for number 205 it's the stern cornerstone star wars extravaganza let's get into fall of the empire play impressions which version should you get a little buyer's guide and a special shout out to stern right after the drop and you know what let's not even mess around hey everybody welcome to the show all right this is being recorded just prior to the embargo lifting finally can i just say ndas i'm not a fan i was on site just a few days ago thankfully stern thanks for bringing us all out there had a great time got to play all versions of the game ask all my questions run my fingers up and down the cabinet and even take some pictures and then i have to come home and i have to sit here and go through all my socials all my discords with all my good friends who are all thirsty and hungry for information and i can say nothing and man, like I love coming in early, but I think I'm deciding I'm not a fan of this approach because it sucks for me to sit here with this information. It's like my friends are like, I think there's two flippers. Maybe there's a third one. And I'm just like, I just want to help, but I can't. Under NDA, that's what happens. So a new approach to this. I'll talk about that a little bit later about how the media day and everything went. But let's talk about the game. So if everything has gone okay, and according to plan, you should have seen the reveal trailer, the little featurette with George Gomez and John Borg, gone all over the game, and now your mind is sufficiently blown, your wig is sufficiently pushed back, and let's tap it back down, and now you have questions, right? Like, is the art really good? I mean, I can see the images. I'm waiting for NAP Arcade to update, but, like, is it good? How does it play? How does it feel? You know, you were expecting one thing in your head, and you got this. You know, maybe you were led to believe it was going to be a re-theme of the Data East game, and that's not quite what we got. Yes, there's an ad ad. You were expecting the AT-ST, all of that. So just so we're all on the same page now, and you're still fresh with this information from your retinas, let's just slowly go through and talk about what this game is and i think the theme here is s capital s for safe that's absolutely the safest choice that you could possibly make no cutting yourself with this butter knife this is for spreading for mass market appeal is what this game is and i don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing i i think it's just like the cave of wonders right from from episode five when luke goes into the dig of a cave you know what do you have what's in there only what you bring with you if you're bringing um some some consternation and stridentness in your heart you're going to find things to nitpick and pull apart if you're going in hoping to justify that le purchase and be happy with what you got your brand new toy and having the shiniest rock on the block you're going to come away happy with that too so all things to all people what do we have we have an eight shot fan layout with star wars we've got toys uh scattered around the back third of the cabinet almost as if i'm not going to quite say p3 module ish because there is some more closer to the flippers but there's a lot of room there to play around the code name for this game by the way was buck b-u-c-k as in uncle buck as in star Buck, as in Buck Rogers, as in the play field is Buck naked. And so that was one of my impressions seeing it. So Media Day, they took us in, they showed us the trailer, and then we got to see the game. And then we got to play it. We got to play the heck out of it. We got to dissect everything, so let's talk about it. So the eight shots off the fan, there's more things to shoot at in this game than just that, but let's talk about it. There's an orbit on the left and right, they both connect. The shooter lane goes right into it. There's no pin to come up to drop a ball into the pop bumpers a la Munsters or anything else, really. You have one option for plunging, either short plunge and have it roll back slowly towards your flippers or go full bore for a rapid orbit to the left flipper. Okay, there's your options. Now, there are spinners on each entrance and exit of the orbits on either side, and they are opto spinners. So I love that. These are fun to rip. I'm a spinner ripper kind of guy, so I can dig it. So that's fun. All right, then you get essentially several things lifted from other John Borg games. Stop me if you were surprised at this. Absolutely, this was what I was expecting. I'm counting at least three things from Rush, one thing from Guardians, and then something from Cactus Canyon slash ABBA slash Diner, right? All right, so let's get into it. So the next shot from the leftover, this is your Vuck shot, similar to the middle shot on Rush. It would go into a stand-up target on the Pro. So on this one, on all three versions, it goes into a vertical up kicker, into a wire form, wrapping around that AT-AT, and then dumping into the wire form, returning to the left flipper. Once you qualify that, then you can put three balls in there. It will count because there's a little insert there that will light up, and then you get a multiball. And on the premium and LE version, you'll get the slow little collapsing of the AT-AT. The AT-AT, of course, is Hot Wheels scale. So not micro machine, but not like full scale kind of Kenner. And not the giant play set that you can load all your figures in. Like how cool would that have been? We'll get into how this could have been cooler. But just for now, imagine like the Jurassic Park dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus back there. Except that's like an AT-AT head coming through and like looking around and shooting lasers and stuff. Again, if you want a nitpick, there's plenty here for you. Let's keep moving on. Stand up target in front of the AT-AT. That's shot number three, I guess. You've got a ramp that's fixed in place that goes up to the Death Star mech. This is Groot's head, essentially. You beat him, and the Death Star opens his gaping maw. You can place three balls in there. It'll shut, and then a little scene will play, and then it'll open up and puke them out at you, just like Groot does. You know, I am Death Star. Blah! And then they come right back at you. It's one of the two silly moments of this game. The Death Star itself, it's not as big as the one from the Richie Star Wars game. It's not animated. it doesn't spin, shake, rumble, light up, have projection effects, or even really a flasher lamp on it. What you see is absolutely what you get, and you get that in all three trim levels of the game. Moving on, you got the ramp, the up-down ramp on the Premium LE. Similar to Rush, it's a little bit bigger. There is a gap back there, kind of like Iron Maiden, but instead of having a stand-up target to hit, it goes through the back plate and then into the left wire form, and it is endlessly repeatable. Now, on the Premium LE, it'll start down. You'll shoot back in there. The opto will read your ball, and then it'll raise up into position. Now, there's no stand-up target back there, no drop target, no ball lock. It's just a rubber stopper. So your first shot on Premium LE, straight up the middle, it's a fast shot, so it's going to come straight back down at you. And then this has middle drained on me a bit, so you might want to get your nudge skills on when you raise that ramp. Of course, on the Pro, it is always fixed up into place. Fireball's up there. And this is the easiest dang shot to hit essentially in the entire game. Right up the middle, both flippers on the fly from a cradle, blindfolded. I was playing this game one-handed, right, just using my left hand. My right arm, to God, was up in the air. And I got it like five times in a row, just bang, bang, bang. So, you know, if you want a game that's going to make you feel like you're a great player, it's right here in front of you, and it's probably by design. And that's what you're getting, all right? What else do we got? The next shot to the right, I believe this is the Jabba shot. There's a stand-up target that blocks it, Salacious Crumb, to the one stand-up in the game, or drop target. So he'll pop up when you start the game. You shoot a couple shots to drop it, and that kind of qualifies, I guess, the plastic ramp into what I'm calling Jabba's toilet. Now, this is supposed to be the Sarlacc pit, right? The Return of the Jedi open gaping maw that ate Boba Fett, that ate the other guy that almost ate Han Solo until Lando shot him. Wait, no, almost ate Lando and shot him. Anyway, the big weird pit thing, the sandy worm, right, a la Dune. So what we got here is essentially leftover plastic rams from ABBA production is what I'm thinking. The ball spins around this thing when you shoot it in there. There's a plastic on top to keep the air balls down because I'm sure they would fly right out of this thing. The balls enter at pretty high speed, and as they circle around, There is an opto sensor in there. So I think this is one of the maybe like a mystery shot where it's going around. I noticed that some modes that would cycle through like three different perks you would get, and then when they finally drop, that's the one you got. So that's what that is. Now, Sarlacc Pit, the art is actually on the play field underneath it, not that you can see it from a player's perspective. You need to be standing alongside the cabinet looking straight down through the plastic, and then you can see like, oh, I see Sarlacc art. However, from shooting it, it's just a plastic and a bowl, and that's what you got. On the Premium LE, this is where that Jabba sculpt is. He's got a flasher up his bum. He does illuminate. He's got a silver ball on his tail that looks like a pinball. It looks like it's slightly smaller, like maybe just a one-inch ball that's on there, fixed in place, probably there because that was a ball trap. So, you know, I don't know. I can think of ten other things, and, in fact, I have, of cooler things I can put there besides just a Jabba with a ball on his tail. So modders, go nuts with this area because it's such a big focal point. And thematically, I'm struggling to see how it ties in quite to the Sarlacc other than it is a pit that drops. But, you know, there you go. Otherwise, you got the entrance to the right ramp next to it and then the other orbit. Those are the main shots in the game. There's two pop bumpers. You've seen them. They're down there in the middle two-thirds right above the slings, right and left, easily hittable from either flipper. There's a scoop on the left underneath the Pez dispenser Darth Vader helmet, and then there's a stand-up target over to the right with the Stormtrooper helmet. And I hope you like that because that's what you're getting. On the Premium LE, there is a magnet ball save feature between the flippers. If you look down there at Yoda, another holdover from Rush. This is essentially the owl from the play field where his eyes would glow to hoot again. Yoda does it this time. All right. So in the trailer. All right. In the trailer, it looks like you could hit the action button, grab the ball from the trophy or the drain, and it would it would sit there in middle space. And then you could pulse the the action button, pulse the magnet to like try to throw your ball either back up into the play field or up the right out lane into the shooter lane. Now, that looks great on the trailer. In practice, my whole team, we tried every single time and we could not get this thing to work. you do have to play the game fill up a Jedi meter about halfway before it becomes active I think the more that's filled up the stronger the magnet is so it could be just our timing needs some work but I was not able to successfully although I did hear some others were grab the ball and throw it back in the play field on the pro version there is no magnet but hitting the action button will just trigger a ball save it'll it'll kick out from the trough and then back into the game. So that will lead into which version is probably the best one to get, which we will get in the buyer's guide. Now, that's the game that's in the box, right? That's what's in the cabinet. How everything else with it This is the first Spike 3 release I mean coming out we did see the Spike 3 board in the Home Edition but as far as the new speaker and lighting upgrades this is the one that has it And I can say unequivocally, this was the biggest surprise and feature of the entire game, was the new screen and the speakers. I knew I was going to appreciate having a larger screen, just so we can have some LCD details up there. But this screen, while only 35% bigger, really commands a presence. I mean, sitting next to a Spike 2 machine, you can tell, like, this is obviously different. And it was also the depth of color as well. It is high definition, and you're telling me, Don, that this screen is like 11 to 13 inches or so. High def, can you even see that resolution? I will say absolutely you can. And you will notice it when you see this in person next to a Spike 2. So you'll be able to say, like, okay, I can tell that the images and the resolution there is sharper. The depth of color present is better, too. Like, the blacks are truer blacks. You know, everything was a little bit more vibrant and not as washed out. So it didn't look like I was looking at a laptop screen. It looked like I was looking at an actual high-definition display. Yes, you can tell. And I wasn't anticipating to notice that as much as I did, right? So impressive. I really, really liked it. we cranked the sound, George Gomez did, on the premium version, which doesn't even have the extra set of speakers that the LE does, and it was kicking. It kicked out a lot of volume, but also kept some fidelity, too. Like, there was a richness to the sound there. To the point, now, we were in the streaming lounge, so you may be able to tell more fine details at home, and I'm not a true trained audiophile, but to me, this sounded every bit as good as the extra amplifiers that I add to games. I mentioned that there may be no need for a pinwoofer in the future because the audio is much better because of the wattage behind the built-in amplifier in the game. So that was impressive. That's something you have to see on location to experience. And make sure someone cranks it so you can hear it if you're at a busy arcade. Otherwise, at home, I think this is going to be a stunner. I love where this platform has now gone. Spike 3 was the clear winner as far as impressing me. While the gameplay didn't seem It's not as complex as a Kong Or a Jaws There's no upper playfield fun play area It's every bit of a safe layout A la Venom, Guardians of the Galaxy And games of that ilk But what really impressed me was the audio and visual Assets I think they got just about everything in here During the little meeting we had in the morning They mentioned that there was A thousand clips that they had taken I believe them Every time I played the game I was seeing new stuff And even though I'm not looking at the screen while I'm playing, I'm hearing the sound effects and the sound drops. The voice that Leia's using when she's in that costume rescuing Han in Return of the Jedi. Like I'm hearing her go through talking about the Federal Detonator and whatnots. That was super cool. And when I stood back waiting for my turn and I'm watching the screen as other people are playing, I didn't see a lot of repeating elements. Okay. So there's not a ton that was in the Steve Ritchie game. Of course, it's kind of compartmentalized between the character that you pick, which mode that you're in, and then the clips that you're seeing. Star Wars is in there, but it doesn't feel like it's saturating the entire experience. This does. This is almost like, while not quite as insane as Harry Potter goes when you're having everything stacked, there's a lot. There's a lot going on here. And they make a big point about talking about C-3PO doing the call-outs. it seems like, now I'll have to play it again to really see this but it seems like I only noticed about 50% of the callouts were from C3PO the rest were coming from other characters or other little sound clips that were pulled and I liked that, so it wasn't just one mono announcer throughout the whole thing, there were different clips and things that were played, so that all worked exceedingly well, I don't feel like they were skimping at all this wasn't just let's take Star Wars and then we'll create our own world, our own story and our own animations and we'll hire a sound alike to do everything. I mean, they pulled everything from those copies. Now, the downside to that is you can only use the versions that Disney will allow you to use. And essentially, those classic versions of the films, the original 1977 release, 81, 83, you can't use those prints anymore. You have to use the specialized versions that were made by George Lucas, man. If you're a Star Wars fan, you've already scoured the Internet and downloaded the despecialized editions where they've largely been restored to how they were originally. Well, now, officially, they can't do that. So I love the fact that you don't have to worry about putting in a video mod or anything. You can go with what they have. They have the Star Wars assets. Just every now and then, you're going to be seeing the Jabba scene with the extra CGI characters that were placed in for some reason from George's brain. other than that this is probably the best presented assets in a star wars game bar none right um it just doesn't have the impact of a death star exploding or a uh you know the the hyperspace loop um but i will say you know one of the main complaints of richie star wars was how cheap the drains felt on the left side particularly if you're just a casual player that just wants to have a star wars experience they've absolutely addressed this so let's get into how the game plays. I had time to play, started on the pro, worked over the premium, picked up the LE, back to the premium. I had my 15 minutes in heaven with myself, Enzo Cookie Man in the see-which room at Stern where we just got to be essentially in isolation and play two or three games. A game is absolutely a long player if you're halfway decent at pinball. I think the way the game is designed, a casual player can come up there and in one game, even maybe their first game, they'll be able to do something cool or interesting. They'll be able to lock balls into the Death Star. They'll be able to get to some multiball. They'll see some action with the AT-AT. They'll be able to flush the toilet on Jabba. And even over multiple plays, I don't think you'll see the same exact scenes like over and over. This game doesn't have that mechanic where you pick a character to start with and then pick a perk. There's a lot of nuance to that Richie Star Wars game where you have to know about the character, the perk that you want to pick, changing that each time strategically as you play, the multiplier, moving it around, building it up, hitting the targets before the multiplier resets, like all of this meta information going on. None of that is here. This is eight shots and a fan layout. Catch the ball. Every target appears to be hittable from either flipper. You can backhand the Death Star even, and you absolutely can rip that center ramp over and over, hyperspace your brains out, and get to a hyperspace multiball. It's all there. I said this is a game that your grandma could probably get to the wizard mode on, and for a broad-based, broad-appeal license like this that's probably going to slay on location, probably going to sell well for five years regardless of how well the game was laid out, I think absolutely it's going to serve that purpose. So if you're a connoisseur of the intricate layouts and the branching ball paths and the flow of a Bond 60th or a Foo Fighters or something. That's not here. You know, these are eight shots, fan layout, rippable spinners, a scoop that is a little bit hidden behind the pop bumper, but it is findable. And, you know, it's Star Wars. This is still an arcade-y type game. You know, it's not Dungeons & Dragons where you pick your character and you're going on a quest and there's different ways to play the game each time. this is kind of you know walk up qualify locks start stacking stuff and get through some modes and see how far you can get to the game all while star wars is just regurgitating all over your face like that's what this game is and that's what it feels like it's in an amazing spike 2 cabinet i love that there's expression lights i think every game needs to have this as an option i think they work particularly well um on this game just flooding the zone with the lights um And the great speaker lights and everything on the Spike 3 system look awesome. There's the extra tweeters, of course. I'm sure you've seen that in the reveal trailer. This is an added option to the Premium and Pro. You can only add expression lights to the Premium. They come on the LE. The Pro is not routed in the cabinet for them. So unless you want to make some major modifications to your cabinet, I don't think there's a way to add them to the Pro. What you can do to the Pro, though, is add the speaker lights, which largely run off the same data that expression lights do. You can also pick up that generic expression light topper to add expression lights to the top of your game and give you some of that feedback. So there is upgradable options that I think are still fairly adequate for the pro. And so that's the game. Don, how's the art? Now, some images I think did leak. People got little glimpses of them. And potato cams don't really seem to show the art off as well as it is. We'll get into this in the buyer's guide. But I can say, having seen them and stood in front of them, the art looks good to me. The artist that they picked is really good at doing faces. So nothing is Photoshopped. Everything is completely redrawn but looks really well done. This looks like good lithograph art that you could put up on your wall if you were super into Star Wars, particularly the Translight from the Premium that has everybody's face there kind of ripped right from the scenes that they were in. Everybody's represented and it doesn't feel like a crowded collage. It feels good. So I think the art team started from a place of somebody that's really great at faces, created original art of the characters we know from their iconic moments, and then the art team kind of dressed everything and finished it so it flowed, so the lighting was appropriate and all that artsy business that is beyond my comprehension, but I know it when I see it. We were remarking even that the premium Translight image looks better than the one that comes from the LE. All this is going to be subjective. I think all three packages for back glass art and trans lights all looked great. I think the cabinets all look good. I couldn't find a bad one of the bunch. Usually there's one that you're like, I don't like that art or I wish this art was on this cabinet. I think all three of them worked just fine. So that's the game. Gameplay-wise, I would say it's a B. It's not full of depth and complexity. When you walk up and see it, you'll see where every shot is if you are passably familiar with pinball. and that's the scope of the game. The cabinet is an A+. I love the Spike 3 platform and where it's going and even more features are to come. I love it. I dig this, man. This is cool. The housekeeping purposes, the back glass and trans lights are the same size. The speaker panel is the same size. The screen takes up the full height of the speaker panel now and its width is expanded a bit. The speakers are oriented vertically. There's tiny little tweeters. They look about two inches or so. They're up on the top, and the other speakers look about the same size, and they're lower there on the bottom. So they're in a stacked conformation, and the new speaker light system that they have, which is upgradable to the Pro and Premium, look fantastic. They highlight each speaker individually. I dig it, man. I dig the lights. I dig the sound, and I love that this stuff is coming stock across the board with the new platform. There we go. Star Wars, follow the empire. Whatever you think you're going to think about this game, you're going to be right. Okay, if you think it's too simple and an easy pass for you, you're going to be right. If you want to get that LE I think you be very happy when you unbox it and have this brand new thing in your game room at least until the next Spike 3 release that may offer even more features So that where we are right now Let go into a buyer guide right So when I sat down and I looked at this, there's essentially four options here for everybody. The limited edition, limited to $770, $13,000. the $10,000 premium and the $9,600 and the $6,900 pro version. All other features will go through them. And then there's the fourth option. The fourth option is location play, where you take your money on down to the arcade, grab yourself a pint of Diet Coke, and go nuts on the game and spend maybe $10 a week on it and have all the fun, unlock all the things, challenge your friends, fun at parties, all that business. So who is each one for? Let's start with the LE. Let's nitpick here, okay? LE comes with blue powder-coated armor. The art, including the back glass, side art, cabinet art, backbox art, all depict the Hoth battle scene. Snow Speeders, AT-ATs, the bit. Like the best scene from the best Star Wars movie, right, is there, the best battle scene. So it's a battle machine. The powder coat is kind of an icy blue stripped straight out of a Wampa cave. I think it works. It doesn't have any embellishments in it. There's no sparkle clear coat. There's no luminosity to it. There's no color shifting. It's got a relatively gloss finish on it. It feels really good. The cut of the armor is essentially, while not the standard standard that you would get from the teardrop or kind of angled armor that typically comes with a premium, it's got a little bit more of that canter to it like we've seen with some other games that they've done. It doesn't have a lot to remark about laser cutting. There is a laser etched area in it. And essentially what they did is they took an AT-AT sticker that's about two inches tall, one inch wide, stuck it to the cabinet, and then the armor goes right over that. Similar to how they did John Wick where there was a cutout and then a sticker. And then they cut out the outline of that sticker. What they didn't do was cut out a full relief of an AT-AT in mid-battle with cannons firing and a snow speeder crashing on one side and the AT-AT cockpit on the other. It's essentially just cut out in the sticker. It's the same on both sides. Feels good in the hands. I do like that powder coat feel. So I'm not mad about it, but it doesn't seem to – it's not as intricate as like we've seen with Kong, let's say, where it's laser cut all the way up through the sides, right? This is more like a wick-ish, although they did go with an actual color instead of just a matte black. So I'll give them that. I dig it. Rip the coin door out, powder coat it to match. Do what you want with the speaker panel. I think a white might work, and the blue would probably work as well. Red would look weird. Gloss black might fit too, but there you go. And it looks like, I have to go back to my photos, but it looks like we've got a chrome T-molding on it. So the cabinet looks good. The art looks good. It's the best scene. It's not fantastic, but it works for me. It doesn't look off. It didn't take me out of the game or anything. I was surprised to see, and a little disappointed, that there's no foil embellishments on the decals on the limited edition version. They are just regular decals. And so I would say, Stern, I always want to see foil embellishments now on LEs if I'm getting them. It worked on Rush. It's worked on every other game I've seen them do that on. It looks great on Jaws, even though it's just a subtle ocean scene, that sheen that you get. It worked to great effect on the John Wick LE where the candles were that gold foil, and you could see the color shifting as you walked by your game. It looked awesome. Like you wanted to look at it every time you walked by. This is just decals. the only exclusivity that you're getting is the Endor scene on your LE no foil embellishments on the snow banks or the tips of the cannons or anything like that to really kind of set it apart and let you know that you've got that premium premium version like the pre pre right so now they may say Don the artist considered that they really didn't like the direction it was going it didn't support the art whatever to that I would counter with how about at least printing them on some glossy radcals so you can tell by feel like something is different here uh i know that the the the price the cost for that is 6x according to what i learned from jersey jack on tour versus just a simple decal but for a thirteen thousand dollar game i i kind of think it would be worth it to at least do that it would commit you to maintaining that standard going forward but i think as a buyer that would want the most premium package i could get at that price level it's kind of what i expect and I don't see it here, and that kind of sucks. When I look at someone like me that builds premiums to look more and replicate what's in the LE, the two things I have the most trouble replicating would be that mirrored back glass, which looks phenomenal, by the way, and the foil art of the cabinet. It's very difficult to get done to the point that if you were to do it yourself, you'd probably be better off just go ahead and getting an LE. All right, so we'll put that out there. So who's the LE for? The LE comes with the expression lights. okay, that's a $600 at least purchase upgrade. Plus you may have to wait, like I did, six months to get them for when Metallica came out to the point that I had the game made over to the customer and then I had to ship the lights to the customer for them to install because I just couldn't get my hands on them quick enough at launch. So you avoid all that with the LE, right? You're going to be paying top of market $13,000 for this game. This isn't a foil Vader cabinet. This doesn't have anything exclusive like a Vader callout or something or a Vader mode or a Vader upper play field. I'm throwing out all these great ideas. So I don't think this is going to do a Metallica LE situation where it's going to maintain or increase in value in the short term after launch. So this is a game for somebody that doesn't want to futz around with anything and wants the best version. The fact that it comes with the expression lights, that it comes with the extra speakers, that it comes with the speaker lights already installed, you have Invisiglass that's already in there, You already have the shaker motor installed. And is there any other embellishment that comes with LEs besides all that? I think that's it. The main thing is that everything is already done for you. You've got a powder-coated package. It's already there. Yes, it's going to be the standard one that comes. It's not as customizable. But for the person that just wants to have the good feel and doesn't have the time to put all that in there and wants the best version, loves that art, doesn't want to wait six months for expression lights, and wants to unbox the brand new Spike 3 machine and have it in your game room for the first three or four months until the next one comes out and really have the coolest thing on the block, that's who I think this is for. So if you're already on the list for the LE and you're kind of like, yeah, I'm going to ignore any criticism that's contrary to this because I just want to be excited and I want to unbox a shiny new toy, I think you'll be happy with it, to be honest. I think you'll open it up and you'll be happy with what you've purchased. I don't think it's going to be $10K by Christmas, like we've seen with some other games, like even Kong. But I don't think it's going to be going to $15,000 levels like we've seen with Metallica LE. And it may settle around $11,500. I think that's okay. So if you have the game for four months, that's probably what you would essentially lose in value. If you're planning on keeping the game, that's not even a proposition. So if you've already pretty much decided, and you know yourself, and you're going to be happy with an LE, I think you'll be happy when you unbox it and happy every time you play it. So I'm going to put that out there for those guys. That's who I think that's for. The premium machine, the $9,600, $9,700 machine, this is for the tinkerer, the person that has some ability to add art blades, to install shaker motor, to install what you want. The shaker motor really adds a lot to the game. To add the expression lights down the road, you want to upgrade a little bit. Maybe you're dipping your toe into powder coating. This is a good time to do it. Maybe you want to reach out to Cab Custom and have something cool done. As far as laser cutting for your side armor, all that is available. All things are possible through this version. The art with the cross sabers of Vader and Luke looks great. Great scene. You know, I think all the different depictions that I saw were all kind of equal in my eyes. I didn't see one I really didn't like and one I really wish it was there. So, like, this version is more of, like, a battle scene between the two main characters of the entire series. So how can you go wrong with that? You've got bounty hunters on the backbox. You've got probably, arguably, the best-looking collage of characters in Star Wars that I've seen for the Translight. So there you go. So if you want the ability to really replicate those parts of the LE that you enjoy, you've got all those options there with the premium. And you still get all the toys. Let's talk about the differences. Going premium in LE doesn't add anything as far as a true, like, game-changing element, right? There's no upper play field like on Foo Fighters or Jaws that you're getting. It's all essentially sculpts and toys, things that will be available in multiple forms forever from modders and everything else. And go down to Joanne's Fabrics if it's still open and pick up a Star Wars something, and you can stick it somewhere in here. But if you want all the features, you want the future-proofing ability to add expression lights if you want, I think that's who the premium version is for. The person that wants to have the fully featured game from the concept of the creator but doesn't quite want to jump up to an extra $3,000 to have everything already implanted there for you. Maybe you don't need everything. I don't need Invisiglass. I don't need a shaker. I do want the lights. I think that's the version for you. So there you go. That's who that person's for. The pro version, I think this will be quite a popular version to be honest. Let's talk about it. Okay. So what are you missing? What's taken out of the pro from the premium? So if you take a premium, you lose the ability to add expression lights. And if that wasn't anything that you were thinking of upgrading anyway, then I think you're already self-selected pro category if you want to own this game. Throw some Art Blades in there and call it a day. Put the expression lights in the speakers if you want. Use the expression light topper to give yourself that visual feedback. I think that's not a bad way to go. When you look at the toys that are on that back rack line, right, the Death Star, the AT-AT and everything, you're still getting the same AT-AT. it's just not motorized but it looks to still be articulated I don't know if that will be an upgradable feature in the future, I don't know that when I was playing I even honestly noticed when it was collapsing, one thing I will say about the game is once you do hit that third ball and unlock that battle multiball and the AT-AT collapses there's no post or anything that comes up in the game, there's no scoop that you hit, there's no building where the ball goes up on top of and then you can watch a scene play out, so essentially as soon as you hit that third shot and the buck pops, the ball's going to go around the AT-AT. He's going to collapse, but your ball is already back to your left flipper, and your mind's in the game. You're not celebrating the fact that, oh, I got it. Let's watch him collapse. So while I was playing, I never noticed the thing moving. I noticed it moving when other people were playing, but myself, I didn't notice. So I don't think on the Pro you're losing anything. It's not a flat plastic. It is the same sculpted AT-AT that's Hot Wheels Scale, so you're getting that. You're getting the full Groot Death Star with all the mechanism and all the absence of light and all the absence of motion that pukes the balls back at you for the multiball. You don't get the moving ramp for that center ramp for the hyperspace shot. The gap is still there. You're still endlessly repeatable. You just don't have to do that one brick shot to raise it up. Okay where I going here is I don think that moving ramp added anything to my game experience other than I noticed the first time I hit it I had to nudge so it didn go straight down the middle You avoiding that on the pro Most people, I think, would call that a positive, not a negative. Moving along, you have the job of toilet. What's missing is the little plastic job of the hut and the light that was crammed up him to get him to glow. The plastic is still there. it's essentially a blank canvas to add whatever you want, add Bespin up there, add the landing pad for Slave 1, add another Millennium Falcon if you want add a Sabacc table, add that chess game that they were playing on the Millennium Falcon add Jabba's Palace right there, I think even that would work, 3D print a freaking Sarlacc mouth and stick it up there with Boba Fett halfway hanging out of it or something, so many options to do in that area. The job of the hut didn't add anything other than a blinky slug that sits up there. So there's that. There's a TIE fighter not on a spring this time, but mounted rigidly to the right ramp. That has been taken out and go to any Hallmark store, throw one in there. What else do we got? The Pez dispenser helmets of the Stormtrooper and Darth Vader are missing. And again, these don't add any gameplay elements. There's still a flasher bulb underneath where the helmet would be on the right. The Darth Vader one doesn't have any kind of movement or any kind of lights in there to begin with anyway. So again, go grab a holiday ornament, throw it on there if it means that much to you. Otherwise, the plastic still depicts the same scene and the same characters. So there you go. So that leaves us with the one other thing that's there, and that's the ball save magnet. The one feature that try as I might, I wasn't able to actually activate. And I'm a moderately good player, and I couldn't figure it out. So either I don't understand the game's code well enough or I need to learn it. But I would say then if I was just a casual coming up and if I had trouble with it, I think even a casual would too. And on the pro, if you hit that button, you get the ball save. So gameplay mechanic wise, again, I don't think you're missing much by losing that. So we've talked about loaded pros before. This is probably the most loaded pro. I would definitely go for this. We've seen simple games in the past like Venom and like the original Star Wars, the Richie game where the pro really seemed to not have much in it. Um, this one, I don't think that's the case. Uh, all of the gameplay is there and I really don't think you're missing much by going premium. It's only really if, you know, the expression lights are really important to you. You know which one to get everybody else. I think the pros are going to be essentially exceptionally popular. And if I was a location operator, I don't know how I would put out, um, a premium when the pro has everything that's in here. Um, unless you're catering to that clientele, like the one-up lounge does where they take everything made over and they want, you know, the done-up custom cabinet. So there you go. The fourth category. Maybe, you know, you're not rushing out to get this game. I think the only urgency that exists would be for that LE. Or if you're a location, you want to have the newest game out there. Or if you just like having the newest Stern. If those things aren't important to you and you want to play this game, which will probably be most of humanity, I think location play is totally perfect. I think this game would earn well just by the theme alone. The fact that you put this out there and maybe everybody's not jumping to put this in their homes right away because it lacks that urgency, this is one that people will rush to the arcade and sit there and just feed money in. I could see this at Electric Bad just earning all damn day long, where if there's not a line, somebody's going to be camped on it just enjoying Star Wars and just consuming, right? It's got that arcade-y kind of dopamine aspect of a slot machine. So there you go. So I hope that buyer's guide kind of helps. You know, you will have just seen this trailer. You may be mulling it over, like, which version do I want to get? Maybe I'm on a list for an LE, but should I go for the premium? Should I not? This is the kind of information that I think would be helpful. And fortunately, I've played these games. I've seen the versions in real life. I can vouch for the art. So hopefully that will help you. As far as the media day, let's do a little trip report on that. It went fantastically. I do want to highlight Stern and Tom and their marketing department for helping out with the Top Topper contest that's coming to Expo. For if you haven't heard yet, if you have a homebrew topper, you can bring it Thursday. You can even bring it Friday. Bring it to the booth over by the homebrew area that I will be operating, and we're going to have a contest. The public will be coming in and voting on their favorite ones. We'll tally the votes, and then I'm awarding prizes. And so far, the Electric Playground has really stepped up. They donated one of their King Kong toppers as a top prize. The Missing Pin Company has donated a leg bag also for one of the top prizes. And then now Stern Pinball has graciously, these guys are legends, donated an Iron Maiden topper, new in box, that you can win just for bringing in your homebrew topper and entering the contest and having something that's interesting or compelling enough to get the public to vote for it. The way I'm thinking of doing it is we'll announce the winners, say the top five, and then whoever takes top place gets to go to the prize bin and pick the thing that they want, and then second place gets second choice, and then third place third, and we'll just keep going until we run out of prizes. So thank you so much to Stern Pinball and everybody there for believing in the community. I think people that go on to have positions in the industry, they come from the hobbyist side, and nobody has as much love for the hobby as somebody that's cobbling together their own things that they are making because they love pinball that much. So thank you for rewarding the enthusiasm and encouraging us to get out there and create. So thank you for that. The rest of the day was cool, man. We showed up at 9 o'clock. There was about 35 of us, it seems. NDAs in hand. And then we marched in there. We were all loaded into the conference room. And then we got a great PowerPoint presentation by Mr. Seth Davis, CEO of the company, and George Gomez there as they went through the rationale for everything, why they picked the name that they did. They wanted something to stand out in the marketing, something recognizable. And they were able to convince Lucasfilm and Disney to go ahead and do that. So that's where the fall of the Empire came from. They kind of used an homage to the old Kenner logo for the action figures to just pump that nostalgia, which was great. They got access to essentially all the assets from the movies, which works perfectly during the gameplay. They talked about Spike 3. We got a little couple extra bits of information here. So Spike 3 will be the platform going forward for new builds or new games, right? Existing Spike 2 games will still be made like existing Spike 2 games. there will probably be a point where if any existing spike 2 games are still in production i'm thinking in the next year or so they may start to be built on the spike 3 platform with all those accoutrements now um there is a software rewrite that needs to happen to convert say a kong into a spike 3 kong or a metallica into a spike 3 metallica and so because of that extra cost and complexity you know games that are you know maybe have been out for a few years now and will be coming up for another rerun, probably won't have that done to them. But any game that would probably be in production for the next few years would have a chance of having that done. But it's not going to be a switch where everything leaving the factory from here on is strictly Spike 3. But that is interesting that if they go back to a title, say remaster it, it could be coming out with that Spike 3 platform. And the rumor of Walking Dead now is a Spike 3, now that I've heard the audio and seen the screen, very excited for that. Very excited for that. All right. also they've strategically chosen to lock titles in the vault in order to spur sales it has worked for them so they've really dwindled a lot of their back stock for the other games they've had so that's cool the spike 3 system will still use the same kind of node board architecture the daughter boards the node boards will all still be interchangeable so those are all the same the cabling is a little bit different it sounds like so you won't be able to just throw a spike three screen in your spike two game uh the the software would need to be rewritten the architecture is a little different um but hardware wise as far as like the game itself and the node boards that's all the same so that was interesting so after all this we saw the trailer we asked our questions and then we were led off into a factory tour and then uh half of us were split up to play the game then we flopped and then they did the uh the 15 minutes in heaven thing uh where they picked small groups and we got to go into the sea witch conference room and just play the game in isolation and it was fantastic. Food was catered. It was sandwiches and salads which was fine. Bags of chips. And then it was just cool having the gang all around there. Jack Danger was walking around made himself very available. Everybody was having fun. I didn't meet anybody at Stern there involved with the process. That wasn't fun to hang out with. Gary even came by and talked to us for a little bit. We talked to Motorcycles. It was super fun. I took a Patreon member Enzo. He's a local there. He was one of the people that entered and he won the the contest to be the plus one. I'm hoping I can stretch it to plus two next time. No promises, but I'm going to try, but we were just having a great time. We were just wandering around Stern, uh, playing all the games. The lineup that's happening in their lobby is fantastic. They've got every spike to game out there now available to play. I really wish they would do public tour days where you can, uh, kind of assemble there in the lobby and just get to play every one of the Stern games. Uh, get your insider connected, you know, badge, visit the, uh, the logo store on the way out. and then maybe sign up for a factory tour that's done once or twice a day. I think it would be super cool, you know, permitting. So maybe they're building towards that. I would love it. If you've been to Stern, their main lobby is cavernous, and half of it was all packed with Star Wars Home Edition machines all going to Costco. And the early word back now is that it's selling two to one for how Jurassic Park was doing. It's very successful. Costco's interested in continuing this relationship. and so it looks like we're going to see more home editions at Costco going forward. So super fun, super fun. I had to bail on the day because I did have to work that evening, but I was able to get my fill on the game. I was able to play it, have a great time, shake a lot of hands, except for Jack's broken wing there. But, yeah, it's Star Wars. I think when you see it in the trailer, everything is laid out there. You have a really good idea of what you're getting into. and if you're deciding to purchase, I hope this was helpful. If you want some other points of clarification, I can finally talk about it now, which is exceedingly cathartic. I love it. DonSpinballPodcast.gmail.com is where you can get at me. You can join the Patreon, patreon.com backslash DonSpinballPodcast. Early news and rumors break there, and heck, I'll even pluck somebody from there to take with me when I go to these things. Thanks so much to Stern. I appreciate the donation. Please enter the homebrew contest. There's a really good chance of winning something cool if you bring something in, so come in and do it. anything else I'll talk about it as soon as I hear about it be good to yourself and others it's been a rough week let's celebrate with some pinball as for me I've already emailed jeff at madpinball.com used code WAP and I got a premium coming fall of the empire is here and you know what it's fall too so let's go This is a great game that pairs well with pumpkin spice. All right, let's go, guys. I'll talk to you later. Be good. It's here. Ball of the Empire.