I visited three different pinball manufacturers located here in Texas. Barrels of Fun, Turner Pinball, and Multimorphic. All three of them are pumping out their latest title, and I got to see it firsthand at the factory. Let's talk about it. This trip was paid for and brought to you by my awesome supporters over on Patreon. To join the team, follow the links in the description down below. My first stop was in Houston, Texas. Barrels of Fun. [Music] Now, if you want to see the full tour of Barrels of Fun, link in the description down below. But let's talk about my latest experience with Dune because the last time I played it was literally day one of launch. And for those that do not know what my feelings were about Dune is that just by the end of playing Ball One, I already liked the way it played better than Labyrinth. Now granted, I love the theme of Labyrinth so much more than I do of Dune, but I like the way this game shoots in comparison to the way Labyrinth shoots. So, it's a give and take there. But I've played it now, and these are the things that have changed for me. Mainly is that I'm not being distracted or there's not a lot of other things going on around me. They let me play the game for as long as I wanted to in the room by myself, which made it so much better. Honestly, I wasn't feeling pressurized by getting through my current game to allow the other people to play it. It was very isolated. So, all the sounds and everything I I really got to take in. There's no longer watermarks on the video. So, I really got to enjoy the truly intended nature of what their display is meant to show us, but I really have to highlight the audio package on this game. And it's one of those where I don't know if you're ever going to get a true feeling of this pinball machine, unless you're in an isolated environment or wearing headphones. I I strongly recommend it. And I'm hoping that Barrels of Fun at Expo, they find a way to give people the ability to experience this game in a little bit of an isolated environment. And this goes back to a number of other games as well. I I I said this about Avatar. I said this after giving Stranger Things a second chance. It kind of is a little bit of an atmosphere-based type of game to really enjoy it. But I'd say the soundtrack and sound effects for Dune blow those other games out of the water. [Applause] There was a a certain sound effect that was in the game before that really brought me back to like Mario. There was like some kind of weird sound effect. I didn't like it. The first time I played it, I thought that was kind of weird. It I didn't hear it this time around. So, I think they got rid of that. But just that along with just how it shoots, getting a better understanding of the rules, the light show. Overall, I really enjoy Dune. And I think that's what's been the hindrance on this game being just like appreciated and loved by and like sold out immediately type of thing is because of the theme. This has been the ongoing thing with Dune is that it's a theme that no one really asked for. But in a way, I think it's kind of leaning towards the original theme on the point of like it's going to have to get around by word of mouth and just a slow burn. Basically, that's what we're dealing with on Dune. And I think once people get to experience this at a show or if an arcade has it, that's where they're going to get around and people are going to be more interested into it. But buying a game, watching gameplay online, and then just loving the theme of Dune is not going to happen with this particular theme. Not to the masses, at least. I think you have a lot of people that bought Labyrinth on theme alone. I don't think you had that with Dune alone. There's people out there, I'm sure, that loved Dune and bought it, but it's not really a theme that the masses can get behind, if you catch what I'm trying to say here. And and it's the same thing with me. I do not care for the theme of Dune. But I do enjoy the gameplay and I do feel like I'm in that world in an isolated environment playing that game. So, I have definitely grown more of an appreciation for the theme after having some time with it. And it's one of those things also that some of these games are on certain locations right now that have not updated their code. So, if you are a location watching this, make sure that you have the latest code for Dune going. I highly recommend it. And that's that's basically for you as well as for the consumer experience there. so they kind of get a better idea of what the game is supposed to be like. Some other notes on playing it this time around is the pain box. Now, there's a portion of the game where you drain the ball. If you drain it on the left outlane, it will basically you have a chance of getting that ball back and you have to place your hand on the action button and play one-handed. And you just got to make one shot, which is the very far left orbit, and you can get your ball back, which I did successfully. And it was a really great feeling kind of thing. It was when I made that shot. I I I think the thing for me that may need to be adjusted is there wasn't enough fanfare or notification that my ball was back in play. I was kind of guessing. Was I done? Did I have to make another shot? Was there still something else I needed to do? I mean, my flippers and the lightning show kind of lit up, but audio-wise, I think there needs to be a little bit better of a cue like, you know, you're like, like your ball is back or so. I don't know. Figure something out there, David. But I feel like there probably needs to be something else to let people know that they are back to being able to play with two hands again. And I even saw this on Gonzo the first time he played it on his video. He was enjoying the game played. They had to do the pain box and the individual that was playing with Gonzo made the shot, but he didn't know that that was the only shot he had to make. And so he eventually kind of messed up and lost his ball even though he could have used two hands. So something needs to be done on that portion of it. But that's pretty much my only criticism as of yet for Dune. But I'm loving what they've done with the game. I really do enjoy it. It's It's to where honestly I'm torn about which game I would rather get in Kong's place whenever this one gets moved out. Do I want to get a Dune or do I want to get a Harry Potter? It's I'm torn honestly because I I really do enjoy both of those games now. So, if you have a location with Dune, by all means, guys, get some time on this game. And I'm hoping that you're able to hear it because I do believe that's really going to improve your experience of it. Moving on to Turner Pinball located near San Antonio. [Music] When you line up all of our current manufacturers, Turner Pinball is definitely the underdog. Now, I played Merlin's Arcade at Texas Pinball Festival. That is where its first appearance was. They had, I think, three or four of their games there for people to play. They had their physical ball lock disabled at that time cuz they were still working on some code. But I got to play the game in its entirety with everything fully functional and working this time around. So, let's talk about what I feel about Merlin's Arcade. This is one of those games that is designed for the family. And what what do I mean by that? And I mean that by of all the games of the three games that I visited that weekend, Merlin's Arcade is the game that I know the most about when it comes to the rules because the rules are quite simple. They take back to the days that you're probably used to when it comes to like Bally Williams stuff. make this particular shot three times, then you start this particular thing. And then how do you get past that particular thing? Hit that same shot more times. It's pretty straightforward, very simplistic, and I think that's going to cater to the family. It's going to when it comes to how easy the rules are. When it comes to the layout, layout's honestly nothing spectacular, nothing like ooh amazing or anything like that. That's pretty straightforward kind of a fan, but you also have your upper flipper. But I want to say that when it comes to this layout, there are shots that do require to make from one flipper or the other. And I think that's where the also the I forgot what they call this finesse flipper. The finesse flipper is honestly very useful for this game and particularly for those out there that don't have the skill to tap the flipper just right to get it to pass to the other flipper. I think that I I used it and when I used it, I felt like I was cheating, but in a good way. I was like, "Look at that. I got it to where it passed to the other flippers so I can make this particular shot and it didn't require much skill on my end, which is fine because I lack that." So, I do enjoy the finesse flipper. And for those of you that do not know what that is, it's an extra button on each side of the game that you use to give a quick pulse of the flipper to essentially pass the ball to the other side. Now, they currently have it coded to where every time you use it, it's basically dwindles in power. So, you can do it like three times before it's just not working and it takes time for it to build back up again. That's what the code currently is at. I'm sure there's somewhere in the code in the settings if you wanted it to always be full powered, you can. If you don't have that setting, Chris, then uh may want to implement it for those out there that want the game to be even a little bit easier. So, here's the finesse flipper. Ain't that cool? That is awesome. All right. See how they're green, yellow, red. So, I was about to lose my power. But I do enjoy the soundtrack in particular. The ones that I really enjoy on the soundtrack of this game are the 8bit versionesque type of rock. I'll try to implement this in the video so you get an idea of what I'm talking about. [Music] But the art style is fun. It's a very fun family-friendly game. I think this is going to speak to a lot of people out there and especially for those when they go to Expo. There's going to be a few of these games for you to experience at Expo. Ninja Eclipse was the same thing. People weren't, you know, too interested in it and then they played it at Expo last year and that's when they sold out all of their Ninja Eclipse games. Merlin's Arcade could be the same thing. They are selling a lot more than in their Ninja Eclipses. Ninja Eclipse was only 100. I want to say Merlin's Arcade is 500. I could be wrong on that, but they are selling more of the Merlin's arcades. So there's there's that, but the price is higher than what Ninja Eclipse was. So there also is that. So you have to account for the price jump and you could get the same low price that you had on Ninja Eclipse, but you just have to buy the lower tier Merlin's Arcade, which takes away the pretty yellow powder coating and your physical ball lock and maybe a few other items and everything. But I honestly do enjoy Merlin's arcade game. It's one of those games, like I said, it's going to be for the masses. If you're a really skilled player, it's not going to be a game for you. This is going to be one of those where like the game's too easy kind of thing. That's why I lean towards this being a family-based title, and that's what they're going for. Now something I do have to point out when it comes to Turner pinball and their manufacturing. They are very small but what they are also doing is innovating and but but the thing is with their innovations the only thing that I think is holding them back on this is the fact that since it's new it hasn't been through the trials and tribulations and time for a lot of people to fully trust. It's like, yes, we I see that you have made this very simplistic to where anybody could probably build this machine. And you have also changed your pop bumper skirts. Little things like that. But I think in the end, it's going to take time and for people to really kind of like be accepting of it because it is new. And when you try to implement something new into pinball and Turner, you're you're one of those that should be like the the trophy winner for when it comes to changing things in pinball with your first cabinet. You know this that people don't like change and you took the heat and you improved upon that and changed your cabinet back to the standard size. So now we've got different pop bumpers and they worked. They played just fine for me. I think now it's going to come down to how do they do in the endgame process of this? How long are they going to last? Is it still going to play normal to people? Is it going to be accepting? I think that's something that's going to be found out during expo as well. But when it comes to the rules, like I said, very basic and straightforward. And that you have to take out these particular knights. Like let's just say for instance you have the very familiar eight ball deluxe where you have all these targets on the right side. Once you hit those particular shots then you need to aim for the scoop to battle I think it's Lancelot and then in Lancelot how you defeat him is by hitting certain targets on the billiard boards against him to defeat him. And if you defeat him, then he basically gets empowered by Morgan, I think her name is, and he turns into like Dark Lancelot. And the visuals on screen for this are pretty darn cool. I like it's it's simplistic but effective. And you have to go through I don't really know what happens in the endgame on that, but I did get to certain points where I did have so many knights lit up. And that was another thing when it came to the coding on that that I enjoyed also is that you can take on one particular knight at a time if you want to or you can kind of do it like Pulp Fiction for those of played that game. You can get all the characters and then aim for the shot to get all of them at one time. It's kind of like that for this game to where you could knock out all these shots and have all of these knights ready to battle like one at a time or you could battle multiples at one time. You get a lot more points, but it's like risk versus reward because you're going to have to take all of the knights out and if you don't then you basically get nothing and you kind of have to start over again on making those shots. So, I thought that was pretty interesting as well because I wanted to see how many knights I could get into one battle. And how many knights you have in one battle also affects the light show of the rails light system that they have on this particular uh system for Turner Pinball, their lighting that they have. So, the more knights you have, then the more lighting effects you're going to see during your Battle of the Knights. Little stuff like that. But, I think that's pretty much all I have to take note of on Merlin's Arcade at this time. I'm definitely curious to hear everyone's feedback once they play it at Pinball Expo coming up here next month. Little bit of a wardrobe change, but we're moving on to Multimorphic located in Austin, Texas. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Now, this was my first visit to Multimorphic. I was invited for the portal reveal, but work just kind of got in the way of that. So, I honestly did not know what to expect, but what I expected was for the factory to be small, but it turned out to be much larger than I expected. Now, at the time of my visit, Portal was currently not on the line. They were missing one component, and that's all it takes to keep you from building a machine these days, and I'm sure in the past as well, is just one part. and it was a pretty big deal part. So, I would like to hope that he's got that in now and portals are now being built. But a part of my visit and tour was getting a tour of the cabinet and all the engineering that has evolved over the course of a decade with Multimorphic. I don't know it's been an exact decade. It's Yeah, it's been over a decade now. So, I got to see their cabinet from the very first time they just wanted to build something all the way up to what we see now with Portal. And from my opinion and perspective, I believe Portal to be their best game yet. And I think why that is is because Portal is the perfect game for this platform. Because Portal, great theme. I love it. But in order for it to truly like be I don't know done correctly, you need to have what Multimorphic has going on, and that's the ability to change the game. The play field, the screen in there allows you to progress through chambers when you make the shots correctly, which I found difficult sometimes for me. But it's that aspect of right there. And there's just so much that they can do with this and you need to be able to have that type of ability for a theme like Portal. I mean, he was showing me certain modes that are not even released yet. It's on the latest code. And I I don't know what all I can say to I don't want to spoil anything, but they was showing me portions of the game where you have to make this shot in order to allow this to do something. And when you do that, then you open a portal here. There's just so much to the game of Portal that I cannot tell you everything because there's just a lot there and it's uh honestly it's a game that I would love to be able to dive into and to learn more about because there's just so much there and I only scratched the surface of what that game has to offer. And as well as a bunch of you already know, multimorphic is different and that is for a reason. And the reason, and it was answered during the Q&A, is like, you know, why don't you do a regular pinball machine like all these other manufacturers? And Jerry's response is and more than likely will continue to be because he doesn't want to do regular pinball. It's already being done. He wants to be different. He wants it to be this way. And in a way, that's a great thing because it offers us something different. It gives us the ability to go, you know what? I like this particular theme. Like for instance, Portal. Portal's been the only game so far that has really pushed me into getting into the P3 Multimorphic family. And that's something also I kind of want to note about is evidently there's more people in the family than I even realized. And I guess that's something that if you fellow multimorphic owners out there that that's just part of like the Discord channel that you guys have and it's like you know once you get a machine then now you're in the family like a mafia or something kind of thing. And I guess all these owners are able to chat back and forth, help each other out, or just comment on the games in general, but they had this whole Discord channel for their Multimorphic machine or module owners, which I thought was pretty interesting as well. And that is one of the main reasons why I believe that Multimorphic hasn't progressed and become so like wanted by the masses is because it is different. Whether it be some people don't like the fact that the monitor on the playfield is constantly changing. Some people don't like the added extra more buttons on the side. Some people don't like the look of the cabinet. I mean, there's all different types of reasonings why people don't tend to dive into this platform. But I think one of the main reasons and the main reason for me that is is the barrier to entry and that is the upfront cost. But it's one of those where it's like it's expensive upfront, but over time it's cheaper because you're not spending 7,000 or 8,000 or even up to $13,000 for a whole new game. You're merely, and I know merely is a is a a word to use here, merely spending three to $4,000 on a module to put into your game instead of buying a whole new machine. But I found out also that there's other customers out there that still buy multiple cabinets, so they don't need to swap out their modules. But for me, my own opinion here, I would want Portal and I would want Final Resistance. Those are the two games that spoke to me the most. And it's funny when talking about Final Resistance, a lot of the people that are non Multimorphic owners found Final Resistance to be their favorite because the playfield was static. It didn't change. It was closer to what we know as regular pinball. But one of the main things that I thought was very good about, you know, having Portal in their catalog now is the fact that they have finally started putting shots a little bit closer to the flippers with adding the ramps that are on top of the glass. That's something that they have not done before. Now, that's an extension of the portal module. So, that's a little bit extra if you want that additional upper deck playfield kind of thing. So, you could play the game without that. And I think that would make the game a little bit easier, honestly, because sometimes the ramps are honestly blocking other shots that you would normally be able to hit. So, you need to raise those ramps by hitting those ramp shots first, then the ramps go up, and then you can hit other shots. So, I'm torn between which module I would want because I I do enjoy the fact that you have the extensions to give you more within the game, but a part of me is also like, man, I feel like sometimes I just wish these ramps weren't here so I could hit the other shots. And it's funny that Jerry was even commenting on that whenever I was hitting the ramps cuz they were technically in my way. and he was kind of like, you know, mocking what a lot of people, including myself, say is that, oh, put stuff closer to the flippers. And so I think it's, you know, he he gets what people are saying about a lot of things and he but he has his reasons why he does what he does. But enough about the platform in general. Let's talk strictly about Portal and how I feel about it. Like I've already stated, it's my favorite module that Multimorphic has put out today. I think it's even better than Final Resistance, which was my old favorite. But this one, it's got everything that I enjoy. Mainly, it's the theme. I mean, I I love Portal, the whole franchise of it. Adore it. And the fact that they were able to implement it the way that they have with all the mechanics basically are involved. the changing of different chambers and being able to progress through those chambers and visually seeing your progression as you make the corresponding shots. And like I said, I only scratched the surface of what this game has to offer. I think this is one of those games that if you do get it, this is going to be something that you're going to be on for a good while. You're going to be chewing on the code for a good amount of time, figuring out how to get through the chambers and all the way till you get to the endgame. And evidently, there is an endgame like portion that he didn't want me to film because he didn't want it to be spoiled for any of you Portal owners out there. But voice over, the soundtrack, the sound effects, it's all great and just right there on par with the theme. And as someone who's a big fan of it, then I was like giggling most of the time while playing this machine. Now, I've got some footage of me playing it, and I'm hoping that I've got enough footage of Jerry playing it because I don't want to show you a lot of the footage of me playing it cuz it's going to make the game look like it shoots horribly. And it's not the game, it's me, guys. But there's just so many different shots and so many different directions that you can go with this game. And I definitely needed more time on it. And time for me at the time on that particular day at the end of the tour was limited. I had to drive back home and had work the next day. And then we had Dallas traffic which I eventually had no choice but to be stuck in. Now trust me, I have heard and read all the commentary for all the naysayers for the multimorphic platform. But I would strongly recommend those of you out there give Portal a fair shot and then you will see that this platform is perfect for this theme. If you're a fan of Portal like me, you are going to love what they have done with this game. Now, is this Jerry merely just dipping his toe into the video game genre or was this a one-off? I definitely do recommend that he pursue other licenses, possibly video game licenses that would benefit from this particular platform. The ability for the environment to change and the game to change, to give people a better experience of that particular theme, that's where this platform can shine. But I'm right there with you guys on the barrier of entry being that upfront cost. It's It's there, but like I said, it's going to be just the upfront. Everything after that is going to be a lot cheaper. Not to mention, they've been recently releasing a released a free game, Elemental, I want to say, or yeah, Elemental. That was a free game. Just like, hey, here for all you P3 Multimorphic owners, here's you a free game kind of thing. But it's also kind of nice that if you do get like every new game or module that gets released every year, you're spending literally half the price of like a Stern Pro. Hopefully, all the upcoming titles that Multimorphic has to offer are just as enticing as Portal because I think that's what's going to draw in more people by getting these particular licenses that people have been asking for. But a regular pinball machine just wouldn't do it justice. So, Portals will be at Pinball Expo. Maybe one or two of them. So, that'll be your next chance to give this game a try. Again, I recommend it. So, I want to wrap up this video right here. That is my Texas manufacturer tour for Barrels of Fun, Turner Pinball, and Multimorphic. Thanks to them for allowing me to come in and see the place and showing me around. Very much appreciated. And guys, let me know in the comments section down below what you feel about what's going on at these manufacturers. And until next time, guys, peace out. [Music] Heat. [Music]