This episode of Don's Pinball Podcast is somewhat unique and calls for a different type of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a pinball podcast newscast, ready for you, opening the doors. We invite you, if you dare, aboard, because in today's episode, we're going to get into some Venom speculation. You have now crossed over into the Pinball Podcast Zone. Thank you, Don, for that excellent introduction. Very Twilight Zone themed. That is quite on brand, sir. Welcome, everybody. This is Don's Pinball Podcast, episode 55. A patchwork of ideas straight from my cranium from the Donbrarium. That's right. That's where I keep all of my speculation stored. And I think that's what we should get into on today's episode. If you dare. Will it have a little bit of a Twilight Zone twist? Possibly. We'll see how it goes. This is a stream of consciousness and it is downloading now. Some of that sweet, sweet nectar dripping off of my cranium into your brainium. It's Don's Pinball Podcast, episode number 55. What's up, everybody? How's your week going? For me, the week is ending. For everybody else, it's about to begin. We are here on a Sunday evening in July 2023. What is it, the 17th? The 16th, I believe. We are just a few days away from Stern Pinball's Venom release. And I can sense the anticipation that's in the air, the electricity that travels through the ether, air molecules bumping into each other, not unlike the bells and chimes, late and ninja, chrome-covered pinballs that are bouncing around the playfield. So we're going to get into that. I just want to do an episode. Have you guys noticed that there is like a hush all throughout the pin sphere right now? It is a calm before the storm. Everybody is chewing on their nails, eagerly waiting in anticipation for any kind of leak, any kind of sweet, sweet information, any sweet, concentrated nugget of news that's going to come out. But hitherto now, there have been nothing released regarding this Brian Eddy Venom Pinball, other than a teaser from Stern Pinball. So everybody's sitting on their laurels with hushed breath, waiting. And so far, I've seen just about nothing coming through, y'all. I've been trolling the Pinside forums. I've been creeping through the Patreons that I am happily a member of, and I'm seeing little things like, is Brian Eddy going to go back to the fan layout? He should if he's intelligent. Otherwise, but this is the guy that came up with Shadow. I mean, with that amazing layout of that game that I just played again recently in live space, not just the virtual pin. So I have an appreciation for that. Mr. Zombie Yeti has been on a huge tear lately, and if he's doing the art for this comic book-inspired Venom, video game pinball machine. I think we are in for some serious crap. Are we? Aren't we? People are divided on this theme. There's been plenty of people posting that their wallets are completely safe. Other people are like, day one purchase. I ran into somebody on the live stream that has deposits down on two limited editions of Venom. He's doubling down. What a baller. What are we going to see? We don't know, but it's going to happen soon. So tomorrow is Monday, the day before the big reveal. Will there be any speculation or news leaks? You know, typically somebody's got something at this point, but they have been completely tight-lipped about this. So we are going to go with that speculation. Let's see. Let's see if I could just call a couple of things. I'm going to make some prognostications. You know what? I like that. I like that idea of a fan layout. Let's keep that. There'll be some ramps, so this is not no single-level game. Will there be a giant Venom head sculpt with a mouth agape, with some sort of jump ramp to launch a ball into Venom's mouth. That seems like the absolute first idea that I would have if I was creating this machine. So I think that's a bit too pedestrian. It's been done on Stranger Things, but then it worked really good on Stranger Things, right? Will we see the return of the projection mapped features? That I would love to see. I'm hoping that that blurred image that was the background for the recent post by Stern Pinball saying that they're going to be at Comic-Con with the yellow in it and everything, I hope that was not this play field. I want to see something that's black, white, silver, and red highlights. I want to see some interesting armor on the LE. Otherwise, I want to see some interesting gameplay. So I've got my name on some lists. I'm hopeful to go for this. Probably I'll stick to my premium lane, but I'll be able to speculate so much more pretty soon. We're all just waiting. We waiting here It going to be coming soon Tuesday morning there be the conference call and then following that there be the release So I still waiting on details what time that conference call is because following that I mean it all going to be released. We're going to see everything. Hopefully there's a good video. I don't know that anybody from straight down the middle has been contacted to go and shoot a featurette, but wouldn't that be awesome if they did? Please, Stern, give us some good information on Tuesday. And then what day is it that this game is going to be playable at Comic-Con? Isn't that Thursday? It's going to be coming up this next weekend. So excited, but I'm just sitting here. It's like I'm waiting for Christmas morning, right? And I'm like, can this day go any slower? That's how my day went today. So Venom Speculation, let's just throw it out there. Fan layout, some ramps, and no head that you're going to shoot a ball in through. We'll see if I'm correct. This is just off the top of my head. I'm thinking of this, but I wanted to go and fill in that void. I've noticed that just about every other pinball podcaster has not been releasing any any real information this week either because we're all waiting we're all doing the same thing but you know what i'm gonna come in and give you something to listen to while you're jogging around the neighborhood i'm hyped for venom um i'm hyped for what's coming next uh you know all the rumors and such you know jaws is being worked on there'll be some kind of forty thousand dollar super limited edition for mr Keith Elwin i mean if it happened i wouldn't be completely surprised given you know the market and everything how it is now. I opened with a Twilight Zone just because that machine has been rumored to be remade, but I haven't heard any real confirmation of where that's coming from or if it is indeed coming. People seem to keep bringing up this rumor, but so far, no takers yet. Is anybody excited about a Twilight Zone remake at this point? Maybe a Chicago gaming company was doing it, but maybe a Chicago gaming company was doing it and the Cactus Canyons were already made and released. So I don't know. I think the whole market of remakes is kind of up in the air. You know, Centaur was recently revealed, but what we haven't seen is, you know, a release. And I'm not holding my breath on that. But, you know, that's just Haggis. Haggis has been done to death. You know, we'll follow along there. I keep going to their site to see if they've sold out. They haven't. The Oblivion Edition is still available. I tried to load my cart with 50 of them just to see if I could get a sense on how many are left, but they only let you put one in there. Come on, Haggis. Let me buy two Oblivion editions. Do I get two leather jackets if I do that? Moving on. We don't really have much else to talk about. This is just a speculation episode. This is, you know, the Twilight Zone, twister in my braid of information and disappointment and an empty microphone and some empty airwaves, and that's what I'm jumping on here. What I will cover, though, I did have a live stream earlier this week on Friday, and it was well attended. It ended up going head-to-head with Canada's Pinball Podcast's Surprise Friday live stream, and Todd's Huckies, same time slot. So it was crazy. Thank you for everybody that came in. I was doing giveaways because my good friend at distributor, Mad Pinball, sent me a whole care package of t-shirts. And when you do something like that, you're going to get some promotions. So anybody out there, if you want to send me free stuff to give away to listeners, let's do that business. I love winning stuff. I love giving stuff away just as much. So the lucky Colin from the Kineticist won the drawing for the Mad t-shirt package. so he'll be getting that out as soon as he gives me his address. Come on, bro. Otherwise, I gave away some sticker packs. And then, you know, following that, some people have ordered T-shirts. So I've got a lot of stuff going out Monday. I'll be at the post office sending things out. If you want to get in on this, all you've got to do is drop me an email because I haven't had the time to put together any kind of Squarespace T-shirt delivery portal website address. You know, but that's coming. But I had a good time. Went for a whole hour on the live stream. I would like to pick a time each week that I can pick to go live. Live from my game room, we'll talk about whatever is going on at the moment. And it's a good place to interact where you're not just taking, you know, all of my words into your ear holes, but you can give them back to me. And I think if it was a scheduled time, it'd be better attended. And the more people we have, the more interaction we get. So I picked Fridays at 8 p.m. Central time that seemed to work relatively well for my schedule. So I'll try to stick to that as close as I can. follow the Facebook website to see what those times are. But it was fun. I did like a whole hour and then I cut out and then Kaneda's pinball podcast was still live. So I jumped on his and we did a little co-hosting thing where I came on there and gave it a little tour of the game room. So that's up on the internet to see. I just believe in dumping out as much content as I take in from the community. And it's fun, yo. So we did all that. Last episode, I put out the word. there been some Punny Factory issues particularly with one machine down in Georgia Punny Factory went down to Georgia and when it came out of its box it was in a bit of a bond It was way behind It had some blistering of the art So I just put out feelers like anybody else that's got a Punny Factory, have you had any art field issues? Is this like a widespread problem, or was this a one-off? And so far, from the people that I've heard back from, their Punny Factory playfields appear to be intact. So I'm hopeful for an amicable resolution to this issue between Oasis Arcade and Pinball Adventures. I'm not going to try to wade into the field any more than that because I just don't know, you know, for sure all the details. And I don't want to be stuck in the middle of that. I do have a few other comments about it, and that is being released to the Patreon members. So I do periodically make content that's a little bit more personal, a little bit more background, things that I don't release here on just the scheduled, you know, pinball podcast episodes. And for $5 a month, you get access to that. So I'm not holding things back, like holding back a piece of news, or you know, what spooky pinballs next is, though I don't begrudge people that do that. But you know, if you want to go a little bit deeper, you know, kind of like an after hours discussion, that's up on the Patreon site, patreon.com backslash at Don's pinball podcast is where you can find it though YouTube series, the YouTube series, the YouTube site, I've got that as a placeholder for now. I've got a couple of videos up there at Don's Pinball Podcast. But once I finally get together and get my streaming rig the way I like it, it turns out there's a lot of moving parts that have to go together to get quality streams. That will be on there. But for now, I'm going to keep the live streams on the Facebook page. Keep the interaction going. What else do we have? Spooky Pinballs making Scooby-Doos. They're probably going to be doing that for another year from now. But my number's coming up soon. I got the email. Do you want to butter? Do you not? and what is your shipping address so i've got past that part i haven't got to the part where i pay in full which i think happens you know pretty pretty immediately before the game is made so i'm hoping to have in my home at some point a scooby-doo i'm also hopeful to have in my home at some point a venom premium which one's going to happen first i kind of think it's going to be venom because i had heard where did i hear this um that venom is currently on the line at the new factory. Where was that? That might have been the K-Man as well. He's been releasing a lot of content. Everybody else is just kind of sitting back right now, I think, waiting for this Venom reveal. And then we're going to get a deluge of episodes. So with no competition currently, I'm going to go ahead and put this out there for everybody. Because I don't want to let you go too long without having some doubt in your ear. What else is next? We covered Spooky, what they're doing. American Pinball, where are they at? I've seen one unboxing video for the limited edition version, the tank version of Galactic Tank Force, apparently came with no instructions on how to bolt together those tank treads. You know, I'm sure it's easily figured out, but I guess they are trickling out now. It's so weird that all of these companies kind of each have their own individual production plants. And so there's got to be a lot of duplication of services that are going on. I think, you know, what, has there been any thought to having like a coalition of these companies, I'm thinking like, you know, American Pinball, Jersey Jack, maybe Chicago Gaming Company, like going in together on a production facility. So it's not like American Pinball has to hire their own staff. And then across town, Jersey Jack has to hire their own staff of builders. And then across town, you know, Chicago Gaming Company has to hire their own staff. And you know, they're kind of all competing with each other. Why not go in on one production facility with a couple of lines in it and each game company can be a designer right uh coder and everything but when it comes to the actual putting together of these units they could share the same resources i don't think that would uh you know impede on anybody's particular uh you know finances i think it would probably save a lot of money honestly if they consolidated i mean stern is stern they've got a brand new production facility and they're cranking out like a thousand games a day or something completely ridiculous like that um so i think that's the competition i think if these other companies bound together? Like, have they put some thought into that? Or are there so many, you know, industry secrets involved in putting a cabinet together that, you know, they wouldn't want to have like that crossover? I don't know, it would seem to make sense to me. And then if you wanted to go ahead and start your own boutique pinball company, you know, maybe you could license some space or rent some space on the production line there, because that seems to be, you know, one of the big hold up points for boutique companies is actually putting these games together, bolting them together, you know, getting the playfields in there. But if they were able to pool resources and like make and clear coat their own playfields plastic coat them you know get like the best playfields you could make and have everything made in one facility And then if you want to launch a boutique company you could do that you know a small team could design and code you know organize the lighting and everything but then, you know, have pooled resources for, you know, parts purchases. So parts that are duplicated, like the coin doors, lockdown bars, start buttons, I mean, legs, those are all, you know, standardized parts, right? You know, so get, you know, one production facility that could do this. I think if a manufacturing company wanted to go out and just make a manufacturing space that could be licensed out or rented out to other companies, I think that might be a good thing for pinball. It would be a whole lot easier to actually start a pinball company if you had the production facilities already lined up and you could just kind of rent them, do your production runs, and then there you go. What a novel concept and idea. I'm sure this has occurred to people a lot smarter than me in this industry but i would ask them to tell me like exactly why this isn't a thing um you know it's kicking around the idea i think it would kind of make sense let's move on so american pinball they're they're cranking out some galactic tank forces uh who else is there jersey jack is producing their collector's editions now for domestic use i guess uh the ce's that they had made uh you know shipped out for overseas we still haven't heard any production numbers officially released for the Godfather Collector's Edition, though. There is, you know, the sense that perhaps Jersey Jack has pulled back on the production and maybe only made or sold 750 of the 1,000. Maybe they didn't sell through all 1,000. Maybe they held some back and, you know, they're using that to kind of temper supply so the market doesn't get flooded. Not an outrageous thought. So, you know, I guess they fulfilled their international orders. Those containers have shipped out and they are now producing their domestic ones and i've heard that buyers here locally in the united states of america eagle land to you and me um they're already anticipating the games coming soon so i'm looking forward not only to the venom reveal but also to some unboxings and some play reviews of the godfather collector's edition with the double knockers man i can't wait to play double knockers with the gold um accents on everything and the gold wire forms and that sparkly play field. I can't wait to play it in person. I'm not playing a person in my house, but I'm going to play it in person. The other thing I'm going to watch is eight to 12 months from when they finally do get released. What's the market like on these things? Are these machines that are going to stay in people's homes for years and years like the Wonkas have? Or is this something that we're going to see then, you know, kind of trading in the post-immediate consumer market? I'm also curious to see the same thing with Galactic Tank Force. What's going to go on with this, you know, price in the market? And how are these games going to hold up long term in a home environment? Those are two things I'm watching for them. What else? We covered Haggis, Jersey Jack, we just covered them. Stern, we know what they're doing. Anybody else? Who else is on that? I'm missing somebody. Not American. That's spooky. I think we hit all the big ones. Chicago Gaming Company, you know, we're expecting Pulp Fiction to come through sometime, you know, February or March. So that's where the landscape is at. We are here on the precipice of another Stern Cornerstone release, a game that's been rumored for years and years. What I'm excited about, though, is that this game may release with some fairly advanced code. So it won't be a bare-bones launch like Bond was, and then we like piecemealed updates and finally got something that's actually representative of the gameplay of the game only now. But Venom may release with code that could be close to 1.0. We will wait and we will see. Thank you everybody for joining me on this brief little episode, this calm before the storm of Venom that is coming. This comic book Venom. It's not going to be movie Venom. It's going to be comic book Venom. And we're going to see other characters in it. Are we going to see Spider-Man? I don't know if I can even speculate on that. Someone was like, you know, well, if you've got the license for Venom, you got the license for Spider-Man. I don't know if that quite correlates one to one, but if you hear more, you will hear about it here from my brain. I will be jumping on this microphone and giving you my thoughts, what I think of this reveal. Heck, I may even do another reaction video. That was a fun time. You're listening. Wait, that's not the right button, Ryan Davies. Hit me up at donsbeatablepodcast.gmail.com, order a t-shirt, jump on the Patreon, do whatever you want. Join, don't join, tell your friends, don't tell your grandma. I don't care what you do, but keep listening because I'm going to keep dropping news and reviews that you can't afford to lose on Don's Pinball Podcast. Who else is dropping content this week? Nobody. Who else is giving you as much information? I don't even know if I even gave you any information. Give yourself a hug. You're great.