DPP #85 "New game preview episode!"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·24m 12s·analyzed·Dec 2, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Stern teases Jaws reveal; Spooky game announcement imminent; BKSOR topper rerun confirmed.

Summary

Don discusses major pinball news including code updates for Batman 66 and Black Knight Sword of Rage (with new topper integrations), strong rumors about an imminent Jaws reveal with production in January featuring an Orca upper playfield, Stern's production delays on Stranger Things premiums, and emerging speculation on Spooky Pinball's next game based on community analysis of prototype parts suggesting possible saw blade mechanics.

Key Claims

Jaws pinball will feature a single-level playfield with an Orca (ship from film) as mini upper playfield, accessible via Vuck, with four flippers total (two bottom, one midfield, one upper)
high confidence · Don citing multiple consistent rumors from different sources converging on same details
Stern will reveal Jaws and begin production in January after factory holiday shutdown
medium confidence · Don states 'rumor has been' and 'I think we might see a reveal this month' based on multiple sources gathering together
Black Knight Sword of Rage topper is being rerun at $1,500 (down from $3,000), with new speech integrations and topper synchronizations added in recent code update
high confidence · Don reports he was already invoiced for the topper
Black Knight Sword of Rage has extremely limited secondary market availability with no Pro models currently listed on Pinside despite consistent checking
high confidence · Don states he checks Pinside 'every other day' and contrasts with Foo Fighters availability
Stranger Things premium production is delayed, rumored to start week before factory holiday shutdown (possibly Monday) with shipping two weeks after
medium confidence · Don cites rumors of parts delays (possibly projectors or magnets) and distributor contacts indicating timeline
Spooky Pinball's next game announcement is expected 'next week' with strengthened rumors emerging in last 24-48 hours
medium confidence · Nap Arcade posted rumor; Don notes it has been floating but recently strengthened
Jaws Premium will feature black glossy powder coat armor with angulated rails; LE will have polar white powder coating with aqua-colored playfield
low confidence · Don presents as rumor with caveat 'I hope they don't mean just the regular crinkle' and notes no confirmation on Special LE
Elvis Presley pinball (Blood Red Kiss of Elvira) LE runs 500 units at $12,999 MSRP and are still available from distributors though probably sold through

Notable Quotes

“either nobody wants this game or this game doesn't exist in large numbers because there are none for sale. And when they do pop up for sale, they sell pretty quick.”
Don @ ~7:00 — Identifies potential strong secondary market demand/scarcity for BKSOR despite low initial sales; hints at potential rerun justification
“I could see that as being a cool upgrade go get you know some some white powder coat with some red blotched blood prints on it i think that would pop uh quite well”
Don @ ~15:30 — Speculating on design aesthetic for Jaws LE cosmetics combining water/ocean theme with blood spill visual
“My wallet, man, it'd be straining under the pressures that the game companies are putting on it.”
Don @ ~11:00 — Commentary on market pricing pressure and consumer affordability concerns
“I could see a world in which there's balls that are locked representing heads of humans and a saw blade that cuts them off and blood splatter splattering screams and then multi-ball mayhem ensues”
Don @ ~38:00 — Speculating on Spooky's next game mechanics based on prototype part analysis; suggests horror theme with chainsaw/saw blade element
“Nap released another post on his site saying there's a strong rumor that we're going to know Spooky's game soon. Like we're going to know Spooky's game like next week”
Don @ ~33:30 — Direct attribution of Spooky announcement timeline to Nap Arcade's recent post

Entities

DonpersonStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyNap Arcadeperson|organizationMad Pinballcompany Barrels of Funcompany Jersey Jack Pinballcompany American Pinballcompany

Signals

?
business_signal: Industry pricing model showing unsustainability concerns with games at $12,999+ and custom toppers at $1,500-$2,500 creating wallet strain for collectors
medium · Don states 'My wallet, man, it'd be straining under the pressures that the game companies are putting on it'; contrasts official toppers ($1,500-$2,500) with aftermarket alternatives ($200)
?
community_signal: Don planning poll on rumored upcoming games to gauge community expectations on Jaws, Spooky, Fifth Element, Food Truck, Princess Bride, and others
low · Don announces intent to post poll later in episode; lists games including confirmed rumors and speculation as poll options
?
design_philosophy: Jaws rumored cosmetic specifications vary by trim level: LE with polar white powder coat and aqua playfield vs. Premium with black glossy powder coat and angulated rails
low · Don presents as rumors with hedging language ('I hope they don't mean just the regular crinkle'); notes no confirmation for Special LE variant
?
leak_detection: Spooky prototype parts being analyzed by community members (Nap, Jason Knapp, Don) with speculation on saw blade mechanism and multi-ball locking based on part geometry
medium · Multiple prototype parts distributed; community drawing ball pathways and discussing receiving trenches and linear slots; Don speculates chainsaw/saw mechanism but acknowledges uncertainty on theme
$
market_signal: Black Knight Sword of Rage showing extreme secondary market scarcity despite reportedly weak initial sales, with no Pros listed and high pricing for Premiums/LEs ($8,500-$12,000 range)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.073

0:00

sliding in a new month here it's december here with don's pinball podcast we're episode number 85 and there's been a slew of news to catch up on even going into the weekend it seems man not a dull moment goes by in this hobby and we're going to talk about some new pinball and some amazing rumors let's go This update is brought to you by the gently flowing fountain right off the balcony at Disney's Boardwalk Inn and Resort, adjacent to Epcot and the current hangout and recording balcony for this episode of Not-So-Pinball Podcast. What's up? Shout out to all the Epcotters out there, Epcotians. What do you call those people? That's right, alcoholics. Moving into the week, we got a code update from Stern Pinball. Now, I thought there was a deluge of code updates just recently, so this must have been for the few stragglers that we had, namely among them, Badman66. So I guess it was left out from the prior code update. I haven't seen if there's any, you know, demonstrably game-changing code that was released, but probably just putting that ad in there on the splash page. That plays unless you're one of those people that go in there and disable it. But also attached to that was an update for Black Knight Sword of Rage, another Spike 2 game that seemingly was left out of the recent updates, so playing catch-up as well. But I did notice with this one it was listed, dear listener, that they also added some new speech integrations, which I'm super hype about, and also some topper integrations. I don't know if it was topper lighting or movements or whatnot, maybe synchronizations with the new speech. But, like, let me talk about that for just a second. I've recently come to become a little bit hype on Black Knight Sword of Rage. A game that's been out forever, and, you know, it's a brutally playing game when I play it on location. Most locations have the pros. the the play upper play field on the the premium and le is fun when i've been able to play it but recently my my interest in here for this game has been peaked for really two reasons um number one of course that three thousand dollar topper is now being rerun again for fifteen hundred dollars so yeah shout out to my wallet they're saving some money if i did actually want to get this thing uh but also my growing bro friendship with mr steve ritchie now he doesn't know who the heck i am at all but i did meet him at expo and got to talk to him uh around the release of his Elton John game. And he seemed a very personable dude. And I have a history with the man's voice, not the man himself, but his voice with him voicing characters from the Mortal Kombat game, which, you know, I remember being 14 years old, just dumping quarters into the local quickie mart and playing this thing over and over. Dude was the voice of Shao Kahn from what I've been able to gather. And so like, you know, I love that. And the fact that when you play Black Knight Sword of Rage, and you can actually hear the call-outs and the taunts, it's his voice that's taunting me and berating me. Yes, Mr. Flail Daddy, I want more abuse. Yes, sir, take my quarters. And like, that is what I want to recreate and optimize in a game room of my own. So this game has really kind of warmed up to me over the last few weeks and months to the point that I want to get one of these things. Also, you know, naive me, I'm thinking, well, this is a game that's been out since, what, 2019 or some such. I'm going to be able to pick this thing up for five grand, probably 5,500 for a premium brand new, hardly played, whatever. It's probably even more than MSRP when it came out. That should be no problem, right? Right? You know, until you go to Pinside and take a look. There was a pro listed there briefly a few weeks ago. Boom, that thing sold. I think it was in the $6,000 range, but boom, it was on and gone. And since then, I've been checking every other day, you know, any new pros popping up there that I could maybe, you know, get my squeeze in on, you know what I'm saying? Nothing. Nada. Foo Fighters, 37 or something are listed for sale. You go over to Black Knight Sword of Rage, there are none. And people keep getting at me because I'm like, dude, I kind of think if I was Stern and I was seeing this limited availability for this game, I'd probably consider another run on this, right? And they're like, Don, this thing didn't sell very well when it came out. Nobody wants this game. Well, you know, either nobody wants this game or this game doesn't exist in large numbers because there are none for sale. And when they do pop up for sale, they sell pretty quick. The pros, especially. There's a handful of premiums, a handful of LEs, 3 and 3 or 3 and 4, something like that, they bounce around. They're going from anywhere from like $8,500 for a location-played game up to like $12,000 with all bells and whistles, home use only, and just running the gamut in there. I'm not seeing those move, and that may be because the hype is really based around the pro for this game. The upper play field blocks a huge part of the game. it doesn't seem to add anything terribly satisfying gameplay wise I mean it's fun to play this fast and brutal single level version of the pro version of the game I'm still kind of warming up to the upper play field I mean you know folks that have it say it's fun when I've played it I've had fun up there but it is a little difficult you know not being able to see the rest of the play field so this is one that I think I'd be just as happy on a premium le as I would on a pro and right now I'm really just searching for a pro maybe I'll switch to a premium le at some point but I'm still on the lookout for a pro man if you got one of these kicking around your game room and like you're not getting a lot of play on it and you wouldn't mind talking about a swap deal with a foo fighters premium or the best looking venom pro or premium that exists you know get at me because i i would be interested in getting one of these i am so hype on getting one of these that i actually went in and got myself a black knight sort of rage topper further cementing myself into that venn diagram of people that own toppers for games they don't actually own i think them up to two now i got well no no actually currently in all honestly um that be three so black knight sword of rage will be the third one i have a stranger things topper i don currently have a Stranger Things but I have a premium on order So you know whatever And I did buy the Sparky Malmberg Metal 007 topper just because I like the look of the silhouetted Bond girls with Bond back there And then the rifled barrel behind them. You know what I mean? I got it mounted on a 2x6, and I got it kicking around my game room. I move it around from counter to counter. I just like the look of the thing, man. Come on. Don't get at me.

6:26

I like his other toppers. so shout out to Sparky. I had his Godzilla. I had his Foo Fighters. Those both went with the games. And then I've got the Foo Fighters one right now, which I'm digging. And then, oh, I got his Venom, dude. His Venom looks great. So Venom is a game without a topper. If you want to get something on there until there's an official topper release, or even if you don't want to spend the $1,500 to $2,500 that that Venom topper is going to cost you, go ahead and check out Sparky on Pinside. They're under $200. They're cut out of metal. They're dimensional. They look pretty good. I dig them. I don't know. maybe he'll get you some free shipping if you mention me maybe not i don't know we don't have anything official but i dig these things i own the venom i love the look of the black and white the red tongue on the venom it looks dope um but yeah so where are we at with black knight sword of rage there was a huge code update uh with topper integration and voice call outs and the remake of the toppers for sure i got invoiced for it already so those should be shipping out sometime soon i would think um but where's the rerun of the game stern's gonna be tight-lipped about this if they do it which i think they will it's probably going to be one of those things like you know maybe later today uh they'll they'll send out a distro letter and say black knight sword of rage is going to be remade in limited uh runs they'll be pros now they'll be premiums in three months you know you'll get your allotment soon blah blah blah like they do like that could happen today even it could happen never just as well but i kind of think that at least you know filling a week on the line one of the lines with stern with black knight sword of rage i think would be, I think it'd be something worth doing. I think they could sell a week's worth of game builds, you know, to, you know, put them out there in the industry, especially the pros, man, they got to rerun these pros. If they do, I would seriously consider one. But my wallet, man, it'd be straining under the pressures that the game companies are putting on it. We've got a Factory Friday video from Stern this week, showing that final run of Guardians of the Galaxy pros that they've been running. So if you want that Groot head, you want that single magnet under the play field there they are they're probably already sold out and then this game will it be run again at this point who knows but no plans on in the future i wouldn't see this game being run at all again this year if ever i'm favoring never um this list is probably going to be it for that i would like the redo black knight though man come on um so what else did we get uh we'll stick with stern here because there was another huge rumor drop for jaws um and a lot of this is confirming other rumors I've heard from other people. It's just they're all now gathering together. To the point that I think we might see a reveal this month, the rumor has been, and this has been kind of coming up more and more from different sources, that we're going to get a game reveal this month from Stern with production sometime in January. That matches. They're going to shut the factory down for a couple of weeks for the holidays, for inventory, for retooling, for whatever it is. Maybe they're going to get that second line or that third line up and running that they showed us at the tour at Expo. So here's the rundown on Jaws, right? I guess what we're getting is mainly a single-level play field with an orca, which is the ship from the film, as a little mini upper play field. Sounds like there's going to be a Vuck that kicks the ball up there, and then there will be a mini flipper up there. Four flipper game is what we're hearing. Two at the bottom, very traditionally. One upper play field shot, and then one up at the mini upper play field. That all makes sense. There was early this rumor that there was going to be a third flipper down at the bottom that was going to function like a shark mouth or something crazy like that. Maybe that was a preliminary idea that just kind of gained traction. Maybe that was an idea for another game that got cross-pollinated and eliminated. Who knows? But I like the idea of keeping the two flippers at the bottom, the midfield flipper that we like, and then who doesn't like a nice upper playfield flipper? Now, nothing about the rumors that were released. I'll get to the rest of them here in a minute. We're stating that this is going to be across all trim levels. So is the Orca upper playfield just a premium LE option and absent from the other one, I could see that happening for sure. That would be an easy kind of mechanistic thing to remove. And maybe the Vuck just stays and serves a wire form or something or fits into one of the wire forms where the balls would roll off the upper play field. I hear there's two wire forms for it to roll off into. And so the Vuck could hit it up into one of those, one or both of those with a diverter. What else did we hear? We heard that there's going to be a single barrel bash toy. We heard there's going to be a shark bash toy. um you know there's questions on if the ship's going to go up and down if the barrel's going to go up and down if the shark definitely if anything should be going up and down um we're going to be seeing a uh you know aqua colored play field this was interesting uh for the le they said you know no rumored confirmation for sle at this point but with an anniversary down the road i'm sure that's going to happen um but i like the idea of kind of like a polar white powder coating on the le i think that goes well with like the crest of the wave like the froth of it coming over. It matches the color scheme with Jaws just fine. So I could see, you know, giant shark graphics on either side, one with legs dangling in the water, one with a shark head on, that all seems to check out. And, you know, white powder coating would fit that really nice being like kind of at the crest of the water. But then the interesting thing I'd heard is about the premium that there would be a black powder coat. And I don't think they mean, I hope they don't mean just the regular crinkle, you know, factory coat that comes with it, but actual like a glossy black. And also it's going to have the angulated rails on the side. So when you go to buy side armor rails, right, you've got the traditional ones that come with sterns. All they do is run down, you know, the top edge there. They don't protect the button at all. So like hand smudges can get on there. And then you got your classic lollipop rails where the metal comes down to kind of cover the button functions as a button surround. It's going to keep those fingerprints off of it But then there like a sleeker angled look that I really digging I used lollipops before but since then I switched these angles because I like the geometry better of that look while still having that functionality of protecting the button surround from smudges and tearing up the art slap saves and whatnot People's rings don't ding up the art is the other bonus that you get there. These are the ones that came with Godzilla LE and the James Bond LE, if you want to look at that. I like for the LEs to have some little laser cut embellishments. um you know seems like kind of a cheaper cop out to go this way uh pinball life sells these things i've been buying them and powder coating them when i refurb and redo my own games um so i'm digging that i like the idea the premiums come with something even a little bit better uh than the the pros do especially with the you know that kind of cost upgrade that build of materials can't be adding a whole lot because i think i get a set for about 60 bucks so um you know that's not like an outrageous you know upcharge so i don't know i kind of like the look of a jaws with the black glossy armor. I did black glossy powder coat on my Star Wars. I think that kicks, you know, but that's taking place in space, right? It's not taking place down in the ocean. So the way I see this working is if the cabinet art, and again, you know, the rumors of the cabinet art that we got doesn't say if this is pro-premium LE, what's going to happen. But if we're getting, you know, black powder coated armor, I could see that working with just kind of like the movie poster of Jaws as a cabinet art. If the shark is there and the legs of the people, I really like it to be a white or an aqua so it fits in with the ocean theme uh but we'll see will there be blood spill at her or not uh that remains to be seen but i could see that as being a cool upgrade go get you know some some white powder coat with some red blotched blood prints on it i think that would pop uh quite well so what do you do if you want to get yourself a jaws well head over to the purveyors of the current fresh pinball podcast available on spotify it's jeff and the gang for Mad Pinball. You know these guys.

14:44

Do you like robot voices at the end of your pinball jingles? Email Jeff at MadPinball and tell him you want to hear more of that. I want to get a remix of this. Can somebody like with some turntable skills, Give me a little something on the ones and twos there. So the other thing we saw with the Friday Factory video from Stern, you know, running their Guardians of the Galaxies, the thing we did see was a thing we didn't see. We didn't see any of these Stranger Things premiums that are supposed to be run. We were initially led to believe, probably mainly through me and other people that speculate with really no real reason to be doing so, that these were going to be run towards the end of November. Now, the pros were run earlier in November, but we still haven't seen any premiums either leave the factory or be bolted together from the factory floor. So when is that happening? I've heard rumors of a parts delay holding things up. I don't know if this would be with the projectors or something with the magnets. Regardless, apparently they're supposed to be run pretty soon, actually, like maybe this next week, like maybe starting Monday right before the factory shut down for two weeks that they have coming up. I've heard people contacted by distributors telling them that it'll be shipping here in about two weeks, so that would jive. So we'll look for that to be next up on the line. They ran through those Godzilla premiums, I believe. The Gardens of the Galaxy run is done. The Blood Red Kiss of Elvira, I would think by now, is done. Did they make them all? They would probably make them all. The edition size was 500, and with all the parts being there, I would say just run all of them. I don't think they have sold out yet because they still are available from some of the distributors, but they probably did sell through for this $12,999 MSRP in the USD district game. God, the game looks good too, man. I would love to unbox one of those one day. I'm working on a deal. Hopefully it comes to fruition. If I do, you'll see it on a Facebook live stream. What do you guys think of the live streams? Do you want more? Do you want less? Do you want more location content? Do you want more me in a closet content? Hit me up, donspinballpodcast.gmail.com. Let me know what you think. Because I always got my phone on me, and I always got my mouth on me, and I don't mind going live and showing off what I'm doing. I went live on the Donald Garrison Facebook page for, like, the true homies. I was walking around the Magic Kingdom one night, talked a little bit of pinball, but mainly just talked theme parks to the point that I may want to add my voice to a future theme park-themed podcast. If that would be something you'd be interested in, I'm garnering some interest now. Email me at donsmithballpodcastgmail.com. Let me know if you would listen or be interested in a podcast about the themed entertainment industry. Talking about theme parks, bowling alley, go-karts, arcades, what-have-yous, what-not, escape rooms, and all that business. I might focus on just the major fun theme parks, which is really what I'm into. And I got some ideas for some names. So if you email me, I'll put you on a list and you could be my little focus group. Let me know what you think if you'd be into this. Talk to some other people. I've been meeting at the parks and there seems to be some interest for it. And I think there is some crossover between theme parks and pinball because after all, we are playing this world under glass. You can't see the air quotes that I'm doing right now. You know, but this is essentially a themed entertainment area that we're playing in. You know, when you're playing a game of The Walking Dead, you're in that space. You're fighting the zombies. You're bashing the door like you're in that town. You know, when you're playing Lord of the Rings, I mean, you were there on that adventure. When you're playing Total Nuclear Annihilation, you're ransacking some cyberpunk, futuristic, dystopian, you know, blasty blast area with like a thumping soundtrack. So these are themed entertainment areas And I think that part of where like my crossover interest in entertainment comes from So I think there enough to talk about me and crossover but I don want to cross pollinate too much of the theme park stuff into the pinball podcast try to keep this a bit pure a bit more uh distilled speaking of spooky pinball um nap arcade just did his fantastic live stream I mean that must have been two to three days ago where he got the next spooky prototype part he at the biggest one that we all got this thing is large enough to function as the back of a playfield panel is what i'm thinking it has the same couple of tabs on it that mine did uh so i don't know if that would slot into the playfield um this looks like something that you would put at the back of your playfield to keep the balls from running back into the back of the cabinet and then it also has receiving trenches cut into it that i think my upper playfield part could probably slot into uh we've got some confirmation from bug scream and scream and swing scream and stream Man, that's hard to say, buddy.

19:02

The piece that Jason Knapp got is not actually for an upper play field, which, I mean, it's big enough to be. So then it's got to be vertical. It's got to be in the back. That's the only place I can see them putting it unless they really are going for a departure on this next build. But, like, my piece may slot in there. And some internet sleuths have been getting out their little digipens and drawing some ball pathways. So what we might have is what I think is a locking mechanism on the part that I got with the four holes in it that are perfect size for pinballs to fall through and maybe a way to shoot balls up there and have them lock in series one two three four and then suddenly drop through that mini upper play field into a multi-ball situation maybe into multiple wire forms even um so I think that could work I think what I'll do is uh you know get home and send measurements to nap and see if these line up maybe I'll even send them the dang part and you can see just slots in there we can do that for fun we may not have to though because earlier today, Nap released another post on his site saying there's a strong rumor that we're going to know Spooky's game soon. Like we're going to know Spooky's game like next week, like this coming week, potentially even. And I guess this has been kind of a rumor floating around, but it's strengthened kind of over in the last 24 to 48 hours. So we're looking for that. We might get some confirmation. Was that the last part that Spooky's sending out? Bug and crew are still tight-lipped about that with me, but I haven't heard about anybody else that's waiting on a part to be coming. So it could well be that we've reached the point that there's been all this speculation. We get the parts set out there. The community is in a fervor trying to figure all of this out. And we're making some gains, but nothing really that's going to say what the theme is, except for one little part, one little aspect of the part that Jason Knapp got. So above the area where there's these two receiving slots, where I think my piece could probably slot in there, there's one long linear one above that. And it's too big for just a simple switch to go into. I mean, the thing is 10, 8, 10, 12 inches long, right? Nearly a foot. And, you know, would this be, would there be enough room for like a rotating saw blade to kind of come out of there? Or like a blade on an arm, kind of like the bond on the wand to come out and like slice heads off victims? Say victims that were locked for a multi-ball situation. Say there was some kind of saw effect, maybe a chainsaw that could come out and cut four heads off and then drop the four balls. Or maybe as you're locking balls, you can trigger it and you'll get a one or two, three or four ball multi-ball. I think that mechanistically could work. That would be for some compelling gameplay. And who wouldn't love to see some kind of sawing mechanism slot out from the back of the play field? I think that would be fantastic. The closest thing I think we've seen from that is that crossbow on The Walking Dead. Upper editions, it swings out on the play field. but has anybody really done aside from theater of magic I guess like a spinning saw blade coming from the back of the play field this may have nothing to do this might be Looney Tunes for all I know this might be you know Bugs and Daffy Ducks Rhino Rally or something or you know Roadrunners Grand Canyon Blast or some such maybe it'll be a Yogi Bear title for all I know I have no idea but I could see a world in which there's balls that are locked representing heads of humans and a saw blade that cuts them off and blood splatter splattering screams and then multi-ball mayhem ensues with a cool thumping music soundtrack and awesome led integration i think that would work i think that could work what do you guys think uh let me know uh what you think of all this i want to put up a poll too i was going to do a poll today and just say you know what do you think is the most likely released rumored game which ones are strongest to be and you know chief among those was jaws but i think that's a foregone conclusion by now so i think what i'll do is later today i'll put up a poll and you know we'll have spooky pinball and solid spooky pinball texas chainsaw massacre let's do fifth element from uh from balls of barrels of fun balls of fun oh my goodness i'm never gonna get that right uh what else is rumored to be coming out uh there's a princess bride game somewhere out there what's jersey jack doing next i haven't heard much from what they're doing is american truck real american truck is american pinball really going to bless us with food truck that barry osler rumored game that was supposedly completed and then you know his untimely passing has precluded things uh but i guess the masters of the universe uh game is just totally dead um you know out there in the periphery you got jack danger just like you know crowdsourcing ideas you're trying to see what the community's thinking so who knows in this world of pinball but as those rumors begin to solidify like the gel texture on a No baked cheesecake. I will be here to talk about it with y'alls.