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DPP #176 "Post TWIPY wrap up! BOF! Rumors!"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·43m 35s·analyzed·Feb 26, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Post-Twippies wrap-up: factory tour intel, unreleased game NDA, Stern remaster rumors, D&D cable fixes.

Summary

Don recaps the 2025 Twippies ceremony held at Wormhole Pinball in Houston, visits Barrels of Fun's factory (encountering an NDA'd unreleased game in whitewood format), discusses Labyrinth's final build numbers (~1,004 units), and covers industry rumors including Stern remaster plans (Walking Dead and Ghostbusters candidates), D&D production cable issues, and King Kong positioning in the release calendar.

Key Claims

  • Barrels of Fun has approximately 120 machines left to build in the Labyrinth run, ending at around 1,004 total units

    high confidence · Don directly from factory tour; stated they're still building to order with outstanding orders not yet caught up

  • Barrels of Fun played an unreleased pinball game in whitewood format under NDA; it's not their next release and needed significant work

    high confidence · Don attended official factory tour with 40-60 people; stated it's not production-ready and optimistically would see release by end of 2025 if effort applied

  • Stern is planning remastered versions of either Ghostbusters or The Walking Dead (John Borg design) based on community sources

    medium confidence · Don cites 'good authority' and 'people two degrees of separation' from industry insiders; NAP Arcade article mentioned Walking Dead; no official Stern announcement

  • D&D pinball had cable management issues with Node 10 board connections; problem remediated with extended cabling and plug-and-play adapters

    high confidence · Don citing Pinball Show production update; multiple machines affected with ground cables unsoldering

  • Don's Pinball Podcast came in 5th place in the podcast category at 2025 Twippies (11th overall in Content Creator category)

    high confidence · Don directly from attending the ceremony; Electric Bat Arcade won podcast category, Canada came second

  • Jaws 50th Anniversary won Game of the Year at the Twippies; Don ranks it above Godzilla due to superior theme integration

    high confidence · Don watched the live ceremony; explained reasoning about theme vs. mechanics

  • Spooky's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes dual release split votes and hindered Twippy performance due to timing (early-year release)

    medium confidence · Don's analysis of Twippy voting patterns; stated both games would have placed better individually

  • King Kong will release in late summer to early fall and is expected to do 'big numbers' similar to Jaws and Godzilla performance

Notable Quotes

  • “2025 is looking to be absolutely devastating. I like what we've seen so far. I like what we have coming in the short term, and I love these rumors.”

    Don @ opening — Sets optimistic tone about year ahead and industry momentum

  • “I can't imagine, given that there were 40 to 60 people involved in here, that something's not going to slip up at some point.”

    Don @ Barrels of Fun NDA section — Acknowledges inevitability of leak for unreleased game despite NDA; indicates confidence in eventual community discovery

  • “Kale is the special sauce. Kale, I will just make him our designated leader at this point for pinball content, man.”

    Don @ Electric Bat discussion — High praise for Kale Hernandez and Rachel; suggests they're community influencers

  • “That theme of Jaws just puts it back up over the top for me. Both top tier games. I don't have to choose a favorite. I play them both.”

    Don @ Twippies recap — Explains preference for Jaws over Godzilla despite mechanics; theme-driven evaluation

  • “So I think just a light remaster, a refreshing of the art to make it a little bit more cohesive. I don't think that the cabinet really ever actually matched the theme of the play field itself.”

    Don @ Walking Dead remaster discussion — Specific design criticism of Walking Dead; outlines remaster priorities (art cohesion, cabinet-playfield alignment, topper)

  • “Nobody deserves to be bullied... And if you're found to be bullying somebody, you should deserve to get punched back. Metaphorically, of course, I'm talking nonviolently.”

    Don @ post-Twippies drama — Addresses online drama regarding Canada's podcast reaction; establishes community tone around bullying

  • “If I was sitting on these two titles and they were remastered and they looked awesome, obviously Ghostbusters is going to be the bigger draw, the bigger seller.”

    Don @ remaster strategy analysis — Analysis of why Walking Dead may release before Ghostbusters despite latter's higher profile

Entities

Barrels of FuncompanyDonpersonWormhole PinballorganizationElectric Bat ArcadeorganizationKale HernandezpersonRachelpersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Labyrinth production run approaching end at ~1,004 units; still building to order with outstanding orders not yet caught up; Barrels of Fun factory operations well-organized and confident in meeting demand

    high · Don from direct factory tour; 120 units remaining; corrected earlier assessment that production was in surplus phase; factory tour observation of organized operations

  • ?

    event_signal: 2025 Twippies held at Wormhole Pinball in Houston with ceremony, awards categories, and live streaming; expanding from virtual/TPF format to dedicated venue with plans to continue in Houston

    high · Don attended and live-watched ceremony at Wormhole; trophies to be held there again next year per announcement

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive reception of Jaws 50th Anniversary as Game of the Year; theme integration valued over pure mechanics; Spooky's TCM/Looney Tunes dual release blamed for vote split affecting both games

    high · Don's direct observation of Twippies results; detailed reasoning about theme vs. mechanics preference; analysis of Spooky release strategy impact

  • ?

    community_signal: Barrels of Fun provided merchandise giveaways, barbecue, t-shirts, patches, and John Wick shooter rod prizes during factory tour; community engagement and goodwill building

    high · Don distributed items via giveaways; coordinated shipping; praised company for gifts and hospitality

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Walking Dead original design criticized for cabinet/playfield art misalignment; grotesque aesthetic without cohesion; remaster should integrate playfield design into cabinet, refine backglass, improve topper

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.131

0:00
Warning, the following podcast is packed with abject parody. Viewer and listener discretion is advised.
0:09
As we're rolling on through 2025, Don's Pinball Podcast is back for everybody once again for a post-twippy wrap-up. I've been to Barrels of Fun, I've been watching the internet, I've been playing pinball, I've been getting a little silly online, and the reactions have been, well, let's go.
0:30
Well, I'm certainly somebody's fifth favorite podcast out there. What's going on, everybody? It's Don back from Houston, back in the worldwide headquarters of Don Pinball Podcast, where we record mirth and merriment and feed it to the masses for free and also for five bucks a pop, sometimes 20, over on the Patreon page. How you doing, everybody? I am good in this world of pinball. 2025 is looking to be absolutely devastating. I like what we've seen so far. I like what we have coming in the short term, and I love these rumors. that NAP consistently drips, feeds us, and confirms things that I'm hearing elsewhere and everything, and I can't wait to see where we're at at the end of the year. And I don't think it's going to stop, and we'll get to more of that. Let's give a wrap-up on exactly what happened over the weekend. The Twippies were held, the 2024 Twippies were celebrated in 2025 at the Wormhole down in Houston, Texas, and when tickets were released, I noticed that I was actually off work that weekend and thought, heck, why don't I give them, what is it, $40, $60, $80? I forget exactly what it was. But let me go to these things, right? I think heretofore until now these were either a virtual event or happened at TPF. But this year, and it looks like going forward, they were housed at Jamie Burchill's awesome Wormhole Pinball Enthusiastic Emporium down in Houston, which I have never been to. And then I thought, well, hey, I've got some friends down there, Barrels of Fun, makers of Labyrinth and forthcoming games. And, you know, they're down there in Houston. Maybe I could swing by. Colin did me one better and set up an official factory tour for everybody with barbecue food and giveaways and free T-shirts and included an NDA opportunity to check out a forthcoming project from the mad folks at Barrels of Fun. So it was a great weekend. And I'll recap it here in trip report format for everybody. So let's go down to Texas, home of Beyonce, apparently. for some reason. And I flew in in the evening, and they had orchestrated a series of events throughout the day. I was able to meet up with the group at Eureka Springs Brewing Academy or some such, a new location in the Houston area, big cavernous warehouse of a brewery with many different events going on, including a pinball tournament. Now, I didn't make it for sign-ups of the tournament, but I was able to go there and hang out. And for the most part, it was what you would expect at a brewery, a nice sternament, I think they call them. However, Pulp Fiction was in accordance there, as was, let's see, which spookies did they have? Jetsons was definitely there. I thought that I saw one more as well. Either way, I got to play me some Jetsons. So towards the end of the night, after the tournament was wrapping up, people were in finals, then I kind of snuck over to go play myself some games, hit the Hyperloop on Star Wars on location. Tell me that ain't fun every time it happens.

medium confidence · Don's forecast based on release trajectory; speculating on market saturation and remaster release strategy

Labyrinth
game
Jaws 50th Anniversarygame
King Konggame
Ghostbusters Remasteredgame
The Walking Dead Remasteredgame
Dungeons and Dragonsgame
Colinperson
Kerry Hardyperson
Retro Ralphperson
Canadaperson
Jamie Burchillperson
NAP Arcadeorganization
Aaronperson
Godzillagame
Metallica Remasteredgame
We Are Pinballorganization
Texas Chainsaw Massacregame
John Borgperson

high · Don's detailed critique: 'cabinet really ever actually matched the theme of the playfield itself'; 'grotesque and also kind of ugly'; specific recommendations for remaster approach

  • ?

    leak_detection: Barrels of Fun showed unreleased game to 40-60 people under NDA; Don expects information will eventually surface despite confidentiality agreement due to volume of attendees

    high · Don's direct observation from factory tour; stated 40-60 people involved, whitewood format, not production-ready, needs significant work

  • $

    market_signal: Walking Dead remastered selected over Ghostbusters for earlier release based on King Kong timing; Ghostbusters likely to release in following year paired with non-L1 game to avoid saturation

    medium · Don's strategic analysis of release calendar; Kong expected late summer/early fall with high sales projection; Walking Dead doesn't command premium prices of Ghostbusters/Metallica/Munsters

  • ?

    community_signal: Barrels of Fun factory demonstrates organized production with clean floors, swept areas, well-organized cabinets, and collector-focused feature understanding (powder coat, coin door options, extra backglass, LCD screen)

    high · Don's direct factory tour observations; noted 'every confidence' customers will receive orders; quality 'probably the best of the run now'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Kale Hernandez and Rachel operating Electric Bat Arcade; strong community influence indicated by Twippy win, Don's high praise, and popularity on Don's 'We Are Pinball' podcast episode

    high · Electric Bat won Best Podcast at Twippies; Don designates Kale as 'designated leader' and 'special sauce'; stated their WAP episode was most-listened-to of 25 episodes

  • ?

    product_strategy: Barrels of Fun has second game heavily rumored to launch in 3-4 month timeframe; reveal possibly coming at Texas Pinball Festival; timing makes sense given Labyrinth build ending

    medium · Don speculating based on ~120 units remaining at ~40/month build rate; suggests TPF reveal window makes sense but cautious about timing

  • ?

    product_concern: D&D pinball experiencing Node 10 board cable management failures; ground cables unsoldering on multiple units; remediated with extended cabling and plug-and-play adapters

    high · Don citing Pinball Show production update; issue described as resolved with back-on-production-line status this week

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Stern Pinball planning remastered versions of classic games; Ghostbusters and Walking Dead mentioned as candidates by community sources citing 'good authority' and industry insiders

    medium · Don cites community chatter, people 'two degrees of separation' from insiders, and NAP Arcade article; no official Stern confirmation; speculation about release order based on market strategy

    • 3:47
    But also, I got on the Jetsons, And, like, I don't know what happened, but I put a couple games on it, and game three, I was just in some kind of zone. Me and Orbity, we were, like, on a vibe, dude. I totally collected every character in Jetsons, did both the multi-balls, and ended up in Eep, Oop, Ah, Ah, Ah, Wizard mode in Jetsons. The whole game started going nuts. A light show I've never seen in that game before. For a rare game on location, one of Spooky's earlier builds, it was super fun to be able to hit a wizard mode, like, at a tournament, with real pinball people there. I was so excited. I had a great time. I must have played for 20 minutes on Jetsons. It's absolutely a game. I've got the play field hanging on my wall. I'm looking at it right now. I'm glad it exists. I would love to see more of these Hanna-Barbera edition cartoons as pinball machines. We saw Scooby-Doo, thank goodness. I think there's room for Flintstones and Yogi Bear. Just putting it out there. Don't know if it would ever happen, but I would play it. So it was as much about the games as it was about the people Hanging out with Colin there Aaron from Fast Pinball was in attendance Tons of other peeps that came up to me What's up everybody I got to meet Jamie and his extended friends group and everything All the Houston peeps, they was treating me well The following morning, that was the morning over at Barrels of Fun So let's start at 10am I did a whole Patreon recount of the whole trip and everything But basically we walked in the door, signed NDAs Played some classic spooky games as well as Labyrinth in the lobby, and then it was off through the factory. Great place, newer building. You know, from the outside, it looks kind of like Stern. It's that go-away gray painted warehouse-type building. No signage out on the street at all to indicate where it is at, and that is by design, I'm told. But once you walk in there, wonderful halls, resplendent in blueprints for old Disney Park attractions, which I absolutely loved, as well as art from Astroworld, which was Houston's short-lived theme park that used to be run by Six Flags until it went down in a poison pill disagreement thing. It was right across from the Astrodome. It was magical, and I went there, and it's gone, and it sucks, and Houston really needs to have a theme park again.
    5:57
    But regardless, I got to walk throughout the entirety of the factory. Everything is very well organized. Floors are swept and kept clean. Games are rolling out of there, so I have every confidence that, again, you order a game from them, you will get that game from them. and more importantly these people understand pinball from a collector's perspective they know what we want we like powder coated armor we would like to have an extra coin slot in the coin door i don't think i'll ever give that up uh to answer the question that immediately comes back would you rather us put 40 into the coin door or 40 into the play field and my my answer is always yes and just charge me 40 more dollars i want to have it i know it doesn't make sense but that's what i want regardless if it happens or not. Had a good time going through there. A lot of cabinets. Of course, the news from the tour there regarding Labyrinth was that they have around 120 or so machines left to build, given their parts capacity, and so that looks like where they'll be ending the run, at around 1,004, I think, if everything goes to plan. Now, correction from my earlier Patreon episode, I said that they were going to go ahead and continue the build, so they had some supply at the end, But what I've heard is that orders still aren't caught up yet. There's still outstanding orders for Labyrinth, so they're still building these to order. So they're not in the last surplus, as I was thinking. And for a company whose first game comes out loaded with sculpts, with some awesome Johnny Crap art, and David Bowie music is in there, and tons of Muppet creatures, I love it, man. I'm going to call Labyrinth a win. I know some of the shots are kind of tight. It makes it a little bit difficult for me to get deeply into the game. But as far as getting into the theme of the game, I loved having it, man. I played the hell out of that thing. And one of the best toppers in pinball, man. One of the best toppers in pinball. Shoot a rod ergonomically, not great, but I understand that they wanted to use the sculpt they produced, so I'm not holding any of that against them. Love it. I love that there was an extra back glass. I love that the vanilla game came with powder coat, came with back glass, came with the extra LCD screen in the back of the play field. I love that. I would not mind seeing that in every single game going forward. I think there's a lot that can be done with that in terms of setting the mood for this game, for this world that you're playing. Anyway, so game number two is heavily rumored to be coming out sometime in the next, let's say, three to four month range. I wouldn't be surprised. I would be a little bit shocked if it was out in the next month or two. But I think a reveal would kind of make sense at this point. I mean, with 100 games left to build and, you know, saying they build, say, 40 a month, you know, within 8 to 10 weeks, they're going to be done with the build of Labyrinth. They'll need to have something else out there. I think it kind of might be time pretty soon here. Now, we did not get to see this. And my expectation going in was, look, they're at the end of the Labyrinth build. I think we're going to see the new game. And if they're showing us under NDA, which I know is going to probably leak, although it wouldn't be for me, I'm sure that they would be, like, shortly to release it. TPF is coming up would be the perfect time. I don't know why as a company you wouldn't embrace TPF as a time to say, here's our new game, it's ready to go, come buy it, except that maybe it's not totally ready. This is a company that does like to have games physically in boxes and deals with distributors and probably a couple prominent locations at the time of launch, which is probably a best-case scenario. Barbecue lunch was had, and then just prior to that, we were led into a conference room, and this is where we were committed to secrecy at this point, but what I've been told and what I said on the Patreon is that I was allowed to say that we played a new pinball machine from them and it's not their next machine that they'll be releasing and I think it's fair to say that they were looking at feedback for this new product I think everybody that was there was reasonably excited to see what they had and we'd like to get it out there even more. I can't go into details without giving it away even the faintest little foggiest detail, eventually people will be able to figure it out. So for that reason, I'll remain mum, but I can't imagine, given that there were 40 to 60 people involved in here, that something's not going to slip up at some point. Although I don't think that it would necessarily kill this product. I don't think that it's at risk of dying by a thousand cuts from a licensor if something got out a little bit early about it. And I think the feedback would help them bring this project to fruition. I will say what I did play was in a whitewood format. It had functioning mechanisms and did not seem like this was the final production-ready layout. So the game would need some work. It's nothing that could turn and burn on a dime, and then we would see it this year, I don't think.
    10:42
    Optimistically, by the end of the year, if a lot of effort was put against it, I think you could see something. But I think this is something that maybe we be seeing a little bit more of as it evolves over time and that all I really want to say about it because I don want to give anything away And I don want to you know I don want to edge everybody along right either like teasing with little bits and things But it's exciting. It's exciting. So I'm glad that there's cool projects that are rumored to be coming out. Now, I spent a lot of time with the folks at Barrels of Fun walking around the hallways. I found out where HR is. I saw the break room. I checked out at least two of the bathrooms. One was a bog of eternal stench. I love that. and yeah it seemed like they had a great factory there now it was a weekend so i didn't see you know employees in full production or anything but i did check out their line and everything seems to be on the up and up if you order a game i'm certain that you will get one and the quality that they're putting out is probably the best of the run now okay so that brings us over to the wormhole so i went and got myself some wienerschnitzel as i do when i'm within 60 miles of I got to go. And then shut up over at the wormhole. Now, I don't know why I thought this, but in my head, I was picturing wormhole as like a, maybe a half the size of a District 82, like just a massive place, like loaded with every single game. I know these guys in Houston have an incredible pinball collection of like rare and like one-of-a-kind items. And earlier in the day before my flight had landed, they actually went into what they call the vault. and you saw the pictures on Nap Arcade, I believe, of just all this like really rare and hard to find important stuff that they have there. And it was not there at the wormhole. The wormhole, it takes hold literally. This was a punk rock hole in the wall placed with a patio and about 30 games crammed inside of like, I don't even know. It would have to level up to be a dive bar. That's how small it was. Intimate, I think is a good word for it. What a great hangout area. Fully carpeted with multiple carpets. I love the carpets that they had in there. But that's where they had the Twippies. So basically everything that you could see on camera during that recording and that live streaming, that's the entirety of the wormhole. You saw it all on there. So I wasn't quite expecting that. I walked right up and played a diner, and that was fantastic. So for me, it was great. Have you guys played this robot game from Zacharia, whoever they are? That's a phenomenal game I've never seen before. Played it for the first time. Check it out on a virtual machine near you. I'm going to go fire up my VP and play it a little bit later. Phenomenal. Had a great time watching all the categories. Now, they ran through on the live stream the finalists, and I think they were taken in the top four for every category. And I didn't realize this until later when the full rankings came out, but Don's Pinball Podcast, this little enterprise that I started, almost literally in my garage, just missed out on finals. I came in at number five by number of gross and total votes and points or however the mechanisms work there. which is pretty phenomenal. I'll speak on that here for a little bit. Last year was my first year of being in the Twippies. Of course, the year before that, they got canceled or something. Last year, everything got truncated, so there was only one category for anybody that wasn't a professional pinball company. And Kerry Hardy took the Twippy that year for that one. They had that esoteric rule that if you had won before, you were excluded from voting this time. So it was a little bit hampered. And I came in number six, which I was incredibly enthusiastic about. Thanks for everybody that voted. This year, with everybody back in there, Canada's back in there, pinball show's back in there, I moved up the ranks even in that situation. And so now I'm just hungry for the damn thing. I'm going to put out so much fun stuff and try everything I can and recruit as many votes as I can and get on some of that electric bat action and see what I can do to increase a little bit more. I'm in good company, very happy to just be nominated, and it was fun to be there and watch everybody get their awards and everything. The breakout category was new this year. I like that they highlight new people. Would have been great if it was there two years ago, but that's fine. It's fine. It's an Internet Awards. I'm not going to get angry about it. But, yeah, kudos to all the winners. Retro Ralph for breakout. Kerry Hardy for content creator of the year, I think is that his category. And then Electric Batter K took it for best podcast. They are phenomenal. I never miss one. And I got to say, I got this other podcast I do called We Are Pinball with Retro Jingo over in Copenhagen. With an international flair, it has absolutely taken off faster than this one did. And to date, our most listened to episode of the 25 or so that we've put out is the one that we had with Kale. Man, Kale is the special sauce. Kale, I will just make him our designated leader at this point for pinball content, man. Teach us your ways. Oh, Sensei, martial arts trained, one of the best beards in pinball. And him and Rachel run the electric bat, both of them. and Rachel, I think, started this place. Kale came in there and couldn't have picked a better partner, man. What a duo, and we have fun times every time we hang out, so love that. So congrats to everybody that matched in there. I saw Bash Pinball was listed. My buddy Ryan with the Phantom Tail Pinball podcast, he got finalist in his category. I think he was in breakout. Phenomenal, man. I love this. So I like that there was several categories, and everybody could be highlighted, even Pirate Princess Jess, who kind of came out of nowhere. You know, a lot of new faces are getting recognized in this. Of course, Jaws was the big winner of the night. And how could it not be? When it comes to animations, just the 3D mode was so fun. Plus the animations of the shark is broken and the other 8-bit modes that are in there. Let alone just like what happens throughout the game. I think Jaws is a complete package. I would say that's probably game of the year for me as well. Just taking every little bit of it. And I would personally put it ahead of Godzilla as far as like of all time, definitely as far as Elwynn's. And I think theme is what really maximized it out. That's the one tenet that's lacking for me in Godzilla. Otherwise, you know, Godzilla probably flows a little better, probably plays a little bit better. Rules are a little bit more easy to understand. But that theme of Jaws just puts it back up over the top for me. Both top tier games. I don't have to choose a favorite. I play them both. But for me, yeah, yeah, Jaws was good. We saw Avatar take it for art. That was great.
    17:03
    I don't think we saw – I knew this was going to happen, but Spooky's release for this last year, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes, the dual release, you can't come out with two games like that in a ranking system like this and not expect it to split the vote. But I think the Looney Tunes slash TCM layout would have had a better showing if it wasn't for the fact that it was split. And the fact that the games come out at the very beginning of the year also isn't very conducive to Twippy Wins, but I would like to recognize them here because they're two games in my lineup that are not going out anywhere at any time. Following that, what else did I do? I think that was the end of the night. Hanging out with friends, having a good time. Hung out with the Barrels guys for a bit after hours. Some really cool guys over there. Thanks for hooking me up with some gifts. I did giveaways of t-shirts that were given out during the tour, as well as patches. Those are now packaged and on their way out to the winners. So thanks to everybody who watched the live stream and who followed the directions and emailed me and got your stuff. Even if you wanted that John Wick shooter rod, it's on its way out to you. Whenever I give away stuff, you've got to email me an address. Because if you send me a text or something, it's going to get buried immediately. And it's so hard for me to go back and find it later. Whereas if it's an email, I know it's like, you know, 2010's technology. But an email can go into a folder that I can then go back at my ship station, and pull it out and actually package and ship. It makes it so much easier. So if you win something or if you just want something, email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com and let me know where the hell I'm sending it even. And then we've got a Venmo and a PayPal if you'd like to send some tips or if you'd like to purchase additional products and things, we can arrange that. The volume that I'm moving at kind of precludes me from starting a website. I would be completely inundated. But if you want something that's been featured or rumored or you got an idea or you have a tote bag you want to get a logo on, like, get at me, dude. We'll make it happen. I've got special orders for hoodies coming up. So if you want a hoodie going into the fall emblazoned with your choice of logos, we can do that. And if you've got an Afghan shawl you want to get a logo on, I mean, talk to me. Ship it to me. We'll make it happen.
    19:11
    But, yeah, I just flew back the other day. It was super fun, man. Loved it. There was a bit of drama, of course, that had occurred. It was actually concurrent with the Twippies for you lucky, lucky folks that managed to avoid all of this and to get sucked in like all of us did. And, you know, of course, you know, Canada from Canada's Pinball Podcast was live streaming during the announcement where he came in second runner up to Electric Bat Arcade by rank choice voting and didn't seem to handle it well, was having a bad day. So a little bit of parody and mirth was taken in light of that. And I'll just echo the nice words from our current pinball morality leader, Cale Hernandez. Nobody deserves to be bullied, which is true. And, you know, we are pinball. We are a collective community, and we mainly remain positive and progressive. I will add that nobody should be bullied. That really goes both ways. And if you're found to be bullying somebody, you should deserve to get punched back. and I think that the universe will sort of settle itself there. Metaphorically, of course, I'm talking nonviolently, you know, within reason. All right. So the trophies were awesome, and it looks like it will continue in that manner. The trophies will be held there again next year, it sounds like. So fantastic. Houston's not a bad place to go, especially in the middle of winter, for us up here in the Upper Northwest. So for podcast, it looks like Electric Bat Arcade took number one, Canada number two, I think Loser Kid, Pinball Show, and then me, if I'm remembering right. And then, yeah, Content Creator, I was 11th overall. So fifth in podcast, 11th in Content Creator, and number one in the hearts of my detractors. Thank you so much, everybody. This has been, this was fun. This was fun. I would do it again. All right. Let's talk about some pinball news rumors and things. So Stern Pinball, based on production update from the pinball show I got this morning listening in the shower. I don't know if you need to know that tidbit. But D&D's, I guess, they've been on the line, off the line, back on the line. Of course, there was this cable issue. It's been fixed because the cabling has been extended. And then I guess there's a plug-and-play adapter that will add a couple inches of girth to your cable to keep the dragon from rubbing it out of the Node 10 board. Node 10 board itself seems to be functioning just fine. It just doesn't work great when there's a plug or a cable that keeps getting yanked out of it, as one does. I saw another ground cable from a pro that came unsoldered and had to be resoldered okay so there some cable management issues seem to be the main thing from Dungeons and Dragons I heard it been remediated and then my expectation was last week it was going to be back on the line and then I guess they were running X Pros or something instead Maybe there's some new parts they're waiting on. Well, again, this week I'm hearing now that it's back on the line, so we'll see. I still haven't heard about my LE and when it's coming. I know some have snuck out. I sure don't mind waiting a week or two if it means a better quality machine without needing a retrofit fix, but yeah I don't know I haven't heard anything yet and it's Tuesday so we'll see what the week brings. Okay so the rumored remastered. I don't know Stern hasn't said anything about this officially but it seems like collectively we've all decided that there will be three cornerstones from Stern per year and one remastered game hopefully more along the lines of Metallica Remastered smash hit amazing way to take an older generation game and just bring it completely up to date with awesome art and great modes and this interconnected and expression lights and all that business love it love it gotta have it uh so the rumor next up was going to be ghostbusters because i think you know of course there was some chatter there was some desire for metallica for sure but definitely ghostbusters probably the spike one that needs to be remade um i know there's been issues or there's a you know are they going to flip fix the flipper gap are they going to not We don't know. But it seems like from good authority that a lot of people that are in the industry and would at least be like two degrees of separations away from people that should know have been saying like, sell your Ghostbusters now. It's coming. The expectation was it was coming this year. Again, this is all from the community. Nothing official from Stern. So when it doesn't happen, we can't be mad at them. But then at Pinball on the Beach, we saw that Nap Arcade article kind of blindsided us saying that there was another game from that era that was going to be remastered as well, and it would actually come out first, and that was going to be The Walking Dead, AMC's flagship series, one of them. I'd prefer Breaking Bad, but here we are. Now, Walking Dead, John Borg game, cool layout. I love how when you shoot a ball, it kind of zooms around that little figure-esque turn to the rollover switches for the skill shot. That's fun. There's Bash Toys Galore and some cool rampage and such. And I don't think I've played like an LE and premium enough to really understand what that crossbow does, but like there's a crossbow in the apron. But, you know, there's pros that are out there. It's an absolutely grotesque looking game in probably like a good way, you know. Now, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a grotesque game in absolutely the best manner possible. This game is grotesque and also kind of ugly. so I'm kind of like, I wouldn't mind having the lineup, like I can stomach that kind of thing, but it is like a grotesque looking machine. So I think just a light remaster, a refreshing of the art to make it a little bit more cohesive. I don't think that the cabinet really ever actually matched the theme of the play field itself. So if you could bring some of that play field over to the cabinet and really make it shine as one cohesive package, I think that'd be good. I think that'd be good, especially if you could tone down the little AMC logo on there, make it fit maybe more in-universe. And then I think the Backglass, the Translight, needs some help too, just to kind of make it, again, nice cohesive package, get a better topper up there, the whole package. So remaster it, yes. Now this game is not commanding the high prices that you see from a Ghostbusters, from a Metallica, from a Munsters even. So it was a bit of a surprise when I heard that they were going to invest the time to bring this out to market because I just don't think, in terms of sale numbers, it would quite be the faucet that you can turn on like with a ghostbusters like imagine if ghostbusters remastered premium and le's came out remade that topper that was up on there had a whole package and fix the flipper gap adjust some of the geometry so it was just shooting amazingly uh with with all the mechanisms and things like brand new and working and some new code in there and a new art approach i love that idea so um again this is nothing official from stern but our expectation that we're manifesting is that Ghostbusters and now Walking Dead will be remasters from Stern. Love it. Haven't heard much about Lord of the Rings. I know they're looking into it. If it's possible, they'll do it. Of course they'll do it. Of course they'll do it if it's possible. If it's not possible, then forget it. Now, who's right? Because we're hearing Walking Dead for sure. We're hearing Ghostbusters for sure. We know they're not going to do two of them. I mean, of course, we don't know any of this, but probably they wouldn't release both of them. So it may be a situation where Whoever is saying it's Ghostbusters, whoever is saying it's AMC's Walking Dead are probably correct or were correct at some point. And it could be that Stern isn't even completely sure about which one will slot in where. And that's probably why you hear these rumors kind of antagonistically hitting each other.
    26:39
    So I would think, you know, putting on my Stern hat, if I was sitting on these two titles and they were remastered and they looked awesome, obviously Ghostbusters is going to be the bigger draw, the bigger seller. We're going into another L1 release with reportedly Kong here in the late summer to early fall. And so that will, of course, do big numbers. Jaws is still doing big numbers. Godzilla did huge numbers. So there's no reason to expect that King Kong wouldn't unless there's a wild departure from what we expect from him. But I would look at that and I would say, you know what, okay, we got gold coming out here. This is going to be tying up the line because we're going to have backlogs of orders and people on lists. Would it make sense to drop Ghostbusters as well into this already saturated market? Or maybe we'll slot Ghostbusters the next year, pair it with maybe not a lifestyle type game, and then maybe put Walking Dead out to follow something like Kong. That would make a lot more sense, and so that would cause a little bit of a switcheroonie, if you would. So maybe that's what's going to happen. Of course, all speculation, but just coming off the top of my head, this is something that would seem to make sense. Get on all these lists. So you have First Rider Refusal, I know Jeff at MadPimple.com, and all the other lovely distributors within the industry do this. But, yeah, go get yourself on a list, and then you're not going to be left out when there is a release. If FOMO is clawing you and you want to jump on it, at least you've got a place in line. Get in line for the soup at the Soup Kitchen, man. Get yourself some breadcrumbs there. All right, what else do we got? So I heard a little bit about Avatar CE production. If anybody cares anymore, I think the ten of us that purchased this game are all anxiously waiting for Avatar CEs. and so I was expecting it any time now and so I ran into a JJP associate over the weekend and I was like, hey man, what about those Avatar CEs? I heard they were coming out at some point. Apparently what I'm hearing is that the exports had to go back on the line there for a little bit so domestic production was delayed by a week. Is it? I don't know. Is that just what they told me? I don't know. Was I bugging them while they were eating a taco? Probably. but last I had heard at pinball on the beach the official word was that my CE would be ready sometime this week and here we're going late into Tuesday still no emails and so if I am getting it this week now's about the time I'd expect to be saying okay you're going to be down here Thursday morning Friday when you come to get these things we're not here over the weekend and so far nothing but I may come off of this and have already gotten an email about it I'll let you know what I know when I know what I know Harry Potter at TPF doesn't seem likely I don't know that that was always the case though there may have in fact been a plan to do this at some point but I don't know maybe they had to bump it because they had to make more export avatars I don't know maybe parts still needed to come in we have this concept in chemistry called a limiting reagent and there could be some specific part that was maybe delivered and then wasn't up to specifications and needs to be remade causing like a four week backlog of back ordering this new part and that one little part could hold up production on the whole assembly thing and can thwart the release pinball as it kind of turns out is hard sometimes so while i think that the at one point the plan was to have this game ready for tpf it's looking more likely that that's not the case i would put 20 on probably seeing it there so tpf is the next event that's coming up it's coming up at the end of march i think the 21st 22nd somewhere around that thursday friday Saturday. So what are we going to see there? Because this has been shaping up to be kind of the TPF where everything's been dropping off. We've had shows where it was like the debut of a ton of games. Remember people waiting an hour or more to get on one of the four Pulp Fictions a couple of years ago? And now it's like, are there no brand new games here? Are we all going to be standing around playing Elton John and Avatar? So without having a new release from Stern, without having a new one from JJP, with American Pinball seeming to have self imploded, what's left? Spooky will be there, of course, with, I'm hearing, ten Evil Deads. Six of them, apparently, are already sold. If you want to get one of the remaining ones and pick it up at the show, this phenomenal game that I was just playing a few minutes ago, email squirrel at spookypinball.com or your distributor and get word to them to pick up one of these games at the show. Skip the line. Have a fun time, man. The game has been incredible.
    31:01
    So what else are we going to see? There's another company that technically makes pinball machines. my good friend Enzo knows what I'm talking about here.
    31:11
    Multimorphic, purveyors of, uh, Weird Al's, uh, Museum of Natural Hilarity, uh, Princess Bride, most, most recently, uh, Final Resistance, probably their best game to date, uh, and others, Lexi Lightspeed, Cosmo, Cosmic Racing, and Cannonball Lagoon, and all that business. Um, they just put out a little post today with a timeline of, like, their entire company's history, and they showed, like, the release of major titles. And for the last three titles, there's been about one a year. And I was at TPF last year, and I think that was the first time that I played Princess Bride. So it seems like this would be one year, hence that. I think it's time for a multi-morphic release. What are they going to ruin this time? I'm kidding! It's like playing pinball, but like, what's that Japanese stick puppet art form? It's kind of like that. Like you got these little stick puppets on the flippers. I don't know. It's weird, man. It's weird. But nonetheless, we'll see what they have to come. And maybe they'll be having a new game. Maybe they're teasing here a little bit. Of course, they're Texas natives. They seem to like to release a game once a year. It seems like they're just about due in the shoot. And they may be able to bring a game to the show and really not have anything else there brand new to play that we haven't seen before. So, Multimorphic Man, it's your time. Your song just came on. Get out on the dance floor. Take your date. Be the prom king and queen that we want at TPF Let see if he got something new to play Can wait to see what they may be bringing I think they may be teasing a little bit My heart wants it I want some new pinball to play The other company the Dark Horse and the Rays Barrels of Fun What are they up to? They have a second game. Of course, they have what sounds like several games in development for yearly releases. They seem to be entering the shoot now of a launch window. Well, we'd be seeing something from them, perhaps, at TPF. These are guys that aren't just the typical corporate pinball folks. I mean, they know that this is kind of their home show. This is the big Texas show. They're in the time frame where they should be releasing something soon. Will they have something ready for TPF or not? I'm 50-50 on this. If they have something there, good on them. If they don't have it, I kind of understand. I'm not very much expecting to walk in and be surprised by something there, but I still think maybe it can happen, and they're just playing coy with my emotions. But I'm excited to see what it has to bring. People were texting me as we're on the tour there. Of course, their rumored title now, the thing that seems to gain the most traction, is the Sandy Dune game. I don't like sand. It gets everywhere. We've heard it. So are we going to see a sandworm game? People were texting me while I was down there at the factory, do you see any sand on the floor anywhere? And no, that turns out to not be the case. I did ask about that special pack-in hint that we got while we were down at Pinball at the Beach as a little jar of kinetic sand and a bottle opener. And apparently that was just because you're at the beach, so we gave you a bottle opener and sand. And so don't read into it too much is what I heard. And I love to read far too much into things to try to look for hints and things that aren't there. So that's what we have. So are they just going to trug out some of these labyrinths again that we've seen for three years in a row? Man, we want – it hasn't been three years, I don't think. But we want to see what they have to come out with. We know they know licensing. We know they don't want to gamble on some original theme that nobody's going to care about. So hopefully we'll see some of that. If not, I guess we'll join the queue for the Black and White Adams family and Ramps' road trip to Valhalla. See if they made any improvements in the month since they were at Pinball at the Beach. All right, all right. What else do I have to talk about? Funs Up. Not Fins Up. Fins Up would be something like a tropical-themed beer, I think, associated with Jimmy Buffett. Fun Sup, F-U-N-S-U-P, is the unfortunate title of the new factory production private labeling conglomeration that Ametron is the subsidiary owner of. I guess this is what American Pinball has devolved into. I still don't know the specifics. I'm just casually observing all of this. But it seems like Ametron has come in and cleaned house, and they've eliminated their research and development department. Now, these would be the folks essentially who are designing and building and coming up with brand new titles, like Galactic Tank Force and Barrios Barbecue Challenge. And Hot Wheels, I think, was an original that they did. Everything else was like Riot Pinball that did it or came from before then. Anyway, so those folks are out. David Fix, out. Program developers, out. Rules, coders and designers out I think they may still have a coder But supposedly they have this forthcoming game Rumored to be based on that retro themed cartoon Whatever And then they have a game 8 And a game 9 or something behind there as well That are also licensed titles These were already kind of known things That Mr. Fix himself had talked about Apparently those are still going to come out And they'll come out what it seems like Under the American Pinball label Which is from now the new company name of FunSup. Was absolutely everything else taken and you went with FunSup? Is it Funs Up? But it's like different color. Fun's a different color than Sup. Sup stands for stand-up paddleboard, so I'm looking at a paddleboard company here. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm hoping that the pinball show can shed some light. I'm only halfway through that episode. Hopefully they will address a bit more of that. What it sounds like is that they're fishing around. They say, hey, we've got this production facility. Technically we can make pinball machines. If you've got a pinball machine that you want made, we can make it for you. We can even make it for you and then release it under the American Pinball brand, I guess. Who's going to service it? I don't know. Who's going to be the R&D that's there on the line when a problem comes up? I don't know. I have more questions than I have answers right now. And so it's not my job to figure that out for them. So I think I'm just going to sit back, crunch some caramel and cheese popcorn because this is Chicago, and I'm going to wait and see what happens. I hope that this Game 7 that I've played, that others have played, that distributors have been kept up on, I hope it gets released sometime. But I have like a less than 5% opportunity percentage of anticipating it being at Texas Pinball Festival. So I don't even know if funds up will be in attendance. And if they are, who's going to be there? I guess they got some new salespeople. I don't know, man. Again, I have questions. But I'm going with the recording equipment. And if I find someone that I can nail down, we're going to get some questions asked. Will we get answers? I don't know. But I'm happy to meet with them and see what we can get out there for everybody. This is how I became everybody's fifth favorite pinball podcast.
    38:05
    So, fun's up is a thing. Don, what does this really mean? I don't know yet. I don't know. Next time I'm swinging by getting donuts up the road or stopping at the Amazon Fulfillment Center across the street, maybe I'll knock on the door and see what's going on. You know, kick some tires and rattle some boxes. And we'll see what happens. When I hear about it, y'all will hear about it. All right, I do want to address We Are Pinball, this new podcast endeavor that I started with Genghis. What I wanted to do was have some sort of podcasting format where I could have more of a conversation with somebody else, and not just a special guest every time like I've had on here, but someone regular and hopefully somebody with a different perspective on the hobby than I have and someone that's also available to record. I found all of that in my international friend, Genghis. And so we started We Are Pinball because we wanted to find a way to use the WAP acronym, and so that's what we did. It's been explosively amazing since we started. We gained a lot of traction. By popular demand, we started a Patreon, and by popular demand, we're expanding the tiers. We now just got an ask for $150 tier level, and we got people waiting for that to launch. So what do you do to somebody that's paying you $150 a month? I'm thinking every mod I create, I'll just send it to them. Like, they get a subscription to my mods. I've got to bake some value in there. But we're having such a fun time over there, and I'm still hearing that some people haven't been aware of it. So if you dig this kind of content and you don't mind kicking back in a more dialogue format between two folks, not just a one-sided delivery at this point, check it out. Now, he's over there in Copenhagen, Denmark. He's an operator. He's got several arcades that himself and his brother own. He also distributes for Spooky, JJP, and Stern at least. Pinball Brothers, I think, as well, although we're still waiting to see what's coming after ABBA. I don't think anybody's distributing any ABBAs for Pinball Brothers. I think that demand is satiated. So we'll see if Predator comes out, man. But if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, wherever you got this podcast, you should also get We Are Pinball as well. Check it out. And it seems like we're going to be producing episodes a little bit more frequently than the every two to three weeks that I originally envisioned. And again, that's due to popular demand, man. How do you not answer the call when that happens? All right, so there's my plug for the WAP.
    40:23
    And I would like to – this is still early planning phases, and there may not be enough time to pull this together. But I would love to gauge interest for a WAP day in Copenhagen sometime in July, maybe middle of the month after 4th of July. So if you want to come and meet us over in Copenhagen and maybe go have a tournament at one of Genghis's locations, Come see this historic town that Hans Christian Andersen came from. Go to Tivoli and hang out at the beer gardens. It's really a wonderful place, and it'll give an excuse to fly into Denmark, man. Let's go to Denmark and hang out. I'll be on a European trip as well. You're free to tag along to some of the sites that I'll be going to because I do like my visits out to the old country, and I think it would be fun. But I'd like to gauge some interest. Are there two people that want to come out? Are there 40? We need to know how many Danish's we need to be bringing, man. their baked goods are as good and friendly as the people over there so if you haven't had a chance or if you've been before and want an excuse to go back man let's go hang out in Copenhagen for a little bit email me at donsbibblepodcastgmail.com or wearepinball69 at gmail.com and let us know if you're interested and we can see if we can throw something together man there's a couple of like very old historic theme parks there as well it's actually located what a fun place man I can't wait to go back summertime in Copenhagen it's a vibe man it's a vibe All right, also by popular demand. I've been asked to revisit my Deep Dive series into games. Got an email. Joe, how you doing out there, buddy? I had a series that I was doing on Patreon where I would review a game that I had owned, and then I would kind of go into the whole timeline of it. Why did I buy it? Where did I buy it from? How was my buying experience setting up? How was it owning the game? Did I enjoy it long term? Why did I sell it? What did I get for it? And now that it's gone, how was my experience? Or if I still have it, why am I still having it? And what sort of things would cause me to move it on? Just so that can help people if they're looking out there deciding on which game to own, which game to borrow, which game to sell, maybe just to get some perspective. And so I've decided to do that because that is an absolutely capital idea. But I tend to go into a long narrative format with these. And I think adding it on to this episode would take me over 90 minutes. So I thought, why don't I restart this series over on Patreon? So I think that's what I'm going to do. and instead of going chronologically through my journey of pinball, I thought I could list all my machines in a random number generator. We'll start the episode, we'll randomly pick one, and then we'll just go from there. Here's the pluses, here's the minuses, here's how the experience went now that I've owned these things, I've leveled up my skills and taken care of machines. Maybe I've done something, such as a mistake, that could help you in the future and it could be addressed there. And more content for road trips, man. And not just the ramps kind.
    43:08
    It's the Honest Pinball Podcast. Episode number 176 is in the can, coming into your ears, man. More as I hear it. Let's be cool out there with everybody. Let's be able to reflect and laugh on ourselves and take a joke as a joke. And don't take everything so damn seriously. It was an Internet Awards show. Just be happy, man. It was fun just to be nominated. I'm over the moon about that.
    43:30
    More to come, guys. Be good. Later.