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Pinwalk - Rob & Davey walk the floor at Texas Pinball Festival 2025

In Before the Lock·video·58m 20s·analyzed·Apr 7, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Texas Pinball Festival 2025 floor walk features Evil Dead sellout, Portal success, and surprise Merlin's Arcade reveal.

Summary

Rob and Davey from In Before the Lock walk the floor at Texas Pinball Festival 2025 in Dallas, showcasing new releases and upcoming games. Key highlights include Spooky Pinball's Evil Dead selling out its last 25 units, Multimorphic's Portal generating strong interest as their best-received title, Barrels of Fun's imminent new game announcement, and Turner Pinball's surprise reveal of Merlin's Arcade featuring innovative finesse flipper controls. The footage captures booth interactions, community sentiment, and production updates across multiple manufacturers.

Key Claims

  • Spooky Pinball sold out its last 25 Evil Dead units to Pinball Star Amusements at Texas Pinball Festival 2025

    high confidence · Bug from Spooky Pinball confirmed this during direct interview with hosts at the booth

  • Evil Dead previously showed at Pinball on the Beach in Florida with major success before Texas Pinball Festival

    high confidence · Bug states 'they did Pinball on the Beach in Florida. According to Mike, that was a big success'

  • Portal is Multimorphic's best-received title to date according to community feedback

    medium confidence · Brian Savage (Barrels of Fun) states 'I think it's probably the best title that they've done so far' and hosts note Portal has strong reception despite it being available already

  • Barrels of Fun has a new game announcement coming 'imminently' (very soon)

    high confidence · Brian Savage explicitly states multiple times the game is shipping 'imminently' and 'very soon' but will not be announced until the game is 'in the box ready to ship'

  • Barrels of Fun will announce their next game only when it is physically ready to ship, unlike other manufacturers who announce months in advance

    high confidence · Brian Savage: 'the thing that we do is we do not announce machines until they are in the box ready to ship. Where every other manufacturer, two, three, four, five, six, nine months, whatever it is, but that's not how we roll.'

  • Turner Pinball's Merlin's Arcade is being completed from the Deep Root Pinball IP acquisition, with original designer Jon Norris returning to finish the game

    high confidence · Turner Pinball explained: 'Ninja Eclipse, our first title, was totally developed by my team independently... But this particular title, Jon Norris, had started working on it at Deep Root. We took that... I approached John, and I was like, Jon Hey, do you want to finish this game?'

  • Turner Pinball expects Merlin's Arcade to ship in summer 2025, after Ninja Eclipse completes its run by early summer

    medium confidence · Turner: 'I anticipate probably early summer time frame is when we'll probably finish Ninja Eclipse. We're starting to get parts in for Merlin's now... I'm just being vague and saying summer because I don't know exactly when things are going to light up.'

Notable Quotes

  • “So if you want an Evil Dead, you gotta go there. Pinball Star Amusements picked up the last 25.”

    Bug (Spooky Pinball)@ 3:02 — Confirms complete sellout of Evil Dead at the event and directs demand to specific distributor

  • “We do not announce machines until they are in the box ready to ship. Where every other manufacturer, two, three, four, five, six, nine months, whatever it is, but that's not how we roll.”

    Brian Savage (Barrels of Fun)@ 8:34 — Articulates Barrels' distinct go-to-market strategy contrasting with industry norm; signals next game imminent

  • “I think it's probably the best title that they've done so far.”

    Brian Savage (Barrels of Fun)@ 6:59 — Strong third-party validation of Portal as Multimorphic's strongest entry; from competitor manufacturer

  • “There's a lot of really interesting depth in the game and a lot of, I think people, there's a lot for people to enjoy in the home but also to experience right here at the show.”

    Stephen Cameron Silver (Multimorphic/Portal video lead)@ 9:54 — Confirms Portal designed with both home and competitive/show play in mind; depth differentiation strategy

  • “You couldn't go to a manufacturer and say, I got this idea for this kooky idea. Not for bird watching... This exists.”

    Stephen Cameron Silver@ 13:22 — Highlights Multimorphic's unique third-party SDK advantage enabling niche game creation impossible in traditional manufacturing

  • “Merlin's Arcade was intense trying to get this ready for the show. We didn't tell anyone because I didn't know if we were going to make it.”

Entities

Texas Pinball Festival 2025eventRobpersonDaveypersonSpooky PinballcompanyEvil DeadgameBugpersonMultimorphiccompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Turner Pinball managing Deep Root Pinball legacy by crediting original artists in game credits, indicating talent absorption and IP stewardship strategy

    high · Turner: 'I've credited all the artists that worked on this from Deep Root Pinball... I think giving those people credit for all the hard work they put in, it makes them feel like it was worthwhile'

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky Pinball using sellout event to announce next game title for November release window, leveraging FOMO after product exhaustion

    medium · Bug: 'when you have a sellout, that means you can safely start teasing the next game... One coming... Definitely one coming... November!'

  • ?

    community_signal: Barrels of Fun integrating charitable giving into product registration campaign with Project Pinball, donating $10 per registration and giving away free machine

    high · Brian Savage: 'if you go register your machine between now and the end of April we're going to draw... somebody's going to win a free game... for every registration we have we're going to give $10 to Project Pinball'

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2025 demonstrates strong manufacturer presence, high booth traffic, and successful product launches; third consecutive year attendance for In Before the Lock hosts

    high · Rob: 'This is our third time here together... tons of new games on the floor... tons of familiar faces... It's great to be here'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Big Lebowski pinball custom artwork blocked from commercial production due to actor approval requirements by Universal, forcing artist to create one-off demo unit

Topics

Spooky Pinball Evil Dead release and market receptionprimaryMultimorphic Portal as flagship P3 title and platform success indicatorprimaryBarrels of Fun imminent game announcement (unspecified title)primaryTurner Pinball Merlin's Arcade surprise reveal and Deep Root IP completionprimaryFinesse flipper innovation as game design breakthroughprimaryTexas Pinball Festival 2025 event coverage and community gatheringprimaryMultimorphic P3 platform third-party developer ecosystem and niche game creationsecondaryCustom pinball modifications and restoration as community activitysecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Strong positive sentiment across all booth interactions and game reveals. Evil Dead sellout and Portal reception generate excitement. Barrels of Fun's measured approach builds anticipation. Turner Pinball's completion of Deep Root IP with respect for original artists receives positive reception. Custom modders celebrated. Only muted element is Dutch Pinball's failed Big Lebowski licensing deal, but positioned as production setback rather than product failure. Overall community engagement and manufacturer health appear strong at event.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.175

Texas Pinball 2020 what is it? I don't know, five? Five man this is awesome this is our third time here together. Yeah third time. How you going Rob you having fun? I'm doing good man welcome everybody we're at Texas Pinball Festival 2025 in Dallas and we got tons of new games on the floor. We got some amazing old games, tons of familiar faces. It's great to be here. Yeah, we're going to do a bit of a pit walk, aren't we? And try to find some interesting things, some people. We've already had a chat with a couple of people to line up interviews. So hopefully they'll be where they're supposed to be. We're just going to walk the floor and see what we can find. Yeah, we're going to try to do this in one take. Keep it easy for you guys. Let's go check it out. And keep the editing to a minimum. Keep the editing to a minimum. Definitely, definitely. Alright, working our way onto the floor. So Davey's been out on the floor a little bit, kind of talking to people. We're going to show you some close-up footage, but also do this in real time. So where do you want to start? Well, let's head on down in this direction. Okay. I think we'll be walking past the spooky booth at some point soon. Yeah, man. So what stood out to you? Anything you're loving so far? I mean, Evil Dead is just fantastic. So Spooky, as I'm sure everybody knows, Spooky released Evil Dead a couple of months ago. Evil Dead has done one show before this one, they did Pinball on the Beach in Florida. According to Mike, that was a big success. But Spooky, where will they be? They're coming around this way, let's go ahead and head that way. And the Spooky booth has been packed. It has. It has. And they sold out today, I think. Last 25 units. Yeah, went to one distro. Yeah, one distro. So I think a Spinball Star picked up the last 25. Hot ticket! Yeah. So here we are. So you played this for the first time here at the show? Yeah, first time at the show. Yeah. I've been hearing great reports about it. Yeah. You know, everybody's really positive about it. Totally. Talked to Mark yesterday, and he's just like, you know, flying. He's having such a good time. He's getting really great feedback on it. guy in place, Lockheed Drain. You've played it. I have. We talked about it on some previous stuff. I love the integration of the theme. Not a horror guy with the colors. The shotgun integration. I mean, it's kick-ass. Yeah. So let's talk a walkthrough. I mean, yeah, this is cool. We'll get a little shot of Bug and these guys in here. You want to talk with him first? Yeah, we got this. Okay, cool. Bug, we're recording a little show. You want to say hi? Hello, little show. Good to see you. You look surprisingly untired. I am riding an adrenaline high for like the last two hours over our game sellout. Yeah, I read about that last 25 games. Yeah, this distro right here, Pinball Star Amusements, showed up and they bought the last 25. So if you want an Evil Dead, you gotta go there. Was that a surprise to you? Did you know that was happening? We mentioned to him how cool it would be if he did that, and then he delivered on his coolness. So, yeah, we're having a great time. We're riding a pretty big high right now. So is the what's next question now like hot or never since you're out of these? I am so excited because, like, when you have a sellout, that means you can safely start teasing the next game. So I'm going to get ready to start doing that. Nice, man. Congratulations. Gorgeous. Davey's got one coming, I think. Got one coming. Definitely got one coming. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you. Moving on. Let's keep going. Yeah, it's, oh, man, it's like hot out here. There's so many people. I have to work your way through, isn't it? I told you, man. The booth is packed. Dexter and Andre are on board. So we should probably... let's go past the Multimorphic booth. Totally. So we got Portal on display for Multimorphic. It's their latest game. They've got three options to play. Two of them are the full package with the expansion, and then we got one with the basic package. So let's check it out. For anybody who doesn't know what Multimorphic do with the P3, It's essentially a modular pinball machine where you can remove the back section of the game and install a new module that creates a new pinball experience. Yeah, yeah. I think they have like 25 configurations or maybe different options. Portal is the latest one. Of course, you can buy the game with everything. The decals on the side are magnetic. They can be removed. So pretty cool from that perspective. Let's have a look. Portal, have you had a game on this so far? I have, yeah. I mean, like, talking about World Under Glass, there's a crazy amount of things under here, inside here. Have you played the game before, the computer game before? Yeah, I did. I played back in the day. So Half-Life was a big game, and then Portal was a game that came out later, so they were really big, I don't know, in the 2000s maybe? Yeah. Have you played it before? No, I've never played it before, but I remember the thing about, particularly Half-Life, I I mean, that was everywhere, wasn't it? Yeah, so the robot had a deep personality. It was one of those first games that had really good integration. It was kind of quirky. And you basically created these portals in the floor, and you could drop through. It was kind of a maze and a first-person shooter combined into one. And if you're into the theme, which you may be into the theme after picking this up, you're going to learn how they really captured that really well. There's a lot of really interesting parts to this too, isn't there? Like that center shot is like a ramp that when the ball registers going past it, the ramp flips up and jumps the ball essentially into the long section. Yeah, and there's a really cool visual back there that's that green kind of hover area. I mean, it's a pretty cool package. After playing this one, it's got me more interested in other P3 games because I'm like, hey, if I'm actually for the first time serious about getting into a P3, I want to know what else there is. Even Neil McRae, who we've been talking about a lot on this, What's up, Neil? What's up, Neil? What's up? Hey, shout out, Neil. Even Neil, who usually poo-poos things like this, was wowed by Paul. He might even be getting a punt over to the UK. And I would be the first P3 to get over to the UK. So, you know, if Neil McRae is sold, you know, he must be doing something right. Definitely, definitely. Well, we've got Brian Savage with Barrels of Fun playing right here. He's about to be done. I want to hear what he thinks if he's up for it. Yeah. And hear about his new game. Yeah, well. because there's been little teasers being dropped. Merlin's Adventure into Wonderland Arcade? It's the whole package. No, but they've been dropping little teasers. I don't know if he's going to want to talk about that too much, but they've got a new game coming. You mind talking to us? Yeah, sure, man. How are you going? Brian with Barrels of Fun. How's the show going for you? Going good. Going good. We're having a good time. Good. What do you think about Portal? I think it's probably the best title that they've done so far. Absolutely. I mean, it fits what the machine is. So I think they'll have some good success with it. And also, everybody keeps talking about video game things on pinball machines, so this is kind of breaking the ice. The first video game to be in like that. And it's great, isn't it? Because it sort of leans into what they're good at, which is the visual. Right, it leans into exactly right. And you guys are just finishing up Labyrinth, it sounds like? We are finishing up Labyrinth, and last night we announced that we're doing something in our thank you tour For our library owners is if you go register your machine between now and the end of April We're going to draw our head with them the project pinball the project pinball folks Somebody's going to win a free game to Out of the existing library owners and for every registration we have we're going to give $10 to pinball projects So they can continue their mission. Yeah, you know in providing games to you needy children and things like that So yeah project pinballs are fantastic We've done a lot of work with them, providing mods for Expo when they do the rumbles and stuff. They're just a great organization, aren't they? Really work well. So that's great that you're doing that. Yeah, so something new that no one's ever done before. So we're going to give a machine away to existing owners. And you've got a new game coming up. What's the energy around the team like? Are you pretty excited to get it out there? You know, anytime you're getting down to the very short window of something imminently coming out, Everybody's trying to do their part and get it done and make everything that needs to happen to make it happen. Because the thing that we do is we do not announce machines until they are in the box ready to ship. Where every other manufacturer, two, three, four, five, six, nine months, whatever it is, but that's not how we roll. We want you to have the game right away so it's going to ship immediately when we announce it. So are you guys finishing up photography, video, getting everything polished? Yes, yes. Code, you know, the whole thing. So how imminent is imminent? Like weeks? Like intimate. Intimate. Intimate. All right, very soon. How about that? We can't say that. Just very soon. We'll go with that. Intimately intimate. Awesome. Well, Brian, thank you so much. Looking forward to seeing what you guys got. All right, well, come by and visit us at the booth. Absolutely. All right, moving on, guys. Thank you, Brian. Yeah, I'll give you that. Okay. All right, let's move. All right, let's sneak on through. That was a fun one. I wasn't expecting that. I know. See, this is what happens on a paywall, man. You just run into people. Definitely, definitely. As long as you're recognized. We got Stephen Silver over here. Steven, did you do the video work on Portal? Yeah, sure. Yeah, something like that. How's it going? Good. Well, we won't spend too much time with you because we've been talking about Portal already, but a great package. What are you most excited about? I just want people to come and experience the features on it. on it, like go and try to make it across the hard line bridge or try to get one of the two aerial jumps of the thing going. There's some stuff that's really close to the flipper, really close to the start button, some stuff that you need to work for, but there's a lot of really interesting depth in the game and a lot of, I think people, there's a lot for people to enjoy in the home but also to experience right here at the show. Yeah, the multi-stage, multiball where you got the left ramp lifted up, you hit the blocks on the upper flipper, get it over, it's really cool. or Jerry told us how to do it and it's like something that I enjoyed really going for right on the gate. Yeah, well you were able to hit it but I wasn't able to hit it. I couldn't get it off my head. Okay, that's what I wanted to focus on. I got it more than Dave. Great package, man. Congratulations. Thank you, yeah. We're really excited about it. We're all like super fans of the Portal package. What's cool now is that like on the Portal wiki we've got some of the characters we created and stuff in the Portal wiki now. So it's like, oh, we're in canon now. You're in canon. Yeah. So Reggie's in canon. That's amazing. And so I think when people get to hear it, get to know Reggie and the personality core, and get to experience the world of the game, go exploring, it's going to be a real special game for people. So we're excited about it. The area's been buzzing all day, yesterday too. It's been packed, hasn't it? The lines are three or four people deep. It's funny. I've had people say, I don't know if Portal is the right thing. I was like, no, you don't understand how this game connects with people. And if you're not if you don't know there's no doubt there's tons of licenses that are out there that people understand But you can get the concept of speedy thing goes in speedy thing comes out You've got these multiple connected portals and it's something we can only do on the P3 because we have Launch points everywhere we've got like 10 connected portals in there that we can send the ball from anywhere to anywhere and magic Instantaneously like that or slow it down and show you an animation saying get ready for the hard life bridge that's coming up, things like that. So, I don't know, we're excited about it. It was a lot of fun to work on. You know, I was saying it earlier, there's a lot of people who probably haven't connected to some of the previous games that are connecting to this one. I think that a lot of people are saying this is the best thing you guys have done. Yeah, well, and that's the thing, it's a gateway, because if you buy this, you can 100% buy this as a standalone Portal game and be happy, right, and be done. But by just having it, you have access to 23 other games that are in the store. They come and say, you know what? I love the Princess Bride. Let me go take another look at that. And you realize the incredible depth to the rules that Colin MacAlpine designed in that game, the tournament-level stuff that you can do in that game. Or you go into Final Resistance, and you just see a really hard, fast-kicking game. So there's all sorts of stuff. New Pinball Day could be around the corner. And my favorite thing about it is that it's the only third-party platform in all of pinball. So there are third parties out there, just normal everyday people that are picking up the dev kit, in making new software games. Which is trying, this is what I said, trying to do some third party. Trying to do some third party module and game, but also, like, in all these games, you can put Birdwatcher on every single one of these things, which, like, this is what Ian's, before Ian started working with us at Portal, he did Birdwatcher, which, it's a pinball machine, a pinball game about birdwatching, and I absolutely love it. It's like, who would, what market could you ever have where you could ship something like that? But it's fantastic, and it works on every single module, or Michael Ocean did Dungeon Door Defender or we had on the Lexi Play Pill, one of our developers, Greg Goldey, created Hooping It Up, which is a basketball game that uses the scoops a whole lot. And so that's where all these really super creative ideas are coming out of that you could not have appear in the pinball market on any other platform. You couldn't go to a manufacturer and say, I got this idea for this kooky idea. Not for bird watching. Yeah, not for bird watching. But this exists. This is something in the air that you can go and get, and it works on every game, and it's got awesome little treats, and you can just switch over to it. You don't have to swap a module. Go to it immediately and start playing and go and collect those extra things. And one day I know there's going to be a big group of really super manly macho pinball dudes that are going to be gathering around the machine going, it's a crystal hummingbird, bro. Go for the crystal hummingbird. It's going to be amazing, right? We got a bucket list item from Steven here. Absolutely, I want to see that happen. I want to see you guys squealing over to Crystal Hummingbird when it pops out. They're going to laugh at you. We need to mic that up. Yeah. We need to mic that up. Well, thank you so much, man. It's a great package and looking forward to seeing what you guys got next. Excellent. Yeah, and a big fan of Toppings. I love the work that you guys did with Brad on the last one. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Thanks, man. All right, moving on. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, I got to play Final Resistance. It's one of the modules. Really fun. That one's done by Scott Denisey who did TNA, and it's actually like a TNA 2 in a lot of ways. Same voice The music very Scott Denisey It got that sort of pulsing bass volume Did you get to the part where it shoots balls at you Balls at you yes I mean very fast It a little intimidating honestly Did you get a bit scared? A little bit. The bird thing's funny. I'm gonna get that crystal hummingbird. Yeah, I didn't know about that. That was a bit of information that I sort of had to be privy to before this. Alright, mod makers, we got a crazy pack to Dracula right here. Let's get a little look at this. It's got to be the best Dracula it's ever made. It's loud, geez. So this thing's got some serious modifications done to it. We've got Damon over here. He's going to come tell us a little bit about it. Let's see. Come on over, Damon. Yeah. Stick him in here. Go ahead and stand by Damon. Come over here. So where did this begin? Damon, last name? Damon White. Damon White. You want to hold that? Oh, yeah. Damon Eder on the inside. I bought this game, so last year I brought Whitewater, which was my first major restoration. And then this year I brought this game, I bought this last year at TPF, and then started thinking about what all I could do with it to make it kind of fun. I mean, Dracula's, you don't see a lot of them. It's a shallow game, so you kind of have to add some pizzazz to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of opportunities, isn't it? Yeah, that's Bob Doody's, right. It's a very sort of dark and moody game. Right. It's a horror thing, which I like. Yeah. So it fits right into what I like. There's a lot of custom stuff in this, isn't it? Right, right. So you did the apron? Yeah, so the apron. So there's a company that makes the apron, that cuts the apron. I went ahead and changed the powder coating. Yeah. Added the plastic glass. It's all edged in. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously the sound is something else, right? So what have you done with the sound of this? So I wanted to stay kind of true to the original. So the original soundtrack was kind of a synthesizer, sort of an 80s video game feel. And it just so happens that I listen to a lot of heavy metal. So actually, Ice Thick Heels. So they actually came out with an 8-bit version of their last two albums. So that's what you're hearing right now. It's heavy metal, but it's an 8-bit version. And then I want to do something special for the multiballs to kind of amp it up even more. Yeah. And so around Halloween, I was listening to like this dubstep Halloween mix. I'm like, this is really cool. Of course you were. Yeah, of course I was. So I'm like, we should put this in a pit ball set. Now we're hearing air shots coming out of this game, right? Air shots on the side. So these are air cannons. So a compressor underneath. There's a little compressor underneath. So, Pinsound makes a shaker motor and they have a board with a relay on it. With their software, you can obviously change the music and such, but you can also control this relay, right? So, when a certain call out is made or a certain music hits, you can tell that that relay to open up for half a second or whatever. Yeah. And so, that's what this is. Yeah. And so, how many sort of external devices are you running through the Pinsound? So there's only one relay, so it's just basically controlling an air valve and this one this one. I kind of got that idea again from haunted houses, you know, they use an emptiness to scare people. So talk us through quickly what mods you've got on this. You obviously changed the Dracula style. So the Dracula is no longer the Ron Jeremy. It's a guy from Europe next to him. Yeah, I've seen him before actually. The tombstone is one of a kind from Back Alley Matt. I'm sure he would make other people tombstone it. And did you do the paint work on it? So these are the original buildings, but repainted? So that's the original buildings that were repainted up. I cut out every window with an X-Acto knife. Because I had 20 hours to waste on that, right? And I put in little windows behind it with a drill. And I backlit that with twinkle lights. Fireballs. So it looks like something that's up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we've got, obviously, precision clips on here as well. Precision clips as well. Yeah. We repainted the mountain with the green eyes. Yeah, yeah. Put some red. I've seen that bit. That's amazing. Yeah. Put the red comet LEDs on the cemetery. Yeah, yeah. We got rad cows on the side here as well, I think. Rad cows on the side. Yeah. Brian Allen. Yeah, Brian Allen back glass. Yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely beautiful drag. I don't think I've ever seen a more pretty one. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Really, really nice. Everybody's made it. Enjoying it. So everyone wants to enjoy it, yeah. And it's state working, which is great. You always get nervous in shifts like this. It's like, come on, stay working. Yeah, please. I love it. Please. I'm enjoying myself, but I'm going to have to. All that's awesome. Diamond well done. I'm really pleased for you. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks, guys. Enjoy. We good to go? We're good. David, thanks so much, man. We appreciate it. All right. where should we go? Should we move over here? Come this way or this way? You're directing us. Let me see. Well, we could always just have a quick chat with John. He seems to be tied up at the moment. John from Precision. Okay, okay. Let's hit him up when we go back out. Yeah, let's try that. We'll hit him up when we go back out. All right, cool. So where do we want to actually head over to the home brew section? Well, let's take a quick look at this Lebowski. Oh, yeah. These guys got set up and then, yeah, we can get up to home brew. So talk us through this Lebowski quickly before we hit it. Yeah. Say hi to Chris. Chris, we're going to check out your Lebowski here. We're filming. You mind telling us a quick little tidbit on this one? Christopher Franchi did the artwork on many games. So there's one of one Lebowski. I like Dr. Pepper. Well, all right, let's see. Story behind this. Dutch Pinball two years ago said, hey, let's make a 20th anniversary Big Lebowski with artwork. So I did the back glass. and they put it into Universal for approvals. Apparently, because it was artwork, they had to get it approved by each actor. It became a pain in the butt, and they decided they didn't want to do it. So in the meantime, it was taking so long, I'm like, I'm going to do the rest of the art because we're running out of time. So we ended up with a whole art package that had nothing to do with it. So this year I told Chris at Cointaker, I said, why don't we take the art and make one up just for fun? It looks amazing. You've got different artwork on both sides. I mean, it's the whole thing. Yeah, we could have sold a zillion of them here. Everybody's actually angry. We thought if they'd like it, you know, it'd be cool to see it, and they're just like... Yeah, rather not. Wish I would have not seen it. Yeah, they're like, set for sale? Pass hold. Oh, sorry. Yeah, well, it's beautiful. Thanks for bringing it to us. We appreciate it, and congrats on Evil Dead. We talked about it earlier. It's amazing. Sold out, baby. Sold out. Looking forward to the next one. Uh, when? We are looking forward to the next one, right? November! Excuse me. No, I didn't. Some word that sounded like a month. I'm not even sure. Save your dollars. All right. Save your dollars. Thanks, guys. All right, moving on. We'll get some footage of this later. I already did. OK, cool. Got some Bayroll so we can talk about it. Davey's double-duting here. Making his check. Exactly. I'm a Bayroll guy. Jimmy guy, occasionally. Yeah. All right, moving on. We're going to check out Merlin's Arcade real quick. Yeah, yeah. Let's go. OK, cool. Let's see if it will cost. Yeah. So we've got Turner Binball who did Ninja Eclipse. They've just come out. Surprise to everyone with a brand new game. Merlin's Arcade. I think there's about eight games coming out in the next two or three months, and this one is the eighth, which no one really knew about. Yeah, well, Turner said that's Sneakthrough. I sort of asked him how many games that he'd made for Ninja Eclipse, and he said there are up to about 70 or 80. So he said, well, that's why we need this game coming out, because the line will be done within a month or so. So, you know, obviously I've been working on this one. This is the man right here. Should we bug him? What do we want to ask him? What's the most difficult question we could ask him? Sorry to interrupt. I was just going to say we just got a camera running. All right. First turn. Hey, how's it going? We're good, man. We're kind of surprising you here. I'm sorry. We were, like, standing behind you. I'm so sorry, man. Oh, shit. We'll let you get back to that. What's up? You got a new game? I know. It's exciting. So Merlin's Arcane. I think I told you already, but it was intense trying to get this ready for the show. We didn't tell anyone because I didn't know if we were going to make it. But we worked really hard. The team worked crazy hours, and we're so excited to be here. The response has been incredible. Lines have been just crazy this whole time, and we're having a good time. People are loving it. The game's playing great. And if you're here or nearby, come play. We want to see you. I'd love to answer your questions, tell you all about the game. Could you tell us about your personal history with this title? Because obviously it was part of a previous company, and now you're bringing it into this one. Is this one that you actually worked on before? For sure, yeah. So obviously people know that my company acquired the IP from DeepRoot Limbaugh. And so Ninja Eclipse, our first title, was totally developed by my team independently of anything that came from the DeepRoot stuff. But this particular title, Jon Norris, had started working on it at DeepRoot. He had the layout, and he may have even had that, which may have predated Deep Root. But he'd been working on this layout, and they had started some of the art and other things for the game. We took that, well, I approached John, and I was like, hey, do you want to finish this game? He was super excited. He's like, yeah, totally. And so if you know John at all, I mean, he's a super humble, nice guy, great guy to work with. And so we were super happy to be able to take this theme to completion. we finished the art some of the play field elements that weren't done in Deep Root and just so happy to get to see it come to fruition. One other thing that's important to me is like if you look at the website you'll see that all the credits at the bottom like I've credited all the artists that worked on this from Deep Root. Brad Duke he was our artist for Ninja Eclipse. He had a big hand in the art for this but there were a lot of other artists that worked on it as well and I think giving those people credit for all the hard work they put in, it makes them feel like it was worthwhile, and I think that's really important. Very cool. So is this one shipping in the near future? What's it look like if you want to pick one up? Oh, absolutely, yeah. So we're finishing our run of Ninja Eclipse, so by the time we get back from the show, we'll be almost three-quarters shipped with that. I anticipate probably early summer time frame is when we'll probably finish Ninja Eclipse. We're starting to get parts in for Merlins now, and then we'll start shipping. I'm just being vague and saying summer because I don't know exactly when things are going to light up. But we'll do it as soon as possible. But yeah, summertime expected. There's quite a unique feature on Merlin's Arcade, isn't it? The finesse flippers. Yeah, so the finesse flip was actually a Jon Norris invention. And so I think he's had this idea for a long time. And he's trying to get other manufacturers to put this in their games. And I guess no one wanted to do it. And so I first heard about it. And obviously, you guys probably remember, we had the dual flipper buttons on the game that we brought to Expo 23. And I actually had it where the flipper buttons, it was like the upper and lower were on different buttons, but people really didn't like that. So we had normal stage flipper buttons, right? And that's all great, but then we've got this extra feature. And I tried it, and once I tried it, I was like, we have to put it in the game. It's just so crazy. So you touch the finesse button, and it gives like a little microflip. And so it's kind of like a tap pass button. So when it gets like, I don't know, maybe like half an inch from the end of the flipper, you just tap that button, it'll just jump over to the other side. Now it's still going to take practice, a little bit of getting used to, but I've seen some players come and try it and they're like, oh my goodness, this is the coolest thing. And so, I don't know, maybe they're going to be asking for this on all their games. Have you thought about any situations where you have to like pass it to the other one using that button to actually get like a multiplier on a shot or anything like that? That's really interesting. You know, I don't think I thought directly about giving multipliers in the rules, but a lot of the modes are time-based, and so getting the ball to the right flipper quickly is going to be important. Now, obviously, advanced players can do that pretty proficiently, but for the novice players, we want to give them a chance. And so giving them this superpower button kind of does that. Yeah, it's cool to see just something so subtle but innovative, honestly. honestly. And of course this is something you can do with any game with even more skills that might introduce people to this technique which is obviously very powerful. Yeah that's super cool I think people are gonna be like oh you know they'll see it on this game and be like how do I do that in general on my other games and then maybe they'll start trying to learn and figure it out. People were telling me that you would demonstrate the finesse whippers but you were essentially just able to whip a pass constantly, like one after another. Yeah you know I played with it a little bit so I've got the hang of it now. Yeah, you can kind of just, right when you get to the end, you just tap it, and it just jumps right over to the other one. Now, the rest of playing the game, you know, I need a lot of work. I tried to do that. I couldn't do it. Oh, yeah. I'd like to try and learn. Yeah, we'll get on this later, and I'll show you how it goes. You can show me the trick. Yeah. Cool. Well, Chris, thanks so much. Congratulations. Thank you guys for coming over. Take care. Absolutely. Allison, how are we doing over there? We good? Are we still recording? All right. Big shout out to Allison, who's helping us with the video side. It's loud in here. I don't even think she can hear any of these interviews. Yeah, he's doing a great job. Doing a great job. Okay, so we're going to head over to the homebrew section. Let's do it. Let's do it. So homebrews were hot here last year. We've got not quite as many, but definitely one new one, right? One in particular. Yeah. Should we reveal it right now or should we wait until they see it? Well, we can reveal it now. It's a movie theme. I'm all the way into- One of my favorite movies. Have you seen it? Have you? Well, I always- Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I do see Neil over here. Should we give him like- Oh, sweet talk to Neil. Let's pretend like we're going to interview him and then just walk off. Yeah, it's about to be good. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's see what Neil likes on the floor. Neil. Neil. Neil. You want to tell us what you're into on the floor at TPF 2025? Hey, I'm into Evil Dead. I'm into, there's this guy, I don't know who he is, but he's made this amazing, amazing, amazing Pulp Fiction top arm. Hey, you heard it here first. Let's go. We're moving on. Moving on. And if you haven ordered one and you got a Pulp Fiction SE you going to miss out So get your order in And then Davey Now the camera gone funny here because of the shirt Davey wearing It adjust don worry about that But Davey's over here making friends, selling these amazing mods, including the latest one, Jaws, which is awesome. I've just put it on my game. It's like me interviewing you. It's amazing. Yeah, I know. This was not planned this way. When you've had media training, the first thing is never ask the question you've been answered. answer the question what else no this shows great I'm gonna plug pinball Republic our home in the UK come and see if you're ever in London come and see us but not great show standing with August reportable because I know you haven't been the hugest P3 fan in the past what's up with more so I've not actually can't just go correct that okay I like P3 but I see it as something that isn't isn't quite pinball, it's like another genre. So Lexi Lightspeed, Hive, all those games, I love them, they're great, but they didn't feel like a regular pinball thing, which is why it's great. So Portal is amazing because you could only do that game on the PC platform. So I played it on the Xbox, my co-op mode with my granddaughter, we love it. The way The way that they visualized it in the game, with the map and the way it moves, I was like, holy shit. And the great thing about it is this, you don't care about the score, you care about how well you solve the puzzle, which is a kind of different dimension to people. I'm a tournament player. Well, D&D's kind of done that recently too, which is a nice thing to see. Yeah, and I think that's a great thing where you're adding more ways to get people. So I think Ian and Jerry and the guys there have done a great job on it. I have to say, the only annoyance I've got is that you go play it and you have to wait in the queue to play it again. It's like, yeah, for me that's a great sign. Will we be seeing a V3 in the World Republic? Maybe. For the first time ever, a maybe. Maybe, yeah. Because there's none in the UK instead. No, but they've just got a distributor. So, Retro, they've signed up to be a distributor. But we'll see how that goes. Well, I'd love to see one in the UK. Yeah, I think there are a couple, but they're in people's homes and stuff. So it would be great to get one. But Portal's definitely, you know, I mean, you know with Pinball, right, when you like a game, you kind of, like, I've been playing Evil Dead wherever I can play it. It's such a good game. It's such a good game. Spooky have smashed it, and loving that they've really, they've taken a big step, a really big step. The quality level, the playability, the speed of it, the ideas. The quality of it. They are workers. I mean, honestly, Christopher Franchi has blown that out of the water. Absolutely. So well done to them. It's just a line, didn't it, for that game, wasn't it? Absolutely. And also, you know, so there's another theme here that I love. It's called Blues Brothers. And the contrast between something that's amazing like Evil Dead It's something that frankly is an embarrassment to the world. Sorry, Mike. Actually, I'm not sorry. They knew what they built. It is what it is. But honestly, they've done some stupid things on it. This is the thing, right? It's like two huge, juicy Texas steaks. Blues Brothers. Stars. The game is based on them. and we should be eating the nicest, tastiest pinball machine of all time. And they did stupid shit like spinners. Spinners are one of those things people love. You want to hit the spinner, right? Especially on a game like that. What do they do? They put the spinner in the most useless place. I'm like, even my eight-year-old grandson knows not to put a spinner there, right? He's got to get it out of his system. You've got a YouTube channel. people can follow you yeah yeah I'm on Neil McCrae I'm not really these guys are the pros wow you can learn all about Blues Brothers on his YouTube channel if you want to if you want to listen to it right now so we had a podcast me and Scott the Great British Tribble Podcast tune into us but like we're not we're just shooting the shit man we're not like we don't want to like interview people like me we're like it's been a pretty big mistake we're finding out pretty quickly alright Neil thank you so much take it easy man appreciate it alright moving on yeah Blues Brothers is uh, Hope Inn, and it's very, very bare. I don't know what it costs, uh, but, it's, it's cheaper than normal pit balls. Yeah. I think in the UK, they're like seven, so here, we'll grab some B-roll of it, maybe, just cause, cause people saw it. I mean, it's a very, you know, Home Pit always brings out the best and the worst of people, I think, you know. Yeah, definitely. It's very controversial. Think of the guy who runs Home Pit, um, he's made a lot of enemies within the same, I'm curious about that. I think that's for another show, but, that's news. So here we are on Mad Max, which is the debut of this game into the world. And, of course, here at TPM. Yeah, it's been about five years in the making, I think. Dude, look at that topper. Like, what in the world is going on? I'm going to step back here real quick. Like, look at this thing. I mean, it's massive. Is this your game? No. Oh, it's my brother's. Oh, awesome. All right, his brother made this game. We'll probably get a chance to talk with him. Have you played it yet? I have, yeah, I have. And it's amazing, man. really really good it shoots great there's uh loads of really interesting shots there's a there's a wicked sort of upper upper flipper diverter yeah which is sort of like a combo shot to even get up to there in the first place you sort of have to feed the upper flipper hit like a side shot like uh you know like you have an elton john so that sort of that Steve Ritchie and it comes up the top and then there's kind of a diverter flipper at the top and i kept forgetting to press the button before i have you talked to the designer yet no i haven't no do you want to try to grab it real quick? Yeah, do you know how to do it? Let me see. Is this your game? I did the code. You did the code. Would you mind talking about it? Okay, cool. What's your name? Justin. Justin, Rob. Nice to meet you. We've got a show, and this isn't live, but it'll be basically live, so pressure's on. Justin, nice to meet you, man. Nice to meet you. Yeah, tell us a little bit about it. So we started this five years ago. I don't know if you've seen the forum on Pinside, but... Yeah, I've been following you guys for like three or four years. Yeah, so, you know, yeah, been watching sort of since the Whitewood stage and stuff, but tell me where it all started. So, five years ago, my uncle, he owned Metallica, and he's a machinist, so he's really good at making things, and he saw the, you know, he loved Metallica, and he thought, you know, I can make this. Yeah. And so he dragged me in a lot with him, so we both teamed up to make this game. He did all the mechanical work, he built the machine, fabricated it, he did everything to do that, and I did the code with MPF. Yeah, yeah. So are you a coder? Are there areas you're liable? No. So you just had to learn all this on the job? Yeah, I just learned it with MPF. There's so much documented about it. Honestly, it's not too hard to jump in. Well, you know, it's really impressive stuff, man. I was watching sort of the supers that you were putting up and the text effects and stuff, and it's all really good, very professionally done. Yeah, yeah. There's so many resources. is like YouTube, all the videos, they're done on Adobe After Effects. Yeah, okay. And I just use those video widgets with the MPF framework. And, you know, those YouTube videos, they'll just tell you exactly what you need to do to do all that. It just takes time for anyone to do it. Yeah. And so this is running a fast forward system? Yeah, this is on the fast. Yeah. And so has Aaron been a really big help to you guys as well? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's great. Yeah. Any problem, if there are problems, we've never had any problems. Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of Aaron as well. He's such a great positive force in the homebrew scene. Him and Anthony, they're a machine. They're the ones that make all of this possible. So if you started this project five years ago, how old were you when you started working on the go? I was 17. I think when we first started talking about it, I was a junior in high school. Yeah, I've just graduated. I tell me tell me what Mad Max means to you. Oh, I Can't believe they haven't made a theme like this in the past when we when we made a film option We just do a backpack Okay, I mean Fury Road is like There's not a lot of talking but every word they say is a perfect call out We used every inch of the movie, just all of it. Yeah, it's one of my all-time faves. I'm Australian, grew up with Mad Max. I never thought they were going to make another Mad Max. When they came out with Fury Road, it just blew my mind how good it was. A lot of physical effects. They didn't use a lot of CGI, did they? And it's had a big line here all day, a lot of people playing it. Yeah, people are loving it. It's been a blast. This is all worth it. This is all worth it. Is this your first pinball show? Yeah, this is the first time it's left the garage. Yeah, five years it's been sitting in the garage. We finally signed up for a show, and thank goodness we did, because it could have gone on for another five years. Well, it's been getting a great buzz around the floor, lots of people talking about it. I think you guys have done a fantastic job. Oh, thank you. It was a lot of fun making it. All right. All right, thanks. Appreciate it. Great game. We've got Tony Hawk here. This one debuted, no not here, at Expo, right? Yes, on short at Expo. If you watch our show you know about it because I'm always talking about it. We got Nick and Wes who did the code, or a lot of the code on the game. Where's he at? Yeah. Did he disappear? Come on over here, Nick. No, I don't know where Wes went. Where did he go? He'll likely be by all the cities. You've been working on this bad boy a little bit, right? Yeah, yeah, I've been working on it a little bit. What, since Expo? Oh, what's new? Some stuff. I can show you. Do you want to see it? Well, so basically when the ball would come off of the half pipe, when we grind over the half pipe, it just kind of would dump it by that spinner mech that I designed. So I made a wire form feed the right ramp, and then other than that I put those, what's the name of those flippers I bought today? Precision. Precision flippers, yes. Real-time upgrades. Real-time upgrades here at the show. I couldn't remember whether they were on Expo or not. No. They're just for this show then. I did the dumbest thing you could do, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I fixed it when it wasn't broken. So the game was down for a little bit because I had to install those. But other than that, everything went off without a hitch. And then I put the, it's a see-through one. So you can see that light shine through that insert when you've got to hold up the flipper for the, yeah. And then I also got my gallon because when you're talking all day. It comes prepared. Who do we have here? Okay, so this is Wes. This is my buddy who coded the game. So introduce yourself. My name is Wes. I live in Maine. I coded everything, basically, over Discord. Long nights, lots of Code Zero. Yeah, this is actually the first time I got to play it in the entire time coding it. Oh my god. So is coding your profession? Are you a code of my trade? No, not really. It was just, he was kind of moving on, and I was like, you need to get kind of moving. and he's like, no, it's good, it's good. I was like, no, I'm going to just go ahead and start for you. So I kind of shoehorned myself in there and I said, oh, this is what we're going to do now. Obviously I appreciated it. And have you played it in person before or is this the first time? This is the first time. Any feelings on your work? Are you seeing things you wish were different? You know, I'm really happy with everything. I wish I would have taken a little bit more time with the light shows. I think that needs to happen a little bit more. I wish I could have put in the multiball, obviously. because we had an idea for a multiball. A lot of people have been asking for multiplayer. So kind of wish that was in there a little bit. But, I mean, it flips great. It's a strong flipper, very fast. I mean, he did a great job designing everything. His CAD work was really great. So it actually feels like the original PlayStation version where you played it for 30 minutes. You're like, I can go skate ramps and do all that stuff. That's kind of the way you feel with this. It's the same thing. It's like, oh, yeah, I can go skate right now. Very cool. So anybody going to get a chance to play this anywhere else this year, or is this kind of the end of the road for you for a bit? I don't know. Wherever the road takes us next, I mean, wherever we can get time off from work, I mean. Are you going to give me any time off? I love that you're always representing. Yeah. Well, he did tell me that this was the last big change. Not that I care, but you're not probably putting too much more time into it, right? No, I mean, the thing is, when you make something like this, you could change it a hundred times and not be happy. So, like, I am happy with it, but it's one of those things where you just got to learn to move on. We've already started planning our next game. We've got some really, really amazing tech in there that has never been done in the pinball industry before, and we feel it's long overdue. So we've got some cool stuff coming. You working on that one, Wes? Oh, yeah. I'll be coding that one with them, doing a little bit of the graphic design. But other than that, I mean, he's right. It's something that we haven't really seen before. And he was even on the fence about taking it out and doing something different. I was like, no, this has to stay. Nice, nice. Well, guys, thanks for the time. It was very cool. Congrats, Wes. Great game. I'll see you at work. Yeah, yeah. Sounds good. All right. Guys, we're moving on to what? What do you want to hit next? I don't know. I think that might be the end of the show. We got lots of cameras going on. We're not the only cameras on the floor. How's it going? Are you going to get some good stuff? Absolutely. Yeah, and what are you seeing that you like? I'm wanting to play this homebrew, so just setting it up right now. We've got a bunch of homebrews here. It's great to see this keep going. We've got Fast over here. Thank you for sharing. Take care. Good luck. All right, moving on. Yeah, I mean, if we could find... Farm was hanging about. We could always get him off. Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't see him over there, but Fast is... I haven't seen him on the floor. Usually he's sort of hanging around. Fast is the board set that a lot of these games are based on, So they really helping to promote this beast and it it it a it great to see new stuff Yeah Matt Max is amazing I couldn hear much the the interview Did you say anything interesting No I had the same problem with Turner earlier I was like I can hear a word he saying I like their directing, their voice directly. Actually, it's hard to hear. I guess I'll listen to it earlier. We don't need to recap our own show here. We'll get it off the mind. Yeah, yeah. Okay, did you have any other spots in mind or should we kind of work our way this way? No, no, yeah, let's walk over this way. We'll go past, because we've got barrels of fun over here again and we'll walk past yeah yeah Barrels has got their labyrinth we talked to David earlier a lot of cool you play anything kind of unique or you haven't seen in a while on the floor one thing I was let me think I mean we played Diner out the front didn't we we did we put some serious time in Diner I tried to get you guys to love Diner as much as I love Diner but it really didn't work did it yeah yeah it was I don't know you weren't doing too well so it wasn't very inspiring that was a big part of it Interestingly, where Dinah was, was across the desk from you. We can probably show it as we walk past, because we need to end up there anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the text that they had on that was essentially like a score bit. Yeah, and I'd never heard of those guys before. Yeah, and somebody was explaining it to me. Essentially, it's like an NVRAM sort of setup where you can save the configuration of your game and then pull it up on a computer, and then it'll just be files. So for tournament operators, they can very easily switch the configuration of the game from tournament mode to non-tournament mode for these old tiles like Dino or WC stuff. Yeah, well, I can't remember what was that called. Do you recall? Maybe we'll hit it up on the way out. I can't remember either. Hey, Jimmy, you want to tell us about your goods? What's going on? I see a lot of color popping out over here. Where's all this color coming from? crazy yeah so here at the TPF we're testing out our brand new pin lights froze which are fully RGB customizable programmable everything and we're making sure they hold up to the rigor of shows that being run 24 7 and then we hope to have those on sale in April so yeah we're testing them out here oh boy you got the fancy glass in there for me 32 yeah we got the pink glass plus they're selling it here at the show looks great how's it all performing what's that How's everything performing? Everything's performing okay. You can't quite cook eggs or anything off of it. It's not getting that hot, so we're just right. It's okay. It's going to be all right. Yeah, guys, we're having a blast. Y'all having fun? Yeah, definitely, man. I'm losing my voice, but I'm fine. Me too. Me too. I'm going to get up tomorrow and sound like Barry Manilow or something. When not? So with the Pideline Pros, when do they go on sale? When do they hit the shelves? Shit, hopefully by the end of April. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Cool, man. Yeah, light bars are already made. We're just waiting on the controllers. Yeah. So, yeah. They look great, man. I think that this is a product that people have been wanting at the price point you're offering for a long time. It's great to hear that they're doing so well. That's the hope. That's the hope. This one, we're going to try to sell every set with a sensible set of default settings so you can drop it into your game. It'll do what you want. It'll look beautiful. But if you want to go off the deep end, we'll give you enough rope. And you've written your own app, haven't you, that controls everything from your phone? Yep. It's all controlled on the app, and you can set rules and priorities. You can have four inputs on our board, but you can extend that up to 32. I have no idea why you would want to do that, but yeah. So it's fully extendable and customizable with however crazy you want to get. Yeah. Why crazy? That's the idea. That's the idea. It's whimsical. Jimmy, thanks, man. We're loving it. Thank you all very much. Have fun. All right, cool. Moving on. Lots of hot takes going on here. Let's get a little quick preview of Brad's booth. So Brad did the artwork on Portal. Shout out to Brad on his first playing field. Come over here. This is Brad's girlfriend, I believe. Hi, Aline Allen. Aline. Nice to meet you. Can you tell us about what it's like been working with this guy who's been doing way too many projects at once? He's obsessive in the best way possible. He's a genius. and he's very thoughtful. That's a way nicer characterization than I just gave him. No, you know, Brad's wonderful. He is, he is. He says everything. Well, we did a little tour of Portal. Had you seen it in person before today? Not in person, no. No. Are you very proud? Yeah. I don't want to, like, have an emotion on the, yeah. Wow, okay. We're taking this show to another level. What's that? What's that? Her cool down for a second. No, so Brad did Motorhead that was right here last year, right? Which is fantastic. And that was kind of his first foray. Fantastic design. Yeah, and it's such so well done. You guys were selling the Motorhead fist too, weren't you? Yes, we have the 3D printed Motorhead fist. I love that fist. As well as a few shirts left. A few shirts left. Did you guys do a poster this year for TPM? We do. We have the Rosie the Riveter poster inspired. Americana slash you know, Persists very of this time. Nice. Alright, well, we might find him later. I'm sure he's out there talking. Out there doing the signing. Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. Alright, moving on, moving on. I'm back again. Brian, well, we saw you playing in Merlin's and we thought we might catch you there. Yeah, we had you to go fast enough. Yeah, yeah. So, you got, what, four or five games here? I did a factory tour recently. You had literally like 15 of those bad boys lined up. Yeah, we have them immediately available to ship. Not intimate, but intimate. We'll go back to that again. Yes, I love it. I love a factory tour. So you can sell a lot of toppers? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had to reorder the toppers. So what we did in the beginning is we thought we had no metrics because we were new. So we said, well, how many? Well, we'll do 500. but we'll pre-sell them because we had a chance to change the manufacturing quantity. So it didn't blow out. So we were like, well, 500 should be good. And then just later on, no, we ran out. We have to order more. It was very popular. Yeah, very, very good. Unfortunately, on game two, the topper will be a little further away than when we first started. We won't be able to show it yet, but there will be one coming, too. And we've got some additional accessories for game two we did not have for game one. Oh, that's exciting. Yep. alright well David thanks again man hope you've had a great show and we'll catch you next time alright well come by and see us again not today next time but next time next time alright alright moving on what else we got you got anything in your head that we've seen no well you know I wanted to go and check out I don't know if you've heard of the electric playground yeah I have I have you've heard of those guys I have look at this look at this Brian this is Brian Allen's artwork yeah this thing is amazing have you seen this in person yet no I haven't actually And you're a bride guy, right? I love bride, yeah. I've got one at home. It's a waiting restoration. It's incredible. Which, like most brides, it's very tired. But I've got all the bits. I mean, that's beautiful, isn't it? Let's check out Medieval and Kansas Canyon real quick, and then we'll head out. Okay, well, you walk over there. I'm going to take some B-roll of bride. Okay, cool. All right. So, yeah, so we've got the Medieval Madness Merlin Edition. here at the show, as well as Cactus Canyon's upgrade. Let's go and check that out. Woo! We just magically transported to this spot. It feels great. It feels great. The other big release for the show. Yeah, Medieval Royal Edition, which is a blue paint job. A blue paint job, essentially, yeah. I mean, look, CGC have been promising this game for years. Really? Yeah. I got hit up from Zach Many with Flip N Out Pinball, and I had been on his wait list for like two years. He was like, hey, I'm contacting you for like two years ago, and bad timing, but it's like, geez. Well, I picked up one of the previous remasters quite recently. Okay. But I definitely would have been in on this at this time had I not picked that one up. Right, right. I mean, I think many people have had to escape, and everybody needs to own one. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the biggest game of the last era. You know, like Godzilla's probably the biggest game of this era. Medieval Madness is the biggest game of the 90s. Yeah, yeah. It was always my favorite before I got it. I loved owning it and I wanted it again. But it's like, it's relatively simple, more complex than Attack, though, and it's got enough depth to really keep you into it. Yeah. I'll be curious to see what this does with all the other versions, right? Yeah, I know. I mean, if you're an owner of one of the previous versions, it's always a little bit irritating. But at the same time, because they only did a little bit of a difference, like the blacked out one maybe, it's better. Usually this is the better one, but it's just blue. It's just blue, man. It's just blue. But that's less interesting than what they did with Cactus Canyon. Kind of a first of its kind. This is a mod with modes like, I can't recall in recent memory when something like this has come out. It's $1,250, so it's expensive. But it does come with a lot, apparently. I played it and I couldn't see much myself. Is it here? It is here, it's installed, we'll get a little bit of a clip, but it's basically a feature that sits in front of the cowboy, there's a spinner that sits under it, it's got some lights in front of it, and then apparently it activates a bunch of modes too. Wow, yeah, I remember something you mentioned again, but I wasn't aware of what I was doing, but we'll go and take some footage of it in a sec. Yeah, well it's delivering on a long held promise amongst some people who developed some code, including Lyman, I think that never came to life. As an owner of the game, I mean it's a pretty major package upgrade from the code perspective it sounds like. And you know, like we've seen modes released with toppers before haven't we? But we've never seen modes released with playfield mods. Right, right, yeah, yeah. So that's pretty exciting. Yeah. And it's a spinner too, so it's actually a functional mod. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, the jury's out for me on whether I'd be happy about it as an owner, because $1200 to get mainly modes, like it's not a big thing. I can't really tell how impactful it is, whereas a topper is a big thing. Yeah. You know, so that'll be interesting to see, but it's good that they're getting this stuff out. Yeah. Sure, yeah. All right, man. Cool. Well, let's move on. Okay, let's do it. Cut out these doors over here. Yeah, so we can sneak through. We're going to end out in the hallway. We've got the wormhole booth. They've got some really cool titles. We'll give you guys a good look at that. Yeah, let's do it. Oh, my gosh, my ears. It's like, you can probably hear us better now. It's a lot quieter out here. Yeah, except we'll probably just be shouting. Right around the corner. Yeah, the Wormhole booth. I've got a very interesting... Yeah, so the Wormhole is based in Houston, a couple hours from here. And they've got a really eclectic group of titles in their place. They've brought Alvin G's football. So this is a two-player game. One of the things I really like about this one is that you can actually play as a one-player. Did you see this? No. So if you look closely, on the top of the flippers are these metal bars, and those actually sense the ball. So if you're playing one player, it'll flip itself, and the way that it does that is it's sensing, I guess, the electromagnetic sensor there, so you can play yourself. They've got a couple of games from super rare manufacturers. They've got a Geiger machine. Hey, John, who's the manufacturer on this one? Technoplay. What is it? Technoplay. Technoplay. So they've got large collections of these pretty rare manufacturers, and they bring these titles with them to the show. So thanks to Jamie, Christine, and Tim and everybody for having us. All right, man, you want to finish this thing off? Yeah, well, look where we've ended up. It's so much like we planned it this way. The timing is beautiful. Yeah, so we've got our Pulp Fiction topper going here. Thank you again to Wormhole for bringing that for us to check out. Feedback's been fantastic both online and here. What do you think of it, Dave? You saw it for the first time. It's beautiful, yeah. I mean, you know, you've been showing me sort of teasers over the last few months. Yeah, of course, of course. But I didn't see the finished product until recently, until you sent me the final release video just to give it the final once-over before you published it. And, you know, it was really impressive stuff, man. I think you've done a fantastic job with it. It's new things that have never been done before. You know, you've got the optos sort of registering when the balls go past, then trigger sound effects through the mod. It's got speakers on the side, on the topper. You know the game. You know the time, bro. I love it. You know, you got me thinking. It's like I send you a lot of stuff, and I don't really feel the reciprocation of teasers coming from your end. Do you really think this is the time and the place to start going into footage? Guys, thank you so much for hanging out with us. I love that you come over here every year. I hope you keep it up. Yeah, I love it, man. I mean, it's a great chance. He wants to be a part of this. Come on, Ali. Come over and say hello, man. Get over here. Did you hear what I was saying? I was telling Davey, I send him all these teasers, and I just don't get the teasers back for him. I'm not seeing all of it. I hear there's a little something in the Mothra building space that you might want to talk about. Who's been telling you that? That's maybe the potential way to do it. Possibly, yeah. I don't know. I'm going to finish with Godzilla for now, just because there's plenty of other stuff that needs working on. But, yeah, possibly we'll come back and revisit that Mothra space sometime in the future. Davey was talking up our topper what do you have to say about his work and your Godzilla I've said this to multiple people it's a testament to what you've done you've changed an entire game if you try to sell Godzilla today and it doesn't have your parts good luck thanks man I don't know how true it is but I do appreciate it there's been at least 5 people at our booth today have been saying they're putting your kids through college and we all are upside down on our Godzilla's thanks to you so thanks yeah well done I'm to please very good alright signing off for real this time thank you everybody see you next time thanks guys
  • Merlin's Arcade features a 'finesse flipper' innovation allowing micro-flips via a dedicated button, an idea that Jon Norris has been trying to get other manufacturers to adopt

    high confidence · Turner: 'the finesse flip was actually a Jon Jon Norris invention... he's trying to get other manufacturers to put this in their games. And I guess no one wanted to do it.'

  • Portal has 23 other games available in the Multimorphic store, accessible through the modular P3 platform

    high confidence · Stephen Cameron Silver: 'if you buy this, you can definitely buy this as a standalone Portal game... you have access to 23 other games that are in the store'

  • Neil McRae may be acquiring the first Multimorphic P3 machine in the UK market

    medium confidence · Hosts state: 'He might even be getting a unit over to the UK. And I would be the first Multimorphic P3 to get over to the UK.'

  • Turner Pinball@ 23:01 — Surprise announcement strategy; tight production timeline created risk of no-show

  • “I've credited all the artists that worked on this from Deep Root Pinball... I think giving those people credit for all the hard work they put in, it makes them feel like it was worthwhile, and I think that's really important.”

    Turner Pinball@ 24:49 — Demonstrates respect for Deep Root legacy and personnel while completing acquisition; community sentiment management

  • “You touch the finesse button, and it gives like a little microflip... it's just so crazy. Once I tried it, I was like, we have to put it in the game.”

    Turner Pinball@ 26:14 — Innovation adoption story; personal playtesting validation driving feature inclusion

  • “Save your dollars... looking forward to the next one.”

    Bug (Spooky Pinball)@ 21:30 — Teases next Spooky game announcement pending sellout completion; FOMO generation strategy

  • “I mean, Evil Dead is just fantastic... everybody's really positive about it.”

    Davey (In Before the Lock host)@ 2:04 — Captures immediate market reception of Evil Dead as strong positive sentiment early in event

  • Portal
    game
    Stephen Cameron Silverperson
    Barrels of Funcompany
    Brian Savageperson
    Labyrinthgame
    Turner Pinballcompany
    Merlin's Arcadegame
    Ninja Eclipsegame
    Jon Norrisperson
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    Christopher Franchiperson
    Pinball Star Amusementscompany
    Neil McRaeperson
    Damon Dick Whiteperson
    Back Alley Creationscompany
    Brad Dukeperson
    Pinball on the Beachevent
    Project Pinballorganization

    high · Christopher Franchi: 'they put it into Universal for approvals... because it was artwork, they had to get it approved by each actor. It became a pain in the butt, and they decided they didn't want to do it'

  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball Evil Dead completely sold out remaining inventory (25 units) at TPF 2025 to single distributor, indicating strong demand and production constraint

    high · Bug: 'Pinball Star Amusements, showed up and they bought the last 25. So if you want an Evil Dead, you gotta go there.' Hosts confirm 'went to one distro.'

  • ?

    announcement: Turner Pinball surprise revealed Merlin's Arcade at TPF 2025 without prior announcement, completing Deep Root Pinball IP acquisition with original designer Jon Norris returning

    high · Turner: 'Merlin's Arcade. I think there's about eight games coming out... this one is the eighth, which no one really knew about... I didn't tell anyone because I didn't know if we were going to make it.'

  • ?

    announcement: Barrels of Fun announcing new game imminently (within weeks) using strategy of announcement only when machines are physically ready to ship, contrasting with industry norm

    high · Brian Savage: 'the thing that we do is we do not announce machines until they are in the box ready to ship... imminent. Imminent... Like weeks?... imminent'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic P3 platform distinguished by third-party developer SDK enabling niche games (birdwatching, basketball, dungeon defender) impossible to pitch to traditional manufacturers

    high · Stephen Cameron Silver: 'You couldn't go to a manufacturer and say, I got this idea for this kooky idea... But this exists... you could not have appear in the pinball market on any other platform'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Turner Pinball expects Ninja Eclipse shipping completion by early summer 2025, with Merlin's Arcade parts arriving and production starting for summer 2025 delivery

    medium · Turner: 'I anticipate probably early summer time frame is when we'll probably finish Ninja Eclipse... We're starting to get parts in for Merlin's now... summer time expected'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Portal receiving unexpectedly strong market reception despite being available on existing P3 platform; described by competitors as Multimorphic's best title and generating high booth traffic

    high · Brian Savage: 'I think it's probably the best title that they've done so far' and Stephen Cameron Silver: 'The area's been buzzing all day, yesterday too. It's been packed... lines are three or four people deep'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Merlin's Arcade introducing finesse flipper as innovative control mechanic, previously attempted unsuccessfully with dual-button layout but now refined into single dedicated button for micro-flips

    high · Turner: 'You touch the finesse button, and it gives like a little microflip... once I tried it, I was like, we have to put it in the game'