Are you As we hit the two-minute mark, I'm not sure if my audio is even coming through right now just yet, but I'll go ahead and talk anyway. I'm going crack open a cold Diet Coke. I'm ready to get back into the Sunday live game. Got a surprise for you guys, too. Oh, we are we are so close to sexy fix. So close to sexy fix. Fantastic. The panic studio. I want to go to a panic studio. Is that where I could pay money and just smash stuff? I want some sexy fix. Whoa. Camera just went all fuzzy though for a second. Congratulations to my top one, two, and three top fans in chat. I love doing these unannounced and just see who shows up. So happy to be back in the swing of lives here. Oh, it's time. All right. See you guys on the other side here. I want to hear the Well, what's up everybody? Back again. It's Sunday. Can you believe it? Logos are floating here and there. Oh man. Pinball Studio, thank you so much for everything you've done for the intro videos. I swear we're going to get I'm gonna find that that new one that you sent me and we'll get that going here soon. Man, look at this beefy guy up here in the corner. Remember that dude? Remember that dude? Boom. Clean shaving. Well, at least as clean as I can get. As clean as I can get. It's the winter time and so one of two things happens. Either I need to wear my beanie, my toque, my tobogen, whatever you call it, all the time because the hair sucks and it's cold, or we got to shave it. Shaving it for the winter. But it lets me tilt my hat to the side like a true Jersey Jack gang banger. I can't wait for Sonic. I think Sonic's coming next. I keep hearing confirmation. I got the first gameplay impression reveal. Somebody saw the game and communicated to me some aspects which is exciting. And so when it comes to do I want to put the money on Dune, I think if anything the money is going to be set aside for Sonic, do I want to put money aside for Pokemon? Perhaps. Still don't know if it's Pokemon, could be Transformers, could be whatever. We'll have to wait and see. But if the new Stern release, this should be coming any week, like any day now. It's the 4th of January. Audio. Okay. Give me an audio check. Sometimes there's there's issues. But if the game comes and it doesn't just knock socks, man, if this is two ramps and a bash toy, little physical ball lock on the premium, and you get a toy instead of a plastic, I'm okay waiting on it because Sonic. I heard it's really fast. I heard it has elements of another Steve Ritchie game. And I was hoping for like a spiritual successor to No Fear. It still may be that. I don't know. But I wanted to see the launching wire form that was in Star Trek the Next Generation. I wanted the fast gameplay of uh the Star Trek Stern game. Um I wanted Steve doing callouts. I wanted it all, man. I wanted it all. And so I'm hearing that it borrows from another Steve G that I didn't think about and that is F14 Tomcat. Okay. Just just great. Dig into what worked in the past, Steve. Put it in here. Mix it in your pot. Greatest game ever. I'm excited. I'm excited for that. I was just going to ask if you were going to get Dune. I can't decide. I Dune will probably be run again if you want to get a new unbox one. If not, I think you know people are enjoying Dune right now. My focus is all over the place with this camera. Dune is all over the place right now as far as like it's in homes. A bunch of people just ordered it. So, give it a year and these games will be available. It's not going to be like Winchester like they didn't seal the vault on it. They vaulted Dune. Stern's vaulted games before. And so it's in the vault. It can come out of the vault, you know, whatever. Yes, sound is good. So, back doing a Sunday live. This is, of course, not optimal. We're in a back bedroom here at the new Benton House. The studio is in development right now. We're going to build out a whole space, much better lighting and things. It's going to be exciting. It's not just going to be a wall of pinball machines behind me. I got I got some other ideas. Um, but that's going to take some time. We're we're stuck in the middle of the move. I really need to take about six weeks off. I need a sbatical to just complete the move, build out the studio, you know, get the mod studio up and running as well. I don't have that, though. I've got this week, this week off. Everything's packed up at the other house. I need to transfer it down here. My problem is I've got this rental place up the street that has great prices on moving trailers. The problem is it's full of Beetlejuice parts right now and so I can't use it. I can't use it. I can't complain about the price. The price is great. So guys, use it. But right now sitting in a trailer is essentially the all the final parts for an entire build of Beetlejuice. How crazy. How much does it cost to ensure a trailer that has an entire year's worth of games hanging on it? That would the anxiety of having that and trying to keep it from blowing up, catching on fire, whatever, freezing in the cold would drive me nuts, man. But they're just like lowkey. Yeah, the trailer's over there. Every Beetlejuice parts in it. We're going to unpack it tomorrow. Tomorrow's the day. So Spooky's going into full production starting tomorrow. Gonna going to ramp up at I mean, you know, everybody's coming back from break. break ends tomorrow. So, people are going to walk in and it's going to be a lot of just inventory, set up the line, get everything where it needs to be cooking. I don't think they're screwing playfields down, you know, first thing in the morning tomorrow. But the work that they do over the next week will set up the whole year's run to be successful. Go get my box. Oh my goodness. Sterling. He shipped a box of banners for the the Beetlejuice event month ago, month and a half ago. They're still sitting over there. I still haven't made it back. Tomorrow I'm going to the factory. We'll go do that. This is the first time in like four or five weeks that I've had just a week to just be off and be kind of at home. So, I thought we'd get back to the Sunday live. The last couple of Sundays I was working and it's hard to do a compelling live stream with my Don Pinball podcast logo floating. I'm gonna put you right up there. Um, it's hard to do a live stream when work can call you at any minute and you got to mute it and talk to them and stuff. So, today we're off. We're going to do Sunday. So, I didn't FOMO myself into a dune. I I I did a podcast yesterday kind of alluding to why and everything. I talked about the return of the want, right? When you when you want a game that you don't have and then it's fun to kind of chase it. When you see one pop up and you're like, "That one's got too many plays. That price is too high. Not quite for me, but I'm going to keep looking." When you already have everything, there's nothing to look for, right? It's fun to go hunt and shop around. Um, so games on my want list, uh, Big Buck Hunter. Big Buck Hunter Pro. I want one. Did they Did they only make a Pro? They didn't make an LE. Listen, if we're going to vault silly games, can we please vault Big Buck Hunter? Imagine that game like retoled with like deeper code, big screen. Um, how would you do a video mode shooting animals with pinball flipper buttons? Um, maybe there'll be a rectacle that was moving around. You hit the action button when it lined up. That'd be fun during a multiball, right? You have the chaos of multiball action. You've got a physical deer running around the playfield. And then on the screen you have animals coming into view over your rectacle and you could slap the action button and get them. I think that'd be fun like like playing Oregon Trail or something while you're multitasking. You know, if we're remaking silly games, remix Silly Games sponsored by PETA. We'll fill it up with PETA mods. These are virtual animals, so I think even PETA could agree that this would be awesome. But anyway, so one of them popped up. It is hard to find. One popped up in Sparks, Nevada, which I got friends out there. There's a whole pinball crew and seemed like a really decent guy that had this thing, you know, but like trying to arrange $600 of shipping from Nevada, you know, for a game that looked like it was in okay condition, I'm not there yet, but so I'm still looking. I'm going to keep my eye out. It gives me a reason to go on to pinsite and scroll through and see what's there. Um, and then that that's fun. If I already had it, I wouldn't be looking for it. And as soon as you get one, of course, a better one comes available cheaper and then you feel like disheartened. So, for right now, I'm living in the the time of the want. And I think that's all right. So, I put a show up last night. I haven't even advertised it yet. Finally had a minute to sit down, congeal my thoughts like some mayonnaise that's been left out on the counter, and we put that out. So, thank you for that. What's new? What else is going on? How many people we got? I can't see on here how many people. I have to go into YouTube and look over there. But we've got the chat here. We got the pinball studio here. Hard at work on amazing products for the future projects. Trying to get myself involved in as much as I can. What's up, Jorge? So, Jorge, one of my my Sparks buddies, uh he knew the dude that had the Big Buck Hunter Pro, and I was tempted. I was tempted, but the timing right now is not quite correct for even more Pinball Madness. I got I got 15 games in the house. I'm enjoying them. I don't have enough time to even play them all. So, so I didn't buy Dune. I I may get a used Dune down the road. I think Dune would be a fun game to have at home with the full code just to get to play through it for a while, but I don't need it right now. If I had Dune right now sitting downstairs, I honestly don't know when I'd have time to unbox it. Still moving things in. I got a lot more pressing projects to get this new household up and running. So, even if I had it right now, even if I ordered it and they were like, "Don, we're going to overnight ship it Amazon Prime." I don't know when I'd have time to set up and play it. I've got to go back out to the other house, load up a trailer on tomorrow, the next day, get that out here, and then we're back into work mode. I'm celebrating though. I'm celebrating the countdown to Pinball at the Beach. Pinball at the Beach is happening the weekend of the 6th, 7th, 8th of February. I have my final week of work at my previous job starting on Wednesday. And then I'm going out back to Maine for my third stretch out there. And then I'm off until pinball at the beach. And when I get to pinball at the beach, I'll be down to one job. That's it. And so I'm excited. I want the next Barrels game if it's a good theme. Me too, man. Um I It was so funny watching uh the the Cana Awards. I caught him during the last hour, which sounds like was the best hour when the alcohol was really hidden. Um and you know, yeah, he he you may not agree with all of his picks, but like his top three for each category were fantastic. and the fact that yes, Stern wasn't mentioned as a winner of anything. We take you back three years ago, four years ago when we had uh two Stern releases per year and Rush was one of those releases. That year, whatever year that was, I want to say 2022, Rush won the Twippy for game of the year. Now, imagine that game of the year this year was between Harry Potter and Evil Dead. And I don't think you could go wrong. I I think you could find near near splits where half the people would agree with Harry Potter being the best. Half the people would agree with Evil Dead being the best because of how phenomenal they are. But can we please agree that Evil Dead and Harry Potter are both better than Rush by orders of magnitude. And and I I enjoy Rush. I like the band. I like the game. I think it's fun. But it ain't no Harry Potter. It ain't no Evil Dead. It ain't It ain't no Merlin's Arcade. I mean, the games we had this year are so much better than where we were just a couple of couple years ago. Flip my Wizard Potter to make some profit. And I upgrade to a CE Jorge. That's amazing. That's amazing. Am I ever getting it back? You mean Harry Potter, Evil Dead, or what? I'm lost. I don't think Harry Potter deserves best art after the AI nonsense. So yeah, and and probably what he meant by best art I got to lock this focus. Uh probably what he meant by best art was the Mina Lima cabinet. And he made a good point where he said it would have been nice if the CE had art based on that as well, you know, and if the topper tied into would be great, but I think, you know, I think art he gave it to Evil Dead or he did a split between Evil Dead and Harry Potter without the AI nonsense. I I think it may have edged out, especially because you got the the artist from the books and everything. Playfield is part of the art package. Yeah, getting a Potter back. I I think I can whenever I want to. Um, so it'll just be a matter of when the timing is. I I think I want a Wizard. I had the CE. Sold the CE exactly for what I paid. That was great. I got in and I got out. I think the game is fun. What my problem was, I ended up playing the game the same way every time where I would, you know, first off get a Quidditch position, um, start qualifying the locks for the hairy stuff with the, uh, you know, the tri- wizard multiball and then it was all about just if during this game I could beat two of the uh, Death Eaters and get to the Death Eater multiball. I tried to do every multiball in one game. You know, the the Quidditch Cup one, the Tri- Wizard tournament, the Tour of Hogwarts is the easiest one. But then every game came down to basically was I able to beat two Death Eaters or not. And so, you know, I never really got into all the movie modes. And I I think that's the part of the game I wanted to explore more. But the movie modes would just kind of be stacked and going on in the background. And every game I was either, you know, trying to get to the Quidditch Cup or trying to do the the Death Eaters. And if I didn't get two death eaters, I felt like disappointed. And then I would tilt twice or and then, you know, get two double dangers and I'm screwed for the whole game. So, there was some, you know, there was some gameplay issues. As now, this is nitpicking home ownership playing this game 400 times. Um, on a location that this game is phenomenal. You can just put the ball anywhere and have a great time. Um whereas with Evil Dead, we'll put since those are the two best games of the year. Um I played that game different every time based on do I want to play, do I feel like movie one, do I feel like movie two? Um the modes were assigned randomly. They all played differently. And then sometimes I'll find out that oh, you know, I'm almost to the uh you know, the cabin multiball. I'm almost to the shotgun multiball. So I started playing differently based on how the game was evolving. I love that in pinball machines. I think Harry Potter shipped fairly code complete. And I think right now I I'm not expecting like any new major mode to come in or anything. Yeah. So, um would I get Would I get it again? Yeah, I think I would get Sonic first. Um, but you know, if prices come down, if this thing does a Guns and Roses where you can get, you know, a limited edition wizard edition for like eight grand, then yeah, of course it'll be a great game to just have down there. Um, but I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not having it. And that's pretty much because I've already owned it and played the crap out of it, and there's so much new stuff coming. But again, it's a good thing to want one. Um, right now, uh, people are still waiting. uh they can't build them fast enough. So, right now is not the time to buy one, you know, unless you were able to flip your wizard and then go ahead and get yourself a C. Yeah, why not? But, um, you know, I I think eventually once everybody's got it, they've had it for a year, we start to see them show back up on the market, that's when it's time to take a look at it. But, I I think this is an evergreen title kind of forever, which is great. And I hope I hope their next one is as well. What's going on with Stern? I haven't heard anything other than Pokemon's not going to be at CES. Leads me to wonder like was it supposed to be initially? And then maybe are are they are they reading the room? Like we can't release a lackluster lunchbox Pokemon right now. We're going to get grilled. Let's can we can we shift our focus to Transformers which has better mechanisms in it is much more impressive and maybe we can get that out here towards the end of the month. You know, I know the code's going to be earlier, but at least the game visually appears more impressive and like we can assert dominance and then, you know, in the springtime bring out Pokemon or whatever the game is. I don't know. Um, but it seems like this close to launch, we should be hearing a whole lot more about it. And so far, um, initially we were hearing a lot. Now we're hearing that, you know, it's not going to be at this show. We're not going to get a teaser here. People are saying the game's not impressive. Like everything's walking back. So, I wonder if, you know, Stern's looking at this like trying to feel out when the best time to launch this thing is. Maybe they want to launch in concert with a home edition. Maybe January is not the time to launch a new home edition. All speculative. All speculative. So, so nothing's nothing solid. And typically by now like enough things have leaked, distributors are getting antsy, they want to take orders and deposits. So we start hearing like impending like it's coming. The baby's coming, right? The the factories dilated, the the cabinet head is coming out, you know, but not really hearing it now. Um Oh, so I did a show last night. I was able to play Walking Dead Remastered. Um, and I like it. I don't think it's a contender for game of the year. I don't think it's a contender for art of the year. Um, I think it's a fun game and I kind of want one of those. I'm hoping Walking Dead falls off a cliff price-wise and I can go scoop up an Ellie for $8,700 just like X-Men. The problem is a lot of people bought X-Men and so there's just a lot of them out there. Foo Fighters kind of situation. I don't think a lot of people bought Walking Dead, so I don't know that a lot of them are going to be out there. And I think we're going to hear um you know, once these games are delivered and people have them for a while, I think we're going to hear that Walking Dead is doing good on location because it's not a game that everybody rushed out to buy and has in the house like me. I don't have one and up until Walking Dead, I got everything Stern Mate. So, I went out to kickback, the kickback, the kickback bar in Madison, and I went out and played it there. Me and my wife went out there. We had a great time. I got to play it. So, I gave some money to the location operator. We played both version, both games they had. They had two Ellies. And so, I think to the to that location that owns these two games or whoever owns the other one, I think they're saying, "Yeah, this game's earning really well initially. We'll probably make a couple thousand dollars in a month or two. Perfect. So, they're happy with it. I'm happy that I can use that money that I would had allocated it for something else. And I'm looking forward to the opportunity to pick up one of these things. It's got to be the Ellie. I have to have the Walking Dead Ellie if I get it at all. Not interested in the premium. This much. That much is how much I'm interested in the premium because when I was playing Walking Dead Remastered Limited Edition with all the lights on the inside and outside of the cabinet and how how lit up the playfield was, how bright that art was, like that's the version I want. So I either have to, you know, pay $10,000 for a premium, which sounds insane, and then pay $600 in lights for the inside, the outside, 250 for speaker lights. I got to upgrade the speakers. Um, I got to get some Invisalass, all that business, you know, and I'm basically spending $12,000 out of pocket for a game that I could get probably for I could probably get an LE for that. So, there's no point in buying the premium for what you would pay for the premium and to upgrade it. I'm sure you pay more than you can get an LE for right now. So, I'm going to wait. Oh, Jeremy, you went to kickback. Awesome. I thought it played really smooth. I thought the cabinet felt sturdy. Brackets are great. Whatever. I didn't lift it up. Um I wish the art on the LE was radcaled. Come on. I know. I I was talking to another manufacturer and they said that over compared to the cost of a vinyl decal, a rad cow is like six times the cost. And so, you know, how much are vinyl decals? If I went to buy them, probably a hundred bucks for the whole cabinet and everything. Um, if I had to have an artist design them, I'd probably be paying 400, you know, with the cost and then the printing. So, $600, but you're doing it at scale. It's got to be 500 bucks or less to get rad cows for each. It's got to be less if you're ordering a thousand of them at a time. I just wish they do it. Or at least like the foil, man. The foil make it different. Make it really stand out. I want to see foil in the teeth of the zombies on the side of the cabinet. The weapons there. I want them glistening, you know. Let me get that. But I think the game plays well. And the buttons that they replace the star rollovers. Initially when I heard that, I was like, I want star rollovers. Such a cool throwback. I'm glad they're in the game. Now they have these little buttons and the buttons have like LEDs underneath them that flash. They're kind of cool. I don't mind them now. Like at first I thought it was a big downgrade not having that cool star rollover post, but I think these buttons are fine. So if you initially dismiss the game, go find one on location, go play it. I I think it played well. I don't know who's buying a premium because you can get the LE for that cost right now. So something's going to have to happen. um where we need to find out like what this material is called, a place to get foil decals made. Um we need to get a hold of the art and just print them ourselves and upgrade the cabinets. I love my friends. They text me the most inappropriate stuff all the time. It's awesome. I'm gonna text them. I'm live right now on the YouTube. Let's see if we can get an industry insider on the on this. Sterling, I got to send you this picture I just got sent. Um, so Walking Dead, it was fun. It's not worth the money right now. So, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait and in a year, two years, I wouldn't mind picking one up just to play it. There's no hype for Pokemon. There's more hype for Sonic right now. That's like the game. You know, Beetlejuice came and sold. Winchester came and sold. So, if you're looking forward to like what the next big thing to get excited about, I think Jersey Jack, I think they own it right now. I think they own it right now. Uh Spooky's going to come back at the end of the year. I think Barrels is going to snipe and try to get get right in there. There's going to be like a week before Fallout comes out. I think Barrels is going to be like here. Love the never- ending story. Buy it right now. I think the next Barrels game depends on like timing wise will depend on how quickly they're making the Winchesterers. They have 525 to make. They're starting now. I think game number eight went out. I have to check with David and see kind of where they're at. Um, but it sounds like they're going to be robustly building Dunes to try to get them done by February. And I I wonder if they're doing like like a true parallel development or if instead of making 40 games a month, they're doing 20 of each. Sonic is gamebased, which is the correct thing to do. I thought the films were fun for what they were, but like I need the video game music. I need the video game assets. I need the the pixel art. Pokemon will do good on location. All of us who have kids will want it. Okay. If if Pokemon has robust, interesting gameplay, I'm talking about leveling characters, unlocking characters, it is a role playing game, you know, it's just you're leveling your characters instead of yourself. But if if I can level characters, if I can unlock characters, if I can unlock abilities that, you know, blossom into like into into solid gameplay, and if the layout is interesting and has two or three cool mechanisms, some fun wire forms, and some really interesting upgrades on the premium version, I will be interested. I'll be interested. But if it's if it's John Wick, if it's two ramps and a Bash toy, one one paw bumper, a physical ball lock, that's kind of Yeah, it's there, but uh I don't know. I don't know. Um, you know, I don't know if it needs to have a layout that has as much to do as Kong does, but God, wouldn't that be nice to just Wouldn't Wouldn't it be great if that game came out and the the code was so interesting that you could like level up and and when you go play on location, like you get credit for traveling to a different area or something and and just like the next level of, you know, like D and D code, Venom code with unlockable characters and stuff. There's just like so much so much gameplay and replay value built in there and a halfway decent mech intensive layout with a lot of wire forms and things going everywhere. Couple of subways, some fun stuff, the best of Jack and the best of George together. Who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want that? And and none of that requires you to get like every single asset ever from every film and every cartoon episode or anything. I mean, you could just have the 150 base characters, some stock art, and you can still have a fun game where you're unlocking all these characters and battling everybody and leveling up and evolving your characters. And then tie that into the topper. So, the topper is changing. Put an LCD screen in the background and some physical characters in front. and there's like interactions going on. I think there's a lot you could do with that. Even if all you got was the characters and a couple of seasons of the show and like that's it. The layout should be great. So, if it's kind of like a h we we've kind of seen this before, it just had different art on it, then I'm okay not having it for home. I still want to play it. I'll go to kickback and play it. I'll go to Oshkosh to play that Winchester and I'll play Pokemon too while I'm there because Lumberjack Johnny's is a great location if they would make a head-to-head machine for locations. Look, yeah, that would totally be fun. And I think there is an opportunity for somebody that's going to take it in the amusement machine industry. Um to take pinball technology and kind of merge it with redemption um coin op, right? We saw that with monster league hockey. That's that's using pinball technology to make a head-to-head game just like an air hockey or something. Hey, spooky looks here. Still got the orange hate AI deer photo. Yeah. Um I didn't have time to make like a ton. I made a thumbnail. Um you know, you want me to change it, Luke? Text me a picture. I'll put that one up there. Oh, you know what? Who I haven't seen in a while is sexy fix. So, um so imagine this. Well, Fix Dance is over here. Um, imagine, you know, a pinballsized amusement device with like 20 popupers in it and slings up and down the side and a kid can come swipe their card and they can they get 10 balls. They can just plunge 10 balls in this thing and they just bounce around just chaos happens and occasionally they fall into gobble holes that award uh tickets. And you can use pinball technology in a way where it's it's swipe, release your 10 balls, they all kind of carry them and go everywhere and then some tickets spit out at the end and the kid can swipe again and play again. And as you're playing, there can be like a basket of balls above the playfield and every now and then more balls are added to it and then when you hit a jackpot randomly, this whole bucket of like 20 balls will dump onto the playfield and just chaos is going to happen. That's like a bonus mode or something. No flippers, just just a plunger. Just plunge the balls, you know, strategically, I guess. Um, just like a just like a a coin pusher or something would be, but do it with pinball. Um, you know, pop bumpers seem to be a pretty robust mech in a game. Like, you know, your game's not down because your pop bumper failed, right? It's down because a mechanism is acting up. Um, a ball guide came unhinged. A plastic from the game fell into the out lane, you know? But like pop bumpers are are pretty sturdy and maybe you only need 12 pop bumpers, you know, just just down the game. And then, you know, your ball can come down. It can be like Plinko at the bottom, you know, where if it drains down the middle, it's no points. Off to the side, you get a 100. Uh maybe you can get extra balls. Maybe it's a timed thing, but essentially like a pinball sized pachinkoish machine, but you're not sitting there with 10,000 balls putting them through this thing and chain smoking like you're in Tokyo, you I'm talking about something that's fun. You know, grab a theme that, you know, kids would resonate and put it next to um, you know, that game where you have the water gun and you're pushing the ball through the playfield or, you know, the sit down Nerf game or the piano playing game or the hit the hit the button to make the ball drop game and try to win something. Kids will go through hundreds of dollars in 10 minutes at at a redemption arcade. And so if you've got a pinball factory and pinball knowhow and an expense account of pinball life, you know, and you're already making these negotiations with licensers, maybe come out with a parallel project to your theme integrated pinball machine that can also go into some of these places because you go to a Dave and Busters, you go to Great Wolf Lodge, you go to Kalahari, uh big indoor arcades, there's no pinball at all. So, this is a way that you can then take a pinball redemption amusement device and bring it in. And, you know, some of these games are still, you know, 10, 15, $20,000 that you see on these locations. So, you know, if you're already making pinball machines, you want another product, another skew, another stockkeeping unit, and it wouldn't cannibalize your sales to your normal audience, which is pinball locations, pin bars, and pinball collectors. This would go to places that aren't buying pinball machines. It's your foot in the door. Hey, we got a new product. Look at this. It's got the Pokemon license and it's high energy impact. Each game lasts 45 seconds and the kids can just sit there and swipe and swipe and swipe and just eat up their parents' credit cards and you'll get you'll get your points electronically given to you. Seems like it would work to me, right? So, should a company like take take uh American Pinball here. Um, now now their themes choices were a little suspect. Um, but you know, they had the Hot Wheels license. They made Hot Wheels pinball machines. Why not a Hot Wheels alley roller? You know, they're making this uh the roller ball or whatever, which didn't seem that interactive. It didn't seem that interesting. It was pretty bare bones. It was huge. Huge. It would take up the space of like two alley rollers typically. And I get that it's a throwback design, but what if they just made a Hot Wheels alley roller and had it compete with ice ball or something and then the kids can play, you know, Hot Wheels and try to get loop toloops or something like imagine that like if you hugged the rail or if or if you if you shot right up the middle with your ski ball, you'd hit that loop and get like bonus points and that's how you get that huge progressive bonus. And then, you know, you still sell your pinball, but then you could also sell this to people that aren't interested in pinball. Get it on location. Get your foot in the door with locations. We're all junk. It was not great. It was not great. It was huge. It was huge. The build quality, it it looked like a prototype and the price was like $9,000. So, I don't know who that's for. I don't know who that's for, but what do you think? Does it make sense? You know, you've got you got the people, you got the knowhow, you've got the cabinets, you've got the pinball life parts, you got the license. That's the hardest thing. Recognizable. Make your pinball machine for pinball people. And make your redemption machine for redemption places. I I don't know that market, though. I don't know if all this stuff is built China and then comes out. I don't know if there's any like US built amusement devices. So, we saw um that uh Simpsons token game, you know, where you would just like roll your tokens and it had a little bit of a play field caned the wrong direction. It doesn't even it doesn't have to be pinball necessarily, but you you have cabinets, you have a license, you have themed knowhow, you've got coders, you have lights, you have the knowhow to make something fun. I'm not saying make an Evil Dead coin pusher, but I'm not saying not. Look, there's there's a one of those uh marble drop redemption playing machines uh with the Rick and Morty theme. There's one over at Interium. I've seen them at IAPA. Um, they have Minecraft versions of them now. They're super fun. And I think maintenance- wise, it's a heck of a lot easier to take care of like a coin or marble pusher than it is a pinball machine. Places are already used to this sort of thing. You've got that footprint. Just a thought that I had and I haven't had anybody tell me a good reason not to do it. And it may well exist, you know, but you know, for like a company like Spooky, obviously that would take resources away from making pinball machines. And it seems like the business is doing fine. Doesn't need that extra headache. Just something I think of, you know, and again, machines like that, I don't know that they're made in the US either, you know. So you'd be competing with, you know, stuff coming from overseas where they could probably build them a lot cheaper even with tariffs. What's the newest, fastest, tallest coaster? Well, it's it's Eagle's Flight at Six Flags Kadia City in Saudi Arabia. It's got a 500 foot um Camelback Hill, which which easily takes the top. Currently, the highest the tallest roller coaster is 420 ft. So 500 just just puts it up and over. It's launched. It looks super fun. Uh there's POVs on YouTube. Just type in POV Eagles Flight and check it out. It's a wild coaster and it's on my radar and I would like to go and take a little trip maybe in May. I've never been to the Middle East. So, you know, barring any invasions, I think I'd like to go over there and go ride it. The whole park looks kind of cool, too. And I think it would be easy enough to just pop in, go check out the park, hit up a Pizza Hut, and then continue on my way. Anybody want to go? Yeah. So, that's exciting. I was at Aappa the year that they brought that uh the roller coaster car for Eagle's Flight. It was there. I got to sit in it. So, that was super fun. So, in a way, I've already sat in the coaster. I just haven't actually been to the location to play it. Yeah, I watched that POV. Eric, we're gonna we're gonna switch over into theme park talk here. I watched the POV of Eagles Flight and it looks like everything I wanted. Um Eric, what's the length? Because right now, one of the longest coasters is um California Screaming at Disney's California Adventure, Disneyland's other park out in uh Orange County in Anaheim. It's about 6,000 feet, which is long for a coaster. It's one of the best. It's very smooth. There's one inversion. I love it. Um, but I haven't even looked at the stats for you. I watched the POV. It's got to be like an 8,000 foot coaster, which is which is truly insane. That's length. A lot of these parks, they they put out their sizzle, right? Similar to like a pinball machine where you can just kind of go hard on one main thing. like there's a fast launch, there's one big element, and then it just hits the brakes, and you're like, "But why not more?" You know? It's like a game with one mechanism, but no other little side mechanisms. Shout out to Spooky Pinball for for loading it loading their games with multiple mechanisms and other little side things that are fun, you know, like like the cabin is great in Evil Dead, you know, the the troll mech heads that pop up and everything, but something as simple as the shotgun shells, you know, the shotgun shells could have been standup targets, and I don't think people necessarily would have noticed so much. But the fact that not only they drop targets, but they're actual sculpted shotgun shells, that's amazing that that's there. And I love that that that's there. You need to have your big marquee mechanisms. In a theme park world, we call them weenies. This would be the giant castle, the giant mountain, the giant drop or something. Something that takes your attention and pulls you that way into the park. But you have to have everything else as well. This is where Six Flags falls flat. They put in these giant weeny attractions, but when it comes to their mid-tier and lower tier attractions, it really the quality drops off. The scope and scale drop right off. You know, where you have like little kitty rides, you have carousels, and you have huge coasters, but you don't have like three or four water rides, dark rides, you know, they'll have a rapids ride or they'll have a log flume, but not both. And it's like, what are we doing here? You go to a park like Europa Park in Russ Germany right on the border with France Alsace Lraine region and they have like you know 12 roller coasters that are all different all interesting five of them are big highintensity beasts the rest of them are nice family coasters and not not a kitty ride but like something that doesn't have a loop doesn't go 70 miles an hour but is just fun and theme integrated and there's like eight different dark rides in the park a couple of trains a Montreal just there's There's rides on top of rides on top of rides for like you walk around the park and explore and you just keep running into something else. An inverted Montreal, a weird outdoor dark ride, um some little floaty water ride, a big rapids ride underground. There's a dark ride hidden here with like there's at least two dark rides that are hidden in that park that most people probably walk right by. And it's just it's just discovery the whole time you're there. It's amazing. Eric, stop it. Steel Dragon 2000 is 8,000 feet. I've ridden it. It's at Nagashima Spa Land in Japan. It's amazing. So, that right now had the record 8,000 ft of length, which is that's most roller coasters 2,000 ft is like what you get. So, to go for like 6 8,000 ft, that's like four rides altogether. Eagle's Flight is 13,944T long. That's like almost three miles. two and a half miles long. That's insane. And it travels that distance at high speed for basically the entire layout. That's incredible. All right. Say what you want about Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I've got to ride that. 13,900 ft long. When when most coasters 2,300 feet is about what you get. You think of something you've ridden recently that's about the length. That's wild. These people are mad men. Why? You could get easily three amazing rides out of that length. And they just said, "Nah, just do it all one." All right, I'm gonna start planning. I'm gonna start planning. Dude, I love that. It's like hold my beer only it's a dry country. Which brings us back to pinballs. I like roller coasters because it's a vehicle on a track. I like wire forms because it's a little marble on a track. I love that kind of stuff. A vehicle in a track. Let me on it. I don't care if it's a train, a Montreal, log flume, pinball machine. Let's go. Let's go. So spooky. If uh we still got we got Luke here and I totally ignored him. Um tomorrow, tomorrow's the day. Is that training day? Is that when everybody returns, gets their stretch on, and then rushes through? Like, do you have like one team that's gonna just finish off Evil Dead and everybody else is training on Beetlejuice, and then it's going to be Beetle Production and or And can I go over there tomorrow? Because I think that'd be super fun. My kids starting school tomorrow. I gotta get some food. I gotta get some food. Do we talk about everybody? Uh, Theater of Magic. Theater of Magic. Based on how Funhouse Remastered, Revisited, recreated did. I don't I don't know that everybody's rushing out to get pre-order deposits in for Theater Magic. Although, Theater Magic is a hell of a better game than Funhouse. Don is in charge of forklift. Hell yeah, I am. Dude, that was so fun to jump back on a forklift. I haven't driven one in like 15 years. Pop right back on there. Second nature, man. It's coming back. That was awesome. I loaded like six Evil Deads into the back of a panel van. Yeah. $60,000 worth of games. And I think I was I was just like the only one around that had done a forklift before and they didn't want to call in someone else. It was on a Sunday. I'm like, "Hell yeah, I can do this." And I didn't destroy a bunch of evil deads. I had to go into the stack of like 80 games and pull them out and uh dude nailed it. Just just nailed it. Super fun. So yeah, I want to jump on the forklift, please and thank you. I love me some forklifts. Can I quit my job and just do pinball stuff full-time? I think the only way I could do that is if I was heading up a redemption division for a pinball company and we'll make the alley rollers and the coin pushers. I do have another idea I'm cooking up for for a company. Not a pinball company, but something else that would give me some autonomy. Should give me some cash. I spent more money on Magic on location when it came out. Top 390s game for me. So, I haven't spent a ton of time with Theater of Magic, but of course, I've I've played it. I enjoy it. Um, you know, I, you know, me, Tales of the Arabian Knights would be the one that I would want, but that's just me. You know, Theater Magic's cool. I'd like to spend some more time playing it. Um, I hope they they've learned from, you know, getting Funhouse out. Maybe that was just their stumble out of the gate. So, if they can just use the original parts and build that game with modern standards, they should have some extra code though, too. I think they should put some new modes in there. I like the option of having like the original code and then the the 2.0 available. I don't like how it was handled on on Funhouse. You had to basically reboot the game in the other mode to do that. Um, I think if it was modernized where you had classic rules or just like Evil Dead, like you can switch between movie one, movie 2, you can switch between classic mode and regular mode or make a new mode that has those older modes baked into it. Black Knight Sorder Rage. Who's like gotten deep into Black Knight Sword of Rage? You spell the night letters and then you go into like this throwback 80s mode where all the sounds change and you get a multiball and it's a limited time experience where you're playing Black Knight with the original Black Knight pinball machine sounds. It's incredible, man. And then there's challenge modes. When you start the game, you hold the action button, you can pick to play like Black Knight or Black Knight 2000 in Black Knight Sword of Rage. The Black Knight Sword Rage Pro is packed with some gameplay, man. Don't sleep on that game. Now that I have mine, I I sold my my heavily used one. I bought a gentler used one, and it's it's just phenomenal. Now, oh, what a great game. Packed with gameplay. Um, it's in demand enough that they're a little hard to find, though they did make a recent run of them. So you can get yourself a newer built Black Knight Sword of Rage loaded with gameplay for about $5,000. That's the pro to get, man. That's the pro to get. And then we'll see what happens with Pokemon. We'll see what happens with Pokemon. Trigger Pinball is also in the news for not much right now. I can't wait to see what their follow-up to Merlin's Arcade is. I saw Merlin's Arcade pop up uh secondary market for like 500 bucks off. Why the hell is Spooky giving Canado five machines? I'm boycotting Spooky as a result. I will never play another Spooky. That's a choice. That's a choice, man. I think I need more ambient light in here. Okay, keep the focus, buddy. Keep the focus. I sold my LE for a mega loss. Which Ellie? I think I'm getting some delay in my comments. Which Ellie did you sell for a loss? That sucks. Was it Black Knight? And I was just talking about Black Knight. So yeah, you know, Spooky didn't need to give any of us any machines. Um, they could have just they didn't have to give distributors machines. I could have sold them all direct, but they didn't. Yeah, check out Sword Rage, man. Especially if you can play those 80s modes. They're awesome. They're awesome. How much did you sell your LE for? The Pro is the one to have. But I'm just curious, Andrew. If you say 7,000, well, how much was how much did you pay for it? Because back then, Ellies were cheaper anyway. I was seeing them go for like nine. So, you know, they let Canada sell five machine. Well, they gave him five machines to distribute. Um, they didn't sell them to them for dealer price or anything, I don't think. So, you know, five out of a thousand or 1080 or whatever it is. I don't know if that's a reason to boycott Spooky. I mean, name a podcaster that's got a bigger audience. You know, you gota you got to play business with these people, too. You know, I had my problems with Canada because of personal insults. I didn't have a business relationship with them, so it was easy for me to just cut him off. you know, but I I think in all hobbies you'll find people you don't agree with or you don't agree with their terminology. But I'm not going to let that sour me on the whole hobby. There's definitely people in powered paragliding, one person in particular, just completely toxic. The worst type of person, and not not one bit did that make me dislike the hobby anymore. I just totally avoided anything that have to do with that guy. And it was fine. He did represent a company um that essentially nobody wanted anything to do with anyway. So, it was perfect. It worked out. Man, imagine if um see in in in powered paragliding if you're a distributor essentially you're selling for like one company only like you partner with that company. Um it's not like pinball where you can be a distributor and you sell every machine, right? So imagine that like if you had just stern dealers and just spooky dealers and just barrels dealers and just Jersey Jack dealers and the kind of cross talk because um you know power paragliding you wear a motor on your back with a propeller on it you a parachute and you go run around fly around your neighborhood it's super fun um and there's like I don't know six or eight main companies that build equipment um as far as like the motor part of it and so a dealer will essentially partner with one of those six companies and then what you get is like the dealer will talk about how his company that he represents is the best one and everybody else is the death death trap is garbage and I'm glad we don't see that in pinball because imagine if you were a Jersey Jack dealer and you had to go around and say that like start complete garbage spooky's crap JJP is the only way forward you're you're a complete imbecile if you're not buying these games and And you got a stern person over there just the exact opposite. I like that. While distributors are all different and sometimes arguments come up, they're really supporting all pinball because they represent all pinball. Paid 9,000 in March 2019 for Black Disorder Rage Ellie. Reasonable. I think it sold for seven also in 2019. I think if you hung on to that about a year and a half ago, you could have got 10 or 11 because there just weren't that many out there available. And that was a game that I was I kept putting it out there in the podcast like please remake this game. There's a huge market for it. People want it. It's unavailable. And then they did another run of it. And maybe that had nothing to do with me, but I I was reading the market and probably so were they. And I I think you could have done the same thing with monsters because I was having a hard time finding a monsters for the longest time. You there's they're popping up again now, but for a while there I think they could have just brought it back out. Um so you lost $2,000, but you had the game for five months, four months. Did you just not like it? I would have kept it a little longer. You know, four months is pretty short for a game. I've had games shorter, but extenduating circumstances. That's not too bad. That's not like a not like a $13,000 X-Men going for 7,800 or Godfather. Godfather. That's That's a scary part about like when a game is released and you kind of want it, but you of course you haven't played it or haven't played it a ton and then you get it and is it going to be something that's going to be louded as things go forward or is something that's going to fall flat like Godfather? Like how do you know? Cuz Godfather looked looked great. Love the art though. Gold wire forms just great. Gameplaywise didn't do a lot for me. The theme didn't connect with me personally, but the aesthetics of that machine were great. The topper was great. But yikes, dude. I still go back and forth on do I want a Godfather not just because of how cool it looks. Gold lions. Come on. The gold lions are great. And if I can get one for seven, I there's other things out there, you know. There's other things out there. But yeah, that's fun. Guys, it's time for some lunch. Tomorrow is Monday, January 5th. It's the era of Beetlejuice here in Benton. Begins tomorrow. Unloading the trailer, birthing a thousand games into the world. There are there are two Beetlejuices right now that exist. the one that we all played, which was the one from the trailers. That's like the finished one. And then there's another one that's torn to crap that is being used for um you know, code updates and things and you know, figuring stuff out. So, it's been put together and taken apart so many times that it's just it's just wrecked. Um there's only two. So, when the first two Beetle Juices get boxed up, that's going to double the amount of Beetlejuices in the world. Oh, the Packers are on. Oh, yeah. Let's go watch some football. Um, but it's going to be exciting. You know, in the next few months, there's going to be so many more Beetleju exist right now. People will get to play it. And I'm I'm fortunate that I got to be at the event that I hosted where we had people that played it as well. So, I I know people enjoyed it. But Pinball at the Beach is going to be the first road test of like general public now. Get some time on this game. And what's the feedback? The feedback from Evil Dead was incredible. That going into TPF the next month, the Fervor had hit a fever pitch and and it just sold out immediately. I watched it happen. Now, Beetle Juices are already sold out, but like are we gonna elevate that hype even more? Are we going to see a $10,000 increase in the price? Is somebody gonna pay $20,000 for somebody's Beetlejuice spot? I think it might happen. I think it might happen. I think it might happen. I don't think the game's going to be $20,000 for years and years and years, but if you want one, especially if you have one and there's a collector that wants it, I I think you might see that deal happen. What a time to be in pinball, guys. fix. Take us out. Cam, you didn't miss nothing. This is going right up on YouTube. Jump back in there. Have some fun with it. Um, typically I try to go live earlier in the mornings, but yeah, things are topsyturvy right now as we're making this whole transition, but I had a free Sunday and I wanted to make it work here in the dark room with my buddy Sexy Fix. Look at him go, man. What a guy. What's Fix doing? Is he buying a Pokemon? All right, guys. Be good. We'll talk later. I'm going to go get some damn food. I got hungry family. They're beating down my door, so we're going to make it happen. All right, guys. Be good. Talk to you later.