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Pinpals Ep 10 - Emergency Ketchup with new John Wick and X-Men pinball code updates.

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 56m·analyzed·Nov 30, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

X-Men and John Wick receive major code updates improving rules depth and mode variety.

Summary

Pin Pals Episode 10 covers code updates for Uncanny X-Men and John Wick pinball machines. X-Men received significant improvements including simplified add-a-ball mechanics tied to Rogue mode completion and a new Berserker Multiball side quest requiring 35 Sentinel kills. John Wick's new Wizard mode (the Staircase) was added, qualifying via seven job modes, five adversary battles, or all six multiballs, with discussion of potential exploit strategies and game balance concerns.

Key Claims

  • X-Men add-a-ball is now a perk for completing Rogue mode instead of a ramp target complexity system

    high confidence · Hosts discuss gameplay demonstration showing Rogue mode now grants extra ball feature as confirmed update

  • Rogue mode is now the strategically optimal starting mode in X-Men due to add-a-ball perk availability

    high confidence · Host explicitly states 'I believe that the Rogue mode is now the right mode to start off with and hopefully finish' based on perk value analysis

  • X-Men's Berserker Multiball can award approximately 200 million points

    high confidence · Host reports 'John scored 200 million points in it' on the new Berserker Multiball mode during recent code release

  • John Wick Wizard mode qualification requires playing seven job modes, five adversary battles, or all six multiballs

    high confidence · Host provides explicit rule breakdown: 'you can qualify the staircase by playing either seven jobs...or five adversary battles...or all six Multiballs'

  • The trend of awarding wizard modes for completing all multiballs was originally pioneered in Lord of the Rings 20 years ago

    medium confidence · Host states 'It was actually first done 20 years ago or so...The Lord of the Rings where you...through the three multiballs Rings'

  • Dungeons & Dragons pinball includes an in-game tutorial screen explaining all action button uses in the game

    high confidence · Host references John Schappel finding 'a helpful tutorial on all the different action button uses in Dungeons & Dragons' in the info screen

  • The Walking Dead was Stern's first game with an action button on the Premium Edition

    medium confidence · Host responds to trivia question: 'I believe it's The Walking Dead. That's where they put the action button on the Premium Edition'

  • X-Men has no traditional ball lock mechanism for multiball qualification, using only ramp finger hold and broken ramp features

    high confidence · Host clarifies 'It's not exactly a ball lock. It's the finger of a Sentinel on the left ramp that can hold the ball for a second, but then it flings it out'

Notable Quotes

  • “Rogue mode is now the right mode to start off with and hopefully finish. And in this mode, shots move from left to right, representing the Sentinels being made on a conveyor belt.”

    Host (Serge/Kaled) @ Early in X-Men segment — Establishes new optimal strategy for X-Men game after code update

  • “To play Dungeons & Dragons at this highest level, I mean, your Demolition Man almost has to have a PhD. I mean, it is a complicated, complicated game.”

    Cale @ Pinball Science Corner segment — Justifies why in-game action button tutorial is appropriate for complex games

  • “The world changes, and so do we. Some people are DMD guys...Old school players are like, I'm a two-button pinball kind of guy.”

    Host (Serge/Kaled) @ Action button discussion conclusion — Addresses generational divide in pinball design philosophy

  • “John Wick you have to get all the multiballs, right? But then you get those four different car chase multiballs, and I just worry that's going to be kind of grindy or woodchoppy to me.”

    Host (Serge/Kaled) @ John Wick Wizard mode analysis — Identifies potential game balance concern with wizard mode qualification path

  • “This adds the missing fourth M that most modern pinball games would, in my opinion, benefit from. A mission or a side quest, something that you're playing over the course of all three balls, not just one ball.”

    Host (Serge/Kaled) @ X-Men Berserker Multiball discussion — Establishes design principle for multi-ball progression mechanics

  • “It would be like Blackwater 100 times, Cale, Tee'd Off do it. Are you kidding me? This is not for the faint of heart.”

    Host (Serge/Kaled) @ John Wick timeout exploit discussion — Expresses concern about potential unintended exploit strategies in wizard mode qualification

Entities

Uncanny X-MengameJohn WickgameThe Walking Dead RemasteredgameBeetlejuicegameMike VinacorepersonRaymond DavidsonpersonZach Sharpeperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Hosts actively play-test new code updates on release (John Wick code released Wednesday, played same week) and provide detailed community analysis

    high · Host references 'John scored 200 million points in it. He played the other night when the code came out on Wednesday'

  • ?

    community_signal: Action button standardization across modern pinball machines is creating complexity that some players resist, with clear preference among traditionalists for two-button design

    medium · Host acknowledges 'Old school players are like, I'm a two-button pinball kind of guy' and discusses necessity of action button documentation via Tilt Forums chart

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Potential exploit discovered in John Wick: continuous mode timeout strategy could allow wizard mode qualification via repetitive ski pass trap-ups without completing modes

    medium · Host speculates about ZMack McCarthy's known exploit strategies and questions whether continuous Blackwater timeout would count toward seven-mode requirement

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Modern pinball increasingly prioritizes multi-ball completion rewards and side quests played across multiple balls rather than single-ball mode emphasis

    medium · Host identifies pattern: 'This adds the missing fourth M...A mission or a side quest, something that you're playing over the course of all three balls'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Trend of wizard modes requiring completion of all multiballs is returning to modern pinball after 20-year hiatus; originally pioneered in Lord of the Rings

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.351

0:00
Ladies and gentlemen, how is everything going today? Welcome to the Pin Pals, Episode 10 with Serge and Kaled on today's show. We're going to get into some code updates on the Uncanny X-Men and John Wick, both dropped in one day. We're also going to talk about The Walking Dead Remastered. Also today, some Beetlejuice layout deep dive. We're also going to get into some comments from YouTube, some corrections, and some trivia. And we're also going to get into a DM from John Trudeau. All today on episode 10 of the Pin Pals. Will we be canceled this episode, Cale? Hopefully. Tune in to find out. That's right. These episodes take a long time, so hopefully. Yeah. Yes. We'll call it a catch-up episode. There's a lot to catch up because we've done a lot of deep dives into all of these many subjects, and sometimes there's updates on them. And so that's worth once in a while, every 10 episodes or so, let's say, we'll call it a catch-up episode. Does that sound good to you, Cale? I like it. This is catch-up. All right. So with that, let's get right into it. We'll do first code updates, and we're going to talk about the Uncanny X-Men code updates first. There are two big code changes here, both for the better, and that game is on a great trajectory. First, they indeed changed the Adaball. And previously, for you regular watchers of the show, you know there was a running segment here in which we were baffled by the complexity of the Adaball system on the B-slab target. It has been simplified, and it's now a perk for completing the Rogue mode. And I'll just show that for a second here. So there are a bunch of modes in X-Men. And what you really want to think about and focus on is this top middle row mode, the rogue mode. It's also called the Sentinel Facility Raid. And I really want to point that out because that may be the right mode to go for first in this game. The other option is this one over here, Fiery Assault Storm, because the rogue mode now gives you an add-a-ball. The storm mode gives you a multi-ball extender. We'll get into a little bit of that detail here. So Adaball is now available as a perk for saving Rogue in the future.
2:22
And the Multiball Extender is the store mode, and I usually say that Multiball Extender is better in most games than Adaball. But in this game, the Multiball Extender only applies to one of the three Multiballs and the least valuable one at that, which is the Sentinel Multiball, whereas the Adaball perk can be used once per ball on any Multiball. So in terms of strategy, I believe that the Rogue mode is now the right mode to start off with and hopefully finish. And in this mode, if you remember, shots move from left to right, representing the Sentinels being made on a conveyor belt that Rogue had to bust up. And now that conveyor belt wasn't really working, but it was kind of wonky. But that's been fixed as well. They also tweaked how the mode is started. It used to be on the left center ramp and the far right ramp, but they've changed the far right ramp to be the right center ramp. But you could ignore all that. I consider that irrelevant. Really, you always want to start the mode on the left center ramp because it's the easiest shot in the game. And if you're stuck on the left flipper, don't forget you could post pass on this game. A lot of people think you can't because there's no sling on the left flipper. But you could post pass off that post there. I promise it works. So I'll pause there. That's one of the two major changes to that. Cale, what do you say about that, especially given our podcast and how much we cared about it? I think I am going to start with the rogue mode.
Kaleperson
Metallica Remasteredgame
Lord of the Ringsgame
Black Knight: Sword of Ragegame
Tilt Forumsorganization
Dungeons & Dragonsgame
King Konggame
Star Wars (2017)game
Deadpoolgame
The Walking Dead (original)game
John Schappelperson
Stern Pinballcompany

high · Host explicitly traces trend: 'It was actually first done 20 years ago or so...The Lord of the Rings' and notes recent adoption in Metallica Remastered and John Wick

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men receives significant post-release code improvements including simplified add-a-ball mechanic and new Berserker Multiball side quest worth ~200M points

    high · Host provides detailed gameplay demonstration of updated add-a-ball perk system and Berserker Multiball rules

  • ?

    product_concern: John Wick's Wizard mode qualification path may be unbalanced, requiring excessive focus on one multiball type (four car chases) making progression feel 'grindy'

    medium · Host states 'I just worry that's going to be kind of grindy or woodchoppy to me' regarding four car multiball requirement versus single car in alternative path

  • ?

    technology_signal: Dungeons & Dragons implements in-game tutorial for action button mechanics as solution to design complexity, representing emerging best practice

    high · Host discusses Dungeons & Dragons tutorial discovery and validates approach through theme immersion argument

    • 3:48
    Mike Vinacore, Mr. MXV. Friend of the pod. He spent the weekend with us. We all, even you, we all went to eat at Waffle House. It was great. One interesting thing, he was talking about the challenges of coding or just the way he had to think different. him and the team about adding rules to this game was the shots are just ramps.
    4:12
    You know, there's no scoop. There's no saucer. I think the only stop is on the right in lane. The post. The post that come up on the in lane. That's right. Yeah, so he said it presented some challenges where he had to think creatively, him and the team. So that was very interesting. No, it was great having lunch. I had the grits. I always recommend them at Waffle House. And it's so true. You know, we often talk about when we do deep dives into each individual game how the layout design affects the code design. And we'll actually get into that later today, too, as we talk about Beetlejuice a little bit later, which has three scoops, actually. And so that's a whole lot of staging. It's almost a different problem than X-Men. You just have a lot of staging areas where the ball is traditionally held up. Yeah. Now, check this out. I haven't played, it's been a long time since I've played the premium X-Men. Is there a physical ball lock in that?
    5:09
    Well, it's not exactly a ball lock. It's the finger of a sentinel on the left ramp that can hold the ball for a second, but then it flings it out, you know, back at you. And then on the right side, there's a broken ramp, you know, that goes. It's actually really cool. So there's no chance we would see a swipe-a-ball feature, is something actually a feature created by Mike Vinicore, which is in a few Stern games. It sure is, but I would not think so. Theoretically, you can stop a ball on that finger, but this is not the way the game works. There's no physical ball lock for the multiballs there. Okay.
    5:44
    So great code update here. I think that's the right move. I do want to voice some concern about actually using the action button to activate the out-of-ball. So for that, let me just show you this information. Hopefully you're watching and not only listening.
    5:59
    And what I want to point out is that to use the Ataball, so you have to beat the rogue mode, fine. Then go into the future, save her in the future, fine. But then you get a green button the next time you're in a multiball, and you have to long press the green button. And, I mean, you just got to know that people won't remember this. I wish it was a simple press. I know why it isn't. They already use the action button for more than one thing in X-Men. They use it for the Bishop boom button. But I personally wish you could somehow opt for simplicity here. Make the Adaball a short button press. Maybe the Bishop use goes away whenever the green button for Adaball is available, for example. I think there are other options to simplify it. But what do you say to that, Kalar? Will you remember to long press it? What do you think about the fact that some pinball has short presses, some have long presses for the action button? Well, I think it's a necessary evil as long as we only have one action button. That sounds like you're asking for two action buttons. You know, I was just running through my head. You can have multiple.
    7:01
    Well, I'm glad you said this because I thought we'd take a detour on this point for a classic pin pal segment. You know the one I'm talking about, Cale. Do you know what I'm talking about? Tell me. There is an opportunity here for a... It's Pinball Science Corner where the pin pal break down a pinball rule. Using charts, they grab the science and... It's the pinball science corner That's right, Cale. Thank you so much. We're going to go through a chart of all action button uses in pinball and how darn confusing they are.
    7:43
    First, I thought I'd share this text from John Schappel about Dungeons & Dragons that I thought was funny. He found in the info screen a helpful tutorial on all the different action button uses in Dungeons & Dragons. And when he initially showed me this, I actually at first laughed. But then I wondered, is this tutorial actually a good idea? And he said, John was asking me, do I think more games need this instant info? And I didn't have any idea that it existed. And I just thought at first, is this a good idea or is it confusing? Or is it actually necessary, like you said, a necessary evil? If the code is confusing enough to rely on it, then do you need a screen to explain it? I even thought about a new segment for us, Caleb. Like, I don't know how I feel about this kind of segment. What do you think about this? You know, I'll take the opposite view of whatever you pick.
    8:31
    Do you like this sort of thing or not? I like this with this game, and here's the reason. This is how D&D is. Like, to play D&D at this highest level, I mean, your DM almost has to have a PhD. I mean, it is a complicated, complicated game. You'd think it's just paper and dice, but a good DM has unbelievable knowledge and a stack of books in front of him. So I think this actually fits the theme. Fits the theme. Damn it, you're right. Theme immersion. You know what? I was going to, for fun, take the opposite view, but you made such a good argument that I can't. You've defeated it already. So in conclusion, although this did make me laugh with how just, you know, confusing it is, sort of. I mean, it's actually explanatory. It's just a lot, you know. And it's on the info screen. It's not like they're showing it to you during the game, you know, unless you're looking for it. So, you know, I think good idea that they have this in the game to explain it. But from here, we can go into the master chart of all action button uses. And this was already lovingly made by those on Tilt Forums. So this is a chart I admit that I'm copying here. I'm actually just showing their website here, and I recommend it. And so this is a chart to end all shorts. Shorts, shout out to...
    9:55
    No more shorts. Yeah, we don't want that either. But this is a chart to end all shorts. It takes every game, explains what the action button does on each game, what color lights it up, how long you should press it for, and whether you should press it as the ball is draining, like lots of players reflexively do, usually to no avail. You know, the ball is draining, and you just press it right away here. I'm not going to go through all of this, but I did want to talk a little bit about it just to kind of show you. So here's King Kong, for example. It shows you, maybe I'll zoom in if that makes it a little bit easier to see, where you can have different colors on the action button. Blue is one, and then you could look up function one. that activates the log bridge whenever you see a blue button being active. And red is two, and that selects the island scene. But if it's green, that means you could bash the T-Rex, for example. And they have all these columns here. They also tell you, is it one of those buttons you should press while you're draining? No use in King Kong. You're not going to activate your log bridge. That won't help anybody. Is this from Tilt Forums? That is correct. It's one of my favorite charts in pinball. This is great. I'm just copying it over, but a lot of people don't know about it, right? Taylor, you don't know about it. Yeah. And so here's Dungeons & Dragons, for example, with all those colors. And, well, when it's orange, meaning number one here, it activates the shield. And you can hold it when it's blue, and that's the range shot, you know, for example. And so I thought I'd just show you that this cart exists already. It's incredible. They have one for Stern. They have one for JJP. all action buttons in pinball over and over and over and over again on many of these games.
    11:35
    Kel, what is your favorite action button use in pinball? Do you have one? Not to put you too much on the spot here. Well, the first one that comes to mind is Black Knight Sword of Rage. Oh, that is a good one, actually. Yeah, because, you know, everybody kind of, it's fun whether you love or hate that game, you know, trying to time that save properly. and there's either a case where you forget about it and so when your ball dreams like, oh man, why didn't I think about this?
    12:06
    Yeah, I think that's probably one of my favorites. Yes, it's such a great call too. You know, when it first came out, people were all upset that it wasn't at the side of the cabinet, you know, like the other Black Knights and it was in the center. And I was too, but over time, I've actually come to enjoy it because it forces you to remove your hand and press something. And I don't know, I've kind of come to enjoy it somehow. Now, it also, a lot of people forget this other thing, is that there's this thing called super modes in Black Knight Sword of Rage, where you get super spinners or super pop-ups, whatever, all these super modes. And if you want to cash that out as a super jackpot, you actually have to trap the ball on the magnet. And that's a cool extra code feature from that that I think is under-talked about. mine, you know, I was thinking about this before and I was thinking that I really actually enjoy on King Kong rather the T-Rex battle that you have to mash the button to increase the pummel value after hitting that you know, if you're in that T-Rex mode and you have to trap the ball on a magnet and then you have to bash the button and then I was thinking about that and I was like, wow, I really like that and it's weird because if you ask me which one do I hate the most, I would say, and I might ask you that too I would say, well, I don't like the Star Wars 2017 one where you hit the TIE fighter and then you have to press the button as rapidly as you can, you know, for example. While you're juggling a multi-ball. While you're juggling something. And so I was wondering in my head, first of all, like, that's how I feel. And then I was trying to justify that in my head of, okay, well, why do I like the one where I rapidly fire, press it into, in King Kong, but I don't like the one in Star Wars? So I was thinking about it a little bit. and I was thinking I was going to say, well, one is I enjoy the theme immersion of King Kong, where that move where, all right, you have a T-Rex headlocked or whatever, so now let's punch it in the face as fast as possible, right? But, like, I don't remember, like, Luke shooting, you know, 23 TIE fighters in, like, eight seconds. That just wasn't a thing. That's not how he rolls, you know, that way. So that's one. But then two is the layout is so different between the two. Star Wars is such a fast layout. It's very much a fan layout, and King Kong isn't, and we know that fan layouts play faster. And so you don't really have time to trap up and press it so easily in Star Wars, whereas in King Kong you have four flippers going on. You could get a shot up in the upper left, and it's going on the cliff's ramp, and then you might shoot something else. And so the ball is moving elsewhere. They have this kind of the river that returns it in a slower way. And so there's an opportunity to press it in a way in King Kong that there really isn't because of the layout in Star Wars. We were talking about before how sort of layout influences code.
    14:48
    And so I see it making sense in King Kong in a way that I don't in Star Wars. That's my opinion. What do you think about that? Yeah, I'm with you on that. Although when Star Wars first came out, I used to play it all the time in the lobby at Marco.
    15:02
    I did love rapid pressing that button trying to get all the TIE fighters. You know what? To each their own. This opinion is not objective. It's subjective. It's just how I feel about it. Always feel free to comment in on what your least favorite and most favorite action button use is in the pinball of folks. How about a little trivia? Yeah. First turn game with an action button. You know what? We'll leave that for the fans. I love it. Unless you want me to answer it. I want to know. Oh, you want to know? Well, let's give the people listening time to yell at their radio or television. I do know, but... Now tell me. All right, well, I believe it's The Walking Dead. That's where they put the action button on the Premium, but not the... Oh, on the Premium. Right, but not the Pro, and then the Premium had the walker bombs and so forth. Yeah. There were earlier action buttons, actually, like Black Rose, as I recall, for example. That may not even be the first, so there were certainly earlier action buttons, but on a stern, I would say Walking Dead. Okay. You know, you could get me with a lot of trivia here, Cale. It's not all pre-prepared. Yeah, no, I don't know. Yeah, leave some comments. Let us know what you think. Okay. All right, so the whole point of this is to say, boy, there's a lot of action button use in pinball these days. We could fight against it. Some people don't like it. Old school players are like, I'm a two-button pinball kind of guy. But, you know, the world changes, and so do we.
    16:29
    Some people are DMD guys. That's true. That's so true. All right. So that's what I wanted to cover as the first code change in X-Men. And there's a second code change in X-Men. And that is this mission side quest kind of thing. And I'm a big fan of this change. This adds the missing fourth M that most modern pinball games would, in my opinion, benefit from. A mission or a side quest, something that you're playing over the course of all three balls, not just one ball. Think about it as the Crank It Up in Metallica for collecting items, or the Mech Scoot multiball in Deadpool for collecting 45 combos. Or in this case, it is the Berserker multiball for collecting 35 Sentinel kills. This is great. It's actually worth a lot. John got it the other night when the code came out on Wednesday and scored 200 million points in it. And one thing about it, Sentinel kills, they're clearly shown in the display. I'll point that out here. Oh, quick clarification. Yeah, please. He got $200 million just on this mode? Just on this mode. Wow. That's right. And so it could be quite valuable. And I think a lot of missions should be quite valuable, I should say. If you're playing it and getting it over the course of multiple balls, you know, like Mech Suit Multiball in Deadpool is a perfect example. It takes 45 combos. You don't get it at the beginning. You can't get it at the beginning. It's nearly impossible to get it on ball one. You build up those combos over the course of three balls, and you hopefully get to it by ball three. That's typical when you get to it, and you don't always get to it. And this is kind of similar, and mech suit is very, very valuable. And I think sentinel is too, and I think that's totally, sorry, berserker multiball for killing sentinels. It's appropriate. It's great. It scores a lot. Sentinels are clearly on the display there, and you can see them as you build them. And you can get sentinels, by the way, in three different ways during Uncanny X-Men. Every time you beat a mode in the future, like let's say you're in that rogue mode now, that gives you an add-a-ball, so you're doing that ball one. As soon as you beat the mode, it takes you to the future. You have to make a bunch of shots. You get one sentinel kill for each shot because in the future the sentinels are hunting you.
    18:43
    If I was going to point back to the layout here, which is worth doing for just a moment, One of the things I really wanted was for them to make the danger room more appetizing, more exciting to go into. And so one of the things about it is if you get into the danger room before you start your mode and you build up the level, which is now easier to do, if you build it up to level three, you'll actually get two sentinel kills when you go into the future per shot instead of one. And now that matters more because you're building towards this very, very valuable berserker multiball. So it's even more appetizing. And as I said, there's three ways to get Sentinels. Way one is in the future. But if you go into the Danger Room before you go into the future, you get two instead of one Sentinel kill. So it even makes it that much more exciting to go in there, much more appetizing. That's way number one. Any questions about way number one, Cale, to get Sentinels? Yeah, so the circles, the yellow circles you made in the Danger Room, is that representing ripping that spinner or hitting the ramp? It is all of it is the answer. So, yeah, when you're in the danger room, actually, one thing to try learning on an Uncanny X-Men is can you get into the danger room? When you're there, just backhand the spinner, hold up the mini flipper, see if the ball comes back to a trap. Just try that one move. You might be surprised that on a lot of Uncanny X-Men, it's very, very doable. You literally just backhand it and then hold up the flipper, and it kind of bounces off and comes back to it. don't try that your first time in a tournament but if you're on a new Uncanny X-Men you're just playing a game for fun, try that and if you notice that and that works you can continuously backhand that spinner and after a bunch of spinner shots you'll get to level 3 Danger Room What do you say to that, Kale? Yeah, I like it I can't wait to try it. Alright, so that's way number 1 to get Sentinels. Way number 2 is probably the way you can get most Sentinel kills is during Sentinel Multiball and so Sentinel Multiball you get jackpots, and once you get the jackpot, you could get sentinel kills on that jackpot. So you just hit a round, a bunch of shots, basically, and you'll get a bunch of sentinel kills. But it also means that the add-a-ball perk on Rogue and the multiball extender perk, which is only for sentinel multiball on Storm, become that much more important now. Whatever you can do to extend your sentinel multiballs will get your sentinels, and then you could think about that sentinel multiball as a way to get your build-up more sentinels. So you can get to 35 and get to that mini wizard mode.
    21:09
    And then there's a third way, a little bit of a more forgotten way to get sentinels here, which is, I say forgotten because it's not in tilt forms as I understand it, but whenever you get a bunch of combos in the game, it starts with six combos. It starts this mode where two shots are lit for sentinel hurry up, and you can make those shots and get another two sentinel kills. So you make a bunch of combos, that gets you Sentinels. And then Sentinels gets you that Sentinel mode, the Berserker multiball. So in conclusion, it's a great code update. The game is in so much better shape than it used to be. Any other questions on X-Men, Kale? No, I think you covered everything. Good job to MXV and team. Agree there. I'm a fan. Well done. And so with that, we can go to the next major code update. Let's talk about John Wick. And the major code update here is the new mini wizard mode, which is the staircase. And I'm glad they added this mini wizard mode because every game needs far-out goals to strive for like this. If you looked at the inserts of this game, and I'll bring that up here,
    22:17
    there are three inserts that tell you that there will be three wizard-type modes. Well, two mini wizard modes and one master wizard mode. So the two mini wizard modes are the staircase and the duel, and then you'll get to special assignment afterwards like that. And so let's talk about how you get to it.
    22:45
    Only the staircase has thus far been the only one programmed, but it's really clear to me what they will do for the other remaining two modes. So let's get into it. first qualification. So, you can qualify the staircase by playing either seven jobs, the seven major modes in the game, in other words, started at the right lower scoop, or five adversary battles, much harder to do, or all six multiballs, and there are six multiballs in the game. There is the dance club pop bumper multiball, also called excommunicado. There is the captive ball, multi-ball, also called deconsecrated. And then there's the car multi-ball, but the car multi-ball is actually four different ones. So you have to get it four times. And there's a lot to say about this rule.
    23:34
    But I'm going to start with that. Any questions before I jump into that, though, Cale? No. So playing seven jobs, like, do you just start the jobs or do you have to be successful? Just start them. Okay. And that's a common question in a lot of mini-Wizard modes. Do you have to beat the mode? Do you have to play the mode? And this is one where you have to just beat the mode. One of the things I'll be curious about,
    24:01
    and maybe we'll bring up ZMack here on something that's kind of worth bringing up. Let me see if I have. Oh, back to John Wick.
    24:12
    So one of the things ZMack is known for, shout out to ZMack, not necessarily a friend of the pod, but maybe one day he will be. So one of the things that ZMAC does is he's willing to do whatever it takes, however long it takes, to time out modes and play a game and win a game. So I'm curious to watch him, and I actually might try this myself, nowhere near as good, of course, but try it myself on a pro. It's quite easy to get into that scoop, which pops it back here, ski pass, and then do that over and over and over again on a pro. And we've talked about that before in John Wick because, you know, you get the 2X play field if you keep on doing that, you know, for example. But you could also continuously get modes if you keep on doing that. So what I was wondering is, is this going to be a viable strategy to ski pass, trap up, do it again, start at mode, then trap up, wait for the mode to time out? you know, even if the timer pauses, then do that again. Trap up, do that again. Depending on the copy of John Wick, it might let you do that. So you just do that seven times? Well, you do that a lot more than seven times. Oh, okay. You know, first of all, each time you do it, all it does is progress you one spot towards qualifying the mode, and modes become progressively harder. It would be like 100 times, Cale, to do it. Are you kidding me? This is not for the faint of heart. This would be 100 times and then waiting for modes to time out, just so you could get to that mini wizard mode called the staircase. I might try it just to be annoying. Not in the league night. I'm not that bad.
    25:47
    But if you're at Indus, maybe you might try it. And I respect that. But I might try it just for fun for myself to see if that works. We may get into a galactic tank force issue. It's a galactic tank force situation. And Escher would do that the same thing where he would start modes. And I think that was at the IFPA tournament at Jimbo. I think that was at Indus. with the Blackie Sandford? Yeah, that's probably in disk. That would be right. Yeah, definitely in disk. Okay.
    26:14
    And then we're just timeout modes just to give the mini wizard mode. And this might be one of the situations. I'm not sure. I'm not judging it. I'm not saying it is that situation. I'm not saying we need to change it. I'm just saying I need to do some investigation. That's what I'm trying to say. Right.
    26:30
    And there's a lot of things to say about this rule that I want to talk about. Well, we said how you get it. That's one thing. But one way to get it is these six multiballs here.
    26:41
    And that's the first thing I want to point out is that trend I pointed out and predicted, actually, in one of our first podcast episodes, Cale. It's really the newest hotness in pinball code design where you give an award to the player for getting to all the different multiballs in this game. It was actually first done 20 years ago or so in Lord of the Rings where you got through the three multiballs in Lord of the Rings, and that qualified that awesome mini wizard mode, Destroy the Ring, one of the best modes ever in pinball. But then this concept disappeared for a while, lost to the sands of time. But it's come roaring back now. I mean, for example, you have Ray Day coding it in Metallica Remastered after getting to all four multiballs in that game. And there it was called Blackened. And that's become its own strategy for top-level players is to just get into all four multiballs as best as you can, for example. So I like it very much as a concept. It pushes you to play all of the game and not just go for one type of multiball. And here I do like it in John Wick, too. I do like it just a little bit less than I do on Metallica, because in John Wick you have to get to all the multiballs, right? You have to get to that dance club multiball, the Axe Comunicado one, the one with the pop bumper, right? I said you also have to get to the captive ball one, the Winston one, the deconsecrated one, it's also called. But then you get to those four different car chase multiballs, and I just worry that's going to be kind of grindy or woodchoppy to me. That sort of balance feels off to me because you're spending, yeah, you have to play the whole game, but you're spending half of the game focusing on one type of multiball, like four cars. That's a lot of cars. What do you say to that, Cale?
    28:17
    Yeah, yeah, maybe just make it one car. You know, we can always change it. Yeah, we can always change it. Another thing that was done, we could change it. There's another thing that was done that's similar to this in Rush, actually. Rush, you could also get a mini wizard mode for doing all the multiballs. And there's four different multiballs in that game, but one of the multiballs is just straight up the middle, the time machine shot, and that itself has three different types of multiballs. And so really in that game, you have to get what they call all six multiballs, where three of them are the same one that's just up the middle. I mean, different rules in that multiball, but you have to do the same thing. So it's just a lot of shooting up the middle if you want to make it to that mini wizard mode. and the way I'd liken it too is imagine Metallica which is great remastered code and you have to get to black end, you have to get to the multiball you have to get through all the multiballs but you have to do Sparky four times let say you know to do it That would be kind of grindy if you had to do that in my opinion And so it kind of similar to that I just I think something to consider maybe you don need to do all of the cars Maybe you don't need to do all the time machines. You know, think about it like Metallic Remastered. That's my opinion of the subject there. Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, I like to think deeply about these things, maybe too deeply.
    29:33
    But there's even something else about this qualification I wanted to talk about that's quite different. there's a keyword on the slide that I've had left up for you video watchers. And that keyword is the word or right here, capitalized or. And that throws people off. In fact, it actually threw somebody off in our Discord just today. They thought you had to do everything in order to get to it because they missed that word despite it being capitalized, that word or. And I don't blame them because that is a very rare word in pinball, mini wizard mode programming, the word or. and to show you what I mean here, Kale, we have yet another opportunity for a fan favorite segment and do you know what that is, Kale? Oh, I have no idea. Surprise me. All right. Well, today we have a double pinball. Well, we'll pass this actually. Sorry. A double pinball science corner.
    30:24
    You've got to be kidding me. Break down a pinball rule Using charts, a graph of science and fun It's the Pinball Science Corner Thank you very much, Cal. I appreciate it. And hold your applause, everybody who are watching this. I know you said to me, Cal, when we started this, you're like, oh, this isn't going to be another few hours long episode, right? And I'm like, you might need a drink for this one. Well, I thought it was just X-Men and Wick kind of updates, but we have so much more. We cover so many things in this, so many deep dives that we need to do all these updates, right? So this pinball science corner will be all about mini wizard modes. What are they and how does a game designer decide how they should be qualified? So first I want to give you definitions. I'm going to define a mini wizard mode for you. I've used the term a few times here. It's a late game achievement that started after you progress in a task where, number one, that progress is maintained over multiple balls. So we talked about in X-Men, this new berserker multiball. You kill sentinels over the course of the game, in other words. So you don't have to do it on one ball. And two is the mini wizard mode. It's exclusive of all other modes and features in the game. You can't have anything else going on during this time. When you're in mech suit multiball in Deadpool, that's the only thing that's happening. The game doesn't let you do anything else. It is a big moment to achieve, and it's not one you mix by something that's going on in the background kind of thing. It is something that's front and center. that way. That's the two things I'd say. And I'll give one last third thing to help differentiate it from wizard modes in that a wizard mode in the game is the final such mode of the game. Or a wizard mode in the game is one that requires you to achieve these earlier mini wizard modes in the game. So you might say, well you have to get to the three mini wizard modes actually John Wick is one of them. You have to get to two earlier mini wizard modes to get to the third one kind of thing. So some rule like that. Those are my definitions first. Do you have any questions on that definition?
    32:28
    No, that makes sense. All right, let's go to the chart I made here. And there are four ways to qualify. Don't get overwhelmed with what I'm about to show you, I promise, okay? I'm going to zoom in. After I show you the chart, then I'm going to zoom in later on each individual row so you can read it. I realize I need to do that for this podcast because I write a lot. And so there are four ways. Hold on, don't get scared. Don't get scared. Oh, boy. There are four ways to qualify these mini wizard modes that have been conceived by designers thus far. and I've ranked them here in this chart from most to least common. The ranking is also the exact same order from most clarity to least clarity, if you want to think about it that way.
    33:06
    And as I said, these charts have gotten so large that I realized I need to break them up visually for this podcast. So we're going to focus on the first row here, and that's what I'm going to zoom in on. It's a little bit better now at least, right? Wow. And this is the most common way. And by the way, we share our charts on our Discord, and also we often remember to put a YouTube link there on the video if you want to see these yourself, and you could comment on them and tell me what I got wrong, and I'll make changes. I like crowdsourcing the knowledge. But let's focus on this first row here. This is the most common way. It's also the clearest way to qualify a mini wizard mode. You simply have to complete one single feature set. Either you have to play all the modes, or you have to beat all the modes, or you have to start all the multiballs, or you have to collect a lot of items. But it's just one of those things. There's no or statement to it. There's no and statement to it. It's just do one set of things. We just mentioned, for example, Sentinels getting 35 of them. We talked about how you get them, and it's complicated how you get them. But that's the only thing you have to focus on, in other words, in order to get to Berserker multiball or 45 combos for Mech Suit multiball. Just do that one thing. And that's why it's, I mean, a lot of things are still complicated, but that's the clearest thing to the player. It's the easiest thing to communicate. Players are already going for all the modes or all the multiballs or all the items. Now they just have to do all of it, and then they can expect something cool will happen. Usually the game already has these goals clearly outlined in the inserts, for example, for the player. If you take Deadpool, for example, here, and Deadpool has these inserts prominently. There's Juggernaut, there's Mystique, there's Sabertooth. And then sitting above them and squawking at them is Sauron. And so that art, I mean, it doesn't sound obvious to all players, but it's there if you look for it on the art. The art is telling you, well, if you do these three things, maybe you get to that thing, you know, for example. So when you have this sort of this row of qualification, which is just do one thing, it lends itself towards communication to the player that maybe if you beat all three battles here, something cool will happen, some new cool mode. I'll pause there. What do you say to that, Cale?
    35:17
    Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. And I was looking at the chart. Let's go back to it. If you go back to that, looking at Foo Fighters, Combotron.
    35:28
    Wouldn't that be? Oh, no. That absolutely would be. And I just forgot it. Oh, boom. Boom. We already made a comment on it. You thought I wasn't paying attention. You know what? I thought you were 70% paying attention, but it's more like 87% attention, and I appreciate that. 87.7. That's right. No, I just forgot it. You're absolutely right. That would be a perfect example of that. But I'll tell you what's not a good example of that. There's something called the FooBot multiball, where you have to do five different things. At least five, right? Different things. For example, you have to get a super jackpot in this multiball, but then you also have to do this thing, beat a mode in one try. There's some very disparate things. This example is the simplest, which is just do a bunch of things. And maybe the example I thought to talk about for this to really, I'm not going to go over every game here, of course, but a perfect example in this most common category is Jaws. So I'll put the little green arrow there for you to see it.
    36:20
    You know, Jaws has five different modes in the game. There's Scars, for example, and Raft Attack or whatever it's called. You play them all, all five modes, and you get to a mini wizard mode called Fourth of July. There's also five beaches you can close in Jaws. You close them all, and you get to the search and rescue mini wizard modes. You could pick which one of those two you do, and then you get another five beaches closed, and then you play the other search or rescue that you didn't choose. Have you seen that before?
    36:50
    I have seen somebody else get to it. Fair enough. So it's like a rule of fives in Jaws. There's five modes. You get to 4th of July. There's five beaches. You get to search and rescue. There's five fish finder awards. these sort of the stand-ups or drops if you're on a premium. On the left-hand side, these different modes there, you get all of them, and you get to super cast-and-catch mini wizard mode. And then on the premium LE, which has the upper play field, and there you could get these five different wheel awards for spinning the wheel there. You collect them all, and you get to the say-ah mini wizard mode. So it's like four different mini wizard modes that are all for doing one, each of them doing one set of five features.
    37:29
    And it's really the prime example of this style of mini wizard mode. It really does it excellently. The game gives you a lot of pathways to play. Should you go for the five modes? Should you go for the five beaches? Should you go for the five fish finder awards? Should you go for the five wheel awards? If you max out any one of them, you'll get to a cool new place that's unique to that task that you may have never seen before. Jaws is really one of the all-time great codes. If you're coding a game and you're not sure which of these rows that we're going to go on to talk about, which of them, which style of mini wizard mode out of these four you should create, and you don't want to rock the boat too much with doing something new and fancy, it's really hard to go wrong here. And Jaws probably and Jurassic Park are like benchmarks in pinball and top-tier code structures to look at for inspiration here. I'll pause there. What do you say to that, Cale? Yeah, I'm with you, man. Something I always come to, and maybe we'll do a whole episode on it, is people talk about Elwin a lot as him being one of, you know, if not the greatest pinball designer. But I always think of him as like the best rules designer, frankly. That's my opinion. He just gets it on rules design, and I'm sure he gets a lot of love for that, but maybe not enough, I would say, on rules design. I know he has help and has a team who does it with him, but sort of an OG rules designer, in my opinion. Even when I criticize, I'm very impressed with the rules design, is what I'm saying. I do have my issues, but I'm so impressed.
    38:51
    And then any questions on this category before we go on to our next, and we're going to get less and less common, our next category? Oh, no, I can't wait to see the next line item there. All right, I want you to think of this next category as the and category. And what I mean by that is you have to do something like play all the modes or all the multiballs or all the items, and you have to do other stuff too. And so this is a tricky category because there's a danger of poor communication to the player if that goal lacks theme immersion. Like, why do you have to do all those random things? If it doesn't have the inserts for it, if it doesn't have the clear display and callouts for it. And there's not many examples here. You know, I have some Stern examples, some JJP examples. I couldn't think of other examples quite yet there from other manufacturers. And I'll show you what I mean with a good example, and then we'll get to maybe less good examples of how you can get away with this. So in this chart, I have, like, I'm explaining all the things you have to do to the game, the name of the mini wizard mode, and then all the things you have to do to get to it. so for example in Godzilla you have to get to Planet X mini wizard mode and to do that you have to do four pretty random things you have to get through a tier 2 battle and you have to do a Tesla strike and then you have to get to the bridge multiball and the tank attack multiball I mean I guess there's some thematic immersion that you have to have Godzilla destroy a bunch of things is the point there but otherwise it's random, it's hard for a player to know that those things are the things you have to do to like, you know, how do I get to Planet X, I always forget kind of thing Well, one thing that makes Godzilla at least a good example here, and of course I'm not going to say anything bad about Godzilla code, and I'm not here, I think it's used well. So I think you can use this category of mini wizard mode, but you just have to do it with forethought. And if you notice in Godzilla, right at the center of the play field, it says Planet X, and then the art shows you, well, I have to do the tanks, the battle, the bridge, and the power. So it's there for you. And I know there's a lot of color there. It might be hard to zoom in and see it, But it's there. If you own it at home, you're going to learn over time because of these inserts. And there's some thematic immersion. So this is my good example of how to do a mini wizard mode like this with kind of disparate features that don't have anything to do with each other. But you have to do all of them, the and clause of it all, in order to qualify the mini wizard mode. I'll shut up for a second. Taylor, what do you say to that? Yeah, that's very cool. Going back to the chart there. Let's do it. I play D&D a lot because I have it at home. and every once in a while I get into the tavern brawl and until now I didn't know how I was doing it. Well, it's funny you should say that, Cale. This is on my getting less good an example of mini wizard modes. And so I'll show you, meaning in D&D there's a tavern brawl mini wizard mode. To get to it you need to do three totally different things that wouldn't necessarily be obvious for the player. There's the dragon multiball, there's the gelatinous cube multiball, and there's a dungeon crawl, which is like go up the middle, the thing pops up if you're on a premium, the subway, you go in there, and then it's sort of a combined video mode and pinball game where you have to go through a tunnel and then choose left or right or center, that sort of thing. You know what I'm talking about there, right, Kel? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so I set it as an interesting example because I'm curious if you've ever noticed this. There is a billboard in that game right above the spinner, and it's the center of the game that way, And it literally tells you complete all three for Tavern Brawl, Dragon, Dungeon, Gelatinous Cube, for example. Have you ever noticed that, Kale? No. I love it. And it's so weird because it's right there in front of your face. And I don't even look at it. I knew it. And I want to point out for the audience here that I didn't test Kale before. I didn't show him this before. I didn't set him up. But Kale owns, not only does he, of course, have Dungeons and Dragons at the back, but you have one at home, right, Kale? Correct, yeah. So you guys are into this game, is the point.
    42:49
    And so I want to point out that there's a difference in the inserts and billboards. Billboards, it's better than nothing. I'm not anti-billboard, but it's never as good as inserts, in other words, because your eyes just don't look at the billboards. I think almost nobody notices billboards. They're there, but I don't know if anyone. Do you notice billboards, Cale?
    43:10
    I mean, I notice them, but I just think of them as like accents, It's like pieces of art. You know, I'm just not looking at them that closely.
    43:21
    I am with you there. So, you know, that's what I would say on this type of mini wizard mode thing, the and clause of it. It's hard to signify to the player. Some games don't even, you know, some games have the inserts that at least explain it, like Godzilla. Points to Godzilla, nothing against it, in other words, because it does it right. Some points against Dungeons and Dragons because it's on a billboard and not inserts. And people just don't notice it, even when they own the game in two different places, right?
    43:49
    But then some games don't even tell you anything at all about it. So an example there would be Bond, James Bond. And I really, really like the code of James Bond. Let me say that. All the revamps they did, there's so many different pathways in the game of modes and multiballs and mini wizard modes. And all that's very good. But one thing I don't really love is how you get this mode. It's called Bond James Bond in the game.
    44:15
    And to get to Bond James Bond, it's this 60-second mode where you have unlimited ball save, and you have to make all the shots, and you could time it with the multipliers, and it could score several hundred million. And actually, the mode itself is great. I'm not saying anything bad about the mode itself. But to get to it, you have to do four random things. You have to get to the two different multiballs, meaning the bird one and the jet pack. you have to get to one henchman mode which, just play it, which is shoot this side ramp, for example and you have to play one villain mode which is shoot this lower right ramp, for example and if you do those four things those four very random things that don't, to me, have that much thematic immersion for example, in order, I mean I like that you have to fight villains and henchmen, but just this random disparate four things to get to a mini wizard mode I don't get the thematic immersion, why that's necessary, plus There's just no inserts, and I think, unless I'm crazy, there's no backboard to tell you anything about this, and you just have to know those four things, and if you don't know those four things, you're not going to get to it. That's what I would say. So that's my comment on this category. It can be hard to communicate to the player, in other words. It takes a little bit of forethought to know it ahead of time back to Keith, who has it on the artwork, because he knows where he's going with the code when he starts, you know, for example. I'll pause there. What do you say to that, Cale? Yeah, it's so important. And there's always, as a designer, graphic designer, there's always that struggle between getting the message across and making something aesthetically pleasing.
    45:49
    Like, for example, with the sign on D&D, I wasn't paying attention to it because I thought it was just a generic, like something you see at a Renaissance festival, right?
    45:59
    You're having the leg of meat. Funnel cakes are this way, you know, chimney bread the other way. because the complete all three for Tavern Brawl is so tiny. Even though they put it in red to highlight it, that should be the biggest thing. Like, boom, do you want to get to Tavern Brawl? Because Tavern Brawl sounds cool. It does. That should be huge. Do you want to get to this? Complete these three things.
    46:26
    But either way, I'm glad I know it now. But still, the art is aesthetically pleasing on that little board. That's true. I just don't think it gets the message across. That guy looks like he's ready to brawl. Yeah. Nobody wants to mess with that guy. No, that's true. Are you a Renaissance Festival guy, Cale? Love it. Go every year. Let's go. I'm coming with you one time. We'll go this coming year. We'll get some deep fried Oreos or whatever they used to eat back then in the 1300s and earlier. Yeah.
    46:55
    Okay. We're going to go to category number three on this very deep dive into Pinball Science Corner. Category three, and now we're getting to less and less common, and here's where we discuss John Wick. And you can think of this as the same category of the one above, where you have all these different feature sets to do, but here's where you add the or statement instead of the and statement. It's just like there's a lot of things going on in this game with modes and multiballs and items, and just have a good game with any one of them, and you'll unlock something cool. So, for example, in John Wick, you get to the staircase for either playing all the multiballs or the jobs or the adversaries. It's not an and statement. It's an or statement. What do you say to that, Cale?
    47:37
    You just got to pay attention to what you're reading. Yeah, exactly. It is hard to know necessarily. That way, you know, we're getting into a little bit harder to kind of know if you're closer to the, you know, how to get to the mini wizard mode. Because it's just otherwise it's very disparate things. At least it's sort of an or statement. And maybe I'll talk about some before getting to John Wick further here.
    48:02
    I'll talk about, like, another example. I could talk about Judge Dredd is sort of a cheat. There is no mini wizard mode in the game. It's the wizard mode. But I wanted to include it here as honorable mention because it's from the 90s. But it was, I think, the first game to do this, so that's why I wanted to include it, this sort of or statement, to my knowledge. It's the first game to do this. And then games did not do it for a long time, which is if you play all the modes in that game, you'll get to the final wizard mode of the game. All you have to do is play them. Or, I should say, or if you get enough jackpots in the main multiball, you will also get into the mini wizard mode or wizard mode of the game, I should say. Did you know that, Cale? And you had that game at the bat, right? Yeah, but you know I didn't know all that. I agree.
    48:51
    But a deep dive for you, especially deep dive people that may not know this, If you do it via the jackpot method, I believe it's only a four-ball multiball, but if you do it via the play all the modes method, it's a six-ball multiball. For some reason, that's why they have six balls in the game, just so you could do it like that. It's the same wizard mode, but it just gives you a bunch of different balls. That's my deep cut on Judge Dredd. Technically, it's a wizard mode, not a mini wizard mode, but I threw it on for honorable mention because it was the first to do this category of mini wizard mode, if that makes sense. And that's the first time I'll say that. Now to J.J.P., though, I want to talk about Wonka here, for example, to give you an example of a game that does this. Hey, keep chatting. I just have to let my cat outside. It's free now. Fair enough. Well, yeah, you'll listen in the background. I know it. Yeah. All right, Wonka gives you these golden tickets, but the game is not very good at communicating how you get these golden tickets. You either have to start all the modes. That gives you one golden ticket. Or you get a bunch of jackpots in the Gobstopper multiball, or a bunch of jackpots in the Kid multiball, or the super jackpots in Wonkavator, or this thing called Gumball, which is just random. It just gives it to you at different times in the game. They did that to make it easy, so you at least get one golden ticket. And when you get to one golden ticket, it gives you a mini wizard mode. If you do another one of these things, it gives you the second mini wizard mode. So that's an example of the or statement here. and then maybe the last thing I'll say I'll get to kind of James Bond again here because I'm seeing an MXV calling card here to his rules design when it comes to final game achievements and we're going to keep on talking here without Kale here, you people in fact, because we don't like to edit on this podcast we're just going to keep going through Yeah, we go straight through Yeah, let's talk about No, we passed that already. Let's talk about the MXV calling card. So this is, I think, I'm sensing a calling card to his rules design when it comes to final game achievements. And the idea is that he takes the ore concept, which is not that frequently used, as we can see here, in terms of what qualifies a mini wizard mode, but he adds a twist to it, which is to also have an ore concept on what is even started once you get to that mini wizard mode. And I'll show you what I mean here.
    51:15
    So I'll pull up, for example, James Bond is worth talking about. So in James Bond, you get to a mini wizard mode by playing all six villains, or all six henchmen, or all six cube wrenches, or all six specter weapons. But there are four different mini wizard modes in that game, and you can get to any one of those four by playing any one of those achievements. That sounds a little confusing, so I just wanted to give a little drawing here, for example. So what I'm saying is if you get to, you do any one of four things in that game, for example, and if you do any one of those four things in that game, it will lead you to any one of four different options on the other side. So it's basically like an or statement at the beginning and at the end. It's sort of do a bunch of things, one or this or this or this, and then it gets you to multiple different types of wizard modes at the end.
    52:17
    Is that clear, Cale, this sort of weird graphic? Well, especially, yes, with the crazy horse drawing, absolutely. Exactly, exactly. And so I'm seeing something sort of similar from this calling card in John Wick, which is you have these three different ways to achieve staircase, either the multiballs or the jobs or the adversaries, and if you do any one of those, it gets to the staircase. but you then only have to do one of the remaining two to get to the dual mini wizard mode, and then you do the last one to get to special assignment. So I could see the code structure already. We're not going to have to do another update on John Wick. This will be perhaps the last deep dive update into John Wick because I know where the code is going after this. It's the final things to do. It's just fleshing out those other two mini wizard and wizard modes of the dual and special assignment respectively by doing the remaining things in this task because that is, in my opinion, the MXV calling card. I don't dislike it at all. It's just a unique way to do things, so I thought it's worth pointing out because I haven't really seen it much, for example. Any questions on that, Cale? No questions. I think we just have to say bravo to MXVN team for coming in on these two games and fleshing out the code. Great job. Yeah, it's well fleshed out, and it's almost done. I can see the pathway to both games being done, and I think they're basically there that way. I have my quibbles. I've mentioned them on different episodes, but just because I have criticism, I think overall I'd give it a thumbs up for both. I'm not saying A+, I didn't say that, but I'm saying it's good. I think they're good.
    53:55
    Two thumbs up. I'll give it a thumbs up. Yeah, fair enough. That's two. That's one from you and one from me. Perfect. There you go. Final category. Are you ready for this final category of this ludicrously long deep dive into the world of mini wizard modes. You know I am ready, Serge. All right, the final and least often used category is just doing generally well enough in enough things. And what I mean there is a game has like 14 different things to do. You don't have to do all of them, but you have to do some of them. Like X out of Y features, in other words, is how you can think about this final category. And this is not frequently used. We talked about it recently in Walking Dead with the Horde mini-wizard mode. We have to do six things to get six multi-kills, and there's actually 14 different ways to get multi-kills. It's the type of game, another way to think about this sort of mini-wizard mode is that it's like a buffet. You don't have to eat everything. You just have to choose a bunch of things and put enough of them on your plate. And usually, this is an interesting option because it's sort of paradoxical. It's the hardest to communicate to the player, and usually the way you do it is by not communicating anything to the player. And what I mean there by paradoxical is that you just have to do well in stuff. Well, what do you have to do well in? Do well in the modes or do well in the multiballs or do well in any of the hurry-ups going on in the game, for example. Do well in the bicycle girl of Walking Dead. You don't have to know the details of it, but just do well in stuff and in enough stuff and that will get you the mini wizard mode. So you tend to not have clarity at all in this method, but it's a good one to do when you have many, many different types of features in the game going on. I'll give you, like, Black Knight, for example, has knight letters, and you could get them through the modes, for example, if you make enough shots, but you could also get them through the war hurry-up, you know, for example. So there's just different things you can do to get those letters, and then if you get enough knight letters, you get into the Knight's Challenge or whatever it's called on the left orbit. it, for example. I'll take King Kong as an example here, too, that's worth talking about. And this is kind of a perfect example of this category. I think King Kong's an interesting approach to many wizard modes because, you know, it's generally the least clear, but it's a good choice if you have like a long-playing game with a very layered code set. I'll show you what I mean by layered. Layered is sort of using that word on purpose. I think I once use the word incestuous, which is a bit more inflammatory. I like that one. I know you do. But I'll just say use the word layered. What I mean by layered is that one thing causes another thing, which causes another thing. If I was going to draw it out, this one, it would be like, this goes to that, but it also goes to that, but it also goes there. And then that goes to this, and then this goes to that. It's so complicated that nobody could really pay attention to all of it, but it's all happening. One thing on top of another. Maybe another way to show it, I would say, is like, let me just, something like this, you know, for example. This is how the inside of my head looks like. You know, it's just a lot of things connecting.
    57:06
    With the cigarette. With the cigarette, right, once in a while. But I will, I'll show you what I mean. Like, I don't expect anyone to memorize this, but King Kong Letters gets you towards Deadeye, if you get king letters, and gets you towards the T-Rex battle, where you're going to mash that button if you get all eight letters in King Kong. And there's, like, all these different ways to collect these letters. You're not going to do all of them. You don't need to do all of them. You do some of them. And you don't even know which, you don't know these things while you're playing it most of the time. Some players know a little bit of this. For example, the skill shot one. Every time you make a skill shot that's unique, it gets you a letter. But there's all these other ways to do it. So, for example, did you know that there is a meter on the display? I'm going to show it to you right there.
    57:50
    There's a meter on the King Kong display. I feel like 90% of players don't know there's a meter on this display.
    58:01
    Serge, you know good and well I didn't know about this meter. You didn't know about this meter. And look, it shows the King Kong letters right there. So if you get this meter to fold by getting a bunch of switch hits, you will get a letter in King Kong. If you climb enough, and there's a little gorilla, King Kong, climbing the building. Oh, you're kidding me. You didn't notice that, I bet, either, right? Yo, that is awesome. I know. And the more you hit climb shots the higher he goes It pretty cool Right But like that also gets you King Kong letters And just going back to this chart if you score enough of this one type of ramp which is that ramp on the mini flipper on the top upper left, that little ramp you could hit, that's the cliff ramps. You get enough of those. You could do it through this mode. I mean, like, I'm not asking you to memorize this. I know it, but I don't think anybody really memorizes all these ways to get King Kong letters necessarily.
    58:51
    And they don't have to. So, you know, for example, in King Kong, every feature layers on top of another one, or as you might prefer, is incestuous on top of another one. And so what I mean is, like, climbing gets you King Kong letters, but it also progresses you towards New York City events. And maybe you're in the super spinner mode, so you're going to rip that spinner, but as you're ripping that spinner, it gives you the switch hits to build up that meter that gets you these letters. And maybe you're already shooting the cliff ramps as part of the crossing the chasm mode, so that gives you letters too. So, you know, like I said, if you're drawing a blueprint, it looks like this kind of thing.
    59:25
    And so that's sort of a – I will say this about it, though. It's not bad at all. I think it's different types of players prefer different things. Some players like the insanely layered approach where one thing – the thing you get from being layered is that pacing feeling of something is always about to be ready for you when you make it layered like that. So that's the advantage of doing it. The disadvantage, it's like, what the heck is going on? and all these things are happening at once. And it's maybe more of a preference thing for people. I tend not to that much love it, but it's where everyone feels differently about it, and so some people will love the code for that reason. It's one of my quibbles about a game like King Kong, is just there's so many layers that even if I understand it, I don't enjoy the cacophony of it as I'm playing. That's my own opinion. What say you, Cale? I tell you, what I love about the Elwynn team using the little gorilla going up the Empire State Building, that's some real immersion. It reminds me of video games that do not show you the health meter. For example, right now I'm really into Ark Raiders. and you're a guy or a girl against robots, and they don't actually show health meters when you're fighting the robots. Some armor will fall off. All of a sudden you'll see sparks and smoke coming off of it, and that's how you know you're doing damage. And that's a real immersion much like this. There's no meter. It's just actually what you see is what you get, and the ape is going up the building. I love that. I do, too. Even if I know maybe players don't notice that they're, some players do, and even when they don't, it's at a subconscious level. It adds some theme immersion, and that's what it's all about. Oh, yeah. So, Cale, that wraps up for me. One other question on Deadeye. Yes. Do you plunge or palm? Palm plunge is the answer, in my opinion. I'm still not great at it, but the answer is palm plunge. Because I tell you, Keith told me to palm plunge. Yeah, Keith is right, of course. But I see, I've been paying attention to how some of the top players play on streams, tournament streams. They're doing a traditional plunge. For example, some of the top guys, Walt Wood, and Walt and I even talked about it after I saw him do it on stream. A lot of them are, if you notice during tournament streams, they're doing the quick traditional plunge. But not Keith. Not Keith. He said palm plunge, and he's the goat. So there it is. But you know what? Each to their own. What works, the answer is whatever scores you 50 million points. That's right. If you're doing that, then you're doing it right. And you keep trying until you're doing that.
    62:19
    So that's everything I want to cover about the John Wick code update. And we could keep on going with our episode here, Kale, rolling along on some catch-up stuff, if you will. And now we go on to Walking Dead Remastered. And you can say, why are we doing another thing on Walking Dead Remastered? Well, we never did a real thing on Walking Dead Remastered. We did a thing on Walking Dead, and we speculated what would be in Walking Dead Remastered. And so this is an opportunity to dive back in and see, wait a minute, were we right about any of this? And so that's what I wanted to talk about here. How did we do? I wasn't on this. I was under the weather, so Rachel took my spot, and she did a fantastic job. So this is some new stuff to me here. Yes. This will be new, although you did edit it. I don't think you listened to the episode while you edited it, but you did edit that three-hour nonsense episode that way. And probably good for you for being out sick and not having to sit for three hours on that mega deep dive of Walking Dead. But we did a lot of predictions. I'm going to refresh us on what those predictions are, and then we're going to talk about it and see were we right on those predictions. So, for example, when it came to art, we said that the predicted that the display would do DMV scenes converted to LCD, not the comic, not the TV. We said that the art would be cartoonized, and then I wish that there would be a comic style instead. And so just showing how we did on those, we were right on the display. I'm going to give a question mark on the art. I said cartoonized, and it was like graphic novelized. novelized, so I'm going to give me a pass, but you don't want to give me a pass on that, Cale, right?
    64:00
    I'll give you 50%, right? Yeah, that's fair. Halfway there. Yeah, it's not really comic edition like Star Wars. It's more like graphic novel, just the actual actors in the show. Yeah, and it's really an artist's rendition of the, you know, teal and orange movie poster. Yes, in fact, let's get into that. We're going to talk about the art. Yes, I know at this point everyone has talked about the artwork and how bright it is and colorful it is. And we're going to do it, and we're going to do it because we're not necessarily, I think, knowing you and I, we're not going to necessarily have the traditional opinions here, right, Cal? Right. So this is both games side by side, if you're watching this, hopefully. And one thing I want to talk about is you said movie poster, which is so true, because I wanted to show, actually, this is the official art book from The Walking Dead. And one thing to remember is that this is a licensed property, and anything color that you put in, drawing that you have to put in, has to be approved by the licensor. And it would not surprise me if the licensor wanted it to be this colorful. After all, this is their official art book of the game, and you're still seeing a lot of this orange kind of situation here, right, Cale? Right. Now, you could argue, well, the show isn't like that, you know, and it keeps her own on what you see in the color. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it does seem to me that the AMC group has actually wanted the color to move towards this palette, and I wanted to give you, Cale, this. I know you're an orange and teal guy. I want to give you the floor to give your thoughts on the artwork, even though others have, and I think you're going to have some unique ones. I know you're an artist in your own right, in a sense. So I'll go with that.
    65:44
    Yeah, well, you know, I think the AMC marketing team is doing their job, and they're pushing a certain vibe, a certain look, and something more vibrant, something that's going to sell, something that's going to catch the eye, a color palette that's going to catch the eye and sell. And the safe shot is always the orange and teal color scheme. Can I pause you for one second, Cale? Absolutely. To introduce a new segment for you that you didn't know I was going to plan? Let's go. I'm going to give you the segment, and then I want you to continue on that color scheme. Okay? You ready for the color? All right. This is a surprise to me. This is a new surprise. I'll be quiet, because this has a theme song, too. All right.
    66:31
    Oh. Look at that rhythm. Oh, you know it. In Cal's Color Corner, we're going deep into color theory. Until you're green within me, the passion of blue in the face. In Cal's Color Corner, all the colors are a play.
    66:59
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Carol, what do you think of that segment? I love that. And I like, you chose the reggae one, the I&I. I didn't even ask you. I knew it was the right one. I swear. All right, all right. I'll go back to it. Now, please, I'm sorry. I had to do that. I had to interrupt you. And then I want to hear the rest of what I knew was coming when I prompted you like that. Yeah. You know, back to what I was saying, I think the AMC marketing team is pushing this in a certain direction. Walking Dead has been around for a long, long time, many seasons, and sometimes you need a little refresh. Even if you see there are video games and, like, you know, cell phone games, the advertisements for those particular products have also gone in this color direction.
    68:00
    And I don't think it's odd that the pinball community seems to dislike it. And their whole argument is, well, the show doesn't look like this. And very good point. But I think the AMC art department and marketing team is not thinking, does this remind you of the show? They're like, how do we get new people into this IP?
    68:30
    And that's how we got here. I am all over in agreement with what you were just saying there. That's my take on it, too. This will sell more than if you didn't do that. That's my opinion. I know that there are people who are screaming and they're like, well, I'm not buying it, who are like real deep dive people into pinball. And I get that, actually. I get that. I'm not saying you guys are lying. I think you're right that you're not buying it necessarily. But I'm saying that when you go into a distributor and you see a bunch of games, you like the colorful games if you're just the average person buying a game. And some people are like, well, I have 10 games in my lineup, and I don't want them all to look the same with the sort of bright, saturated color scheme or whatever words they're using. but I would say like you forget how many people are just buying one pinball machine for their game room and like how many games Stern sells like that, you know, for example. And people want the bright, fun game. And even for something walking down, that's my opinion. Now you go, Cale. Yeah, I don't know if – interesting data point. I don't know if you listen to Jack Danger and team went overseas and Jack and Gary Stern did a little talk, and it's recorded. I've seen bits of it. Interesting data point for, and I guess this is just for Stern Games because, you know, they wouldn't have data on other companies.
    69:54
    Forty percent of people, when they buy one game, they buy another. Yep. Very interesting point. But that also means 60% don't.
    70:05
    Yeah, we're trying to fix that. Right, I agree. But my point there, my point is not to be a pessimist. I didn't mean it like that. But I just mean like those 60%, which are the majority of people, are not saying, oh, I don't like all that bright colors. What if it looks like the other nine games in my lineup? In fact, most people are not saying that. And this just tells you, and I've noticed this growing up. I mean, since I was very young, I had friends who had a pinball machine in their basement or garage. that just goes to show, which is what I thought and which I've heard from people, most people, most families buy a pinball machine for a special occasion, maybe the holidays or something, and, man, it just ends up in the basement not being played. Right. And it looks nice because it's colorful. And now we know it's 60%. Right. That's a lot. Yeah. Right. So that's my opinion of it is that I think there's a reason that Zambietti is the commercial art director at Stern, because he actually knows what sells.
    71:07
    And it doesn't mean it pleases everyone, who's a super diehard fan of either pinball or Walking Dead, specifically. But I think it pleases the sales, ultimately, even though it seems, if you were to listen to all the pinball media, that it doesn't. That's my opinion. I'm not an distributor, but that's my opinion, at least.
    71:26
    Alright. That covers our art segment. Do you have anything else to say in your new segment, Hale? Very nice.
    71:36
    Thank you for coming out, ladies and gentlemen. This is great. I really appreciate you doing all this work, Serge. This is great. You know what? Let's listen to For You.
    72:01
    They all have a place. Yeah, all the colors have a place. Absolutely beautiful. All right. Well, with that, we talked about the art for Walking Dead. A little bit about the hardware. I'd say we made some predictions on the hardware, and I want to give how we did on those. I think they did improve the magnet design, from my understanding, and the crossbow reliability and the prison door registration and the bicycle girl ramp. All of that was done. But we haven't seen the game streamed yet, and my understanding is that they still haven't maybe gotten licensure approval for that. That's my understanding of why they haven't streamed it yet personally. Maybe you hear other things that are different. I know they've shown the game over a camera footage of somebody playing it, but they haven't really gotten into streaming it enough, so I can't tell is there a more reliable skill shot plunge. It often fails on the original Walking Dead. And how does the ball feed out from the pop area, for example? What do you say to that, Cale?
    72:56
    Yeah. Man, we're all waiting for the stream. I think everybody saw some cell phone video from HiApa or the show in Florida. I can't remember which one it was. But, yeah, we need to see a real stream.
    73:12
    And Stern still says it's just they're waiting for final approval. Yeah, I know. People think it's like, oh, because there's the conspiracy people out there that are like, they're just scared of Beetlejuice or whatever. I don't think that's it at all, personally. I just think they have timelines, and they didn't get the licensure approval for whatever reason, and they still had to get the game out. I think that's all it is, personally. Yeah, that's it. There are some wishes here that didn't come true and doesn't exactly surprise me. I wanted a walker counter on it, like TNA and Rick and Morty have on Spooky Games, and they just kept the, I'll just point it out again, I won't let you listen again, I promise you. They kept the numbers there. I wish those numbers weren't there. I wish it just told you what the number was kind of thing. We'll see. But then also I said that, you know what, I wish they didn't just go with all flat plastics. I wish they gave you a world under glass. They kind of did. So that's why I give a green checkmark with a cross. I mean, they give you like the little heads over there. Ultra creepy looking thing staring right at you. Exactly. They give you heads there. They give you the backboard, I should say, fish tank here. There's still these flat plastic billboards. There's one, for example, and there's one, for example. So that's why I gave it a mix of an answer. But there's a little thing there, too, that's, like, flat. And so they give you some flat stuff but some design stuff, and that's cool in the end. I've seen people mod it already where they put, like, railroad tracks on the ramp, for example. Oh, cool. So I think there's, like, more you can do to give a game the world under glass feeling. I know they know that at Stern, and they just have – they do what they do, and this is what they do. So I'll give them a mix of an answer on my – what they did to the hardware. What do you say to that, Cal? Any other comments on the hardware side of things? No, I think you nailed it. I can't wait to see what they come up with for the topper. I'm guessing it's going to be another fish tank with maybe a little different look or something. Yeah, I tell you what we maybe wish for is, like, you know, you look at the Evil Dead topper from Spooky with, like, the human hair and the ghoul coming out. If you did something like that with the zombie, people would love it. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I don't expect that, by the way. So I won't even put that as a prediction. Right. It's not a prediction. I wish it were, but I don't think it's going to happen.
    75:28
    And maybe the last thing to say, and I'll be rather quick here, is what we expected they might do in the code. And I have to be quick here because we haven't seen the code yet. And from what I understand, even so far, they haven't really made changes to the code. Maybe they will in the future. but so this is all to be TBD I'd say right now on all of this prediction stuff that I had on the screen here of what I kind of hoped or wished or thought they might do with the code changes so really that's all the things I wanted to cover for Walking Dead here, Cale, anything that I missed that you wanted to cover?
    76:05
    No, no you I think all the stuff that's all great ideas you know, this is really one odd thing. I heard from one person at Stern that there may have not even ever been plans to add anything to the code. It was from the get-go just going to be a direct port. That is interesting because Metallica Remastered has a lot of changes, you know, and it's not like that was coded by Lineman, too, Walking Dead is as well, and they weren't afraid to change or add to Metallica code. And by the way, I think they did a great job doing it. And people also really liked the Metallica code. It's not like they didn't like it. It's not like people felt it sucked or anything like that. But Ray Day added to it very tastefully. Great ads.
    76:54
    And Walking Dead, I would have thought is similar, that it's also great code. It's not like people say it's terrible. But there are things you could add to it to make it better for a modern audience, more mini wizard modes, all that sort of thing. Like we talked about mini wizard modes earlier. So I think there is stuff you could do, but it maybe sounds like they may not. Yeah. And one thing, and I don't know if you guys went over this on your deep dive, the difference in geometry. Oh, I would love you to do that, actually, Cale. I'm going to pull up the layout again so you can do that. Yeah. So one interesting thing about these remastered, the spike cabinet is different. I think because of some extra support on the play field in the back, he can't fit everything from Sam to Spike. So just like in Metallica, the ramps had to be slightly repositioned. So on Walking Dead, your ramps are just a tad closer to the flippers. Now that combined with the stronger Spike flippers, What I'm hearing is these ramps are much easier to hit than they were on the SAM version.
    78:09
    I love that. And I have some trenchant analysis that you bring from being so deep in the hobby that you know that it might feel a little different even.
    78:21
    And I'm open to the idea that it might even feel better. I know people are like, well, you can't change the layout or whatever or can't change the feeling. I bet these ramps are easier to hit. and I am open to the concept that it actually plays better. That's what I'd be curious about. I haven't played it, of course, yet, but I'm open to it and excited to try that and see if it does. Well, I hope we're not spoiling anything, but our friend Retro Ralph has one on the way, and I guarantee you we could go over to his place for a stream. We might have to do that. Let's make it a trip. Right. Arizona, home of the podcasters.
    78:56
    Who knew? Okay. I don't have anything else to say about Walking Dead. I was going to go on to the next topic for our day. Anything else you wanted to say about it, although I really appreciate that point on the layout. Yeah. No, I think we covered everything. If you want to know any more, just leave some questions in the comments. Yep. All right. Next thing. Beetlejuice deeper dive. Not a long dive, I promise. I know. I know you got scared when I said that. I know you got scared. No, this is going to be really easy. I got things to do, man. No, no, no. This is going to be short, Cale. This is going to be short. And I might just make it even shorter than I need to. I've got the day off. Let's go. Okay. Obviously, we covered Beetlejuice already, and everyone's covered Beetlejuice already. But since then, I've heard some people call this a basic layout, maybe even a fan layout. And that is just crazy to me. So I wanted to do just a quick dive on the layout, shot by shot, one more time, but a fast way, to tell you why I don't think that opinion tracks, that I think that there is a unique design philosophy here. And I do not think this is a typical layout. And I'm going to point out why. And as he has said, as Bug has said, he takes every shot, but he wants to make it do extra stuff compared to what you're used to in other games. And so I want to back up what he's saying with some careful analysis of the game.
    80:13
    So, for example here, we're going to pull out the game. We're just going to talk about the different shots. I'm not going to talk about the in lanes or anything like that. And the first thing I wanted to point to here, Akil, if you'll let me, is the left orbit. and so I'm pointing to the left orbit and the first thing I'll say about the left orbit is it causes a crossover shot. Crossover shot is when it turns into like a figure eight like that and as soon as you have a crossover shot then this is no longer a fan layout. That's what happens when you have crossover shots. It's not typical. The ball is not moving in one direction outward like that. It's a crossover shot. It actually was done before in Bond's 60th so I'll point that also on the left orbit and so you make the shot and almost the exact same thing happens. It goes around and it feels really great. Bonsixvia, I know people hate it because of the price or whatever, but I think it's one of the greatest layouts ever for a classic street level game and I know it does well at that, right? I'd like to point something out on this game.
    81:12
    It also uses the orange and teal, but nobody complained about it. Oh, I love that you're pointing that out. And this is a great point that, like, it can be done in a way where you don't even notice it.
    81:28
    Yeah, and it's also the classic thing, like, we didn't even say the term because it's so overused. It's, oh, but it looks better in person, you know, kind of thing. Every single person who's going to look at that Walking Dead, I think, is going to like it better in person than they did on the pictures. 100%. You know, that way. But that's just the nature of the beast. And so, crossover shots. I mean, this is a great game. To me, this has the greatest single street-level game layout in history. I'll take it over Pulp Fiction any day in terms of the layout. I'll still take Pulp Fiction over the whole package of the game with the integration and the modes and all of that. But I think on pure layout, boy, this is a fun layout, I would say. Yeah, I love this game. Yeah, it's great. It does well at the bat, doesn't it? It does very well at the bat. It is one of the best tournament games ever invented. It is just a blast. Totally agree. Right. If the price wasn't an issue like that, people would love the game, and you would get a lot more love in its ratings. It really is a shame it is so expensive, but we all understand why it has to be there. Right. But what I want to point out about this left orbit shot is back to Bug's design philosophy. Let's let games do more than one thing. So it comes here, and we've said it already, but it has the upper flipper shot. You could go back. You could hold up the flipper, and it could go in the scoop, for example. I'll also point out the shot goes through the pop bumpers smoothly like that, for example. And so it's doing different things with that shot than have previously been done. That's the first thing I want to say. If I look at the left orbit, it's just a basic left orbit. You could backhand it. I mean, left ramp, rather. You could backhand it. You could forehand it. But it puts that wheel on it there like that, for example. And there's been wheels in pinball. You know, for example, I could point out in Elvira House of Horrors, there's a wheel award there. but again, giving shots more to them the wheel, in this case it's not just on the display, but it's on the actual game itself, so you can kind of time, look at that as you're making the shot, and when they program in the action button, you can press the action button and time it when the wheel is spinning around so it adds more to every shot in other words, here's another thing on that shot you have to think about, you might have to press the button after you hit that shot, because there's a physical wheel award that you're staring at, you know, as you're doing it so there's that I wanted to point out the spinner shot. You know, at first you might say, oh, there's just another spinner shot, for example.
    83:48
    And that's true. It goes through here. But I'll point out that it also goes through the pops. And talk about innovative layout. I believe, and you can come out here with a comment if you think I'm wrong, that this is the first game ever designed with two different, totally separate shots through pop bumpers. You know, for example, right there. That's my hot take on this. Bug has actually done something different that I've never seen in any layout, which is people talk about the shots through the pops. A lot of Elwynn games have shots through the pops. Bug and Luke. Bug and Luke, thank you very much. Bug and Luke, yeah. That in Elwynn games, the left ramp in Iron Maiden, for example, goes through the pops and it makes it like a cool shot, feeling like you're going through that Congo has a ramp through the pops, for example. A lot of games have orbits through the pops. Aerosmith does, Rush does, Adam's Family does, you know, for example. But when you go back around the other side of that orbit, it hits the pop, so it doesn't come through cleanly. And the games like that, like KISS and Aerosmith and I guess Adam's Family, they don't go two ways through those pops. They only go one way through that orbit. That's my claim. Here it's two distinct ways through three pop bumpers. I can't think of another game that does that. Let me shut up for a second. What do you say to that, Cale? yeah i'm i'm trying i'm looking at other play fields trying to uh trying to prove you wrong but i uh it's not working well this is what i try to do here kale that i when i saw something like it's like oh this is just a typical layout i'm like he's done something i've literally never seen in another game like what you know i want to point it out i want to celebrate it when people do something unique like this you know that way yeah i think you're right but i would love to hear from the audience? Yes, that is the claim. Let's find out from the audience. And then the spinner shot, after you hit it and it goes through the pops, it goes through that scoop and then fires directly back right through you. So it's also doing more things there. We have the camera stand-ups. They could have just been stand-ups, but the camera flashes at you. We have this scoop, which could have just been a scoop, but you hit it in both ways. We have these stand-ups, which could have just rose and lowered, but here they can lower and then you could go through there and hit more stand-ups, and you could go through the mouth of the sandworm, for example. There's this right ramp that you could hit in two different ways. One way diverts it to the couch, physical lock. Another way, through a ramp that comes back at you through this way. Then you have four different shots on the Beetlejuice. It could hit a drop target. It can trap behind the drop target. It can raise up from Beetlejuice, rising from the grave, and then shoot back at you. it can go in a super fast orbit to left ramp kind of transition where it goes back to the flipper. And so it's just multiple things with every shot. And I find that extremely innovative, I would say, personally. And so that's what I wanted to say about this game. It's not a fan layout. It has actual new inventive shots. And every single shot does something. And that itself is a very unique design philosophy that to me should be celebrated because I think what is often just as important in a layout, you want shots that feel good, but when shots, and Keith has said this himself, you want shots that have phase changes, where something different happens when you hit it different times. And just Bug has done that as a design philosophy, and I think that should be embraced. I hope he continues doing that. I think that's a great idea. That's what I have to say.
    87:21
    Yes. Yeah. But, you know, I haven't seen the comments that you've seen online. But, like, I think the people that are saying, oh, it's just another fan layout are just being inflammatory and possibly incestuous. But like let talk about modern pinball I mean if you wants to argue that like everything except X is a fan layout Yeah, exactly. People just want to call everything a fan layout. No, it's not a fan layout. It's not like maybe it is or maybe it's not. No, it's not a fan layout. The end. It has a third flipper, you know, for example. But one thing I'll say about the game, we were talking earlier, this concept of how the layout influences the code design. This game has a whole lot of staging areas. It has three scoops, which is a whole lot of scoops. There's one, and there's one, and there's one, for example. It even has a fourth staging area here where Beetlejuice is, because you could go behind the drop target. And I will say that that affects the code design. For example, when we covered Walking Dead, we said it has no scoops and actually no traditional staging areas. And because of that, the code design reflects a game that has very little stop to it. It's sort of a nonstop killing zombies vibe kind of game. And because of that, that's the code for Walking Dead. But Beetlejuice essentially has the opposite. It has many staging areas. So the code design must harmonize with that kind of layout. And what I mean here is, for example, in this game, because there's a lot of different staging areas, there are a lot of different mode trees, for example. Not just one place to start modes, like let's say John Wick has, where it's just one place to start modes and one place to start adversaries, I suppose. But here, the Juno scoop, for example, will start your Juno modes. and this scoop here or this staging area here will start your Beetlejuice modes. Or, for example, when you defeat the Sandworm enough times, it's going to stage the ball here for your different Sandworm staging modes, for example. There's a subway that connects that area. And so the idea is that if you have a lot of staging areas, it lends itself towards a code set that has more mode trees.
    89:29
    That's just one way to think about it. So if you like mode trees, you might actually prefer a game like this. And if you don't like mode trees, you might not prefer a game like this. You might want a constant fast movement, which I get, too. The game's pretty fast, of course, too, but it does have these staging areas. So that is my claim. Also, because it uniquely has these pop bumpers that I mentioned where you're going through two ways, it means you use the pop bumpers potentially more as it navigates that path. And so you might use the pop bumpers more in this code set than you might in other games. You might use them here for modes, for example. You might use them for play field multiplier rules. So it's just a way to think about how the layout effects co-design. That's what I wanted to say about Beetlejuice. Not so long of a deep dive. What do you say to that, Cale? Yeah, I loved it. I think, yeah, we killed it. We said some new things, hopefully. Yeah. That was my intention. And with that, Cale, we can go on to nearing the end of this episode, more or less, with comments and corrections. Are you ready for it? Let's go. All right, here's where I shout out three different commenters, not the ones who say only nice things about us, but we do appreciate you, and we need that to feed our empty souls so that we can continue on with the podcast. But we're going to go to some people who have some extra analysis. And so, for example, three comments. This is the first one. Amanda says to our Walking Dead episode what she would want in Walking Dead code, which we know we're probably not going to get, maybe, because we're not necessarily planning on changing this. But I thought she had some good ideas here. She would love a zombie wizard mode where you qualify somehow during the game, possibly by getting like 60 zombie kills. And then when you drain the final ball, the whole game stops and goes dark. Slowly, everything flashes red as your dead heart starts beating again. The LCD screen is distorted, seeing through the eyes of a zombie. All the zombie kill shots are now human victims that you have to eat. The timer is constantly counting down as you get closer to starvation. Eating humans by hitting shots is all that keeps you alive. Then that gets added to you as a final bonus, depending on how many humans you've managed to eat. What do you say to that, Cale?
    91:28
    Somebody hire Amanda. Totally agree. This person, this is theme immersion at its finest. 100%. This is such a great idea. You could also put it as even a separate challenge mode. Like if they don't want to add this to Walking Dead, the main code, you could do it as a challenge mode. For example, in Jaws, if you hold the flippers at the start, I don't know if you've ever played this, Cale, you could play the game and choose the 16-bit mode where you actually play as the shark. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And you reverse the kind of, instead of trying to kill the shark, you are the shark. This lends itself towards the same thing, and I wholeheartedly support it. So that's what I say. Cale, it sounds like you do too. Yeah, two thumbs up. Yeah, this is a big two thumbs up. I think this is a great comment and a great idea. I want it. She even added another thing here I'll add here. She said, oh, and zombie vision is all done in the OG red dot from the D&D. Nice. Even better. She's thought it through.
    92:25
    Fan, do it. That's my opinion. Do nothing else but do that, and that would be great. Okay. I've got another comment here. So that's Amanda's comment. Our next comment, I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's quite long. But I want to give you the spirit of the comment because it's a good question.
    92:44
    Hunter Lodwick, 99, says that, well, I'll say at the beginning, Another brilliant episode. Only negatives I have to say is that it's under three hours, which I've come to expect from Surge. This is on the Beetlejuice kind of thing. Bonus drinking game for every time Kale says hit it from the back. That's my favorite part. I know. I know it is. But I want to talk about the comment here is talking about Spooky Speak. And he wanted to say that, well, you know, maybe the Spooky Speak is using LLM, large language model technology, AI, chat GPT, that sort of thing, so that you can kind of have a lot of other things you could do in the game. You could ask the game questions like, what are the rules to this mode? And it would tell you, for example. And he gives a lot of other good ideas if the game were using LLM AI technology. These are good ideas for if you want to read them on the screen. I'm not going to go through all of them. If one day they do start implementing AI LLM technology into a thing like Spooky Speak. But that is not what Spooky Speak does, I want to point out. It's not actually using traditional AI in that way. It's using more traditional voice recognition for specific terms that they code. And I'll actually give you Spooky DJ's programmer over at Spooky, his comment here that he put on Pinside. He wanted to float out there that Spooky Speak does not use AI in the colloquial sense of the term. It uses traditional audio processing and machine learning techniques. And to do that, I'm not going to go through all of his comment here. it's speech-to-text that has existed since the 90s, you know, for example. It just looks for specific keywords like Frenchie or Beetlejuice, for example. The bonus of why they're doing this is that, well, it's sort of easier to program and to consider all the possibilities, but it's also processing is all done locally. There's no Internet connection. The data never leaves the machine. They can't actually collect your audio or text data, and they don't have the ability to do that. So I know some people had that concern, for example, oh, it's going to listen to you or whatever. Not many people. I'm just saying some people. But even those people don't have to have that concern. That's not what the technology does. So that's what I wanted to say. Akhil, what do you say to that? Yeah, and another thing, and this is just a guess for me. You might know a little bit more about this. I'm imagining the licensing to use a large language model would be a little too much for pinball.
    95:09
    Well, it would come with other problems. Yeah, I think it depends on the light you're saying, the licensing. Like you have to get everything approved for what if the thing says this? Well, not just that. Or the licensing to chat GPT, to open AI. Right, for an API. For an API, I see. I actually don't think that. That's an interesting question. I think there's some expense. I think the bigger problem is you have to consider all the things it might say or do, and you also have to connect it to the Internet and could have a time delay also for when you talk to it. I think probably one day we will see that. But, you know, it's also worth talking about, maybe I'll give one more comment from Spooky DJ on this, is that even the code itself, the source code for Beetlejuice, which is like 50,000 lines of C++, I think he said at the moment, it contains like only a few lines that were provided by AI. There's a lot of controversy that came out of Harry Potter and AI and art. To me, pinball code is art, too. You know, I think it can be. when Lyman is doing code. It's art to me because I could hear his voice while I'm playing the game in my head. And, you know, it's a little bit more abstract than art itself, perhaps, but it's there. And so, but there's a whole thing in coding with AI. But AI tools currently, I agree with this too as a light programmer myself, is that it just produces a lot of trash. And I don't think yet AI is coming for pinball code. That's my opinion on it. One thing I always found interesting, Kale is people gave a lot of upset feelings when AI pinball art for Harry Potter, but Stern said, and I don't think it's actually true anyway, but they said that the enemies in John Wick are spawning using AI. For example, I don't think it's actually true, but nobody's upset about that. No. From the get-go, I think that was just a marketing keyword. Right. So anyway, that's some stuff on AI related to code in general and Spooky Speak, not really part of Spooky Speak TM or market or whatever it is, because they have it patented or pen and pending. So that's it for the second comment. Anything there that you wanted to add to that, Cale? Nope, that's it. All right, I think you're going to enjoy this next comment, Cale. So you didn't get a chance on The Walking Dead to retort here, but Matthew Morden says, this is ridiculous because we were talking about the flipper gap on Ghostbusters and we were talking about is it wider than usual and Matthew Morden says John Trudeau is already common for you know, it's commonly known for wide gaps it's not a mistake and what I said I should have clarified the common argument here is that of course it has a wide flipper gap almost all John Trudeau games do but it's even wider, is it even wider than Trudeau's usual gap That was the argument. I'm going to set you up here in a moment, Cale, with the full discussion here. There are different opinions on Ghostbusters flipper gaps. Does it have a standard Trudeau flipper gap, and this was always planned? Does it have a standard Trudeau flipper gap, and this was not planned? Does it have a wider-than-usual Trudeau flipper gap, and it was planned? Or does it have a wider-than-usual Trudeau flipper gap, and it was not planned? And so with that, Cale, I want to give you the space to talk through what you think about all of this. Okay.
    98:26
    So I, okay, a little history here. The first time I heard anything, like any type of information almost from the horse's mouth about the flipper gap, I was hanging out with Jack Danger at Interium, and he said it was a mistake in CAD that was made during the design. And apparently that's also floating around, you know, in the arguments online, right?
    99:03
    So, you know, then we had that episode where we talked about it and some guys said, no, this has been debunked. So when I was at Expo. Swinks from Pinside. Swinks. But it was actually the commenter was referencing Swinks' work. Isn't that correct? Yeah, but then I showed Swinks' work. Correct, correct. Okay, so, and that was on the, I think that was on the episode that I wasn't, was I on that episode? No, you weren't. That was when you were your own Walking Dead. Yeah, Rachel episode.
    99:34
    So, at Expo, I asked Dwight, who worked on this machine, he didn't pause, he immediately said no, it was a mistake. I was like, okay. So then, I went and found Gomez. Wait, Kale, can I set you up again with a new segment? I'm going to interrupt just, and then I'm going to be quiet again. Kale, I made you a new segment.
    100:02
    All right, now I want to warn the listeners of this podcast that I have made a new segment and a theme song for this segment, but the theme song is pretty intense. It's sort of a heavy metal kind of thing. All right, so you might want to lower your podcast volume now, or maybe you want to turn it up, depending on whether you're into it, but I just want to give you that trigger warning before I play this next segment, and then I'll kick it back to you, Cale, to continue with where you left off, this rabbit hole. Are you ready for it, Cale, with this segment? Let's go. Okay. Let's go.
    100:49
    Ladies and gentlemen. Are you part of the conspiracy? I'm out. This is our version of the screaming goat. You've got to have something. I'm willing to give you every episode a conspiracy corner where you dive deep in your own way through all your many connections in pinball. Marco and Gomez and Dwight. I know you have a lot of connections in pinball. My type of deep dives are in my head, Cale. They exist only in my head. But you actually know people. And so I want to give you the space to have your own rabbit holes on penthouse. And that is going to be this segment. What do you think of this segment? What do you think of your theme song? I love it. And actually, I did some investigative journalism on this one. Yeah, keep going with Gomez and everything. Yeah, so Dwight, he didn't skip a beat. He said, no, it was not supposed to be that wide. I was like, okay, so let me go to Gomez, the boss of the operation.
    101:57
    And he said, it was not, I explained to him, I was like, you have to help us out. We've had a discussion on the podcast. We need to know definitively, was the gap, the flipper gap in Ghostbusters supposed to be that wide? I didn't lead him with, was it a CAD mistake or anything like that? Like I heard from Jack Danger, Gomez, I talked to him face-to-face. Rachel was right next to me. He said it was not supposed to be that wide.
    102:32
    There was a mistake in CAD. And he went on to say that now this mistake went to the whitewood, and he said they didn't even notice the wider flipper gap because all of the guys testing it were such incredible players. They were called shooters, is what he said. They were real shooters, and they did not find the game difficult because of this increased flipper gap.
    103:05
    Where do we go from there? Do we have some? Yes, I have what you have provided me as breaking news. All right? It's going to be a little hot, a little hot for pinball media, but we're going to show them some breaking news. Are you ready for it, Cale? Let's go. You don't need to hear the theme song again, do you? No, no, no, please. Okay, you're good. You're good. You had enough metal? All right. All right, good. Let's show some hot news here. We've got, well, you say it, Cale. I can't. I'm not legally allowed to say it, so you say it. Which part? John Trudeau. DMs from John Trudeau. All right, keep going.
    103:46
    So what do we want to do here? Well, do you want to say what the DMs are showing? Do you want me to talk about it? You go with that part. That text was too small for me to read. Okay, good. I'll do it. I'll talk it through. So this is in 2015, I want to point out. We didn't recently send these messages, for example. I should say that for those who are just listening. So, hi, John. First time sending you a message, but you've made a comment a few times to some of my mods.
    104:14
    Oh, just to be clear, this is from Swinks. This is the message is from Swinks. That's right. And so here they asked John about the game. For the most part, yes. This is what John says. My flipper shafts are seven and one-eighth inches apart. That way I feel comfortable closing up the drain lanes a bit more, and I'm still able to get good average playing times. And then there's additional messages here where he said, just more stuff, no toy was ever planned for the book stacking target. The side holes were some proton beams that haven't made it past the prototype stage. I don't know if they'll be offered or not, unfortunately. But actually, I don't know if this does reference this thing that you wanted to dive deep into, Cale. Does it? I don't know. Well, Swink's provided that to us as proof. But here's my problem with it.
    105:09
    Trudeau's response is a politician's response. It doesn't specifically say the flipper gap on Ghostbusters was intentional.
    105:23
    It doesn't actually say that. Do you follow me? I do. You're right. you know it's just kind of like for the most part yes my slipper you know it doesn't i see for the most part yes so you're saying that when you combine the commentary from trudeau dwight who coded the game and gomez creative designer for stern your conclusion is that it was not meant to be that wide well better than that Gomez was the boss if he says you know because here's here's the the thing you know as an employee like when I was a graphic designer I would get things past my boss right common right we're gonna have a whole episode on that by the way right and and so I could say no it was meant to be this way and then the guy writing the checks was like no it's not which kind of trumps whatever i you know i said so it could be something where trudeau kind of you know like sneaked it past the team and and it was in there but even in his own words He never says, no, it was the slipper gap on Ghostbusters was intentional. Hmm.
    106:47
    I like it. Now, we can still get in touch with John Trudeau and get a definitive answer, but. You're going to visit him at his house, I thought. That's right. But I think my point is. Friend of the pod. Right. My point is that Gomez approves everything that gets through all the way to the assembly line. He's the director of this. They're his games.
    107:20
    And I think if he says, no, that was not intentional, then it was not intentional. Do you kind of follow me? I do. Yeah. I do. Well said. I think that wraps up this segment of Kale's Conspiracy Corner. What do you say, Kale? One more thing.
    107:42
    Alright, I won't do the whole thing, Kale. What I would like to see is and maybe this is already out there. He did two other games with Stern before Mustang. yeah yeah and wwe wwe that's right what are what are the flipper gaps like on those post uh post to post on on the uh you know flipper bet i think there was dude well well right um but some listeners might might measure and go hey look at this but here's the problem it still doesn't definitively tell you whether Ghostbusters was intentional or not. But it would be an interesting data point. Okay. And there you have it, folks. That was our Kale's Conspiracy Corner slash comment section here. Just on the way towards wrapping up, I want to talk about corrections because we do make mistakes here on this podcast. As you know, Kale, we talk a lot. and so on the Walking Dead podcast I said some things that were not 100% true and Ray Day pal of the pod, a real pal of the pod and is also in our discord and I'm so grateful that he is that he can give these corrections because I know like 90% of code and he knows 100% of code that's why he's who he is and I'm not that person so I give him all the credit so one of the things I said is that well Walker values don't really matter like why are they 55, 60, 65, and 75,000 points for these four letters and well as it's moving along. And you could even get 50,000 if no letters are flashing, he points out. But then he points out that it actually does influence the well walker completion value. So he gives the whole formula for it. I'm putting it up here. I'm not going to read it word by word, but I'm going to say thank you for pointing it out, Ray, that you could actually use this, and you might even line up a shot with the shot multiplier and multiply it by the playfield X, and it actually could be worth quite a bit. It can make the well walker jackpots more valuable. I didn't know that it does that, and now I learned that it does that, is what I'm saying. So that's the first correction I want to mention there. And then a second similar correction here, also on The Walking Dead, is that on The Walking Dead, I was saying that, well, there's no reason to prioritize weapons versus food versus first aid too much on The Walking Dead Pro because the Pro doesn't give you any walker bombs, whereas the Premium does. So on the Premium, you really care about those walker bombs. You want to get the food and first aid. Those are action button uses. But he points out that when you get weapons, it lights the crossbow. and on a pro crossbow is way better because there is no crossbow and you just shoot the shot you want to hit. And so you can actually intentionally use the weapons with the crossbow. I won't go any further into it than that other than to say he's absolutely right about that. There is a reason on the pro to prioritize weapons, whereas on the premium you'd prioritize probably food and first aid. With that, I will pause. Do you have anything else you wanted to add to that, Cale? I love how Ray Day listens to the podcast and makes comments in our Discord.
    111:01
    What a wealth of knowledge. We're all learning something. It's very important that you learn at least one new thing every single day. And he's keeping us on our toes.
    111:11
    But I want to bring up and thank Ray for giving us a pro tip on Star Wars very quickly. on Star Wars. Fall of the Empire. Fall of the Empire, the new Star Wars, John Borg, Raymond Davidson.
    111:29
    Doing well with that. Yep. So on the left out lane, you know, there are two spots to put the post on the left out lane.
    111:41
    Borg opened it up because he wanted more left out lane drains to give you a chance to use that fourth save on the premium. Well, he left that in on the pro. So Ray was saying, if you want the game to be a little more fun, just close that down a little bit. And I did it on our, as soon as he said that, I did that on our game at the bat. And, man, it really is more fun to play. You get way less left out lane drains.
    112:14
    Awesome. Great advice. I like it. and I think that covers our Ray Day segment here at the pod yeah, thanks Ray Day very last segment to cover here which is a few episodes or Walking Dead ago we gave a trivia question we were discussing Walking Dead which has no mystery award and so I asked what other Stern games have no mystery award, name three well first is I should have asked what other modern games Stern games have no mystery award because Garrett said, TN7928, who was actually first to answer this, said, Stingray, Stars, and Meteor, which I had to accept was true. Those are all three Stern games that do not have mystery awards. I agree. Except they were made in the original Stern of the 1980s, that way.
    113:02
    But credit to him, that sort of counts because of my lack of saying the word modern, probably. I think I didn't say it. But then I also want to point out, so touche, Garrett. But then after that, Jimmy Morgan, 9543, gave some modern examples of sterns that do not have mystery awards. And they include, for example, Primus, that'll count, James Bond 60th, and Elvira's House of Horrors. And he is right. I will show you the full list here if you're curious. Though these are all the modern stern games I could think of that do not have a mystery award in them. You have, like, Walking Dead, Dungeons & Dragons has a Fismo shop, for example. But it's not a mystery award, you know, that you actually choose what you want, in other words. We said Bond 60th and Primus John Wick actually doesn't have a mystery award So quite a few games don't Jaws doesn't You don't always need a mystery award in pinball Oh, Iron Man actually does have a mystery award I think I should take that out That probably does Other than that, I'm right about everything, I think And what about Can Crusher? Yeah, you can call Can Crusher I think when you say Primus, you say Can Crusher You say Bonelli And that layup But you're right, I shouldn't There's Primus, Flash, those other ones Does Supreme have a mystery award? Man, you're actually making me think now.
    114:15
    I don't know. How about that? I have played that once, actually. Sunshine Laundromat in New York, which put some crazy games once in a while there, and they had Supreme. And it was fun to play. It's like the same home edition as Star Wars or whatever. Spider-Man. Spider-Man, rather. And it's a lot of fun, actually. But it's probably a lot of money, and I should have bought three of them and scored them. It's a great one. Yeah, Rachel and I played it in Las Vegas. There was a shop in Caesars Palace that actually has two of them. Wow. I don't know if they still do, but they did. Well, Cale, that is supremely interesting and really covers everything I wanted to cover on this emergency catch-up episode of the pen pals. What do you say to that, Cale? Did we cover enough? Not only did we cover enough, but you were right from the get-go. We exactly hit two hours. Boom. We can do it. Let us know in our pen pals listeners. We traditionally do deep dive episodes, and we still will, I promise, but if these catch-up episodes work for you too, probably every ten episodes or so, I bet there's stuff to do.
    115:25
    Yeah. Also, let us know if you can figure out, we have to remember this, if you can think of any games where the ball path goes through the pop bumpers in multiple ways. Yes. Right? That is right. I'm curious, too. And anything else, my friend, my pal, Cale, that we have to talk about? I mean, we are streaming tomorrow, right? Well, it's tomorrow for us. But do you want to tell the listeners about that? Because that's over on Twitch. And I'm going to edit this and immediately upload it. So this will be out before our stream tomorrow, which will be Sunday, noon Arizona time. Mountain time these days. Mountain? We're always mountain, right? No. No, we're not. Six months of the year we're mountain, six months of the year we're Pacific. Right now we're mountain. So noon mountain time on Sunday, we will be streaming Chewy's All Classics Bounty Knockout Tournament. World famous, actually. yeah so tune in to our Twitch channel and you and I get to do that in person together yeah man it is a blast people love it I don't know if people love it but we love it we love doing it and it shows that's right that's all I've got Kel and I'll let you close it out yeah fantastic thanks for joining us and we will see you next time everybody have an absolutely wonderful day
    116:54
    Bye, everyone.