All right, coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got Kong is released, Dune is released, Portal, Merlin's arcade revealed, we've got Harry Potter confirmed, and we've got Cuphead not released. All that and more coming right up. Double Super Jackpot! I need a room. I need a room. I want to party, talk, and dance. I need to see you. I need to go with you. I've got to find my wife. That's right. That's right. We'll be right back. Yeah, we're real old. Get out the walkers. Some people do that in two months, though, in pinball. That's right. It took us 10 years. You know, less is more sometimes. You know what I mean? Try to do a weekly show. There's not much to talk about in the world of pinball. We've covered this before. But we do have a lot to cover today. There's a ton of pinball machines to talk about. We got lots to get through, so let's get right into it. Nick, you want to kick us off with the partners? I thought you'd never ask. All right. Let's see. Looking for it on the screen. Oh, you're not. I didn't send you the right thing. Here you go. Now you can see it. There we go. I mean, come on, Nick. Nick knows this. You know these guys. I don't know why I'm talking in third person today. I started off on that, and here we go. All right. I'm just delaying. Here we go. All right. First of all, shout out to the premier partner, Flip and Out Pinball, flippingoutpinball.com. The best place to go to buy pinball machines. I mean, Zach Manning. Once you go, Zach, you never go back. I don't know. What can I say? Best service in the industry. He actually has a pretty good podcast, too. I've got to hand it to him. I've been listening here and there, but enough about that nonsense. Go to flippingoutpinball.com. They've got it all, and he'll take care of you if you have a problem with your game. Him and Nicole, good people. And Greg, he's got your back if you need an issue and need to work with one of the manufacturers to get a part to a resolution. All right, other partners we want to give a shout-out to, Pinball Life, pinballlife.com. I've been using them, as I say, since 2011. I think I'd get a Pinball Life box at least once a week these days because I'm just buying a ton of stuff for games at the club. So just absolutely great. And they ship things out super quick. I'm very impressed with Pinball Life, so pinballlife.com. Multimorphic.com because of the P3 and the news game portal Kevin Manning will talk about that later then we've got Titan Pinball TitanPinball.com use coupon code Buffalo, save 10% for silicone rings and mats and tools and all the other good stuff and then Pinside.com Pinside.com, the preeminent place to go and fight and argue with folks on the internet and also you can buy and sell machines yeah, have a good chat Have a good day. Go hang out in the owner's threads. That's where the good stuff is. They'll teach you how to fix your games and stuff. All right. Let's jump right into it with a little news. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. Show hunt. It's on fire. All right. Let's kick it off. I guess we're kind of going in reverse order of the reveals. But King Kong, Myth of Terror Island was revealed by Stern Pinball. This is April 15th. Coming to you from Pinball News. So this is the latest game designed by Keith Elwin. You know him from Godzilla and Avengers Infinity Quest and Iron Maiden and all that fun stuff. There's a couple more in there, too. Again, so it's got art by Jeremy Packers on Bietti, but also Kevin O'Connor and Greg Ferreris. It's like a three-person tag team on the art. Music and sound design by Jerry Thompson. And software designers Rick Nagel. So a lot of the team that you see on Keith's teams, games, wow, words, continuing on, they got a successful team. They got a successful thing going. So they're sticking with it. Kevin, I got to say, we made a mistake. What happened? Stop the press for a minute. We forgot longstanding partner Comet Pinball. Comet Pinball. Not give a shout out to Comet Pinball. Oh, man. Ryan, I am deeply, deeply, deeply sorry because I was just thinking about LEDs the other day. I need to get some LEDs for a new game I just got to the club. So Comet Pinball, folks, sponsor since 2016, preeminent place to go for LEDs for your machine. Show some love for Comet Pinball. Let's get some in the chat. There we go. Ryan, we love you. Ryan, we love you. Amazing. All right, Nick, initial thoughts on King Kong. So there's the initial thoughts And then I also got to play it last night Because it got delivered to the And Ali got delivered to the club So let's just go with the Let's talk about the initial impressions And the reveal Kevin we can do that And then at the end I can talk about Playing it a little bit So yeah I mean I Positive impressions when I saw the release The release that everybody else saw You know what's funny Kev Is that the forum wasn't as happy As I thought they would be with this, they are definitely turning on zombie Yeti art. And I got to say, I've been, I was early on this where I was just like, it's too much, too much zombie Yeti. Said this years and years and years ago. What's funny is that when I saw this game, I didn't have that impression, just maybe because I'm just totally resigned right now. It's like, of course, it's going to be zombie Yeti. Of course, I know what it's going to look like. But I think a lot of the chat was just like, why is it so purple? Why these colors are off? It's terrible, blah, blah, blah. So I think a lot of zombie Yeti fatigue is sinking in for a lot of people and creeping up. But that's no knock on him, but I get it. However, look, I mean, he also did the cabinet art and the play field art on Godzilla. So if you're going to make Kong, and, again, go back in the podcast. I said when Godzilla came out, sir needs to make Kong because everybody who buys Godzilla will buy Kong. And here we are. They did a good move. Good job. I get that you probably want to keep that consistent with the same artists who did Godzilla, at least on the cabinet. So the play field artistry is different, and I really like the play field art. So anyways, yeah, I was generally positive when I saw this game. It's an L1. You know it's going to be good. You know, how good is it going to be, I think, is the question. It's never a question, is it going to be good? It's an L1 game. It's just how good is the game going to be. That's where we're at. I think in person the game looks obviously better. It always happens this way. I think the colors are always blown out and overly saturated when we see pictures of the game, and in person they do look better. I'm fine with the art, again. I really love the LE back glass and the side armor on it because it's the Art Deco vibe, which is exactly what our club has for our theme. So it just looks really good, just really well done. Yeah, I don't know. The inside of the artwork on the cabinet is like foil. It looks cool. Yeah, it is very good. You haven't talked about the layout. I mean, you've got the toy. I guess Alwin originally wanted it to throw the balls on the play field at the player, whatever. The King Colin toy is cool, but he doesn't really do much interaction. Shots look cool. I guess I'll talk about gameplay later. But, yeah, overall positive reaction to this game. I didn't think to myself, oh, I need to buy it. I did tell Martha she should buy it because I'm spending other people's money. Yeah, it is. All right. Go ahead, Kev. What do you think? Yeah, so artwork-wise, I really like that they have a callback to the – so there was a Data East King Kong game that they made like 10 of but never actually put them into production. And this kind of like central area right above the flippers is straight up, you know, inspired by that. And it's the same artist, so it's not like they're, like, ripping themselves off or whatever. It's the same artist finally getting to take this design concept and put it into a game that's going to go into full production, which is awesome. I thought the initial stream they did was really, I mean, it had tactical issues at the beginning. There was, like, all this audio doubling, so it was kind of a hot mess at the start. But once they finally got it dialed in, you know, the game looked super fun. and I think the shots all looked really good and flowy of course they have top level players playing too so you have to keep that in mind when you're watching that video that these are some of the best players in the world playing the game but it's got cool mechanical action, I like that the ball stages in the train and then Kong smashes the train and the balls come out stuff like that and it's got some interesting in lane out lane stuff on the left there's a lot happening in the upper left area so it's kind of hard to without having actually played it understand how it all fits together but it looks super flowy and then it's got the Kong Dong Gong thing on the right Did you call it Dong? Kong Dong, yeah Kong Gong goes Dong Okay I'm going there One thing that I think was interesting was if you look at the, they posted either a video or some still shots of the production of this game. If you look at the Kong mech, he's actually servo-driven, which I know there's been massive revolts against using servos and pinball machines and manufacturers shouldn't keep using them, even though there's a bunch of Evil Dead and there's some in King Kong. Curious to see if they hold up or if it gets the backlash that we've seen in the past for stuff like that. I really like the only way to articulate him the way he is would be to use servos to make him dance around and stuff like that. So hopefully they hold up. Yeah, I think the only other thing that's coming to mind is like the theme itself. So it's based on the book, the original book of King Kong. So it's not based on one of the movies or any of the other properties, the video games or anything like that that we've seen over the years. it's their own kind of take and story in the King Kong universe, which I think is fine. Like the, the, if you were looking for, I don't know, old school King Kong movie footage, that's not going to be in here. It's all, you know, 3d animated. And I know there was a, that was one thing that folks had a lot of pushback on initially, you know, when you, when you see the videos and the gameplay videos, that's one of the things you react on is the art and the animation style. and a lot of people didn't like that animation style. I thought it was okay. Yeah, I thought it was fine. I think it's cool. Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. I'd rather have that than old footage of movies. Like, you can go watch a fucking movie if you want to watch it. Right, exactly. So I think of it like Jurassic Park where they took the concept, they put you in the world of Jurassic Park, but then they add in their own animations and stuff. And I think they did a good job with that, and this one looks pretty good too. and I like the King Kong getting smacked on the glass too, that's pretty cool so why don't you give us some thoughts as to you've played it so I've played about, despite being at the club for like almost 6 hours yesterday, maybe 5 I only played the game 5 times so I was doing a bunch of shit there but yeah, what can I say about the game, let's talk about gameplay, right, yes the shots are in the back, characteristically Keith Elwin's games. There's still maybe stuff a little closer to the flippers that could potentially trip you up. I found that the gong is a dangerous shot, which I like because it kicks back at you. What you want to do with that is definitely backhand it rather than shoot it from the left flipper. The left flipper I definitely drained a number of times shooting there before I learned to stop touching the hot stove. And then just backhanding from the right flipper, and that was way more controllable. So it was cool. I like the shot. By the way, this game looks beautiful in person. Looks stacked with stuff. The Elyon Premium, I'm sure people will be very happy with. And you got the sweepable drop targets. They were pretty cool. That little area over there with the mini flipper, it almost felt like a mini playfield, but not an upper playfield, so I like that. It didn't seem like there was a ton of shots at first playing the game. That was a thought that ran through my head, but I don't think that's necessarily true. It's just kind of a feeling that I had. Obviously, the center ramp is very easy to hit. That's the one that you lock it. The speed is, I think, medium to fast. I would think medium to fast is probably an accurate way to describe it. It's not blazing just because, again, the shots are further to the back. One thing I really liked about this game, though, in comparison to the last few Keith games is that the game moves along quicker, right? Like it doesn't have these up posts which are holding it and then making you watch a backlog of videos which will drive you nuts. Like it is sped up, which is really good. So moving in the right direction. I'm curious as to, you know, once a muscle memory gets kicked in, I know where the shots are. The difficulty of the game, if it is a baby game or not a baby game, my first reaction is it's not a baby game, but only time will tell. There's a center post. I got tripped up by that where it didn't help me, and it also did help me at times, which is interesting. I like the little log thing where you can push the button, and it will help you trap the ball and keep the ball in play for the mini flipper. multiball sequence when you start Kong, and he does a little shimmy and he hits the train car, Again, that's quicker than the slower Godzilla building thing. So these are all kind of concerns that I've had in past Keith games where his games are just really slowed down artificially. This game is sped up more, so it's a move in the right direction. I do, as I think about moving kind of gameplay along, I do think that I personally prefer games where you cannot select modes. I think, again, that just slows down the game. I like where you kind of select the mode by either pop bumper hits or switch hits or maybe even pre-selecting the flipper and then trying to hit the shot. I think, again, that's a way to speed up the game. So I think the game slows down there a little bit, but nothing egregious. All in all, I wanted to keep playing this game, right? Like I had a good impression. I had a way better impression playing this than when I played Godzilla. It took me a long time to come around to that game. I'm still kind of not around to that game. And I really fell in love with Jaws, as you guys know, and I ended up selling it less than a year later. But, yeah, Kong is just a very good impression. I think people will be happy. I can't really speak to the code or balancing because, again, in those five games, I kind of just feel out the geometry of the game and how it goes. I didn't have the game too loud, even though I have no excuse not to have it loud there. Some of the call-outs were a little cheesy. I heard one, like, when it's waiting for the next player to step up, it's like some, like, female voice is like, put down your phone and play. It's like, that's stupid. Like, how is that atmosphere? How is that, like, I get it as a joke, but how is that atmospheric towards a game in the 1930s? It's stupid, right? Like, I get it as somebody says it in a meeting, we should do that, and everybody laughs, oh, that's funny, that's cute, and you hear it. But, again, it just doesn't make, it doesn't work, I don't think. Also, like, don't they want people to pick up their phones and use the Insider Connect? There's that, too. You know, again, I think they're trying to be funny. They put the shoes back on as a specific Carl call-out, but it doesn't – I think you've got to nail the theme and hit the theme. It doesn't do that. I was playing with Matt, and he pointed out at one time, he's like, oh, I really like the lightning. I think there's like a lightning strike maybe sound effect, and the lights kind of flicker and flash, and that was cool. I didn't notice until he pointed it out, but then when I was playing it, he pointed it out, and I was like, yeah, that's a nice presentation. I do wish more games had the expression lighting in it. I really think it adds to the game. But overall, definitely a positive impression. I'll go back this weekend and play more. I'm going to go back today and play. Maybe I'll take Kevin to the club tomorrow. We'll play some. So I think that's all there is to say at this point. Yeah. Do you feel like this is going to be a long playing game? I know you talked about some of the things, but in general, Do you feel like it's going to be more Godzilla or, I don't know, his games tend to be longer playing because I think people like that? I think that this will not be as long playing as Godzilla is my initial five-game reaction. I definitely seem to have drained more on that. It's hard for me to say because I'm so used to Godzilla and where the shots are and how it plays. But I think that there are some shots that are a little bit, some of the geometry is closer, or at least like midfield, where if you hit it and you miss it, you have less time to react and it could be dangerous, right? And that's how pinball should be. There should be some shots that, like, if you miss the shot, you're probably going to drain. You know, you take Godzilla and it's so forgiving when you miss the shot, like, you can pretty much save it most of the time. And that's the problem with that game. So this, I do believe, I can't articulate which one's exactly, but I did get the feeling in those five games that, yes, if you miss certain shots in the game, you will drain. So I think it will be us. Godzilla is notoriously the worst game in terms of length. I mean, even at Pembroke, with, like, the best players there, and, like, that game just set up pretty damn difficult. People were playing for, like, an hour on it. It's fucking ridiculous. Can we all agree not to put Godzilla in tournaments? Like, let's just not. Nobody wants to do that. I think you've got a bad game if you can't put a game in a tournament, even when you try to neuter it. That's really tough. Although they did it, like I don't get on a tangent here, although they neutered Led Zeppelin, which can be a very long game, they neutered it so much that it was destroying people. Okay. Make it even harder, I guess. All right, so that's King Kong. More to come on that. Looking forward to trying it out. uh let's jump to the second game from barrels of fun uh it's dune based on the the movies uh with timothy chalamet and crew um so this was revealed the reveal of this was interesting i definitely got vibes that they were trying to get ahead of king kong to try to like capture any any dollars that may be available before people sunk their money into King Kong. Because the reveal felt rushed. Their website was all messed up. There's images on top of images and all this stuff. If you remember, Barrels of Fun came out early last year or the year before with Labyrinth, based on the 80s Jim Henson movie. Out of nowhere, raring to go with a nostalgic theme of license. They had games in the boxes ready to go. And then it's taken them, I think they're still building Labyrinth. So it's been a long ramp up to get through all. They were planning on doing a thousand of those, and I don't think they've sold out of all those, but they've sold a good chunk of them. But now they're moving on to the second theme. It's Dune. I don't know. The theme is kind of a whatever for me. I've I never watched the movies in the 80s. I never read the books. I watched the first of the new movies and, like, half of the second one, and then we stopped, like, halfway through. I don't remember why, and we've never finished it. So it's not a theme that is, like, oh, my God, take my money for me. But I get that it kind of hits in a few ways in that if you're a fan of the 80s movies, it's got, like, that nostalgia. If you're a fan of the book, obviously, it pulls in those things. and the new movies are a huge success in the box office. And it's a modern license in that way too, which is kind of cool. Well, I would say, I mean, I think this has nothing to do with the 80s movie. I mean, the 80s movie is damn near unwatchable. I mean, this movie is strictly based on the new movies. Yeah, but, you know, I'm just thinking if you're of that generation and you're like, oh, I love that movie for whatever reason, you're like, oh, at least this is a Dune license bill on my machine. But absolutely, if you're not watching this, it's absolutely based on the new modern movies for sure. I don't know. Have you gotten to watch any gameplay footage of this? Any initial thoughts on Dune overall? I tried to watch a little bit, and my ADD kicked in, and then I just kind of like you couldn't finish the second movie. I couldn't finish the video of what was going on in it. I just really need to play a game, to be honest, so there's no knock on Dune. I really like the apron artwork there, that style that looks really good. I am lukewarm when it comes to barrels of fun because their first game, Labyrinth, did absolutely nothing for me in terms of the theme. There's something weird on the lighting on that game and the way the play field looks and the inserts. I don't like it. And the shots, I don't know. It just cannot grab a hold of me. So hopefully this game is a little bit different and better. And, again, Kevin, I'm with you. I've seen the 80s movie. It's very forgettable. I've seen the new Dune movie, and it's okay. I've got the second one. I'll watch it eventually. But it's not a theme that I get super excited for, but it's a whole lot better than Avatar. But that's not saying much. So it's got a flashlight in it, I guess, that comes up in the back. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's, like, super slow and – Super slow. Man, it's like, okay, that'll be fun, like, the first two times you do it, and then after that, I hope you can cancel out of it or make it go faster, because, man, to your point of, this is like the Godzilla building, like, at half speed, it felt like. Oh, yeah. I was thinking the same thing. Like, this is, people don't want these slow things. You've got to have something quicker. Like, after you see it, even if it's the first time, it's not that impressive. I'm not talking about Godzilla. I'm talking about the worm coming up, but that really drove me nuts over time. Yeah. It's, uh, so the teaser, you can kind of see it. Look how slow that is. Look how slow. I understand that it's slow and dramatic in the movie, but, like, I don't know, either have a different toy or figure something else out because I just, again, we haven't played it, so don't crucify us if, you know, it's like, no, it's not bad in person, but it doesn't, I don't know. The gut reaction here is it's not good. thank you donnie we appreciate it i was wondering who was gonna be the first donnie i saw you on tuesday at the uh at the town ballroom but i missed saying hi but hello um yeah so a couple things so i did watch some of the gameplay video on this and it's the um it's like the people who are playing it it felt like they were not making a ton of shots. It looks very crammed, this play field. I was getting kind of Houdini vibes from the gameplay footage that I was watching. And also, it's got the 007 thing going on where it's like the assets are not approved by the licensors. So they're showing video and clips and all this stuff that is not even approved. And shipping games with... If you look at the gameplay footage, it's like a watermark over the video, it says, you know, pending approval from licensor on it. That's not good. That's not good. Yeah. So who knows, like, if this is anywhere near complete or if it does end up, you know, getting completed, like, what's going to end up being in there? How can you buy a, you know, $11,000 pinball machine with assets in it that haven't even been approved yet? Dude, I didn't know that. I think it's a mistake rushing it to try to get a couple orders before Kong and all these other games. The problem with all these games come out at the same time, you can't help but really go head-to-head and fight it out, unless you think you've got a better game than Kong, right? It's stirring. Come on. You almost want to release it when people are starving for a new game, and they've gotten bored of the last game that came out three months ago, because there are people that that happens to them. Release it in an off time in the summer. Get everything ready to go. Have a complete code and have people blown away. What do I know? I don't run a pinball company. I don't see the figures and the money. I'd hope that people know a lot more than me. But, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking, it does seem like a mistake when everything comes out at the same time. And then most people have money for one game. They have money for one game. And they're going to buy the best one. And they're going to buy the one that has the best theme, too. So, I don't know. It's a little rough. And if the game comes out and there's what you're telling me is true, Kevin, and it's missing things and watermarks, like, you're going to say, like, I think I'll wait. Right? I'm going to buy Kong or something else, and I'll wait and see how this is. Yeah, I don't understand the rush. Like, it's baffling to me that all of these companies consistently all rush to reveal at the same shows. So, like, for this podcast, for example, like, we're talking about four new releases. where we could be talking about just yours for most of it. You know what I mean? It just gets lost and mixed up in everything else. So, I don't know. It's baffling. There's a reason why we only do a podcast once a month, because there's not that much to talk about normally in a year of pinball. So, you know, you don't have to all battle it out at the same time. It doesn't make sense. So, I don't know. I would this would be a wait and see I would definitely play this game before jumping into anything because there's so much unfinished still, so much unapproved you don't know what the heck is going to actually be in there at the end also I think $11,600 is just too much, it just is too much for this game which is not a Jersey Jack, not a Stern I think they still have a ways to go, no offense to them and maybe they're there. I haven't played it yet, so forgive me. But, you know, a $9,600 Stern Premium, you want $2,000 more than that? Like, that's rough. That's rough. They were trying to make this, in the lead-up to the reveal, they were trying to, like, I don't know, make the pill easier to swallow with the price because they were like, oh, this is the best value in pinball. It's going to have, you know, our infinity glass, and it's going to have this edge lighting that goes into the glass and a shaker motor and blah, blah, blah. And the only – what's funny is that they're like, we want people to have the complete experience when they play this, but then they're also coming out with a full line of accessories that you can buy too. So you can't have it both ways. It's like either you're giving people everything in the machine or you're letting them kind of do it a la carte and pick and choose. I mean, it does look pretty loaded. The screen in the back is cool. It's got stuff. I'm not saying that there's not $11,600 there. I'm not saying that, right? Like, I'm just saying it's a tough sell when there's this other competition out there. That is really the thing. So, again, the way I think you would do that is just you have it when it's just a release and, like, you're months away from any other release, and you can just be the center stage, right? Like, that is it. that's when you can pull that off. We'll see. I would love to talk to somebody who knows about this stuff confidentially and just tell me how wrong I am and that's fine. I'll correct it on the podcast without outing anybody. I just I don't know. Yeah. Maybe there's a reason why. I mean maybe it's worth to these companies to launch these shows because that's where the biggest gathering of pinball players happen and they want people to get their hands on the game which is a fair assessment but But it's also like, there's shows happening all year, too. You can kind of pick and choose a different show. Yeah. All right. So that's Dune. Let's move on to game number three, Portal. This is when I had the luxury of going and getting a whole lot of time on as I did the reveal stream for our friends down at Multimorphic. This is their newest game, Portal. you know based on the game from late 2000s the Valve slash Steam game portal came as part of the Orange Box and was originally like an add sort of game but then kind of ended up stealing the show out of the Orange Box package and ended up spawning a sequel and a whole bunch of, like, spinoff little, you know, licensed games and things like that. and it's funny because players have been like notoriously like waiting for portal three or half-life three and i was like this is kind of like your portal three because it's an all-new uh story in the portal world where you're uh you know in the test chambers and all that so it's not just revisiting portal one or portal two and taking you through that story it's it's giving you your own portal experience, which is kind of cool, and expanding on the portal universe with new characters. So you've got Reggie, the identity core in there, so he's new. You have call-outs from Helen McClain, who is the original voice of GLaDOS, which is awesome. It's got the Jonathan Colton songs, Watch It Gone and Still Alive, all the things you would kind of want if you're a fan of portal. That's all in here. And these guys, you can tell these guys really get it, because they're really, if you're a fan of the game, you're going to recognize that these folks are fans of the game too, and they're doing it justice. So yeah, the creative directors are Stephen Silver, Michael Ocean, Ian Ian Harrower, Ian Eno from Blood Bank Billiards, and Birdwatcher. This is his first official game with as part of the Multimorphic team, which is awesome to see. Congrats, Ian. Art is by Brad Brad Albright. This is his first commercial pinball art package, so congrats to Brad on that. I was talking to him a little bit. He was at the reveal, and And, you know, they were talking about the way the game ended up looking and how this, you know, in the Portal world, everything is white, basically. And in pinball, you want colorful, bright things to bring you, draw you into the game, right? So there was kind of this back and forth with Valve and, like, you know, Brad was pushing to make it more colorful. And they're like, well, that's not how the world looks. So that's how it kind of ended up looking the way it does. And I think he does a really good job of making it feel bright and colorful, but also still feeling like Portal, especially if you look at the play field itself. It's, like, packed with art, feels like Portal. It's got more of a Portal 2 vibe because in Portal 2 there was more of, like, the overgrown, mossy kind of, like, destructed world look. And that's kind of how it looks, which I think was the right way to go because Portal 1 was super clean and I don't think would have been as visually interesting on a pinball machine. So that's really cool. uh call us by Marc Silk um you know him from tmnt and a couple other games i can't i can't remember what other games did he do mando um i'm trying to remember the other games he's done but uh and Ellen McLain they got call outs from glidos um Scott Danesi he's on sound again which is awesome he's got a cool like re you know amped up version of original pinball uh What's up? Mando for what? For Mark Sillick. Did he do any of the voices in that? No, I don't think so. I'm trying to remember. Because he did T.M.M.T. He did Turtles. Yeah. He was in another one, too, I thought. But I don't know. I can't remember. And then you got TJ Weaver and Terry Jones on Mechanic. Rory Sanuda as a technical artist. So if you watch the original trailer of this, one of the big features is the extended part of this. Let me see if I can find some pictures here. Where it brings – oh, yeah, here you go. This is a good play field shot. So a lot of feedback from players over the years for the P3 platform has been, yeah, it's cool, but all the shots are far in the back. And, you know, there are lots of great games with shots in the back, like Jaws and, you know, Godzilla and things like that. But, you know, I understand the appeal of having things closer because, you know, like Nick was talking about earlier, if you have stuff closer to the flippers, things get more dangerous. You have to be more careful in the shots you select. Games are going to, you know, play a little different, things like that. So they took that into mind, and they brought in the extended add-on where you can plot this. you know it's like a one piece thing that sits down on the lower part of the play field connects with two connectors and you've got a lift ramp on the right a spinner lane on the left a kickback on the far right on the upper side of the play field there's stand-up targets all over the place and there's also the uh faceplate wall so you or no that's not the face plates in the back this is the you shoot the wall across the light bridge the hard light bridge so there's actually an a hidden upper it's sort of a flipper but it's like the wall on the left it's kind of hard to describe uh you hit that and it shoots it across the hard light bridge if you've played the portal games you know what that is um that shows on the screen underneath and you can shoot it across to the right in lane and that that's a feature of some of the modes and things like that so yeah some really cool mechanical action i like the double level thing happening i like that the ramp on the right lifts and lowers so that gives you different geometry there over the course of your gameplay. And yeah, kudos to them for making it happen and bringing the action down closer to the flippers. Even in the back, though, there's a ton of cool stuff. You've got the faceplate, the thing that flips it up into the back wall. That's that there. You've got a captive ball that kicks it through the portals. All the ramps lift, so a lot of diverters, different ways you can send the ball. It's got the faceplate lock with the companion cube in the back, upper playfield in the upper left with another companion cube that you can bash, and it's got the momentum jump, so the more times you go around that little loop up there before you hit it into where the companion cube goes, the faster the ball comes flying out the other side. They've brought a lot of portal mechanics into this game through the features and also through the software. So in the software, there's, like, the – I forget what they call it, the main room where you're just kind of, like, hanging out. And in there is, like, kind of an Attack from Mars-style rule set where there's, like, all these hurry-ups. You can try to get all the hurry-ups going and stack them up and get a huge jackpot. So that's cool. But then you can also go into the different testing chambers, where that's where it brings in like the video game style feel of solving puzzles and getting through the different rooms. So it's a good mix of like the puzzly aspects of the Portal theme, which you would want, and also like some more traditional classic gameplay features. I feel like that pretty much covered it. I know, Nick, you got a couple shots in on this at Pinbrew. Any initial thoughts on Portal? Yeah, I mean, this has got to be their best game, I'd have to imagine. It's just amazing what they managed to pack in there at a level of creativity. There's things that, as you're going over, Kev, I didn't know or notice after playing a few games. To me, P3 is kind of a cerebral platform in general, and this is like the height of a cerebral pinball game, and it matches the theme of Portal very well, as you can translate that game into pinball. I have very limited experience with Portal, but I understand enough about it to make that statement. Yeah, just very impressive. I mean, P3 owners rejoice. People like Portal rejoice. Personally, I just like the P3 just doesn't grab me emotionally the way it's grabbed everybody in my friend group. But I'm glad you guys get it and all have one so I can just leech off you guys and play it. Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I said at the end of the stream. It's like if you want innovation and creativity in pinball, these guys are doing it the best, in my opinion. They're really kind of taking things to the next level. They really take the theme and integrate it into everything they're doing. So this was a theme like years ago that I was like, you guys should do this. And when they announced that they were finally doing it, I was like, thank God. This is like the perfect theme for this platform. I feel like with the Infinity Trough in the back, they can make the balls, you know, disappear over here, reappear over there, fly all over the place. So this is really, really awesome. And the humor, and there's really, there's so much more to come, too. So if you watch the gameplay stream, and I'll just play a little bit of that here while we talk. So I went down to Round Rock and played it with the crew. There's a ton more call-outs coming. There's more test chamber modes. tons of more coming so I think when this starts shipping this summer you're going to have a lot to enjoy on top of everything that's already in there and really awesome okay I think that's good for Portal and we say the best for last of the new releases y'all it's Merlin's Arcade okay original everybody who wants an original theme here you go everybody who's clamoring. Here's another opportunity. If it wasn't Ramps Ramp Around or whatever was the game we did last time. Merlin's Arcade. This is the one. Nope. RLM. When are they going to start making original team games again? They're doing it. Get yourself a Merlin's Arcade from Turner Pinball. Makers of Ninja Eclipse. Another original team game you could have bought. Another game pulled from the ashes of Deep Root Pinball. And man. So it's by Jon Norris, who, you know, of Bad Girls fame. And it's got... Oh, shit. You called me up, Bad Girls. Now Nick Lane is interested, you know? Retheme this to Bad Girls 2. Put a bunch of whores on there and you've got my interest. Yeah, so it's basically 8-Ball Deluxe modified again. Because he likes to do that. So not flipped to the way Bad Girls is, but more traditional 8-Ball Deluxe. yeah but it's like you're in an arcade a medieval arcade or something I don't know seems fine this is another one where it feels like they're pushing the limits of pricing though how much I forget let me see you know you give your initial thoughts and I'll look for the price I don't have this is the problem with Scab I see this and I'm just like I'm never going to buy it I don't know if I'll ever play it But I just want to say one thing about Portal I think our friend Dave Sousa Is working it out So we're going to do like a Portal launch party At the club at some point So there you go Everybody who wants to play that game Don't worry about it No one cares about the price $89.95 So $9,000 Although Pinball machine prices are plummeting Oh my god Absolutely plummeting You get yourself, well, isn't that about what you paid for your WIC LE? Yes. Yes. So. Yes. Spoiler alert. For a WIC LE. Yeah. So. And that might be too much. Like, three months later, like, I can see that thing plummeting to $8,000. Like, I'm like, oh, my God, I overpaid at $9,000 for a WIC LE. Everyone wants an original theme. Here's another one you won't buy. Thank you, Wildcat. It looks cool, but, again, you know, look, what do they want to, are they doing, like, limited of 100 kind of deal? I have no idea. I don't know. Our time is of the essence. Let's move on. Yeah, who cares? Good luck to them. Who cares? There's another game. Maybe you'll play it someday. Sorry, Turner. Sorry, Turner. We're a little harsh. I know. I know. But there's only so much time and money and space. That's the problem. Yeah. At least they're building games and not taking people's pure order money and running. So I'll give them credit for that. It's a low bar, but, you know, there is something. All right. Speaking of more upcoming games announced but not revealed yet, Harry Potter from Jersey Jack Pinball. Pretty stoked about this one. I think they were going to have a hit on their hands. I feel like J.J.P., the last few games, they haven't, like, had knock-it-out-of-the-park themes, and this is one that tons of people have been clamoring for. I personally am not a huge Harry Potter fan, but as soon as it was announced, My wife and son were both like, when are we getting it? So, you know, there's a lot of people out there with very similar mindsets. I'm of the age where this was like I was a little too old for the books when they were coming out. And then I never got into the movies. We actually went to Chase Buffalo a couple weeks ago, and they did an in-person performance of I think it was the second movie. And they had the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra play with it, which was really cool. So they played the soundtrack live. that was really cool. And the movie was pretty good. And like, I can see why people get into this. Um, but you know, I think, I think this will be, this will be a killer theme for them. What's funny was the, so this all happened after our last podcast. I was on, I think there was a TPF. They did this. Yeah, it must've been. Um, so he, it was, uh, Mark Seiden at his panel talking about avatar and the making of avatar. And Jack, when area was there with him and I was just, you know, I was sitting on my couch, I had it on the TV because I like to watch the seminars. And they were taking comments from chat and then questions from chat. And somebody in chat was like, hey, Jack, what's the next game? You know, because everybody asks that and nobody ever answers it, right? But Jack's just like, yeah, everybody knows it's Harry Potter. You know, save your money and don't buy anything until you see this game. I lost Nick's audio. I was saying no fucks given. Yeah, no, no, not at all. and I was like wait a minute there's like 20 people in this chat nobody's watching this the people in the room at TPF obviously know about that but I should like clip this and put it on our social media channels so it's like he just said what the nice game is and yeah it kind of blew up from there which was cool but yeah so kind of an unexpected movie I feel like you can see Mark going I can't believe he just said that without saying it like is he really is he really like announcing the next game but uh yeah it's like okay good you got a good license in your in your pocket you know people are good this is going to be a like take my money kind of theme we always talk about licensing and themes and certain themes for people being like yes i'm buying it no matter what i feel like this is going to be that that sort of theme so uh yeah we're all just kind of hanging out waiting to see what comes next uh as far as the reveal and what the game holds. They did announce the pricing levels. So there's going to be three different versions of it. So Jack was actually, I think this was on the Pinball News, Pinball Magazine podcast last year, or last month, where he actually announced that the Arcade Edition, Wizard Edition, and Collector's Edition, they're all going to have the same play field features. So there's not going to be like mechs on one that aren't on the other, that sort of thing. It's all going to be cosmetic things that differentiate the three levels. Probably, you know, things like toppers and invisiglass and shaker motors and extra play field sculpts and things like that. So the arcade edition is $10,000, you know, $9,999. You could say under $10,000, and they just barely did that. Wizard edition is going to be $12,000, which is in line with their standard, you know, their traditional LEs, and then the collector's edition is $15,000. So no real change price-wise on the Wizard and Collector's editions, but they're also bringing back the lower end, kind of what used to be the standard edition. Because, you know, Jack on the podcast said he wants as many people to be able to buy this as possible. You know, they want to get into arcades and things like that, and they know if they can hit that lower price point, then that's going to make that more viable for people. So, yeah. Nick, any thoughts on Harry Potter? we don't really have much to go on at this point. It's interesting that they kept the same price point and zero interest in this game. I don't like any movies or TV shows with kids as the main character. Even when I was a kid, I was born in 1980, and even when I was a kid, I didn't like Goonies. I just don't like kids and movies. What's wrong with you, Nick Lane? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with everybody else? Why do you want to see kids? Why do you guys like Stranger Things? It's a bunch of kids. Weird. It's got that nostalgia vibes, bro. Yeah, they know how to tweak something in everybody's brain, right? Yep. That's it. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. So, all right, there's Harry Potter. Let's talk Pimberoo. You want to give a little shout-out to Pimberoo? A little shout-out, very, very quick. Good job, Keith, and everybody who's involved in making that show a success. Had another great year, good time. got to play a lot of the new games, got to play Avatar, didn't like it. Got to play Evil Dead, we'll talk about that. Ended up unexpectedly buying a John Wick LE. So that was cool. And then just a bunch of nice people came up and recognized me from Buffalo Pinball. I'm sure Kevin had the same experience, but shout out to Nolan and his mom, Wes and Kathy, James, Matt from Kineticist, Mark from I think Pinball Planet, and then There's an unnamed hero that every year gives me drink tickets, so thank you so much. There you go. Winning. Yeah, thanks, Keith. It was a good time, as always. Enjoyed the show. Always a great place to go and play the newest, latest games without a whole bunch of lines, which is a plus, and we were able to kind of help get Portal there. Justin from Wise Trailer, the distributor in the U.S. for Multimorphic, was like, hey you know I want to get portal there but my daughter has a bunch of track meets that weekend can can anybody from the community help out and uh Dave and I and a few others kind of pitched in to just you know answer questions keep tabs on the game throughout the weekend and it really didn't do anything there was a stuck ball or two that I had to free but the game ran like a champ and uh yeah people were pretty stoked that I talked to some uh viewers who you know appreciate the show And, you know, we just chatted a bunch and hung out and had a good time. So, yeah. Oh, yeah, there's a little chatter in the chat about Kyle Boss's homebrew. I don't know if Kyle's here. He's the creator of that, of Harry Potter. And, yeah, the movie studio, I guess, reached out to him and gave him a cease and desist on his game. Which is really dumb because if you're making a one-off game, like, who cares? If you're trying to sell it, I get that. How can they do that if you're just making a game and you don't intend to sell it? It's for your personal use. Who knows? I'm not a lawyer. The only thing I can think is, like, they think there's going to be some confusion since they're actually making up in Malmachine. But I don't know. I don't know. All right. Cobb box with bad girls, too. No one's going to come after you, I promise you. It could be. He's got, like, that castle in there. It could be, like, the castle where all the bad girls live. Yeah, Sir Gothel. We could re-theme it. Or it's like an influencer house, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Arlen says they went after his YouTube video so he can make it he just can't talk about it good times that's what people like to do, make something that they can't show anybody yeah, exactly alright, let's talk Evil Dead we got a chance to play some Evil Dead we haven't really talked about this game much so let's give some wait for it, first impressions not a review, not a review everybody we're just going to give our initial thoughts on Evil Dead, why don't you kick this off? And hi, Martha. Yeah, there's nothing creeping out. She's creeping. She's creeping. Disappearing behind the curtain. Nothing to see here. She's creeping out to do some gardening or something. Yeah, all right. I played Evil Dead, and I got a very visually impressive game that's got a lot of mechs in there. And what do you call it? molded artwork pieces, right? Like, they do such a good job, especially this game, in terms of things that they've crammed and put in the game. Like, it just looks great. I played a few games on it, and it was like, like most spooky games, it just doesn't grab me. The gameplay never grabs me. They look great. They kind of draw me in. I play it, and I'm like, okay, I'm good. And to be honest, Kevin, I forgot to put this game in the show notes because I completely forgot about this game. Completely forgot about it. So another stunning review from Nick on a spooky game. I was lucky enough to get some one-on-one time with this at James' place. So when I played it over there, I blew it up and had a great time. I don't know if it's just because I had some good games on it, but, yeah, it seemed really fun. There's a lot of, like, multiball stacking. I feel like the mini playfield underneath, the lower playfield, is actually pretty fun. You know, a lot of times lower playfields are kind of boring and whatever, but that one's pretty fun. It's got a lot of interesting, like, it's got, like, the pop-up troll-like things from, you know, Medieval Badness or, you know, other games like that where we have things popping up out of the playfield. Hobbit is another one. it's got the little trapdoor thing that can grab the ball the hand over on the left lots of cool interesting mechanical stuff like you were saying even the little flipper that is in the slingshot on the right is kind of cool although you know it's on a second button oh my god a flipper on a second button but I like that you can if you know the ball is going there you can hold it out and stop the ball and then take a shot kind of cool clever thing there the Evil Dead theme is I'm not a horror movie guy and I've talked about that on the show in the past so this is not a theme where I was like take my money or anything I actually borrowed James' copy of Evil Dead 2 and watched it for the first time because I had never seen the movie so and it was still like okay yeah I'm still not a horror movie fan he he kind of recommended the second one because apparently the second one is the same or similar story to the first one but it has more humor in it So I was like, maybe that'll appeal more to me, and it was kind of, still kind of whatever, but. Yeah, it's too bad, Kev, because you've not seen Army of Darkness. No. Which is not based on that. Like, I can care less about the first Evil Dead movies. You should watch Army of Darkness, but you should watch Ash vs. the Evil Dead, which is, like, comedy. Okay. Like, it embraces, like, the comedic, ridiculous side. Ash vs. the Evil Dead is so good. Okay. It has just, like, the character and story concepts, but actual, like, a lot of humor is thrown into it. I do like stuff like Walking Dead and The Last of Us, like those, like, survival kind of situations, where it's just, like, gruesome murder stuff. Like, that doesn't do it for me, you know. Bruce Canthel's the man after watching Army of Darkness and Ash vs. the Evil Dead. That's the way to go. Nice. Yeah, and so one of the things, like, you know, another game with a bunch of servos in it and 3D-printed stuff. So, like, if you look at this branch, you know, it's a 3D-printed thing, and there's servos down by the shooter lane for the little, like, shotgun shooter thing and the tape deck, the real, real tape thing, and the apron, which is not a mechanic that is, you know, on the play field. It's just a decorative thing. But still, it's like, you know, questionable decisions when it comes to things like that. They did go out and sell out all of these, allegedly. Somebody in chat was asking if they had sold out. They were making 800-ish of these, and they did sell out. So that's smart. They scaled it back from the numbers they were shooting for with Scooby-Doo and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all that, which I think will help drive sales in the future, helps keep the resale value up on these games. which will encourage people to keep buying them. One of the things that was super obvious was that they got Bruce Campbell call-outs and they're proud of that and good for them but this game would not shut up. He was talking so much he was talking over the top of himself. I was like, okay, can you just scale that back a little bit? Chill out on the call-outs. Everybody wants to hear them especially if they're fans of the movies but less is more sometimes. And they were repetitious, like in quick succession, which is very, it's not good. Not good. Yeah, exactly. But overall, like, I thought the game was fun to shoot. Apparently there's still a lot to come in the rules, which is kind of like Spooky's M.O. I feel like they put out a game and then they promise a bunch of stuff, and sometimes they finish it and sometimes they don't. So hopefully since this game sold out, they'll put the time and attention into it that it deserves. but then also, like, they sold all of them. So what is their motivation to make it even better? You know, maybe they'll just move on to their next game. You know, they haven't exactly instilled a bunch of confidence in buyers as far as completing code. My God, that's like every company now. It's just terrible. We should have a show just about the lack of code epidemic out there. Yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about John Wick later. I'm sure we'll get into that, too. Every certain game. You know, Jaws has been out for more than a year. Still not at 1.0. Still doesn't have, I don't believe, the Wizard Mode. Last code update was November. Yeah. Every game, every company. We're Godfather up to two years now. Fucking bullshit. Finish your games, guys. Finish your games. So, yeah, that's first impressions on Evil Dead. Not a review. Fun game. Fun game. Finish it and make sure it works. Okay? Thank you. That's all we ask. Nick, I don't know if you have you dug into your pin glass yet? You got a sheet of pin glass, right? I do. I'm grateful for the pin glass. It's going to go on my wick le. However, I've had the glass, as with most of your games, off a lot to tweak it, dial in, fix problems, all that good stuff. So I'm going to put it on once I get the game to where I think it needs to be so I don't have to take it off every two seconds. With that said, bathroom break number one. Alright, here we go. I'm going to talk about pin glass and Nick's going to go to the bathroom. Yes, shout out to Multimorphic does finish their games. Good call, Snail Man. Especially with Princess Bride shipping at 1.0. I always make this point. I like to give you guys kudos because you go the extra mile shipping complete games. And J.J.P. did put 1.0 for Avatar. So, you know, there are some who are finishing them off. But, you know, it's a trend that, you know, not every manufacturer is finishing their games. Cool. So pin glass. Let me show you some pin glass. So this is from our friends at Multimorphic. They saw the fact that there was all these companies making anti-reflective glass. So if you've used stuff like voodoo glass or Stern HD glass or the Invisiglass, it's awesome. And it makes your game look like it doesn't have any glass on it at all. but it's also quite expensive up to like 300, 350 bucks for a sheet of glass, which is kind of crazy. Um, which is why I had never gone out of my way to put extra glass in, in visit glass on my, my other games I had bought at one point. Uh, so any, obviously any of my JJPs that I had came with, um, invisible glass. And then at one point I bought two sheets of voodoo glass when they were, they were doing a black Friday sale. I think it was $350 for two sheets or something like that, plus shipping, which wasn't too bad. It may have even been like $400. But I wanted anti-reflective glass for streaming. So I was like, oh, I'll give this a shot. And I didn't want to keep moving glass around all the time on my JJP. So the Voodoo was good. I was a big fan. But, you know, one sheet of that is, I think, like $250. bucks and yeah so Pin Glass Plus came out and Jerry was kind enough to send Nick and I both a sheet of it as part of their shipping test and for us to kind of give our hot takes and our reviews on it once Nick has his out and on his game he can talk about his more but I put mine on my P3 it's important to note that this will work on any standard pinball machine so even though Multimorphic is making it it's not a thing that only works on the P3 because that was one of the things I think Jay Fairbrother commented about. It's like, oh, it would be nice if they made glass for all the games, but yeah, no, it works on any game. This is a little video I did of it that I put on YouTube. Obviously, videos are hard to tell how great it looks in person, but it is really good. So, this is... Okay, there are very few times when you can just say, like, based on merits alone, this is not a subjective thing, that this is the best invisible AR glass you could buy, So it's got the lowest price. It's like $150. It got the beveled rounded edges which are super nice And yeah it a win So it looks just as good as the Voodoo Glass and the Invisiglass I have So it performs up to the standards of all the others Price is lower. And it's even better because it's got the beveled edges. So if you're looking for anti-reflective glass, no question, this is the one to get. Grab yourself Pen Glass. Objectively, it's my objective review of Pen Glass. I mean if you want to waste money go ahead and throw your money away on a different name but pin glass you might as well just get this it works great and you can like I'm showing on the video here they've got glass cleaner and anti or the microfiber cloths which you can get but it'll work with any anti-reflective glass cleaner like spray away or sparkle or you can just use Nick, I know you like water and alcohol, right, to clean your invisible ass? Yeah. I think that came from Jersey Jack's recommendation, water and alcohol. This is what you need with 50-50. Yeah. You just want to avoid anything with ammonia in it because that will take the finish off. And don't use paper dolls. Just buy sparkle and make it easy, too, you know, if you need something in a pinch. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, $150 was early pricing, but it's still $179 and still almost $100 cheaper than any other sheet of glass. So, still cheapest option, still has the better edges, and still performs just as well as the other sheets of glass. So, grab yourself. I like it so much that, you know, they sent me the review copy, the review sheet of glass, and then I went out and I bought two more sheets for my other standard pinball machines that I liked it because I like it so much. You rascal, you. Yeah. So the only game that doesn't have anti-reflective glass on it in my room now is Alien, which will soon have it because they announced they're going to do Widebody soon, too. They said if they got enough requests, they would do Widebody, and they're going to do Widebody. So I'm going to be all anti-reflective glass, baby. High-quality pinball over at the Manny household. You know what I mean? Proud of you. Thank you. Okay. Let's do some game remotes. That's the news. We got through the news. All right. Deep breath. Stretch it out. Let's do some game room updates. Nick, you get to kick it off. Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, this is a change of pace. Here we go. All right. Game room update for myself. Like I said, I bought a Wick LE. We're actually going to review John Wick. We didn't say that in the top of the hour, but it's going to be a super long show. So you've got to do a bathroom break. Make sure you time it right as well. Get some food. Put your feet up. All right. Got a Wick LE. Super pumped. That makes it now. I own a Wick LE and half a Wick Pro. Who's the asshole, Kevin, who told me back in May on a YouTube comment? Hey, I'll find it. Can we bring that up? Yeah. You want to call me a shill and a liar? Okay, it is. So 10 months ago, so on the show where we talked about when John Wick was revealed almost a year ago, at John Smith 78098 said, guaranteed neither by a Wick. Ha, ha, ha. Ugg to Shillymore. artwork looks great. And then he and Nick proceeded to get into this back and forth battle in the comments. I tried to talk to him like a normal person. I'm like, dude, no, I legit and he's like, he's still not doubling down. So, Kevin, if this is you trolling me to get me to buy a wick, brilliant. Alright. But I don't think that it is. So, don't ever call me a liar. Call me a shill. That's more than any game I own right now. I will guarantee you that was not me because I do not have the energy or initiative or drive to do that level of trolling. I do not care that much. Fuck that guy. You really showed him. I showed him. I got a game that I absolutely love. Yeah. All right. So you got Wigali. Talk about you got another game too, though, right? I got another game. I got actually two games. I bought a game yesterday unexpectedly. Okay, so let's go to the game I got last week. I bought a ballet speakeasy because, again, the club has this kind of private club but also kind of speakeasy vibe, Art Deco style too, so I thought that would be perfect. And plus speakeasy is a pretty cool add-a-ball game. You don't see it a lot. So I snagged that. I did have kind of a disappointment. It's largely my fault. So I bought it off a guy on Pinside. I'd been looking for one for a while. It popped up. It looked really nice from the pictures, although the pictures were a little blurry and not great. but it looks really, really nice from what I saw. Guy said it worked 100%, so I sent our friend Rob out there, and he grabbed it. And he's like, oh, I think you got a screaming deal. Like, this is super nice. I get it, and the head is down on it, and I see, like, a little bit of the lower play field. And instantly my eyes noticed that. Some of the inserts were replaced. There's two inserts replaced, and it honestly looks like – I would say Kindergartener did it. I showed our friend John Barsh it, and he goes, what, did a two-year-old do that? And he's right. Yeah, I saw a picture. It's bad. It looks like a two. It is the worst insert repair I have ever, ever seen. It is god-awful. I didn't notice in the pictures because pictures weren't great. I went back and looked at it. I was like, oh, now I see it. But it's so strikingly bad. I see it in my dreams, Kevin. I wish we had pictures that we could show. but we'll have to put them on the Facebook group or something so people can see how bad this is. It haunts me. I might be able to send it as you're talking later, and you can throw it up there. It is terrible. So I need help fixing it because the rest of the game is pretty good. But, man, and let me just say, when I say two-year-olds, I don't mean to insult two-year-olds because maybe the particularly bright ones could do a better job than this. This is like a two-year-old who their parents are like, we probably don't even want to talk about potty training until he's four years old, right? That's that kind of two-year-old that did the repair work. It also, by the way, the guy said it works 100%. That's not true. The flyaway targets are not working right. Fires. Yeah, there's a chip plastic on it, and it's missing a gate on it for the left flipper gate. It's missing that gate. This is a key piece of it, so this is not working 100%. That is impossible to find. So I need, I'm going to crowdsource this. I need help. The part is like ASE 2250-91. I know, rolls right off the top. I have it memorized. This part was also in Fathom. So I cannot find it. They do not make it anywhere. I need help. The game does not play properly. Please, if somebody can help me find that gate or if you have a solution, I'm all ears. And give me a solution that I could do or find somebody who can help me and just make it easy for me. somebody is really kind and they're going to help me with a plastic that's chipped. So more to come on that. Other than that, the game is in great condition, but I really got fucked over by this guy. Again, I should have asked for better pictures, but it's not working 100%. So buyer beware. What are you going to do? And then the other game I got, I did not know this. When I woke up yesterday, I did not intend to buy a pinball machine. but, you know, we've got friends down at Allentown. And, again, our buddy Rob, he was in a text chat with me and Matt Taylor, and he's like, oh, there's this Old Chicago I might get. Like, it looks really good. And I've been wanting Old Chicago for months as well. I talk to Martha every few weeks. I was like, the ladies on the back last day look really nice. It fits the theme. It's a cool EM. It's Goran's favorite game, like one of his favorite games, so I've got to own it. I want to make Goran happy. Yeah. So I was like, oh. Rob activated me. He's like, oh, if you don't buy it, I will. The guy, like, wanted $950 for it, and it feels pretty damn good. The cabinet's beat, but play feels pretty good. And then he's like, all right, you can have it. So I ended up buying it. So that's at the club now. It got delivered last night. And Rob knows what he's doing. I think ultimately he maybe thought, sure, that'd be nice in my house, but if I post this, Nick will buy it. And mission accomplished. And I paid him money to haul it up to Buffalo, so he's crushing it. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. I don't want to think about how much money I've spent with him in the last few months. But think about how many machines you have not had to move yourself. Oh, I know. Yeah. I know. All right. No more talking about him because he needs to be a sponsor. No more talking about him. Come on. I love you. But come on. Come on. I can make you some real money here. Let's move. What else? Do I got anything else? Oh, I sold Jaws. See you, Jaws. Oh, yeah. Do not miss you. Baby game of the year. Baby game of the year. I loved that game. When I bought it, I loved it. I even messaged Keith. I was like, great games, super cool. And then I just – the honeymoon was so quick, so quick. I know a lot of people love it, but I do not miss it. So there we go. See you, Jaws. All right. A couple updates in my game room. The big one over the past month was that I hosted Pinball League, so I had to get my game room in order for that. Game's held up solid. A couple of stuck balls, that was about it. So it's always a relief when you get through league night without any major malfunctions or gameplay issues. Also, you know, of course, the chicken wing dip and the deviled eggs were always a hit as always. Apologies to anybody who may have missed out, but you knew what you were missing out on. What else? I sold Royal Rumble, so I picked that up over the winter as a project, got it all fixed up, and then a local friend, actually the guy who I got my Alien from, Dave, was like, hey, he saw me streaming, and he's like, if you want to sell it, let me know. I said, yeah, I just want to hold on to it until after League, because it's kind of my go-to thing to have a weird game that most people don't see at League when I host. So I was like, I'm going to keep Royal Rumble for that. It played great throughout that, and then I hauled it up there over the weekend to Dave's house. So thanks, Dave, for the easy sale. Did not even have to post it on the Internet and have to deal with dummies online, which is always a win in my book. And then on the way back, we stopped at Jeff's house to pick up his firepower that my son is working on trying to get. He's trying to resolve. There's an issue where it will just reboot itself every once in a while. So he's got the oscilloscope out that he got for Christmas. He's diving deep into that. He's trying to figure that out. And he loves a good project. So hopefully he can get that going. Your game's going to colonoscopy. It is. It is. He's way up in there. You know what I mean? Was that it? Yeah, that was pretty much it. A couple video games. Been playing the Indiana Jones game a little bit more here and there. But that's about it for game room updates. All right, let's move on. Let's move on. This is the moment everybody's been waiting for. It's back, baby. Mods you don't need. We don't have an intro song yet, but we do have some amazing, amazing mods you don't need. I was telling Nick before the show, the best part of this is I'll just, like, throw things on the document and then forget about them until the show. And then I was like, oh, what were these? And I opened it up and I was like, this is some pretty good ones. We had a really good mods you don't need the last time. So this is almost as good. All right. So I'm going to start off, we're going to peak early on this one, because this one is definitely the winner of this batch. Oh, don't, oh, you start at the high moment. You know how we love a good cover for your pinball machine, right? Like you've got to cover up your pinball glass with a cover. Absolutely. I mean, dust will wreak havoc on a pinball machine. We all know this, folks. Dust cover on your pinball machine. But then where do you put your dust cover when you're playing your pinball machine? Well, obviously you need a pin cover caddy to mount on the leg of the machine to hold the cover while you play. So, like I always said, give a man a 3D printer and he will find numerous ways to come up with dumb shit like this. It's the pin cover. Oh, my God, look at this. It's so dumb. Try to get through, Kevin. Try to get through one of these without saying it's so dumb before we even talk about it. I think my favorite part is that he imprinted patent pending on the side of it, as if somebody was going to steal this idea and make millions of dollars off of his pin caddy. You never know in this hobby. Yeah, so then the comments were good. They were like, well, when do you get the cover for your cover when it's in the pin cover caddy? Who's going to make that? And then you've got to get a caddy for your cover for the caddy. You know, it's like a never-ending cycle. Really? Everything needs to be protected from the dust. It really does. Okay. Yeah. That's your pin cover caddy. And it's nice that he's featuring it on Halloween, because that is a game I would definitely cover in shame if I had it in my collection. And, you know, it's a good look at the armor coating that's wearing away there. Oh, yeah. Look at that wear. Yeah. I think this guy's got bigger problems than getting the dust off his machine, to be honest. Yeah. Amazing. All right, so there's your pin cover caddy. $25 plus shipping, by the way, if you want to buy one of those. Well, super reasonable. Yeah, yeah. And then how much is the cover? Oh, I don't know. 50 bucks? You have to buy that yourself. It's probably close to $100 to get that nasty dust off your machine. Yeah. Pin cover caddy, everybody. All right, here's number two. Because when people think Gorgar from the 80s, the Williams pinball machine from the 80s, They're like, obviously I need a $500 topper for this, you know, $1,000 game. So here's a Gorgar Williams digital video topper. And here, let's just take a look at what it does. That's what it does. That's all that it does. For those listening along at home, it is a video screen with a pile of skulls and flames. And that's it. Is there any pile of skulls and flames in Gorgar? I guess maybe. It doesn't even, like, first of all, who in their right mind looked at Gorgar and said, yeah, this is good, but it needs a topper? Like, that's what's holding me back. But also, like, if you're crazy enough to do a topper for Gorgar, which is, the market has not been clamoring for this, it should have the art style. Like, this is incongruent with the game. It looks like shit. Yeah. It looks nothing like the art on the game. This is like AI bullshit that you did. Oh, my God. All right. This is terrible. This is insulting. It's, what, $500? Yeah, $500. How many of these have you sold? If you sell one, do you just do it for the lulz and you almost have a stock, it says? He's got that checked? Yeah, because the stock is one. He made one. He thinks maybe one person is going to buy this nonsense. You have to drive the FOMO, bro. You know, almost out of stock. Hurry up and buy it. No reviews yet, so I guess we'll never know. Okay. Okay, so there's that. You're stealing Goran's thunder talking about toppers. I know. We don't have a topper talk, so I have to kind of go in today. So this one's kind of adorable if you were ever playing Dungeons & Dragons pinball and you're like, oh, I wish he had a little hand. Oh, that's cute. Give him a little hand. Look at him. Yeah, look at him. And why is the hand coming out of a mountain? That does not make any sense at all. Well, he punched the mountain, Kevin. Like, he punched right through it. Wait, it moves? Oh, look at that. Watch this. Whee! Oh, look at the little plastic printing underneath. See the waves at you. Oh, rah! Look at, rah! Look at that little limp wrist reaction. Oh, yeah. Here it comes. Oh, it's so scary. Whee! Oh, I'm so scared. He's waving bye. Bye-bye. Oh, my God. Get the fuck out of here. Okay. And then here's an old favorite. Everybody's like, you know. Hey, everybody. It's Don Parker. Some kid talking about Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, everybody seems to come up with this idea, and then they realize that nobody wants it, and they don't actually sell it. Someone's going to buy it, though. Here it is. You ready? It's the flipper lock. What? That's the idea that those guys in Canada had. Remember? You put the magnet. Pause your balls. Pause your balls. Pause your balls all over again. Get out of here. Isn't it? Get out of here, Kevin. It's a magnetic pinball tool to lock the flipper, cradle the ball, snap on a flipper lock, and effectively pause your game and burn out your coils. It's the flipper lock. Yeah, get yourself one. Oh, my God. Here we can see it in action. Here it goes. oh, game is fun. Oh, look at that. It's fun. Well, you know what, though? It is funny that he's showing this on a Godzilla because that game goes on so long. You could probably eat lunch and dinner. If you're me, you probably gotta go to the bathroom like ten times. So, I don't know. Maybe it should just come with Godzilla. And a stroke switch tester. Ah, yeah, I wonder. Oh, I think my favorite part of this is that I was on their Instagram. I forget who sent me this. I was like, oh, let me check out their website. So I went to their website, and they're like, oh, look, just go to our Instagram. Oh, it's like a treasure hunt. You just go, you know, you're on Instagram, and it sends you to their website, which sends you back to Instagram. That's good. That's good. Good stuff. Is that where? It looks like it's, like, worn out underneath there. Hopefully the flipper lock is not wearing out your side art. We would hate to have that happen. Anyway, there you go. Mods you don't need. There you go. It came back. Thanks, everybody. We might do it again next month. Keep sending them in. I appreciate everybody who sends in the terrible mods. Some of them are there like, you should feature this one. And I'm like, we already did that one, bro. You're behind on your mods you don't need. But keep sending them in. We'll keep featuring them. And with that, I think it's review time. Let's introduce it proper. I am okay. I'm ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready for it. I am down. It's John Wick from Stern Pinball in 2024. It's a game designed by Elliot Elliot Eismin, Elliot's first game. The software was by Tim Sexton, who isn't there anymore, so we'll talk about that more coming up. Artwork by Randy Martinez and sound by Bob Baffy. Pricing when it was launched was $7,000 for the Pro, $9,700 for the Premium, $13,000 for the LE. Now, according to Pinside, it's more like $6,000, $8,000, and $10,000, but it's actually probably even a little lower than that, based on especially what Nick just paid for his LE. But I'm going to let Nick kind of drive the bus on this. I'll give my initial kind of overall thoughts and jump in as we go, but he's put a lot more time into this than I have. I've played it at the club a bunch. It's kind of like one of my go-to games there because it's like a fast, kick-your-butt kind of game, so it kind of keeps me coming back with the one more game sort of feeling. I like the overall look of it. I think that Randy Martinez's art is really good. the like cityscape green glow vibes to it are cool like i'm a fan of that and uh yeah i think just like the the layout and shots are cool i don't have a complete understanding of the rules um but you know i think i think it's fun enough for playing on location i don't i can't really speak to overall how it holds up in the home but nick i'll kind of let you dive deeper into things from there yeah okay we'll start with the rules so the and i can talk about the pro and premium because I'm experienced with both. Number one, I think the rules are actually good. I think that there's a lot of chatter in the owner's thread and they're as the rules developed or not developed, you know, in terms of getting updates. There's different levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with this game. Let's just cut to the chase. The game is missing too many wizard modes that should be in there. It's missing wizard mode and It doesn't need more code polish, for sure. I mean, right now there's a number of, what do you call it, villains or bosses, I forget what they call it in there. At best, they've maybe gotten to two of them in a game, in a particularly good game, so it's hard to progress in there. The way the game is set up, you've got to kill enemies to unlock those. And people have speculated, well, they probably made it difficult because there's no mini-wizard mode or wizard mode, so that's why they're trying to artificially slow you down. And then also, I mean, look, Tim Sexton is gone. He is the lead rule designer. He left within the last month. So is anybody driving the bus right now on this? I liken to this game in terms of the rules, and I'll talk about the good in a second, but it's like they got the plane in the air, but first of all, there's no pilot right now. It's in Antonio Cruz control, and I'm wondering, are they going to land it or is it going to crash? They need somebody to bring this game home and land it. So here's the good. It's good but not intuitive. I had to go to tilt forums just to really understand what the hell is going on in this game. It's not intuitive. So one of the main things to understand about this game is each shot has enemies that spawn. They're like the three blue dots. If they're blinking, they take one hit to clear. If they're solid, they take two hits to clear. But you can't, let's say there's like an arrow that's lit to hit for like a mode or jackpot. You cannot collect that shot for the mode or jackpot until you clear the enemies. So if there's enemies on that shot, they're blocking the shot, you got to hit the shot to clear the enemies. Then you can hit the shot again to actually score the jackpot or mode shot. I really like that. It's something different. and it's not been in any game before. The enemies spawn randomly. You know, when they were doing the reveal stream, there was this bunch of bullshit about AI and there's 4K video. I mean, it's too bad. These guys need to learn how to sell better. Like, they just did marketing bullshit, and I hate that. Marketing shouldn't be bullshit, right? Like, sales shouldn't be bullshit, but these guys leaned on that. It's just whatever. It's just random. Stop saying this shit. But it does spawn randomly, and it keeps the game varied. and with the way this game is super fast it's like the fastest game that I can think of so it really keeps your head on a swivel of saying okay this shot's blocked if enemies that shot's not like you really it gets your heart racing and I love that and as I was talking about you know Godzilla and Kong earlier and just in general discussion about a way games these days seem to stop the ball too much or make you watch video clips like no no no no this game like never stops the ball it is very very rare that the ball stop it is and when it stops it's quickly back into the action so i just i love this game because it gets your heart pounding it keeps my ad on track of just being super focused on what's going on um and it's a difficult game it is not a baby game so we're in this era now where all these games have to be super deep and super long playing and you know like this and that and and like this is such a welcome relief for people who do not want that. This harkens back to me to, like, the days of, like, Tron and Iron Man and Avatar and Big Buck Hunter where games were, you know, and Metallica where they're not these, like, long playing fests. They're just, like, hit the shot and there's some basic modes and whatnot. But I love that era and this reminds me of it. Like, this game is so difficult. It throws you, like, an extra ball within, like, the first few moments of the game. And an ass kicker. So, again, I think what Tim and his team did with Joshua Henderson and the enemies is good. It's thinking outside the box. But, like, I get somebody who doesn't understand it or is confused by it. You've got to go to tilt forums. You really, when you start a mode, which is the crate shot, you've got to really read what to do. Sometimes it's just, like, it's basically hit the lit shot. But you don't want to skip that. It's really quick because it might help you understand a little bit better. What is also really confusing is that there's these factions in the game, and there might be a mission like Escort the VIP, but it could be a different faction that gets paired with that mission. And I'm still confused on this, but I think there's shots in the game that would change what faction is actually paired with a mission. So, like, a mission is not faction-specific. So if you're confused, that's okay, because it's not coded in there in terms of what matters, what the faction is. I'm, like, 99% sure. Like, it's something that they intended to do or might do, but it's not in there. So this is the scary part. They have ideas for this game. I think there's good ideas, but it's either half-baked or not fleshed out, right? This is very concerning. So what makes it confusing is that you think, oh, I'm in the orange mode where the arrows are orange, right? And when I'm in the orange mode, I need to do this. No, no, no, no. That's just the orange faction. You might be in a mode that's escort the VIP where if it's another faction, it's white. So it's, again, not intuitive. I'm only starting to learn the game because I've played it a ton, and I've had to go to teleforms and really kind of sink in what's going there. And at the same time, it's not complicated. That's the funny thing. It's not a complicated game. It's just not intuitive. There's other things in there like car multiball. There's like three different car multiballs or four. But like one of them I think is like when it starts the hurry up to hit the car. There's no hurry up countdown in the score, I believe, in the screen. So you don't know it's a hurry up. Only after you hit it, it shows what the hurry up value is. So like just stupid shit like that. It needs work, guys. This game's been out for a year now. What the hell is going on? And George Skoma is on the screen. George, at the end of the day, this is your fault. Like, what's going on? You guys are cranking out so many games that are incomplete with the rules. You've got to get the rules done on your games. These games are plummeting in value. This game, when it came out a year ago, was $13,000 when Ellie is dropped in value by $4,000. That is terrible. Also, you guys made 1,000 of these? Are you kidding me? All right. But, all right, I'm going to slow down. I love this game, by the way. I fucking love this game. It is so fun and addicting to shoot. So I recommend it to people who like the games. If you've been following this channel enough, you know what I like, you know what games I like, and it resonates with you. And, like, I like the games Nick likes. Like, this might be the game for you. All right. There's also what makes it also confusing is there's different rules on the LE versus premium on how you start the car multiball, I think, and also like the Winston lock multiball. So it's probably a good idea that there's different rules because the games are different. But that can also throw you off a little bit if you don't know anybody. It can also add to the confusion. I think a minor thing is that they have a really cool lights-out mode where when the button's flashing, you hit the button, and if you've seen John Wick, you understand what that is. All the lights go out except for the GI in the game, so you don't know what shots are lit or what shot has enemies and you're playing blind. It's cool. It's thematic. They do need to change one thing, in my opinion, because there's actually a cash-out scoop for the villains, which is, like, crank it up. So the villains, Kevin, are like, crank it up. Okay. Okay? Like, you score as many points, you hit a couple shots to get out of there, and then you can cash out or keep on going. I like that. That's cool. Very good stuff. Copy that. Good job. You can cheese it because when you get in the scoop, you can hit lights out, which will automatically give 2X, and then you can pick if you want to cash out or keep going. So it should make it so you have to shut the lights off and then you have to hit the shop. Correct. That's the most minor nitpick in this game that has missing modes and incomplete rules. Okay, that's it for rules for me. Okay. This is sort of rules, sort of like lights and display, but why does it has the smallest insert for the multiball start? It's like, I had it lit and it didn't even realize it was lit until somebody pointed out like, no, that's where you start multiball on the far left over there. Cause it's got this tiny little dinky little arrow. Um, it's like usually when multiball is ready, it's like beginning, let's, you know, yeah. So that's, that's a nitpick, but it's like, um, such as dragons is kind of the same way. It took me a while. The one on the right orbit to start the dragon multiball It so small Like make a big deal out of it It not that hard Oh by the way it really weird on the pro Like you would think to do car multiball you just wail on the car right And then, okay, so starting it, you've got to hit the – when it's ready to go, you've got to hit the spinner. Fine. But what's really weird on the pro, like, you can't just wail on the car. You've got to hit that left spinner first. And then you can start wailing on the car to make progress towards that multiball. I didn't realize that either. It's really bizarre and nonintuitive. I don't know why they do that. On the premium in Ellie, you just start wailing on the car. And it takes less hits to the car, and then you hit the left shot to start it. So, again, like, super confusing and non-intuitive. Okay. Like, weird. Yes. All right, let's talk about it. Not that I can change it, but just weird, you know, non-intuitive. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the art. Go ahead, Jeff. I'll pull some pictures. It's a beautiful game. I think I'm a big fan of Randy Martinez and what he did with the Star Wars comic edition. I think that he was doing it with Mando, yeah. It's a nice, like you said, a lot of times when you see pictures of modern Stern lineups, they all look very similar because they're all zombie-yeti art, like you've said. It's just like, yeah, he does cool stuff, but not every one of your games needs to look exactly the same. Uh, so, uh, it's, it's a nice, cool hand-drawn look, but not in the same style as, as Zambietti, which is, which I appreciate. It's a little less intense from, like, an overwhelming, like, amount of art on the playfield perspective. And also the, this is the alley cabinet that we're, we're looking at right now. I like, he's got, like, the stained glass look to it. It looks kind of, sort of elegant, I guess. Like, it's got gold flakes in it, too. It's, like, layered. It's, it's really well done. Yeah, it's really neat. The LE is foil cabinet artwork. It's just stunning overall. But I think, yeah, Randy Martinez might be my favorite artist these days, certainly working at Stern. He crushed it. I mean, just everything about the art I absolutely love. The color choice is just perfect, in my opinion, for this. Just so good. It's a beautiful, beautiful machine, in my opinion. Yeah. Nothing negative to say here, as far as I'm concerned. The sound. I have played it, but nothing really stood out as far as the sound, good or bad. It's kind of like middle of the road as far as I'm concerned. I don't know. You've had, you know, at-home experience playing it. What are your thoughts? So, I mean, the sound they got for the call-outs. Ian, what is it? I can't think of his last name right now, but, you know, one of the main characters from John Wick does an absolute bang-up job of call-outs. the soundtrack is phenomenal on this. Really well done. I'm not sure which is like, if there's any stock ones for the movie, because it would be a good soundtrack, and which ones also cost them a lot to look into that, but well done. And sound effects are pretty good. You've got a lot of gunshots that play into it. So the only criticism or commentary, really, Negas, on the sound is, one, during the boss fights, it goes into the movie clip scene when you're fighting the boss, which is cool, but the sound level seems inconsistent with the rest of the game. Some of the dialogue gets buried in there, so I think it needs to be tweaked. It's a little weird and bothered me. However, on the LE, I just installed the pinwoofer system the other day, and after tweaking some of the settings, changing the attenuation, through the settings and also through pinwoofer, it sounds phenomenal. Like, it is amazing how terrible not only the Stern Pro speakers sound, which I guess you could take that grain of salt, but even the LE, the quote-unquote upgraded Ken ones that they put in it, are just total garbage. Either get the pinwoofer or get just custom kickers that you can do for much cheaper and put them in the backbox. It just brings the game to life. There is so much better sound and music in these Stern games than you're getting from the stock speakers. I think that is a no-brainer upgrade. If you absolutely love the game and you're going to keep it for a long time, Pinwoofer's recommendation, if you like the game, then at least get the kickers, which are like $80. You've got to buy some parts from Pinball Life and change that for a pro and stuff. But just do that. Do that right now before you do any other mods. Those are the mods that matter. Mods you do need. Yeah, every time I play Godzilla, I got the kickers in there. I'm like, man, this sounds so good. It's a, what, that plus I have an external subwoofer hooked up to it. It's like a really good combo if you're not trying to put a bunch of money into speakers and stuff. But, yeah, it's a banging soundtrack, good gunshots. You don't, no lack of that in the game when you kill enemies. And then I guess I'll talk about it here because this is more like we don't have a section for it between, like, sound, display, and lighting. But this might have some of the best shaker mode or incorporation in any Stern game I've played. Like, when you kill enemies, you hear, like, kind of, like, the gunshots and taking them out. And it just, like, thumps perfectly, almost like a silencer. Like, I don't know. It's just – and when the movies are playing and there's action happening, there's gunshots. It's choreographed to that. Like, it is very, very well done. I've got to say, in terms of the coding, that team, they must have spent a lot of time on just the lights, the sound, the presentation, because it's very well done. Yeah, that's awesome. I haven't played the LE yet. I've only played the Pro, and the Pro at the club doesn't have a shaker motor in there. I should convince Matt to buy a shaker for that game. Maybe I'll just bring my Kenwoods in there for it. The Kenwoods are garbage. Who am I kidding? But, yeah, that game with the expression lighting and all the stuff you put in, you can make that game really sing. Yeah, it's a cool-looking visual presentation on that game for sure. What about toys? We were watching a little video earlier. It's got some cool toys. It's got the car that goes boop and stuff, you know. Yeah, so on the Pro, really the only toy, which is fine. This is typical of a Pro. It gets a pretty decent toy. Like the car actually boops it back kind of like a kicker. So you hit the car, the car then pushes back against the ball, so you get some nice action off of it. That's the main toy on the Pro. On the Premium LE, the car doesn't boop, but it swings out, which all things considered, if I had to pick one or the other, I'd rather have it swing out than boop because it helps indicate what's going on in the game better. It's also cool how, as Kevin's showing on the screen, where it locks it for the start of the multiball, so the functionality is really cool. I like the car. you also have the crate that you have to bash and it flies open to start a mode again I like that I think it's fun it gets the ball slightly out of control but not crazy it's very manageable but it also helps indicate what's going on in the game I don't like how the pro where you can kind of just hit the scoop hit the scoop hit the scoop again and again it just kind of takes you out of the game a little bit so I think the crate is maybe the best just for functionality it's got the blood oath marker which is whatever. I mean, the LE that I bought, it was broken. I think Stern shipped out a replacement for it today, so I'm looking forward to getting that fixed. And then the premium LE also has the actual ball lock, which I was worried about slowing down the game, but it doesn't. Again, this game moves along very quickly. And it has the stand-up target for the dance club area, which is nice, protecting that area. So to me, I think, like, look, the pro's fun. I own half of a pro. It's at the club. Pro's good for, like, tournaments, moving things along even faster in an already fast game. At, you know, $5,500, $5,000 for a pro, this is such a great game to pick up. It's so cheap. If you really like this game, right, you're a John Wick fan, you kind of have this level of love and appreciation for it like I do, then treat yourself to the LE or premium. My God, I mean, getting, like, an LE now from $9,000, It's cheaper. Again, this game is a year old. It's cheaper than a new in-box premium, for God's sakes. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. That's insane. This is one of the best deals in pinball right now. Yeah. Nick was like, are you thinking about getting any of these new games? I'm like, dude, I don't feel motivated to buy anything new. Let's just wait and let somebody else take the hit on the new in-box game, and I'll get it used. I don't mind buying used. Dude, totally. Okay. Alright, we got the toys covered. Display and lighting, I feel like we've kind of talked about this along the way, but that's one of the highlights of this game. I feel like it's the overall presentation from a lighting and display point of view, right? So good. So on, talk about the LE. You guys talk about the expression lighting, right? So I'm glad this game has expression lighting. Tim and whoever else is coding with him continues to do a great job with the expression lighting, and there's also the speaker lighting, which goes along with all that. It's very visually impressive, which kind of helps this game become a world under glass when you're playing it and adding to that kind of heart-racing moment. So just very, very, very well done. Very, very, very well done. I will say, this kind of goes to sound, but it's so stupid, Kevin. So they have, like, Stern does these inserts on the speaker, and it's like a dog on the LE and Kong has... You're blocking the fucking tweeter, bro. Yeah, don't do that. Like, don't block the tweeter. Who cares about that shit? I think it's on Evil Dead. It's like almost completely covered. Yeah. You guys understand how Serenity works? It needs to move the air out and the sound waves out. Don't block them. Oh, God. So, yeah. But, yeah, phenomenal. Great, great lighting. More expression lighting on games. Yes. Agreed. Gameplay. This is where the game shines for me, folks. This is why I fell in love with it. I remember watching videos and like, I like Wick. It looks fast. And, man, I was so hungry for a fast, brutal game. This game is super fast. I mean, everybody has to turn down the flippers. I got mine at 225. I wanted to run them at, like, the highest setting because it's so fun when the balls are flying around. But you will get air balls for lower during multiball. It's insane. it's it is just such a fast smooth game I mean Elliott crushed it and you know people talk about oh another fan layout I get it I've said the same thing myself about fan layouts in general but this is maybe the quintessential fan layout for me it's funny too because the if you look at some of the shots kind of thin especially that center ramp and the right ramp and yet it's findable and feels like butter and super satisfying. I can just shoot this game hours on end and not get bored of it. It is so fun to shoot. I like that. You also have a more challenging shot like to the boss scoop on the far left. It's nice to have a shot that you've got to kind of do trap up and think about and hit it, so it's good it's got that. It's got several bash targets with the car, the continental hotel, and then the crate, so you've got things to bash on there. So this is a game where you are feeling like you're John Wick, where you're kind of just doing these zoom fast movements, the combos, and then also things are coming back at you with things to bash. I love that dance club area where you kind of hit it back there. It's reminiscent of the kiss and getting the ball in there, getting a ball locked in there, and then hitting a ball when it's locked in there and having it jump around and hit the switches. I fucking love this play field. This is why this game has gotten me hooked. to me this is the best turn that came out last year and one of the best turns that's come out in a long time in just gameplay and shootability. Yeah, like I said, at the club this is the one I always come back to on the third row because it's fast and fun and it kicks your butt so you want to have that one more game kind of gameplay. It does a great job and I think it's, like you said, it's nice to have, you know, we've talked about this in the past where it's like not every game has to be slow or long playing and easy and forgiving. You know, make some tough games too. Balance things out a little bit in your lineup. Yeah, and it's like, look, you've got these other games that came out, like X-Men, and it's got all these kind of complicated, like, look what I could do with this shot, look what I could do with that shot, and it's cool, right? And you've got these longer playing cool Keith games where everything's in the back. And that's fine. They all have their place. Like, my collection is buried, and it has a wide assortment of games. It is just so fun and refreshing to play this game. And I like games where you get your heart pounding. Does every game need to be like this? No. But you also don't want every game, how Stern has been leaning towards these, like, complex shots and super long playing. This is a breath of fresh air. So it would be kind of cool if Elliot wants to define himself as this, like, I'm going to make fast, brutal games. Like, please, there is a market for that. Let's get more of it. He's only being held back, in my opinion, by, unfortunately, you know, people latched onto the gun thing, which is a non-issue now. And then just really the code is letting this game down, as is plaguing other games as well. But, like, get the code to where it needs to be. Get this game complete. And start selling this game. People will go out and buy new and boss games and drive the value of it up. Like, it's terrible. People look at this game and they see the price plummeting, and maybe they don't understand or play it much, but, like, it is so good. I'm a total champion for the game. Super happy I got it. I mean, look, it benefited me. I got a pro for $5,500, right? Like, after, like, four months, five months being out, and an LE for $9,000? Like, great. If you guys are listening to this, spend some time on it because grab it while you can. I'm not saying, like, the way the market is, this game could plummet to eight for all we know. I have no idea what's going to happen. I am not optimistic Stern's got a code update coming for any time soon. They sure as hell better finish this game. That would be a travesty to the team. And it's amazing, Kevin. You think about how much time they put into this. They got somebody to do the – who was it? A guy from Anthrax to do a custom soundtrack. They brag about getting, like, the Blood Oath marker from the movie and replicating it perfectly. You know, there's 40 minutes of footage. They did all this nice integration with the Shaker motor. And then you don't finish the game. Unbelievable, dude. It is disrespectful for everybody who bought the game and the entire team that spent so much creativity in making it not to fucking finish it. Hire people to finish these games. Stop cranking out. You know, somebody speculated that, and I dismissed it quickly, maybe Stern should only do two games a year. And I was like, ah, you know, we want three games. But I'm like, no, maybe they're right because it's like, no, you're not going to have dessert until you finish your meal. Like, finish your games. Like, Neil, are you listening to me, my friend Neil? Neil was giving me shit months ago because we were complaining about code. He was like, what about this and this game? Yeah, they're all bad, Neil. All these companies are bad. Again, Godfather, two years, no code. Like, I think you'd agree with me. Put it in the comments. You'll agree with me. A fucking year and this game's not done? A year of Jaws? That game's not done? No wizard mode? They get the stupid secondary mode on Jaws? Like, and you can't finish the game? What is wrong with them? This is insane. Well, you're paying the price, Stern. You're paying the price because people aren't reluctant to buy these games new, and they know they can get a discount. Dealers have got to be frustrated by this. Go hire some coders. What's funny, too, is I feel like Stern has people are most apologists for Stern because they used to be terrible. The whole, like, where's the code movement started because they were not updating their games. And then for a while, they were releasing games with really bad code, and then eventually finishing them. So they earned this reputation, and now I feel like they're regressing back to where they were. Is that a result of where the pinball market is right now? I don't know, but really there's no excuse. Because in the long run, it disadvantages them because people are less likely to get in early on a game if they don't think you're going to finish their game, right? Yeah, well, BorgDog says that Stern doesn't care. I agree. They don't care. I fucking hate when Stern gets mad when we say they don't care. You guys don't care. There's some level. You care about a lot of things, but there's no care in the code. There isn't. Because what's stopping you from bringing people into due code and demanding as a company that you're going to finish the games? You're going to iron the bugs and you're going to get it right, right? What is stopping you? This is bullshit. He said, look, they don't care because games are slow. People keep buying new ones. Yeah, I think that there's a lag, right? Like, you know, during the COVID times where people were just buying, buying, buying, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, they couldn't get games out fast enough. I think they're paying the price now, right? Like, you eventually will pay the price. And as we see these games in general sitting unsold, games plummeting in price, you're paying for that, right? Like, you are turning people off because they're going to wait for two things. They know the price is going to drop, and then they know the games are not coming out with complete code, so they're going to take a wait-and-see attitude. And nobody wants to get a game that's going to take two years and maybe never get coded. but there's not – Stern quote-unquote eventually makes it right, and maybe not on all games, not Wheel of Fortune. They didn't make it right on that game, did they? Right? Oh, that's like one game, two games. But, like, look, guys, there's no guarantees in life. Right? There's no guarantee. Their main coder is gone. Tim is gone, which that kind of baffles me to – I don't know what's going on. All right? I wish Tim would finish this game because I like the game, and I think he's got something special here. I hope he's well. but it doesn't bode well when that's your baby your game it's like you're making a board game and you just leave halfway before it's complete like figure out the rest of it yourself yeah that is scary come on yeah and RLM made the point and Chad made the point that well the distros are the customers to Stern but yeah they're sitting on all this unsold inventory now because you know the economy is shit and also people's buying confidence is down. So they should be the ones pushing back to Stern saying, hey, can you update this game? Because we want to move these games. We want to sell some games. Ultimately, who do you blame? The buck stops somewhere. I don't blame Tim or any other coder working on any game. I blame leadership at Stern. Who's ever leading ultimately makes these decisions and allows it to happen. They're not prioritizing it. They're not stopping and saying, we're going to do this. We're going to finish it. We're going to do what we need to do. So I worry about this game going back to the rules. Like, who are they going to put on the rules? When are they going to put it on? Is this person going to come in and totally change it and make it a baby game where it's got to feed out a million extra balls to get through it? Right? Like, it's scary because the person who had the original vision is gone. And maybe Tim couldn't land the plane. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he started off and couldn't figure out how to finish it. I don't know. But ultimately, I don't blame Tim. I blame Stern for not figuring this out and allowing this practice to continue. Yep. Well, and that gets into our next category, the last ability, right? Do you feel like this game, as it stands now, has last ability because it is missing so much? Last ability is always a question. I've liked this game for – I think I played it first in maybe July is the first time I played it. And I've played it – I've got out of the club. I've played this game a lot. and I'm just as excited for it when I saw it and first played it. So I love this game. I'm addicted to this game. I think in many ways it has passed my less ability test based on that. I don't know. I mean, I look at the owner's store and a lot of people, I see a lot of games getting sold. I don't know. I don't know. It's just damn fun to shoot, and what's there is fun to play, and right now it's a game where you play to chase score rather than to complete the game. So time will tell, Kevin. All right, so we had a question in chat, which I think will serve to reinforce your point. How many games has CERN not completed recently? So why don't we just, like, run through the list. Dungeons & Dragons, nope. That's their most recent game, so I'll give them a, you know, they got. Kong is, it's not complete. This is a low bar, Kevin. You know, like, I think a game when it's, it's crazy. I think when a game comes out, it should be done. Except for minor co-things or somebody wants to add bonus stuff that nobody expects. Right, polish, that's fine. It should be, like, feature complete, though. Correct, correct. There should be inserts that fucking don't work on the game because it's not in there yet. The Metallica remasters. Cursing is out there. I mean, it was a complete game to begin with, and they're adding more stuff to it. More of a baby game. More of a baby game. Uncanny Island, not even close. Yep. Godzilla, it's a Keith Elwin game, so yes, they put the code into that. John Wick, no. What else? Jaws, no. Jaws, no. They got like four people on that coding team and it's not done? Yep. They added a bonus mode? Like, not done? Come on, guys. Elvira? Lyman got that one done? No, they had somebody else finish that game, right? But that's also not the – we're going in a weird order, though, right? It's popping up weird. That's the Blood Red Kiss version. So I'm just going backwards through the number of releases. Jurassic Park, I think we can count that one done. I don't know. I don't know. You can get to the wizard mode, I know. But I don't know if there's other stuff in there that was promised but not. Oh, you can filter Stern games? Oh, yeah, here we go. Stern Pinball. Okay, yeah, this is better. Let's see. Foo Fighters, I think is done. I think it's done. James Bond. I think they're still adding to it, but I think now you can close the books on it. I mean, it only took, you know, over two years, two and a half years, but here we go. Yeah. That's the one that everybody always points to. Oh, look what they did with 007. Oh, yeah. You get to have assets. It's like a two-year thing that they're on. Is Rush done? I feel like Rush is probably done. Yeah, Rush is done. Godzilla we talked about. Mando? Mando's bugged. Bugged. There's bugs in that game that actually make it, if you encounter the bug, it's basically you can't progress in the game. So there's that. Nice. Zep is done. Zep is done. Yeah, so I think we're good now. It started with Bond, I would say. Yeah, during the pandemic, they were putting more time into the games, I felt like. But, yeah, so about half of the modern releases in the past two or three years still have stuff to come. So there you go. There's a little diversion, but a little run through to kind of back up what we've been talking about. Quality. I got a broken blood oath marker. I was not the first owner, so I don't know what to make of that. I think the quality has been good in general. I've got a weird problem, so this is to any other WIC owners out there. I put brand new balls in my game. My game, when I bought it, had 800 plays on it, by the way. I put brand new balls in it, and I put maybe 30-some games on there. And I had to take the balls out because I was doing some work on the game, and they were all, like, nicked up, like scratches in a way. They're kind of deep that I would expect to, on any other game I own, not maybe see one ball with one scratch after, like, 200 games. So something is chewing the balls up on my game. I don't know if that's unique to just mine or if there's something in these games that are messing the balls up. But it's very concerning because that will destroy a play field. So I've been on a hunt to try to – I cannot just ever enjoy myself, Calvin. I've been on a hunt to try to figure out what's going on on that. So if anybody can help me out, I'd appreciate it. I didn't see any other posts on the owner's thread. I don't know if they're checking it like I do, but it's really weird. No shipping or pooling, Chris Pinter. That's good. Good to know. And the joy factor, last but not least. The joy factor is a 9 out of 10 for me. Maybe even be a 10 out of 10. I absolutely love this game. It is, despite the issues I side with the code, I love it so much. I'm really happy that they actually made, like, an adult-themed game, which is John Wick, where he's killing people left and right. Maybe I'm just really starving for it. And I do like John Wick overall. but I love the game puts a smile on my face, gets my heart racing which is what I want in pinball and yeah I own one and a half of it so there you go you like it enough you bought more than one-ish alright so let's get down to it, what's our scoring going to be, should we run through the through the scoring or no our rating system is 0-2 burn it, 3-5 expensive nightlight 6-8, solid game, 9-10, get your wallets out. Where do you put this one? Well, I'm going to have to extract a heavy penalty on this game and give it a 7 because it's missing three serious modes and needs some polish and things fixed on it. So maybe a 7 is really generous, all things considered. But if that stuff was in the game, then I would have to imagine, if it's done to satisfaction, then I would probably give it a 9, 9.5. Might even be a 10 for me if that shit gets complete. We'll see. But right now, for somebody who loves this game and owns one and a half to seven because Stern can't get their shit together. Yeah. Like I said at the start, I don't have as much time on this. The theme doesn't resonate with me as much as it does with you, but I appreciate the game. It's a fast, kick-your-butt kind of game. Looks good. The overall vibe is cool. I would put it at more of a 6 because it's, like I said, the theme is not as attractive to me. It is concerning that it's missing so much I do not have confidence that they're going to finish this game. So I'm going to rate it a 6. But it fits in that window. I thought about putting it at like a 5.5 and kind of, you know, top it out and not really putting it in any category. But that's where we'll put it. Mark it down. Those are our scores. All right, we did it. Two hours. Boom. Podcast. What more do you guys want? What are you writing to? I'm good. All right. All right, it's long. I only did one bathroom break. I'm going to get some food. I'm probably going to go to the club later. So if anybody's listening to this, by the way, if you listen to us, if you're in Buffalo, hit me up. I'll give you a tour of the club if you haven't seen it yet. I'd love to get you out there. We have almost 40 games now. We're really close to that. It's pretty damn impressive. We'll have to do a video of the club. You know how we do game room tours, Kev? We'll have to do that. I think it's ready now. Nice. How many games are there now? Almost 40, maybe 37 or 38. Nice. And, you know, there's a spring break there now. What more do you want? Spring break. Spring break hype. You seen that movie? Yeah. I don't think I have. I don't think I have. Do yourself a favor and go watch Spring Break. 80s movie, I presume? No, no, no. No? Reason? It's not like 10 years ago. Okay. Vince Franco. Okay. Yeah, it's something else. All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Don't forget, you can go to the buffalopinball.com website to buy some merch. You follow us on our social media. Here's a shout-out I meant to mention earlier. If you're looking to buy yourself a portal or a different P3 game and you want to get in on the $1,000 off, send an email to buffalopinball.gmail.com, and I'll make the referral for you. It'll get you $1,000 off your P3. It'll also give me a little credit for the store, too, so it's a win-win. Shout-out to Multimorphic and the crew over there for doing a great job and running that promo that everybody benefits from. So talkpinball at gmail.com if you want to send us some feedback. Somebody asked if we were going to talk about pin glass last month, so that's part of the reason why I snuck her back in there now that we have some experience with the glass. And then, yeah, subscribe on Twitch if you want to support the channel. I saw a few of you in chat today. Thank you very much for that. Bits and subs, or you can drop a PayPal donation at buffalopinball at gmail.com as well. You can also go ahead and give us a five-star review on your favorite pinball podcast platform. And we appreciate all the support. It helps other people find the show and get these hot takes in the future. So, Nick, any parting words for the folks at home? I'm just looking at the chat. Is this true? John Shepard is moving to Buffalo on June 21st. There you go. Dude, never a better time. We built the club just for you. Come on by. Hit me up when you come out here. There you go. sounds good thanks everybody we'll see you next time and go play some pinball or something you know alright bye