 LEs out there for WIC that are driving down the price to $9,000 for an LE. God knows how many LEs there are out there that Stern actually ran. Maybe half that, maybe 500. I don't even know about that. So imagine if they actually did have 1,000 LEs out there. They're just sitting around unsold, right? Like what would the price be on these games? That's not good. How does Stern fuck up so badly? I'd love to know. I mean, I'd reach out to the company, but it's not like they're going to give me an answer that's truthful and honest. They're going to give me some BS. It's like, why even bother doing that? But in this market where prices are falling and you've got a huge team, how are you doing this bad on code? Is it because you don't care? Is it because you've got people there that don't know how to make a game and you need to clean house and hire better people? Like, I don't know what the answer is, but it's not consistent. It's not like an anomaly where it's like, oh, look, guys, it was just this one game. It got pushed up in production, and that's why it happened. Like, no, no, no, it's multiple, multiple games at this point. Yeah, absolutely. And why, what makes you think that your next game, Dungeons & Dragons, right, which is a legit, what makes you think that's going to be any different or better? And you've got the Stern Apologist that, if you say anything about it, will try to defend Stern on this, right? But, look, how many people, I'm curious, for folks listening who have bought a WIC new or bought an X-Men new, So in the chat I curious are you likely to buy a new box game from CERN again given where they at given where the prices have fallen Like it got to have an impact It got to have an impact It got to be hurting them Yeah. Let me get to two points in the chat. So J. LeManc says, mind works fine out of a box. Don't buy first runs, which, yeah, that's solid advice. But the problem with X-Men is that they ran the LEs first. So all the ones that had all the problems, all the production issues, were the ones that cost the most money. So people are rightly losing their minds because they're like, I spent $13,000 on this. So it's like, you know, that was a terrible idea. Normally CERN would run pros first, get them out on location, let everybody play it, get hyped about the game, and then they sell the LEs and then the premiums I think is how it would normally go.
    57:34
    And I don't know why they decided to switch it up on this version, probably because they wanted to cash out as much as they could before people actually got their hands on the game and decided it was a huge steaming pile. I don't know. But, yeah, it's crazy. And to Boots' point, he's played Wix 709. I know for JJPs, and I presume most of the other manufacturers too, they have LE number plates in a pile. And when a machine goes out, they just grab a number plate and they stick it on there. It's not related to the number that they produce. So, you know, if they say they have 1,000 number plates, they just grab one. And it's – they don't – because they don't want you to know how many machines they produce because they're a private company. They don't have to disclose how many machines they've made. They want to kind of obfuscate that a little bit. So just because you see a high number on a machine doesn't mean that's how many they've made. Yeah, and I know Jared said, like, it is good advice to don't buy the first run. But I wouldn't even buy – you know, yeah, certainly wait until the next run and go on the owner's thread and see if the games that they're producing have fixed the issues. Don't ever buy a first run. But also, on X-Men, you can get a premium use. So somebody's gone through and probably fixed the problems. This guy's asking for $8,500. So that's $1,000 off the new price you're going to get, right? And you can probably get this guy down a few hundred bucks. The longer you wait with these games that suck, the price is just going to tank. So you buy these games, you're just going to watch the value go down. And if you like to rotate your collection, you're bleeding out money at this point. It's not like the days where you buy a game and they hold or maybe even go up, which is definitely an anomaly.
    59:18
    So you either buy these games, new in box, and you suck it up, and you're just like, I'm going to keep it for a number of years. I'm not going to worry about moving the game, and it is what it is. But if you're thinking, hey, man, there's a possibility I'm going to sell this game six months to a year because I like to rotate, just prepare to lose a lot of money on them. Yeah, you're losing thousands and thousands. And I'm glad there are people out there who do it because it helps keep these pinball companies in business, which keeps new games coming out, which is awesome. Like, as a pinball fan, that's what I want. But for most of us, we can't be taking the hit to lose thousands of dollars over and over again on brand-new games. It's tough.
    59:54
    This is always looking out for the consumer, and this is what it's about in doing the PSA. and then also trying to put pressure on the manufacturer to, you know, by vocalizing this so that they can stop this bullshit practice, what they're doing. Right? They know that these games are not finished. They know these games have mechanical problems, and they still decide to sell it to you guys. Yeah? Like, you know, there's consequences. Yep. And we know pinball is not easy, and they have these production lines that they have to feed. Otherwise, you know, you have to lay off staff, And then when you have another game that is in high demand, you've got to rehire. So it's like they're trying to balance all of this stuff. They're, you know, developing these games, which is not easy, building them, you know, sourcing the parts. We understand it's tricky, but it's also like as a consumer, if I'm spending $13,000 on a product, I want it to be what I expect it to be, and it should be a completed product that functions well and holds up well. I don't think those are unreasonable expectations for a kind of luxury product like that alright let's move on to everyone's favorite section what the fuck AP I was going to show this article but it doesn't exist anymore so why don't you give a little bit of a back story on this I can't remember so I did the notes for this a couple weeks ago and I think my notes is DaveFixLiesAgain And then NAP Arcade posted something about, like, bullshit coming out from AP. But that article's down, so not even really worth talking about at this point. But you know that the drama's going on. There was the one about where somebody said Cuphead was on the line. Oh, yeah. They told somebody Cuphead was on the line, and then somebody posted about it online, and then he said it's not on the line. So it's like, yeah.
    61:48
    But then, you know, I don't know if they got threatened with a lawsuit or something, and he planned to pull it down. I don't know. It's all speculation because it doesn't exist. Let's do a rapid-fire recap. So Dave, who's running American Pinball, went on the Loser Kid podcast because he reached out to them and asked to come on. So just keep that in mind. This is typically how it goes, which, again, I've said in this podcast before, Dave, I don't know if he listens or not, but, like, stop doing this. If you think in your mind you're doing yourself some favors, you are not. You only dig a bigger hole every time for people to pick apart and analyze, and it's not going the way you think. And by the way, if you insist on going on podcasts, he has yet to reach out to Buffalo Pinball. He's from Buffalo. He knows me and Kevin. You're welcome to come on here, but I think that it's not advisable because we're going to ask some tough questions that are, you know, and I think Loser Kid did press him, but he, I don't know. Let's just kind of go through some highlights. Number one, Dave goes into financials of the company, just things that probably are not advisable as a person running a company. He talked about layoffs, so we learned that Steve Bowden was laid off, like, two weeks ago. We learned that on the podcast.
    63:04
    Sorry, Steve. I mean, Jesus. I know. At least he got to work on a game this time. Yeah, what is there to like at AP anymore? It was always like, well, they got Steve, and I think they still might have Ryan, but on Pinside they also said there's only, like, two people left at AP because everybody else got laid off, and I don't know. I'll see if I can find that post. Yeah, he said, I think, quote, GTF I thought was going to be a hit. That tells you everything, folks. Like, if you thought GTF was going to be a hit, I don't have to tell you.
    63:37
    Dude, I just, there's nobody there, it seems, anymore. The other weird thing that struck out to me is Dave spends a lot of time, somebody who's running a company praising other companies' products. Oh, that was so weird, dude. Here's something you want to do in sales. You never want to trash the competition. That's a bad look. It doesn't, whether they deserve it or not, you don't want to do that, ideally, if you're selling a product. Okay? You can do it, but, I want to do it, but it's weird the amount of times Dave praises the other companies. So he says, oh, you know, Jack Danger's great, X-Men's great game. He's like, I love Bond. My wife just told me I can buy a Bond premium. And then he said in, like, the same breath, he doesn't own any American pinball games in his basement.
    64:25
    And he praised Spooky. So he praises all the competitions, and then he goes on to say he doesn't even own the games that he has. Right? Like, what?
    64:35
    Dude, you should be hyping up your games and instilling confidence in it. Like, if you're going to go on a podcast, your job there should be to pump games and sell games, period.
    64:50
    So the whole tone of it is just like they're not going to be around. They're not going to make it through the year. That is the vibe. That is the tone I got. It was not a good interview. Again, David says he listens to all the podcasts. He did not mention Buffalo Pinball.
    65:07
    He's been on Buffalo Pinball's stream. You guys highly recommend going and checking it out. The Whirlwind episode is a good one. It's a classic, yeah. It's 2015. If you're looking for something to do with the holiday, watch that. He's been on the bro. He's been on the episode where we stream, dialed in. Certainly welcome to come on. But, dude, things are not going well over there. That place is going to be closed. I've still got my predictions in play. I said two years ago they're going to be closed in two years. I think I have until March or April. but all signs indicate that this place is not I'd be surprised if they released Cuphead to be honest Blueberry Johnson was asking do you think Cuphead gets released it's like well here let me show this so this Dan Arkey person has a pretty good track record of like rumors and insider stuff and they said I heard everyone but Casey and the art lady let go last Friday so I don't know if that includes Dave Fix or not but if there's only two people left that doesn't bode well for putting out a new game unless they're going to clear house and like hire all brand new staff which if they're going to do that it's going to take some time to get it up to speed there's also I want to find the somebody had transcribed the end of the podcast where Dave was like he said he was scared he wasn't sure one of the loser kid interviewers asked him, like, you know, we just want to know if AP is healthy, you have enough cash. And he's like, Fix was like, I really don't know. I'm kind of scared.
    66:47
    Just stop going on podcasts, dude. Like, why would anybody who was thinking, like, all two people out there who were going to purchase an AP machine, would you want to buy a game from a company that you don't know is going to be there to support it in a few months if you have an issue? Of course not. So shut the fuck up and just put the head down and do what you can. Like, God, I say that as, like, advice to try to help. It's not, you're not helping.
    67:14
    Holy shit. Dude, I can't even compose my thoughts here. This is just absolutely insane. It's sad, too, because Ryan has spent all his time developing this Cuphead game. And if it doesn't come to market, it's like, dude, he just keeps getting bounced around. Same with Steve. He just keeps getting, you know, went from, what was it, those guys in Texas that frauded, defrauded everybody. Oh, Deep Root. And now he went to AP. And now he's like, off he goes again. You know, it's like these companies that are just run by people that can't keep it.
    67:46
    Illegitimate companies, you know. Well, look, here's the deal with AP. the truth is like Dave is in charge he's making decisions so he can be blamed but also why was Dave hired when he doesn't have any experience or pedigree of running a company or managing people he's a collector he likes pinball he can just randomly pick somebody off a pin side to run a company so that makes no sense so I blame ultimately I blame whoever put him in that position right like and then I think about the decision making like they decided to make GTF which he thought was a good idea was not and then the next game they double down and do barbecue and what's really interesting is when you hear about Dennis Norman saying that he had uh Whitewater 2 right made and ready to go which according to Dennis that game was further along than barbecue okay like look Whitewater 2 is not a licensed theme in a way it is and maybe licensed from Williams. I don't know how that works, but like, Whitewater 2 is exponentially better than Berrio's Barbecue Challenge. Alright, that might have turned things around and gotten excitement, because you know there's a built-in market of people who own Whitewater, they would just buy it and put it next to their game, okay? There's just that automatic thing. It's recognized within the community, and maybe they've, like I said, AP is such a small company, they might have been able to sell enough that's considered a success for them, right? I think they could have sold enough just based on that theme alone. But they decided not to do it. Dave decided to do this weird barbecue game instead that nobody wants. I don't know if we didn't touch on this. They're also being sued. So we heard from Josh when he came on the podcast that he was not paid what he was owed for his work on some of his games there. And then Norman and Josh filed a lawsuit against AP. someone went further than Norman and Josh and filed a lawsuit against AP. Paul Reno is listed as co-designer of Galactic Tang Forest in some of the articles during development.
    69:56
    So search for him. But found an AP versus Wingding Game Design LLC lawsuit that was filed a few days ago. Click online and see if this is a company started by Paul Reno, who also has a home game room supply company. It says it's a contract dispute but no other details. Whatever it is, a lawsuit from one of your co-game designers is just another negative development for Americans.
    70:19
    Things are not looking good, I think, right now for AP. They are done. They are donezo. Donezo. Alright. Is that enough for WTF AP? There's probably more I can drone on about endlessly. It's just let's move on, Kevin. Alright. Moving on. Oh, you had a note in here about NAP Arcade with the Indiana Jones and stuff? Yeah, let's move on I guess the short of it is they were allegedly, like Borg was working on Indiana Jones, he was like five months into it or something and it got cancelled Oh no! That was it, so let's move on Okay! By the way, the Indiana Jones game is a great game that came out a couple weeks ago on Steam and Xbox Game Pass. It's also on my two playlists this week, so I played it like an hour or so and it was really good All right, so this is the segment Chris the Pinter has been waiting for. Games we bought in the last five years and how we feel about them now. So give us some of your inspiration on this.
    71:24
    I like to reflect back because we get a game, we're excited. Obviously, we're purchasing a game, we feel very strongly about it, and a lot of times we'll review the game after we get it. And a lot of times we review games we own because we don't get a chance to go out into public and play games because we're banned from the local place where they have games. So sometimes I think, I'm curious, how do we feel about it, right? Like, were we right about our review after we spent a lot of time with it? Do we still have it in our collection? Or did the honeymoon end and it's not as good as we thought it was? Did it develop into a better game over a period of time? Right? Like, I think that's an interesting topic to discuss.
    72:04
    So that was the thing. I don't know how we want to do this. Maybe I'll roll through my games quickly, Kevin. Yeah. And we'll try to do this quickly because we also somehow have to review Pulp Fiction, which I might even kick that. I might just call it after this so we can spend time talking about it, if that's okay with you.
    72:22
    Life's got to move on. We've got a lot to talk about sometimes. So let's just do this. Let's do the mods you don't need, and next time we'll do Pulp Fiction. And Topper Talk. We've got a Topper Talk. And Topper Talk, yeah. Okay, got it. And Game Room Outdates. So we've still got a lot to go in the show. Spoiler alert for Topper Talk. We don't go into the office this time. I'm just going to leave it at that.
    72:42
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not my watch. I just heard Gordon in the chat. I love it. All right. Well, Kevin, help me out. I can look to you, like, what we also reviewed the game at the time.
    72:56
    So I'm going to go back. I originally thought, okay, starting in 2022 today, what are games we bought? What do we think of it as a store or collection? I included Deadpool, which I got in November 2019. So we're talking about. So Deadpool, I think I rated it 8.5. I think Kevin gave it an 8. I was looking that one up. Yep.
    73:16
    I ultimately don't have it in my collection anymore. I sold it. I don't necessarily miss it. It's certainly – I think it's a good game, but it's not one that stuck. Okay, next on my list is Black Knight Pro. I got that during the pandemic.
    73:33
    It's a game that I had en route. I took it home. Martha and I fell in love with it, and we bought it, and it's bolted to the floor. It's a Black Knight Pro. What did we give that one, Kevin? I think I'm slagging on updating this. Well, no, I have parts on there. So I gave it a 7.5. So I think we reviewed that before I had it. Yeah, maybe.
    73:54
    Yeah, I think a 7.5 is fine. I don't need to change the rating, but that game, I love it. It's fun. I've actually beat it a number of times, but it's a shorter playing game. It's not a baby game. I think the presentation is good. I think the rules are functional to not be bad but not be amazing. But it's just a nice ass-kicker, aggressive game, great presentation. It's a lot of fun. I'm happy to have it in my collection.
    74:17
    Next is Led Zepp, the infamous Led Zepp. And I think people are coming around to that game. By the way, I got so much shit early on, so much shit early on, because everyone was, like, going nuts over Guns N' Roses. But I think it's generally agreed that Led Zepp's a better game. There was even the Led Zepp versus Godzilla threat on Pinside, and I thought that was going to be a complete disaster, but a lot of people think that Led Zepp might be even better than Godzilla. I do. I like playing it more.
    74:45
    So I've beaten that game. I got to the end of the game, whatever you want to call it. That game I love. I still keep it. I still play it now and again. I've opened up the out lane, so now it's just a tougher game. It's so fun to shoot. It's so fun to chase the score. It's so fun with the multipliers. Obviously, listening to Led Zeppelin helps out a lot. Love that game, keeping that game. What did I give it, Kev, at the time? A nine. Do you stand by your nine rating of Zepp? A hundred percent. Oh, man. That game is, for me, it's a nine. Okay. A nine out of ten. I stand by my five rating of that, just for the record.
    75:17
    Okay. Rush. Now, Rush has not held up as well. I've had it for over two years now. This is falling into, I'm getting really sick and tired of, these long playing games, these games where there's no threat of losing the ball. Now, Led Zeppelin can almost fall into that category. Again, I've had to change the outlanes to make it more fun. I'm taking Dave Smith's advice, who wrote into me after I talked about potentially selling Rush, and I'm opening up the outlanes finally. I've flirted with selling the game multiple times. I'm going to try to keep it a while longer because I do like the presentation of the game. It shoots pretty good, but it's just painful to play stock because every time you play, it just can fall into at least a half an hour of playing that game. It gets long and grindy. So I'm less – I think it does a lot of things well. What did I give that, Kevin? Nine and a half. Yeah, not nine and a half. I'm going to dip it down to eight and a half. Okay.
    76:19
    Godzilla, that's a game Martha bought. I wasn't never too hot on it when it first came out like most people. I did surrender to it, and Martha bought it, and I think that there's a lot of good things to say about Godzilla, but also it falls into this painfully long playing game that I just don't play it because any time I engage in it, I'm there for way too long. I can't just go, I'm going to play a quick game of pinball. It falls into these games where it doesn't feel like there's dangerous shots, so you can kind of fall asleep playing it and get into this kind of rhythm. What did I give that game? A 10.
    76:49
    A perfect 10. Nick Lane. It's an 8. Oh. Godzilla is an 8 and dipping and diving as we go. I would honestly sell that game if I owned it, but it's Martha's and she likes it.
    77:02
    All right, next is Jaws. Jaws, I just got that in April, and I've got to say Jaws is a game that I might have, for a more recent purchase, something I made in the last 10 years, I have fallen out of love with that game quicker than any game I've ever bought. It went from the highs to the lows. I get why people like it. I'm not saying it's a bad game. It is just way too boring for me. You know, the shots feel good. They're smooth. But I think pinball needs to be exciting. I think you need to have shots that are dangerous where you cannot just kind of, like, go into this, like, half-asleep mode and hit it or you miss a shot. Like, you know, you can quickly recover from it. The other thing with that game I was thinking about, Kevin, and as I know that there's a controversy about people wanting the shot to eat the ball, I think people are getting this all wrong. Okay? Think about this. Jaws is a horror movie, right? The shark is the adversary. You're supposed to be afraid of the shark. When I play Jaws, I'm not afraid of him at all hitting him. It's easy to recover after hitting him. It's rare that it goes straight down the middle. It doesn't go down. It doesn't come back fast at you. It's a pretty safe shot.
    78:10
    And it would even be more safe if the thing actually ate the ball and returned to the flipper. So I think when you have a baddie in the game, like the Ironmonger or the Black Knight, you want hitting that adversary to be dangerous, and you should fear that thing. So I think they just totally got this wrong. I think hitting the shark should be something that's super dangerous and exciting. The game is not exciting at all. I was playing it the other day as part of the Stern Pinball Cup, and I was just ready to walk away from it. So I can't believe it, man. And I wasn't excited when I saw this game, and then I played it at Pimbrook, fell in love with the shots, and now that is the game I would probably sell in April, May time frame. Interesting. If anybody wants it, let me know. Would you say Iron Maiden is your favorite Elwynn game?
    78:58
    I don't... Maybe. I don't think I like Elwynn games. I don't think they're for me. Okay. I don't think they're for me. And I think Elwynn games are great. Don't get me wrong. I was going to say, because you reviewed Godzilla 10 out of 10. Yeah. But now you're like, now you're saying you don't like, like, what changed? Yeah, so I think I can look at all the individual, like, categories in the game, like sound, rule, like, and, like, I kind of add them up, and it's like a 9 to 10 or whatever. But I'm just so, maybe I've changed as a player a lot. I'm so against games that are not exciting. These games are not exciting. They're designed to get through a lot of content. So to do that, you have to make them safe. And you have to extend the play time, like long ball saves, you know, generous ball saves, or modes that you hit where the ball saves are super long, or, like, the outlanes are pretty closed, right? Like, it's easy to save the ball. And this is what the market must want because if you look at pin side, you look at sales, like, Elwin and his team are doing the absolute right thing for the market. Like, they shouldn't chase what somebody like Nick Lane wants. I get that I'm not in tune with the market. I want a game like Wick that's super fast and brutal. I want a dangerous game like Iron Man or the OG Metallica. They've even made the new Metallica easier because they put outlane saves on it. It's like, no, no, no, stop making games play so long. Now, I understand as a player I can go in and open up outlanes, I can change the settings, but I like to look at a game as is and call it from there. So, again, I realize I'm going to be in the minority, but I do see a lot of other people saying the same thing about Godzilla, and they're starting to sell it because it's just too long for them. So I don't like this trend of long-playing games. And then Pulp Fiction is the most recent game I got. Absolutely love it. We'll review it one of these days. Great game. Highly recommend it. That game is going to be bolted to the floor, I'm sure. Nice. Okay. I'm going to run to the bathroom again. I'm sorry I'm going to miss some of these things. You're going to miss all my games. All right, I'm going to talk shit about all the games you like. All right, here we go. Fine.
    81:08
    All right. Where's my list? I lost my list. I need my list of games. So, okay. So I went back through my collection, and here's some of the games I've owned over the past five years. This is going back 2019 or so.
    81:27
    Godfather. I'm kind of going from most recent to oldest. Godfather. You know what? I'm going to hold Godfather until it gets back. We'll go the other way around. Roadshow actually so here's the ones I've sold Mustang Pro is the oldest game that I bought the longest ago and I also sold Mustang Pro when we reviewed this I forget I give this like it's worth it's better than it should be I gave it a we both gave it a 6 which I feel is fair. I don't love the theme. The game itself is fun.
    82:09
    The art is kind of whatever. The layout is interesting. And the rules are actually pretty good. It's kind of hit or miss on the music. I like that it kind of ties into the era of the cars, but it doesn't really do anything. It's one of the coolest things you can do on that game is kind of customize the sound package because the music doesn't really matter.
    82:33
    Let's see. Then I had Jurassic Park Premium. Jurassic Park is one. I gave that a 9. Actually, I reviewed that with Rudy, so he gave that an 8.
    82:46
    I would stick with a 9. I really like Jurassic Park. That's one I do kind of wish I still had. There aren't many games I saw that I kind of wish I still had, but we have it at a local movie theater, and so my son and I will play it when we're out, and I feel like I kind of get my fill there. And that's a game you see quite a bit. So you do have opportunities to play that. So I played Rochester Pinball Collective as well. So still really like Jurassic Park Premium. I had an X-Men LE, the older original X-Men, which did we review that one? I think we did. Oh, yeah, we both gave it an 8.
    83:28
    I might knock that down to like a 7. it's a fun game but there wasn't a lot of meat on the bone there i felt like i saw quite a bit of it um when i had it and i was that was more like i was trying to sell i think i sold hobbit to get that and i got that as like a trade plus cash kind of thing so it was fun oh fun for a while kind of game i don't really regret it what game are you on kevin x-men oe can i can i go back because i miss godfather i know you i forgot god i'm going i'm working backwards i'm gonna go through Godfather. Oh, you didn't talk about Godfather, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very quickly, love Godfather. Perfect, perfect game, I think, in terms of content, difficulty. That game's bolted to the floor. Okay. Wonka, there was also a game I just wanted to have and try, and I think the code got a lot better because Joe Katz went back to it and really polished it up.
    84:24
    That was never a game I really loved, and I still don't love it, so I'm okay with that. We never reviewed that one.
    84:32
    Avengers Infinity Quest. It was another fun-for-a-while game. When I first got it, I was like, I kind of love this game. But then I was also kind of like, okay, that's fine. It's kind of like, whatever. I'm okay not having that game. Guns N' Roses. Amazing presentation. They did balance out the game a lot since I sold it, so I do kind of wish I had some time on it. I should go to James's and play his because he bought it again and see how it plays now that they kind of balance things out. He did say it's a lot more valuable and rewarding to play the mini wizard modes now, which was one of the things where it was kind of lacking before so that fun Looking forward to trying that Where else Toy Story Toy Story was one of those games where I looked around my game room and I was like man I have three of my name games are all Pat Lawler games. And Pat Lawler games all have similarities. So I was like, I don't really need all of these Lawler games. And I don't want to sell my Addams Family. So Lawler was going to, Lawler games, Toy Story was going to go and Dave wanted that. So he picked that up. And same with Roadshow. Roadshow was a fun-for-a-while kind of game. Not great. You know, it's got that 90s rules. Cool layout, lots of mechanical, interesting mechanical stuff happening, but not a lot of code there. I did have the updated code where it lets you kind of randomize the cities, which helps. And it also had pin sound on it, which made the audio a little more tolerable. And Godfather, I just sold mine.
    86:07
    Didn't do it for me. for whatever reason. I like the layout enough. The movies are good and high quality movies but just whatever. Certain games they either click for you or they don't and Godfather just didn't.
    86:22
    I'm happy to be out on that one and on to my new game which we'll talk about here shortly. And then games that I still own are Godzilla. I really love that game. I stand by my 9 rating of that. I think it's a really fun game. Can't be a long player but I'm not I'm with Nick in the sense that I'm kind of feeling like I want more punishing games and I had played into the game that I ended up buying this week one of the two games I ended up buying this week but I also don't mind having one or two long playing games in the collection either and for me Godzilla is fun enough in all the other ways that I think keeping that as my long playing game I'm happy with that let's see, Alien, which I bought, you know, six months ago or so.
    87:12
    I really like that. I've always liked that game. I kind of got what I was expecting as far as build quality. There have been things that I've had to fix on there, not surprising. But the theme integration, the interesting mechanical layout, features, things like that, the rule set is really good. The audio is awesome, the David Thiel audio. I would actually bump up my rating on that. We reviewed that early on.
    87:35
    Let me see. I gave it a five. Nick gave it a three because it was always broken. That was actually the highway version that we reviewed.
    87:42
    So, yeah, I would bump that. That's like a seven or eight now I would put it at based on the highway pinball or the pinball brothers version with the caveat that, yeah, stuff's going to break. You got to fix it.
    87:59
    And then let's see. The P3. Amazing. like thinking back, looking back on all this and then factoring in the P3. So I got the P3 in 2021 with Heist. And since then I've added like almost all the play fields, a ton of the downloadable software. I think of all of my machines in my collection, that one gets the most play, which makes sense because I have the most things to play on it. And considering that like mechanically it's held up well, obviously there's been things I've had to tweak or adjust. And I've done some of the upgrades over the years, you know, So they sent out the quality upgrade kit for free for owners, you know, and they've offered this upgrade path for people who had the older P3s. So I've, like, upgraded the back box and things like that. So it's just been – it kind of made me stop and reflect about, like, how much fun I've had on the P3 and how much I play it relative to my other machines and how much value I feel like I've gotten out of it. So, really, P3 is really cool when you think about Heist, Weird Al, Final Resistance, Train, Princess Bride. the library has really expanded over the past four or five years and it's been awesome to see and I'm super stoked to have that in the collection. And I'll talk about my other two games that I picked up recently in my game room updates.
    89:18
    One you can obviously see behind me. Surprise. Shocker is Royal Rumble. I haven't played it much so I don't have much to say on whether it's a keeper or not.
    89:27
    Okay. Are we good? We got all your games? We good. Hope you guys like those I hope you guys like those updates. It's fun to do.
    89:37
    It's always worth talking about how we feel about a game after the fact. I think that the way we're rating games now is because we're rating games that we buy so our ratings are always high. Obviously because we bought the fucking game.
    89:52
    Hopefully that will change because I'll do my updates. I'll kind of launch into this with the Nickel City Pinball Club which will be opening up in a few weeks. And one of the plans is to reserve spaces for the six newest games, and I'm hoping club members will buy the newest Sterns. So we'll get a chance to play the new games that come out and rate them right when they're out. The hell with waiting months after the code develops. Let's get our pitchforks. Let's start giving out forts again. Threes and fours, Kevin. All right, here we go. Don't have any code. Imagine if you played X-Men and got to rate it, what that would be. It would be like a three for being a broken mess. All right, we'll balance out the ones that we buy with the new games. So I'm looking forward to that. But I'm super excited. The Nickel City Pinball Club should be opening up the first week or so in January. We'll be moving games in. I think the occupancy review is happening on January 3rd, and after that the green light should be lit to start putting games in there. We've got already an IFBA tournament booked for the last Saturday of the month. We're really excited about that. and then planning a party for all members, whether it's the full member or associate members, the Saturday before, which I think is the 18th or something like that, off of memory. So anybody who wants to join as a member, it's a private club. It's members only. Hit me up. You can reach out to me at nickelcitypinball at gmail.com. Nickel City Pinball is a nod to Buffalo Pinball. Obviously, Nickel City is another name for Buffalo Pinball. And that was not taken. and there's not a Nickel City pinball out there. There's a Queen City pinball, so we couldn't do that, but Nickel City pinball, it is super, super, super, super. I've never been – this is the most excited I've been in doing just kind of community pinball, whatever you want to call it, right, that aspect of the hobby. One day I'll tell the story, Kevin, but for those that don't know, Buffalo pinball was banned from pockets here in 2017. Those people are terrible, terrible, awful people that absolutely killed location competitive pinball back in 2017. So we've just not been able to run kind of tournaments out in the public like we used to love to do. I mean, we were so successful, Kavanaugh, running tournaments when we started in 2014 there that, you know, we graduated to Papa Circuit events with the Buffalo Pinball Summer Opens in 2016, 2017. Then we had to scramble and do our swan song at the Yacht Club just to prove how awesome we are. And that was a highly successful tournament. So we've been on hiatus from doing that. Obviously, we've had the Buffalo Pinball League for years, but we've been kind of underground since then, and I just cannot wait to bring back high-quality tournaments in the Buffalo area, and that's been seriously lacking.
    92:43
    That place has absolutely – Pocketeers absolutely killed location competitive pinball. I think you were telling me that they had in their last tournament seven people playing it because there's such a mess over there. Not holding back. One day I'll tell the story, but, like, you know, Buffalo has 275,000 people live in the greater Buffalo area, and you're getting seven people a tournament when we used to get 40 back in the day. So all that to say I'm super pumped, man. We've got leagues coming, team league. We'll have flip frenzy tournaments. We'll have monthly tournaments. And then we also have ten spots open for the full members. Full members get key card access to the club. I can't wait because maybe next podcast, Kevin, I'll be able to show pictures or a video of the club. The club is designed kind of the theme or the vibe aesthetic is like private, high-end social club meets speakeasy. Now, obviously, we're doing that on a budget, but what we've been able to control is like dark colors inside, black ceiling, no natural light. Just bought some nice leather Chesterfield chairs for the place that's getting delivered. So we're going for like a kind of higher-end, private vibe feel to it. Most of the games there, Kev, we have room for at least 40 games. Over 30 of them, or around 30 of them, are all classic games. And that's something that when Matt and I were talking about doing this almost two years ago at this point, we looked at kind of the landscape in Buffalo, and we've got the home league, and in the home league everybody has like the latest and greatest modern games, which is great. Like, that's great for the home, but what I really like is going to a tournament and not having people sit at a game and play it for like an hour, and then it's the next person's turn. So we're going to be celebrating the classics there. It's going to go along with the theme of the place. Tournaments and events will move very quickly. It gives people who, you know, may not nerd out on rules more of a chance to win because there's more of a luck factor in these classic games. And, of course, we will have some modern games there that we want to get the latest and greatest. But I don't know, I'm super excited. I can't wait to show you guys what we got in store. If you're in the Buffalo area or in the other surrounding areas, come out for our monthlies. We'll sell day memberships so that you can be a day member and come to it. But I'm super pumped. Yeah, so two items of note. One, merchandise opportunity, members-only jackets with the Nickel City Pinball Club logo. So take that under consideration. Also, so El Rocco in chat says, is the IFPA tourney members only? So talk about maybe a little bit how that works. If somebody's coming in from out of town and they want to swing by, like, how does that all work? So you have to be – so, yeah, anybody can play in these tournaments, right? You have to be a member. So we sell day memberships. So if you're coming out of town, you buy a day membership. You have to fill out your name and address, right, because it is a private, not-for-profit social club. So that's why we need that information. We'll sell you a day membership.
    95:47
    There's three categories. There's an associate membership where you can pay $300 for the year, and you get to come to all the tournaments and leagues and the competitive events, and that covers it. There's no additional charge, right? It covers your IFP, all that.
    96:01
    Then if you're coming from an out-of-town, we'll sell, like, a day membership for $30. That's how much the tournament will be. We're not doing prize money unless you want to do a side pool. All the games are, of course, on free play. and then we're doing a full membership level for the year, which is only limited to 20 spots. You get seven-day-a-week key card access. That's the limited aspect. The other, you know, we'll be able to, you know, if you want to be an associate member, those memberships are available. So, again, there's no discrimination against anybody, right? Like anybody can join, you just got to join as a member and pay the membership fee. That's how it's structured that way.
    96:37
    That's in compliance with the IFPA. Chuck, give me in the chat. He's 15 minutes from there, so there you go. Dude, Chuck, if you want any more information, you want to be a member, you can hit me up at nickelcitypinball at gmail. Happy to answer any questions or talk you through it. Awesome. And I agree 100% with the game selection choices. I think classics are so much better for tournaments for anybody who's not in, like, the top 100. The top 100 players want to play on CERNs, and they want to have their 45-minute games. but for like general audience, community building stuff, having a good time not waiting all day for your turn, I think classics are just such a benefit in that way and like you said you're going to have the latest and greatest too but like having that heavy bias towards classics I think is a smart move, especially when it's going to be so tournament focused it's going to be a lot of fun and I don't think there's many places that do that. So we're offering something different, which I'm really excited about. Yeah, that's amazing. And I know folks like Dave have been stocking up on classics, so he gets to be all set. Alright, that's your update. My game room update is I sold my Godfather, like I hinted to earlier.
    97:57
    Like I said, that game was fun, but not one I felt like I needed to keep around, so I was like, oh, not playing it that much. Let's see if we can turn it into something else. So I had it posted on Penzide, and it didn't sell, you know, within the whatever, 60 days or whatever, and then your listing time's out. So I ended up trading it with Rob from our league. He's Flash71, Hall & Oates.
    98:21
    He delivers pinball machines all over, mostly in the Northeast, but he's been expanding out a little bit from there. He actually, one of the people that he delivers games to a lot said he wanted one, And he basically set up that wholesale for me, which was amazing. So he shot out to Rob. He's like, I got somebody who wants your game. I'll take it to them. I was like, this is a dream come true.
    98:43
    Thanks to Rob for that. So that sold. And when I was out at Expo in October, I was hanging out with Scott Denisey. And he's like, hey, I'm thinking about selling my Rick and Morty. And Rick and Morty is, like, the one spooky game that, for some reason, I've always kind of wanted.
    99:07
    I like that it's an ass-kicker of a game. Like we said, you know, like, let's trade a longer-playing game. Although Godfather, in the updated rules, the game times have come way down, which is good. But let me get this real ass-kicker of a game that has an unconventional layout. and I had played his so I knew his plays really well as you might expect from like the designer of the game to get his game dialed in really nicely so I'm hitting all the shots on it it's feeling good the game's funny and fast and theme integration is really good so I'm super happy with that I've got a bunch there was a bunch of mods that came with it too so I'm gonna be installing a bunch of mods what's cool about it so he signed it for me which was awesome but it's also got one of the You know, it usually says, you know, game number 500 or whatever. His has a tag on it where it says it's a team member game, which is pretty cool.
    100:02
    So it's got some neat little perks like that with it, too. What else? So that's gone. My son, who I think I told the story of how he bought a taxi and fixed it up all over the summer, he actually sold it. So he bought the game, fixed it all up. got it working 100%, you know, we streamed it and then he was able to sell it made a little bit of money on it too, so he's happy about that, so he's able to go from soup to nuts on that, which is great but that also freed up another spot in my game room and coincidentally enough, Rick who has been on the show before had this Royal Rumble and he had hit me up about it, asking if I wanted it and I was like, well as a matter of fact, I have an open spot in the lineup so I was able to go and grab that on Wednesday. So I moved three games out. So I moved out. Stranger Things went back to Rob.
    101:00
    Let's see. Godfather had already been gone. Taxi went out. And then Rick and Morty came in and WWF went in. So it's been a busy week or two in the game room here. Lots of things moving. I've got a whole bunch of parts orders in for WWF. Mechanically and cosmetically it's in pretty good shape. and needed a few things, but I'm going to do a full LED makeover on it. So I got it ordered in with Comet. I'm putting a full set of new Titan bands on it. I got some of the parts I need from Pinball Life around the way. And I also ordered a pin to DMD, so not a color DMD, because those are like $500, and I don't want to put a $500 mod into a game that sells for like $3,500. So Retro City Pinball has a pin to DMD plug-and-play kit, it was like $210, I think. So that was more in the range of tolerable.
    101:58
    So that's on the way. All that stuff is on the way, so I'm hoping to get that as part of my project for over the next two weeks, as long as all the parts and stuff come in on time. So that is that. And one other thing was I got a new Neo Geo game. This is a homebrew game just released this year called Project Neon. It's a vertical shooter, which is weird in a Neo Geo cabinet because the monitor is horizontal, but it plays in a horizontal mode too. But if you have like an AES, the home Neo Geo, you can turn your monitor around the side and play it vertical.
    102:34
    So, yeah, and one of the other things I found out was I plugged this into my machine and the audio was playing no sound effects but only music. So shout out to former league member Adam. He had a Neo Geo board that he swapped with me, and the sound all works on his board. So another thing I'm going to try to do this week or next week is I have a cap kit for the sound board section of my Neo Geo board that I'm going to try to put in. So if all goes well, we'll have fully working sound, which is weird because I have sound and music works on my other games but not on this one. so there must be something weird that's failing or that this game is doing in a different way from other games that it's causing the music to have issues. But pretty stoked to have that. I also have Vengeance Hunters on the way, which is I got the shipping notification for that. It's a beat-em-up. That's supposed to be pretty good. It's also available on modern consoles. If you have Switch or Steam or PlayStation or Xbox, you can play it on there. But it was originally designed for Neo Geo, so I'm looking forward to playing that one too. and I think that's all my game room updates let's not miss out on mods you don't need though because I don't want to overstep mods you don't need because it's a fun segment that everybody loves this one I think somebody had posted on Facebook what is this tell me what game you think these so we're looking at some 3D sculpted slingshot plastics tell me what game you think this is for Jesus No idea This is Yeah This is supposed to be for Funhaus Okay Is her hair on fire? Like what the What is going on? I have no idea Is it a head full of flames? I don't know It's $110 too $110 Come on Don't You don't need these mods you don't need. Don't buy these. How did Gorin get that? Isn't that Funhaus? Gorin, you just looked at that and was like, that's Funhaus? That's obviously Funhaus.
    104:43
    It's a girl and she's like... What ride is she on in Funhaus? Is she on a water slide? Or like, what's going on? Yeah. Is she farting too? What's the smoke coming out from behind her?
    104:57
    Apparently, Gorin says this is what the slings look like, but they're in 2D. I've never noticed the slings looking like this in Gorin. No, Maji, don't need this. Kevin, you're crushing it. Thanks for getting this segment in there. I didn't have it on the show notes. This is a nice surprise to me, so thank you. This is my favorite segment because I just see dumb shit during the month, and I'm like, there it is. It's just like, you know, it sells itself. This segment builds itself. If we had the bandwidth, I'd clip all these and put it into YouTube so people could easily find this and just spend the day watching this nonsense because it needs to be cataloged for posterity. Okay, so there's this. I do have one more. You know, it's the holiday season. I want to give you an extra gift. These might be the most worthless mod ever created. That's a lot. Kevin, that's saying a lot, but I'm ready for it. Are you ready? That's how I'm feeling about these. So, apron wall decals. So, this is art. Get the fuck out of here. The bottom. So, if I'm standing at a pinball machine and I'm looking at the flippers, it's on the wall where the ball drains down to the hole, the out hole. You don't see this at all. You would never see this mod. No. Why?
    106:14
    Well, God, they make the Luma legs look like a brilliant idea compared to this. Luma legs is really dumb, okay? I'm not going to discount it. I don't want to take anything away from Luma legs. They've earned their place in mods you don't need, right? But this is just like, you might as well just take your money and throw it in the trash. At least you can see the LumaLags. Right. It's stupid. Incredibly stupid, but you can see it. And you almost don't want to see it, but you can see it. Yeah, you can see it. It's almost not a feature of the LumaLag. Every time you walk up to your machine, you can say, that was really dumb. Why did I buy that? This one, you will totally forget because you'll never see it. But that's the benefit. Yeah. It's a plus. Okay. All right. That's all I got for you. Just take your money and set it on fire. Okay? And that's it.
    106:58
    How much do they want for this nonsense? Oh, let's see. I'm sure also it's got the Jurassic Park logo on there, so totally properly licensed, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure they did it for themselves and didn't steal it. $30. What else could you possibly do with $30 plus another $8 in shipping? Oh, my God. Almost $40 for that out the door. Oh, Jesus. Okay. We've seen it all. We think we've seen it all until next month when I find some more crap. Yep. Kevin, you're doing a great service for calling this shit out. Thank you. You know, it's like Pinside has that thing at the bottom where it's just like related mods to this game you're in the thread about. And that's where most of these come from. It's either from Facebook pinball enthusiasts or like, what is this garbage at the bottom of this thread?
    107:49
    All right. So that does it for another year of Brody Even Talk Pinball. If you haven't yet, go to Buffalo Pinball and get yourself a sweet T-shirt, sticker. I forgot what the other merch is there. We got stuff. You can buy stuff. There's no members-only jackets, but maybe you can get a Nickel City Pinball Club one someday.
    108:09
    Follow us on the social medias. They're all at the bottom of your screen. Email us, podpinball at gmail.com. If you have a mod I don't need, you can send it to me there. If you have feedback on the show or just want to tell Nick how handsome he is, You can do it there. You can follow us and subscribe to Twitch, share our Prime, your monthly Prime with us.
    108:30
    When we do giveaways, it gets you an extra entry in our giveaways. And you can drop us a review. Don't be late. So it's at the end of the year, Spotify did a Creators, like, you know, the Spotify wrapped.
    108:45
    And in there, it was like, oh, here's all your stats. And it was like, your fans love you. We got like a 4.8 out of 5 for the year. And I was like, well, shout out to everybody, but whoever the jerk was that didn't give us a 5 out of 5. So go in there, give us a 5 out of 5 on Spotify and counteract whoever that was. It was having a bad day, and they're like, you know what? It's probably Dave. Probably Dave gave us a 4 out of 5.
    109:12
    Didn't give us a 5. Go boost us up in the ratings there. So, Nick Lane, anything else to close out at the end of the year for another year of Stock Pinball? Another great year. I think we crushed it. I do hope that American Pinball survives another year, and I'm wrong, so we can see the release and discuss it because they've been phenomenal for content. So I want to thank American Pinball more than anybody else, number one, first and foremost.
    109:38
    Always love hosting this with Kevin Manning, crushing it. And then thanks to everybody who listens. And I say this every time, but I love the chat. I love the format of our show. I love how the chat participates with us. You guys are really good. Oh, Denufpin asked if I've ever got a John Wick. I still want one, but no. So probably in the springtime I'll grab one. I'll probably grab a pro. I mean, the prices keep going down. So the longer you wait, the more you make out. I don't like to move games in the wintertime with the snow and just dealing with everything. But, yeah, so, yeah, I'll be rewarded for getting a game with more code, hopefully, and cheaper. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. We'll see you all in the new year and the next week or so. Hopefully, you get to play some pinball. Yes, but stick around. I got my thumb on the Topper Talk button. Episode 26 of Topper Talk. We're not going into the office. We're going somewhere else today. So stay tuned. We'll see you guys next time.
    110:35
    It's Topper Talk with Goran right now. Let's all have some fun. This is about plastic on top of your pin. Go and buy one now. There's a topper here and a topper there. Here a topper, there a topper, everywhere a topper. It's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly bill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Goran.
    111:03
    Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Goran, the part of the podcast where Kevin and I give you about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. For today's episode, we'll be talking about the Metallica Remastered Topper from Stern Pinball. So let's head into the study and talk about that now.
    111:20
    All right, so here we are in the study, so let's jump right into this topper. So here it is on the left-hand side. The image shows the lighting in red. It is a completely RGB topper with different lighting effects that I'll show off in a second.
    111:34
    One thing immediately that strikes me is that the topper is the Metallica logo and the Metallica font, but you have the typical situation of the name of the game being repeated right below on the back glass and in this case with Metallica it's in the exact same font and brand typeface as well so that does look a little funky you can see it here but it's almost as if they intentionally did this so that the Metallica topper builds off of that initial Metallica logo now someone on Facebook actually took this a step further and made a Metallica topper for the Metallica topper. So we have Metallica, Metallica, Metallica. I found that a little funny.
    112:15
    Now here's another look at the topper as well. Let me show you a little bit of it in action here. So here it is doing some of the lighting effects. You have your four domes as well that show game progress and can have some cool lighting effects, as well as each Metallica letter that you collect shows progress towards a Lady Justice mode, which I believe there is an exclusive mode for this topper, which we've seen Stern do in the past. What I will say is that I feel that the topper ties in nicely to the art package. I know the art package is not everyone's favorite thing, but it works. It goes well with the expression lights. It goes well with the shooter rod and the artwork and the speaker lights. it comes in at $999 which is expensive but I believe that at this point is the cheapest that you're going to get a Stern Topper for these days so overall it may not be everyone's cup of tea but it works for the game thank you for tuning into this episode of Topper Talk with Goran, tune in to the next podcast for another episode and as always get out there and buy a Topper thank you for coming to my Topper Talk
    113:30
    you