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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast May 2022 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 16m·analyzed·Jun 3, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

May 2022 pinball industry recap: Stern factory issues, American Pinball expansion, Sonic licensing uncertainty.

Summary

Pinball Magazine & Pinball News recap of May 2022 industry developments, featuring exclusive interviews with David Fix (American Pinball EVP) and Rob Burke (Pinball Expo). Key topics include Stern's factory flooding incident, code updates for Rush and Godzilla, American Pinball's Dream Challenge for homebrew designers, and unconfirmed rumors about Sonic licensing and pricing increases.

Key Claims

  • Stern Pinball experienced a factory flooding caused by a burst water pipe under the factory floor in the lunch area

    high confidence · Martin Ove confirmed this event and details about the repair

  • David Fix stated that another unnamed company (not Stern) currently holds the Sonic license after American Pinball's negotiations with Sega failed

    high confidence · Direct quote from David Fix interview: 'And they said, we can't tell you who the other company is... is it Stern? They said, no, it's not Stern.'

  • Stern may have a James Bond pinball game in development, with the design potentially being done from scratch by George Gomez rather than continuing Steve Ritchie's previous work

    medium confidence · Martin Ove reported this as rumor based on George Gomez interview and other reporting, noting uncertainty about whether Gomez was joking

  • Overseas Stern distributors have been informed of a $500 price increase on upcoming titles

    medium confidence · Jonathan Euston reported this as unconfirmed rumor from a closed source at an overseas distributor, cautioning it needs verification

  • American Pinball is actively hiring and has appointed Stephen Sprauka as a new purchasing manager

    high confidence · Direct mention in news section, confirmed by David Fix discussing hiring spree

  • American Pinball Dream Challenge is still planned for October 2022 at Pinball Expo despite already hiring homebrewing talent like Ryan McQuaid

    high confidence · David Fix confirmed in interview: 'Absolutely. Absolutely they're still invited.'

Notable Quotes

  • “And they were like, that's okay. We're going to go with this other company. Thank you. And I asked one question. I said, what's the other company? And they said, we can't tell you who the other company is.”

    David Fix @ American Pinball interview segment — Reveals Sega rebuffed American Pinball's Sonic negotiations in favor of another unnamed licensee, highlighting licensing competition and secrecy in the industry

  • “I feel sorry for anybody who's going to make the Sonic Spinball, that it's not Ryan. Because they have big shoes to fill.”

    David Fix @ American Pinball interview segment — Expresses confidence in Ryan McQuaid's homebrew work and concern about successor quality, showing industry dynamics around designer reputation

  • “It's like we have to continue to build what we love, but we have to make sure we have a pedigree or something that's going to continue us into the future.”

    David Fix @ American Pinball interview segment — Articulates American Pinball's strategic vision for nurturing next-generation designers, referencing historical industry succession patterns

  • “I don't want to play catch-up. Like you did with Oktoberfest, for example.”

    David Fix @ American Pinball interview segment — Implies Oktoberfest had service/quality issues requiring catch-up work, contrasting with American Pinball's proactive service approach

  • “These days we're given the other type of games you're going to be up against, which have guns and roses with all the assets they get from that.”

    Martin Ove @ James Bond licensing discussion — References Guns N' Roses pinball's extensive licensed assets, highlighting asset availability as key challenge for James Bond production

  • “Jurassic Park had no assets from whatever movie, and they created it all by themselves.”

    Jonathan Euston @ James Bond discussion — Points to Stern's historical capability to produce successful games with minimal movie assets, suggesting path forward for James Bond

  • “There's supply chain issues that are still there but we're working through those”

Entities

David FixpersonRob BurkepersonGeorge GomezpersonRyan McQuaidpersonSteve RitchiepersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball experiencing rapid growth and hiring expansion; multiple recent staff appointments

    high · Jonathan Euston: 'They are on a bit of a hiring spree ever since David Fick joined the company'; David Fix mentions weekly service meetings with expanding production and service staff

  • ?

    community_signal: American Pinball Dream Challenge contest designed to identify and nurture next-generation homebrew designers for commercial production

    high · David Fix: 'opening this challenge was kind of a dream of mine to be able to bring young designers together and have a little competition'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: James Bond licensing complexity due to multiple actors, film versions, and music rights requiring extensive asset negotiation

    high · Martin Ove detailed discussion of slot machine limitations and Stern's potential asset challenges with multiple Bond iterations

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Sonic the Hedgehog license held by unnamed third party (confirmed not Stern); American Pinball actively negotiating back channels to acquire license

    high · David Fix explicit statement: 'is it Stern? They said, no, it's not Stern... I am quietly still negotiating trying to find the person who has a license'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern exhibiting at Craft Brewers Conference indicates strategic focus on bar/barcade operator market for pinball placement

    high · Jonathan Euston: 'pinball in barcades is a big thing around the world, and particularly in the US, at not just barcades, but also at Brewers taprooms'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.411

0:00
Another quiet month, but... We interview David Fix! And we interview Pinball Expo's Rob Burke! Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine,
0:24
and just to clarify, David Fix is the executive vice president of American Pinball. and I'm joined here with I'm Martin Ove and I'm the editor of Pinball News and I'm joined with Jonathan so we can look back at all the events which took place in the month of May 2022 Pinball industry related events that is we're not going to discuss the news or the war in the Ukraine well, I don't know it was a quiet month in the pinball world so maybe we're going to no, no, don't worry No, quite right. There's strictly pinball, and we have, even though it's relatively quiet, we do have a good number of things to get through, and there's been some interesting development. And, of course, as I said just now, we've got two exclusive interviews with David Fix from American Pinball and Rob Burke from Pinball Expo. And, of course, the two of them work together on Pinball Expo, so some crossover there as well. And there's more about that later. Right, so let's kick off with Stern Pinball.
1:30
Yes. Well, yeah, interesting news at the beginning of the month, where they had a sort of flooding of the factory, which eventually turned out to be a burst water pipe under the factory floor.
1:45
Yeah, recently I think people thought it was, they might have thought as well, that it was caused by rain from outside or a local stream or river overflowing. But, no, as you say, it turned out that there was a burst water pipe under the factory floor in an area by the seating area, where, if you've ever been in the factory, it's where they all sit and have their lunch, all those people who are working on the production line. Any chance you think this was a hint to a future game like Tsunami or something like that? Well, I didn't see any shark fins swimming around in the water, but you never know. anyway they soon had it repaired and the only sign now is that there's a small hole in the floor near that area with some barrier tape around it to stop people falling in the two inches deep hole that it is so anyway that's as exciting as it got there were a whole bunch of other stories though which we can report yeah so do tell okay well it's going to have been busy exhibiting at the craft Brewers Conference, which was held this year in Minneapolis, in Minnesota. They had four of their latest machines there, Mandalorian, Godzilla, Avengers, and Rush. And, of course, pinball in barcades is a big thing around the world, and particularly in the US, at not just barcades, but also at Brewers taprooms. So, a good tie in there, and I think those four titles would be very appealing to bar operators and to brewers. Right. Okay.

David Fix @ Opening of American Pinball interview — Confirms ongoing supply chain challenges persisting in May 2022 pinball manufacturing

American Pinball
company
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Pinball Expoevent
Rushgame
Godzillagame
Mandaloriangame
Avengersgame
Sonic Spinballgame
Legends of Valhallagame
Segacompany
Pinball Newsorganization
Pinball Magazineorganization
Dutch Pinball Museumvenue
Pinball Asylumvenue
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Ryan McQuaid hired by American Pinball as designer/developer despite failing to secure Sonic license

    high · David Fix: 'We hired him. And when we went back to finalize things with Sega, we were told another company is already in front of us.' Confirms Ryan's hire precedes but was not contingent on license

  • $

    market_signal: Unconfirmed report of $500 price increase on upcoming Stern titles for overseas distributors; process may involve order cancellation and reordering

    medium · Jonathan Euston: 'apparently Stern did that already once, cancel your order and then you have to reorder it again at a new price' - explicitly marked as unconfirmed from closed source

  • ?

    product_concern: Oktoberfest pinball had unspecified service/quality issues requiring catch-up work, contrasting with American Pinball's proactive service approach

    medium · David Fix reference: 'I don't want to play catch-up. Like you did with Oktoberfest, for example' - implies historical quality/service problem

  • ?

    product_strategy: James Bond pinball in development at Stern; unclear if continuing Steve Ritchie's work or designed from scratch by George Gomez

    medium · Martin Ove: 'other parties have reported it as that basically that design is out the window and that George is doing a game design from scratch.' Hosts note uncertainty about Gomez's tone in interview

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Supply chain issues continue to affect pinball manufacturers including American Pinball in May 2022

    high · David Fix: 'There's supply chain issues that are still there but we're working through those'

    • 3:25
    Spam also released a making of Godzilla video on their YouTube channel that came out just around the time that we recorded our previous podcast. So, I don't think we mentioned it then, so if we didn't now you know.
    3:47
    It's definitely worth watching, I'd say. see how they develop the mechanisms and each of the team members' interests in the theme. It was particularly interesting to me to see how large the moving building mechanism is. You don't actually realise it when you see it in the game, but it is pretty massive, probably. I would say potentially alongside maybe the Doctor Who transported time expander device. One of the biggest mechs, single mechs, in a pinball machine. But we proved wrong Yeah Oh well Speaking of Godzilla That game got nominated At the Licensing International Excellence Award But apparently it lost out to Elmo Yeah I don't actually know what Elmo was used for In that particular license But because the organizers haven't posted a list of who the winners were, or even who the nominees were, on either the social media or on the website, despite me having a good look. I couldn't find any details of it. But anyway, it was a good use of the license by Stern. I think everybody agrees with that. And a good game came out of it as well. So let's hope the Elmo product, whatever it was, was even better than Godzilla. Right. Okay, well, else maybe this is an indication that Eastburn is so keen on winning that award that you do an Elmhouse-themed pinball machine. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's about time. We haven't had one of those ever. Yeah. And it's probably a good reason for that. Well, if you want to tie the youngsters, the really youngsters, into pinball, what better than a Sesame Street pin? Well, that's a question you could ask of George Gomez. And I think you have been asking him a question, haven't you? Yeah. Well, actually, I have been asking him two questions, which could be sent in to the super awesome Pitbull Show, who were planning an interview with George and since then have recorded and published that in two parts. It's a very in-depth interview. And indeed, two of my questions were answered by George in that interview. The second one was about his very stylistic handwriting, which apparently turned out not to be such an original question, as more people ask about that. But I also asked whether George or any of the other designers at Stern Pinball were going to take over either the license or the design that Steve Ritchie left with the company when he left in, I think, August of last year. That's right. For Jersey Jack Pimple. Yeah, where he left for Jersey Jack. And I got the feeling it was, I'm not sure whether George was very serious when he was answering that, or I got the feeling he more jokingly said that Steve's design was out the window or something like that. I'm paraphrasing here. So, not quoting George, but to me it felt like he said it jokingly, but since then other parties have reported it as that basically that design is out the window and that George is doing a game design from scratch. Which could be the case But maybe he was joking And then it's not the case Or maybe he's just doing some tweaks To Steve's design Oh well, we'll find out And the other rumor is that The name of that team Had been rumored more and more Or had already been rumored And is sort of Confirmed as being James Bond Yes we've heard that theme go around for actually quite a couple of years Stern having that license and oh well it could be an interesting theme if you are able to get the right assets I suppose yeah that's always going to be a problem with so many different versions so many different actors involved and at least the same production company but, you know, what do you cover? Do you cover the last movie, which was the Daniel Craig one? That was the last time he would be playing James Bond. Or then if you go back through, you know, I don't know how many James Bond movies there are, 25, the last 25 movies, you've got to get a license sign-off on all the actors who have been in there. And, you know, it's a bit of a nightmare, as well as the music, without even going into that. Right, so, well, what's interesting, or could be interesting, if we just focus on the theme of James Bond, I tend to visit the casinos here in the Netherlands quite frequently. Not so much that I have an addiction, but it's just... No, no, no, of course not. No, no.
    9:22
    Just for fun. Just for fun, and, well, it's a nice evening out with my girlfriend, So, on the, well, they got two areas. In the slot machine area, there is a James Bond slot machine in two versions. A Sean Connery one, themed around Goldfinger, and a Goldeneye one with Pierce Brosnan. but in all fairness it's mostly if you play those games and I have, it's mostly the branding of James Bond and there's very few clips from either movie, just a couple of scenes which are even hard to recognize that they are from that movie but there's not much James Bond-ish going on in that James Bond slot machine, so I'm not sure whether that's an indication of what to expect for the pinball machine. I think it might be a bit harder to get away without using large quantities of assets in a pinball machine. These days we're given the other type of games you're going to be up against, which have guns and roses with all the assets they get from that. But Stern have dealt with that before, if you look at Jurassic Park. Yeah, Jurassic Park had no assets from whatever movie, and they created it all by themselves.
    10:56
    True. We don't know what direction they're going to take and what assets are available, but if it's similar to that slot machine, then they have a big task ahead of them. Okay, well, let's see if they even pursue that, or whether they've gone in a completely different direction. Right. And it also remains to be seen, if Steve left in August, how long would George need to design a completely new game?
    11:25
    I mean, as busy as he is as Vice President of Game Design, and as talented as a designer as he is, could he do it in less than a year, with the next Cornerstone game coming out in August?
    11:39
    Yeah, I don't think so. But it depends whether they can use the work they've done on the game up until now on assets, whether they can use the sound clips and video clips that they might have developed, or even got that far.
    11:56
    They may have pulled the plug on it much, or the scene may have left, shall I say, before we even got to that level of detail. Right.
    12:06
    Oh, well, we'll see. well and speaking of themes, possible themes that Stern might be doing Venom is one of the rumours in this comic book Stern also posted a photo of Seth Davis and Gary Stern with Sonic the Hedgehog from Sega and later on in our interview with David Fix, he will comment on whether, as far as he knows, Stern has that license, yes or no.
    12:45
    Yes, I didn't see that, and I had a look for it earlier. I couldn't find it. I don't know if it's still there or whether it's been removed. Right, okay.
    12:55
    I'll see if I can include it in my newsletter then. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, especially if you got a grab of it while it was there. Right, okay. And, well, speaking of things that are difficult to, what's the word? Confirm. Confirm, indeed.
    13:14
    I'm just putting this out there as a rumor, which I heard yesterday, and I have been looking to get it confirmed. But apparently, at least overseas distributors from Stern have been informed that the upcoming titles will see a price increase of $500.
    13:36
    I'm not sure whether that's the case for US distributors. I couldn't find anything on it, on any of the media that usually reports on this kind of stuff.
    13:48
    So please take it with a grain of salt, as it is not confirmed. But it sounded very serious, and the source... I'm not questioning the source that told me, as it was a closed source to one of the overseas distributors. So, if you have a game on order, apparently Stern did that already once, cancel your order and then you have to reorder it again at a new price, and something like that could be happening again. A bit worrying if you've got a pre-order or a back-order on an outstanding Stern game.
    14:29
    But the question is when that's going to kick in, if it does kick in. You're right. So don't be alarmed, but I'm just reporting on what I heard. And usually we don't cover rumors or gossip or anything like this, but this sounded very reliable. I figured I'd mention it. In between question marks and all the warnings, this is not an official communication that we received or seen. Okay, right. Moving on then.
    15:04
    New code from Stern. Oh yes, let's not forget about the new code. As you would expect, their most recent games are still getting big updates. The current title Rush Has had two From bringing 0.96 and 0.97 0.96 was quite a big change With the new wizard mode And the accompanying challenge mode New secret entirely connected feature Lots more achievements And lots of rule changes And bug fixes And whereas Godzilla Has gone from Has had updates 0.94 and 0.96 Which Brought new Monster Zero and Terror of Mechagodzilla Mini Wizard modes Yeah and new music For those as well Which both Traps have been added to the DJ Mixer Which is the thing that you can Play just the music from the game On from the start menu Or the gameplay menu I should say, and some changes to some rules for some of the modes, a bunch of adjustments, and some of the usual bug fixes. And those are the code updates from Stern for May. Right, okay. On a personal note, if I may add, yesterday I was at the Dutch Pinball Museum, which was technically closed, but I had a meeting there with Rob Burke, which we'll get into later on. And the reason I bring that up right now is, once Rob Bird left, I was actually able to play a number of recent Stern games that I played at shows, but then you're always in a rush and distracted and there's lots of sounds. And now I have basically the entire museum to myself, so I could dive into Rush and Mandalorian and a couple of other games, which was actually great.
    17:12
    And Mandalorian at first didn't appeal to me that much, but I'm, after yesterday, starting to like it more and more.
    17:24
    Okay, growing on you then. Yeah, absolutely. Moving on. Okay, let's get to American Pinball, and that will lead us nicely into the first of our interviews. but they've also been busy in appointing Stephen Sprauka as a new purchasing manager. They are on a bit of a hiring spree ever since David Fick joined the company.
    17:51
    Right, and David will address that in his interview as well. Absolutely, but he's, yeah, that's one of the most recent appointees, and I think we can look forward to some more coming along before too long. but I've also got Steve Bowden there of course who's a world class player and he was taking part in the IFPA 17 championships which were held at the Pinball Asylum in Fort Myers in Florida and I think American Pinball well he was posting a lot of updates on the American Pinball social media feeds talking about how he and Jeff Teolis I think were I think they were a team weren't they? Playing in a doubles team or something like that? Could be, yeah. Sort of representing the company. Yeah, and Stephen was also playing in the Epstein Cup which is the European and US challenge which the US won handsomely this year.
    18:58
    So congratulations. I didn't participate. Well, obviously that's why it wasn't a walkover. Sam, thank you very much.
    19:10
    Always welcome. But anyway, yes, so David Fix indicated he'd like to come on the show. We recorded that interview earlier, and let's take a listen to that now. Yes, David's got a lot to tell us, so let's hear from him. So we're joined now live with David Fix, who's the Executive Vice President of American Pinball. Welcome, David. Hey, hello, Martin. Hello, Jonathan. How are you guys? We are doing excellently, I think. Thanks very much. And how are things going over at American Pinball? Well, things at American Pinball are going very well. It's been a very busy first year so far. I mean, we were at Texas. we're trying to keep the lines of communication open for everybody so that they understand what we're doing and American Pinball being pretty much open so that everybody understands what we're trying to do and we're just trying to help everybody continue to build these games and trust me, there's supply chain issues that are still there but we're working through those I'm sure they are, we'll touch on those a little later But one of the things I wanted to talk to you first of all about was the American Pinball American Dream contest, which you announced at Pinball Expo last October. And just as a recap, that was for homebrew and custom game designers who would like to have their game brought to production by American Pinball. and the idea being that they will bring it along to Pinball Expo this year and take part in the contest with the winner being adopted by American Pinball to produce the game commercially. Now, since then, you've, of course, you've hired Ryan McQuaid, who is also a well-known homebrew designer with his Sonic title. More about that a little later. and of course you work with the Riot Pinball team as well to bring Legends of Valhalla. So I'm kind of thinking you've already sort of cherry-picked some of those homebrew game designers before the contest has even sort of culminated. It's still going ahead in October at Expo though, is it? And are people still invited to bring their games? Absolutely. Absolutely they're still invited. the full details of the American Dream Challenge on the Pinball Expo webpage. You can go right there. You can also send an email to dreams at AmericanPinball.com, and we can go over some more of that information with those who put that in. Listen, American Pinball Dreams, this whole Dream Challenge, this personnel of new designers has been a pet peeve, not a pet peeve, but a personal project for me because I was at Expo, and you might remember this, Martin, we brought in all these young guys who were designing young games 10 years ago, if not more now, when little companies like Fast Pinball, back then was called Skill Shot, and Multimorphic were making their first waves into the thing. And then we had, you know, I remember some of the games. I mean, I saw Nightmare Before Christmas back then. I saw The Muppets. I saw Tattooed Mystique. I saw Future.
    22:51
    It wasn't Future Spa, but it was something spa. But, you know, I saw all these young people, young guys, young game designers, let's just say, and some of them weren't so young. But anyway, I saw these creative people enjoying what they did, and they're really showing us some beautiful work.
    23:10
    Some innovative work. Innovative work, yes, yes. And you know what? I mean, I'm not knocking the establishment, not at all, but these guys are not young that are there. I mean, we have Dennis. I mean, he's our senior game designer. He loves the idea of working with young people. He knows a ton of information. He wants to work and share his knowledge with these young designers.
    23:35
    And, you know, I mean, I know Steve Ritchie, a good friend, just went over to JJP, but he's not young. He's a few years younger than Dennis, but, you know, and, you know, some of these guys may want to retire at some point. So I look at this as like, you know, Steve Kordak in the 80s was looking for his replacements, right? So he went out and found people like Barry Osler and a bunch of people. Steve Ritchie came in from Atari around that time frame. So, you know, we have to keep looking at the industry. It's like we have to continue to build what we love, but we have to make sure we have a pedigree or something that's going to continue us into the future. So opening this challenge was kind of a dream of mine to be able to bring young designers together and have a little competition. Just to talk about the competition, to clarify for you, Martin, they're going to bring their games in. They're going to set them up in the homebrew section. American Pinball's team and all the people in attendance will get to vote on which game they think is the best game. American Pinball has the right to first refusal to talk to that designer and negotiate their theme and their game however some things let's say somebody comes out with a I'm making out Harry Potter well unfortunately that license is probably already taken or is a dream license but we could always work with that person kind of like Archer was to Keith Elwin which then later became Iron Maiden right So there is some of that that can happen, right? So we will definitely look at that and the package. Now, does that mean they have to have a game like Legends of Valhalla or Archer completely done, artwork, everything done? No, not really. You can have a thematic theme to the game. You can have some shots, some feel, some flow. You know, you can integrate. Does it have to be 100% done like Sonic? No. Listen, Sonic itself is always morphing. If you ask Ryan, he's always working on it. It's one of his pet projects, right? So we continue to say, bring us your concept, your thoughts, and let's put them together and see how they look, right? Okay. So you are definitely seeing homebrew game builders as the channel through which new talent can come into the industry. but what about people who don't have the manufacturing capability you know the people who are designing virtual games on the computer is there a sort of similar system for them to be able to bring a virtual game to you and say look I've done all the layout of this game I've programmed all the rules and the display the lighting all that kind of stuff and done stock placement so it flows perfectly but I don't have any means of actually building this game It's a great question. It's a great question, Martin. I love it. And, you know, you're touching on an aspect that people are dealing with that, you know, and there are some of those people. So this year we're not going to do that. Let me think about that. That may be something we might open up to next year. But the idea of that physical building, you know, I will tell you that Ryan will say and even Scott will say that, you know, you can lay out something, you know, on the graphics or on the video screen, and it just works, right? There's ways to cheat it to make it work and make it flow right, so forth, programming-wise.
    27:15
    It's another thing to have this physical form. But let me think about that, and that's a good question, and maybe we'll extend that the year after or the year after that. We could always talk about that. So I'll tell you that there is a young man, not so young anymore, but he was John Norris, right? And John Norris in 82, 83 designed a game called, I want to say it's Tour La France or something like that, where he designed a whole thing about bicycle racing in France. And he went to Expo and he was sitting in the front row and he says, hey, I'm a game designer. I designed this thing. And he basically got on the radar of Gottlieb at that point, which led to him getting hired by Gottlieb because he was a homebrewer. right? He built this game, which I believe is Trudeau France, where he put the shooter on the left side and everything's done on the left, and it's kind of interesting. And he designed that game by himself and brought it there, right? So there are other people who have done this in the past, who have done, you know, so it's kind of like not new, but it led to jobs for people. Yeah, well, I think that's kind of how Pat Lawler got into the business, wasn't it?
    28:32
    Yeah, the wrecking ball. Yeah, you're quite right. So anyway, you mentioned about Ryan, and you also mentioned about license issues. And of course, Ryan is well known for his Sonic Spinball game. Yes, I am. Now, is there anything you can tell us? Yes. Is there anything you can tell us about the status of the Sonic license? Because I know there's been a lot of rumor around that, as to whether or not you have it or can get it, and whether the game can be made as it is or whether it would need to be rethemed.
    29:08
    So keep that in mind. All of those are really good questions, and I'll pick at them, and I'll pick on the ones I want to pick on. But I will tell you that, of course, when Expo and I made the announcement, I've known Ryan for over two years, okay? So I saw Sonic Spinball in its infancy before Pinball Expo Virtual. Okay. So I was live with Ryan back then. In fact, I was the one that, you know, we made sure that he got his video and the whole thing of what we've seen on the radar at Expo back in 2000, good gravy, is that 2020 or 2019? I can't even remember. 2019. That was COVID. I can't believe it's been that long ago.
    29:57
    So, you know, we saw that then, and I saw potential. Then I went to American, and I kept talking to Ryan quietly in the background saying, listen, get Sonic to Expo. And at that time, you got to understand, the company was trying to grow, and we were. We were growing by leaps and bounds, and we still are. We're growing very fast, and it's kind of great to have that.
    30:27
    Possibilities of, you know, games, you know, in such demand. Our quality is so good, you know, and people love that about our games. And trust me, I take phone calls on people who have had problems with their games to refine them, and those calls are, like, very small.
    30:42
    But we have a staff of people that are working on that too, that always are working to make sure that everybody's problems are resolved fast. And we take care of that all the way back. In fact, yesterday morning I had the service call. So just so that everybody knows, I don't mean to go off on a tangent on this, but I'm just going to say that there's a service meeting with the service technicians and the entire production staff every week. And every week we go through any of the service questions or service bulletins that have been brought up. and if it's something that has to have been missed by us, we take care of it immediately. If it's something that needs to be adjusted, we take care of it immediately, and we try to work through that so that, you know, and then we make it retroactive. We make sure that all the people who have the game out there in location get the updates, and then we continue to support our games 100%, because I don't want to play catch-up. Like you did with Oktoberfest, for example. Yes, yes, yes. at Oktoberfest, and we did that for Legends. All the Legends owners got an updated part.
    31:50
    We continue to send out updated parts to that, too. So we continue to just keep refining our game because we want to build the best game possible. Now, back to Ryan.
    32:02
    So I've known Ryan a long time. We brought him in. We actually helped Ryan and got the Sonic game shipped to us at American, and then we brought it to Expo for him, and then we made sure that he got it back. We had him at American. We sat down with him back in October. We started talking to him. And, listen, the passion that Ryan brings, what he does with his work ethic, what he knows and how to do things was the number one reason we hired him. It wasn't because of Sonic and the other stuff. You know, like, you know, Keith Elwin designed, you know, Archer. And people in the industry saw the passion that Keith brought to the games and what he could do, right? So I see the same thing with Ryan as being a rock star. I see the same thing with Scott Gullitz, too, as this rock star. And we have to work with them, right? So I immediately was like, listen, Ryan, we want to bring you on. were working with the Sonic license. We dealt with Sega already. We had already started negotiations. And we hired him. And when we went back to finalize things with Sega, we were told another company is already in front of us. And they ended up taking it. So we were like, well, wait a minute. We started this. We did this. We presented our case. We presented everything Ryan had done so far, the following, everything. And they were like, that's okay. We're going to go with this other company. Thank you. And I asked one question. I said, what's the other company? And they said, we can't tell you who the other company is. I said, well, can you at least tell me, is it Stern? They said, no, it's not Stern. So at that time, that's what was told to me. So is it Stern who has Sonic? No. Now that means through the back channels I am quietly still negotiating trying to find the person who has a license and maybe even try to see if I can go through the back channels to obtain the license It a little tricky but we continue to look at it But the long term on this whole thing is that we really want Ryan. Ryan's the guy who has the passion. He's the one that took the entity. He's the one that took the, which I laugh, I think, sometimes of Joe Kamikow talking about Star Wars, the Blue Cabinet one. There were no Star Wars movies. There had been no Star Wars things. Star Wars was a dead entity at that time and turned it into this great game and was sought after by a lot of people. So Ryan took Sonic, and there was a movie coming out, but he had been working on this way before the movie was released, and basically drove this industry with people just loving Sonic Spinball, that Ryan had taken this dead entity and made it into things. So for me, I can see the passion and what he brings to this, and know that I feel sorry for anybody who's going to make the Sonic Spinball, that it's not Ryan. Because they have big shoes to fill. And you also have a public and collectors who know what Sonic Spinball is like and absolutely think, you know, it's like they have, I don't know if they're going to be able to do it. You know, if they come in and be cheap about it and they don't do it exactly the same, people are going to be, you know, it's like being the second comedian on stage, right? You don't want to be the guy following somebody. so that's would you be in a position to work with whoever the other company is as a sort of cross collaboration yeah collaboration with them so Ryan's game as it is can go into production even if it's in a joint production with another company absolutely here's the thing we're not dead right there's not a game already out there, there's not something else already done. American has kind of opened the doors, you know, we, we, we worked with other people. I mean, I'm, I talked to guys at Stern, I talked to guys at, at Jersey Jack, you know, I've been in the industry, you know, remember, I'm a collector running, helping run Expo for over 20 years, right, and just being part of that family, I know these guys outside, you know. So at the end of the day, I am not going to be shutting the doors and say, no, I can't do this. Listen, at one point, this is crazy. I don't think I've ever pointed this out. But at one point, the day before Deep Root had the issues, Robert reached out to me and said, hey, is there something we can do? And I was like, let's talk about it. You know, that's an open door. We can talk about it. There's possibilities for manufacturing for, you know, Raza or whatever. I mean, you know, and then the next day he was like, you know, I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner. Here are the lawyers that are dealing with all this. Please deal with them. So it's like, okay, you open the door at the last minute. You know, it's like, I don't know how you want me to deal with this. But, you know, in the industry, remember that, you know, even me being passionate about pinball, it's just, you know, it's a hobby to me that has turned into an industry, into a job, which I absolutely love. And it helped that working for Innovation Concepts for, you know, that period of time, the bubble hockey guys to know how arcade machines are made and working with them and all the, you know, stuff that we brought together there. It gave me the pedigree also working for Dave Buster for that good period of time, knowing what is in the industry and what makes money out there. So I kind of got off on another tangent. Yeah, that was interesting.
    38:27
    Can I just ask you before Jonathan gets in, just a little side question then about working, even the potential of working on Razza after everything that went down when American People started working with John and Zidware on Magic Girl you would still consider working with basically the same team on Razza?
    39:00
    I mean it's all hypothetical of course it's all hypothetical at that time Listen, you know, I've known John for many, many years. Okay, I knew him from back, there was this company called Ice that I worked at, that he was working at at one point, you know. So, listen, I know John is passionate and has a creative mindset, but it is tricky to work with him.
    39:27
    So, I don't mean to say tricky. I mean, is they more like it has its pitfalls and it has challenges. Yeah, absolutely. It has its challenges.
    39:42
    But I look at this as that he worked at Williams, and the reason he got the games out from Williams was because of the talented staff that was put around him, right? I mean, think about it. There are challenging people out there like Python Angelo who were a wild man, but he changed the industry, okay? He changed the industry in the way he did things. John Papadou changed the industry on the way he did things with Theater of Magic and Circus Voltaire and World Cup Soccer and other games that he had worked on. I mean, there's, I think, a missing one or two in there. But, you know, that was a team that was around him. So any designer is only as good as the team around him, right? So, you know, Magic Girl was made as a contract manufacturer by American Pinball. It had nothing to do. So John basically said, this is how you build it, this is what I want, and we just did what he asked us to do. So it was a contract manufacturer. It wasn't like he had a team around him, right? if he had a big team and the right kind of team that managed together as a team things could get built so like Raza I think was brought in there was somewhat of a team around him but it was a very young team it had to be you know I think about it like Williams there was this giant team that had been building machines for many years and could deal with somebody like John Papadube and bring a team and structure it around him. And trust me, Steve Kordak is the kind of guy who literally looked at Papaduke and said, okay, you need this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, because he knew those people could, you know, work with John and make his dreams come true. So to that point, if Raza was completed and it was something that was going to be contract manufactured by us, we probably could have done it for Deep Root. I will tell you that since Deep Roots drying up of the roots, let's just say, there is, I'm still in negotiations, still talking to the lawyers about the IP for all the games that were done. None of that has been put up for auction yet. None of that has been put out there. So that is, you know, there was a ton of stuff that Robert had done for Deep Root. a ton of stuff, a ton of IP, a ton of design work, a ton of other stuff that was... I continuously dig and find information about Deep Root, which I can't go into much detail, but I am amazed that if they could have had a manufacturing company that was manufacturing, they probably would have gotten out a ton of games, just knowing what IP that is out there. Okay. So I'm currently quietly waiting to hear more about the IP and what it's worth, but it's kind of a mess right now. So let's get back and wait and see what happens with that. You must stay tuned for that. Yeah, stay tuned. Okay, now speaking of IP, and I may be taking this in a different direction than you may expect. I always expect that from you, Jonathan, so go ahead. I have a reputation to keep up, so pull down. Keep up, yeah.
    43:15
    So, when American pinball sort of presented themselves for the first time at Pinball Expo, they showed a Houdini design by John Poppadoo, which since then has been completely changed.
    43:31
    I think there's only about like two inches of a ramp that is left of the design, and everything else is basically a new design.
    43:42
    But that's an IP that American pinball already holds. Is there any chance that you would consider re-theming that layout and using it for a future title?
    43:55
    Anything's possible. In fact, those designs, that whole paperwork, all that design has been sitting in my office.
    44:03
    When we moved from Streamwood to our new location in Palatine on Hicks Road, a lot of stuff was just boxed up, and we've been going through a ton of stuff. So the original design that was done by Papa Duke, the original Houdini, that IP we do own. I have all the drawings now for that entire game in my office. And I would say, Jonathan, that nothing, nothing was used in the original Houdini, or the second Houdini that we actually put together. Joe's game. Yeah, Joe's game. Nothing. I didn't even think the ramp is the same. I've looked at the ramp.
    44:45
    Two inches of the ramp, I think, just the end. Maybe the flap that holds the ramp down. Yes, that's the same. I mean, that's about two inches. I mean, for the most part, that entire design is completely different. But, yes, I have the drawings for that design. Can that be used down the road? Yes. That is in the arsenal. Who knows? Maybe there might be a vault edition in three or four years. spoiler that maybe, who knows, maybe a return to Houdini's revenge or something. I don't know.
    45:20
    There's always possibilities. There are so many different things. But that's us just navigating. Do we have a whitewood of that? Yeah, we do. We have whitewood for that. So, in fact, I think we have the artwork done on the entire play field too, which was done ahead of time. So that game got pretty far. In fact, I think there's a copy of it floating around somewhere. I know there's a full version that's in some collector's house of the original Houdini that American put together. I don't know what the status is or how far it's working, but I know it's out there. You can see the pictures on IDBP. I know that our dear friend over there, Max and Company. Yeah, Max and Company.
    46:09
    but definitely in Jay Stafford, all work very hard to make sure that that data and information is held. In fact, I think that was... I have lots of pictures of that as well. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know if you guys have noticed the original drawing, which nobody's ever seen, back glass hangs in my office, of the original 2016 Houdini, which is not the Papa Duke version, and it's not the version that we did, but it was the original drawing that was done up. And four or two pictures. Yeah, yeah. Or when you stop by and I let you in the office and you can see my office, you can see it then. Okay. Okay, so we got an appointment.
    46:52
    And you know, you guys are always welcome to come and tour the American Pinball Factory. Right. So we shall take you up on that. Okay, so I'm going to do a little bit of a shameless request in this case. Earlier we touched on the American Dream Challenge, which is held, and Martin touched on what if you're able to design a game on a computer, but you have no capabilities of building it on your own.
    47:24
    And you need help with that. Well, I may be in that position right now. I know you're in that position, because I played that game quite a few years ago at Expo. You know, everybody says, why do you go to Pinball Expo? Is it just because you want to play games? No, listen, I've played just about every pinball machine out there. And I go to, it's the people that are at the shows, the people that make the shows, that's why you go back. And, you know, there's these times when you have somebody like Jonathan who comes, says, David, I want you to play this game. So I played this game.
    47:58
    And I will tell you, Jonathan, it's an interesting premise on a game. And I would say anybody out there who would like to work with Jonathan, Reach out to Jonathan. He has a very unique layout, an interesting little thing that might work great for the American Pinball Challenge. And, Jonathan, all you need is a team behind you. You know, you have this design. It would be quite an interesting little plane. It's got a rule set already kind of developed. it's something that could be definitely a contender in the American Pinball Dream Challenge. So call in all the rest of you game designers or guys who are homebrewers that want to work with somebody. You can work with the great Jonathan Joister about building this game. And trust me, nowhere in the game does it say tequila. Okay, but it does have all the rest of the stuff in it. it almost seems like you need to have a, I don't know, a forum or a sort of interchange somewhere where people who have got designs but no manufacturing ability can team up with people who've got manufacturing ability but no designs.
    49:11
    Absolutely. And you know what? I hate to say it, but that's kind of like what Pinsight is, you know? So all you need is somebody to start driving that. And, in fact, if I'm not mistaken, there is a forum, and you can reach out to the guys at Multimorphic, P-Rock. They have something. I know the Fast Pinball guys, Aaron out there, has something for the home brewers to kind of unite. So, listen, I'm bringing all these people together here. I'm just kind of reuniting everybody to understand that don't think you're alone. There are other people out there. I know there's a guy in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an old friend of mine, John Greatwich, who knows how to make a play field. actually can print you a play field for your one-offs, for your things. So maybe you guys can reach out to good old John.
    50:00
    There are many people out there in the industry that have been in this hobby for a long period of time that can be around there to help you. So reach out. And, Jonathan, you shouldn't be ashamed either. Reach out to these guys and say, hey, listen, I got this design. Far from ashamed. You're not ashamed. Far from it. Far from it, right. You have a good design and you've got to definitely work with it. I've got to give you a little hassle just like you give me hassles.
    50:29
    Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Of course. Now, back to American Pinball. You mentioned the staff at American Pinball.
    50:42
    If we have to believe the rumor mill, American Pinball staff has been slightly reduced. And with Josh Coogler no longer working there, is that correct? And is there anything you can say about it? Well, the official line is that in March, Josh and American Pinball separated. And that's where we're going to leave it at. Okay, so he's been gone since March. We continue to build within our own staff. We have many people who, and Josh, listen, Josh was one of the pioneering fathers. He helped out with American Pinball in its infancy. He worked on Houdini Oktoberfest. He did a lot of work on Hot Wheels and worked on with the Legends of Valhalla. He will always be a member of the American Pinball team, one of the original guys who worked on these games as much as Joe Balzer was and so forth. And, you know, as of March, there was a division, and that's when it happened. And so, you know, and Josh has been in the industry, and he's a home brewer too, right? So I have a feeling that someday we'll see another game from him or from teams. He's very passionate about his creativity and what he does and what he brings to pinball, okay? So he's a great guy. He's, you know, just that he's not with us anymore. So moving on from there. That's right. Now, obviously I want to lose staff because it's increasingly difficult to employ people these days in the pinball industry. I think most companies out there are currently looking for additional resources, additional staff members to help them build games. Is that true at American as well? We're always looking at people. Listen, we are growing by leaps and bounds. So I'm looking for mechanical engineers. I'm looking for artists, animators, people who want to build games, final testers, people who want to work in the, have some solid work skills, right, that want to work in the lab, building games, testing games. We're continuously looking for all kinds of personnel for the industry. The industry is growing, right? So, you know, when you grow, you may be with us, you may be going somewhere else. Listen, I know that we may be looking for a salesperson down the road, you know, because Steve Bowden is bouncing into more of the rules and programming. So there's, you know, here's a guy coming in from Deep Root who has a long pedigree and is continuously playing games championship-wise. I'm 100% behind Steve and he has this mindset for rules and it blows us away when we sit down with it and then we're integrating these rules with you know by the players perspective you know it's different from where we've been in the past so I'm kind of excited about having Steve on our team well you must be else why would you employ him? Absolutely. You know, I've, you know, listen, I've known Steve Bowden for, oh, good Lord, is it 10 years or more? So, you know, and he, and he had that passion. He took that passion to that other company down in Texas we were talking about a little bit ago. And, you know, bringing that passion to American Pinball was a no-brainer for me. So I was so happy about bringing him on. and you know I've heard some people refer to you know the good old days at Williams right and listen I understand that was 20 years ago and I know that some of my competitors always say that you know you look back at that well I look back at it just as understanding where we need to go and build the quality games that everybody has come to know and love, give them the quality support, but keep perfecting the game. Give us rule sets that are today's standards. Give us a vision that, yeah, it's not Williams, but it is a good foundation to build off of. You have to have a good foundation to build off of your games. So I think that's one of the key points.
    55:23
    and personnel if they're from Williams or Bailey or just fresh young designers who are taking the industry by the horns and working with it and bringing them together that's the key point one of the key things about building games of course is the supply of parts and that's been an issue for you and for every manufacturing company in the world I think over the past few years I've heard various people say that the situation is improving now and more parts are becoming available and the price of shipping them and manufacturing them is coming down what's your experience with that? It is improving, but slowly so listen, when you're building games there's a reason that you're running so many of these games so many of those games and running back because parts are getting tough, right? So, you know, there's delays in shipping. Are we like during the pandemic where everything was stopped? No, we're not. But are we moving forward? Yes. Is it as fast as we would like to do pre-pandemic? No. It is still slow. I mean, we sit down, and I use the plural tense, we, just so that people know that at American Pinball and at other companies I've worked with, we have a production meeting on every Monday and Thursday to see where we are, what we're doing, and what little problems to optimize and to get us the amount of machines we need to get out in the public, okay? And, you know, we sit down with ownership. We have two game lines. We just signed off on the third game line, so that will be installed shortly. So we're going to have three game lines producing, you know, three lines to produce as many games as we want. Are the orders there? Yes. Are the people buying games? Absolutely. I have to say that out of a ton of people, we get that A-star quality because when they get an American pinball game, it is built American tough. Now, I can't say that because that's the headline for an American car manufacturer, but you understand what I'm saying. But, yes, has the supply chain been a problem? Absolutely. It has not been easy. And they continue to be problems. Correct. And you know what? Listen, the demand is not just at American. It's the demand at my other two competitors or four competitors. And when they start building parts and start building up their lines, guess what? It puts a strain on all the rest of the supply chain. because, you know, hey, if I'm buying, you know, legs from one guy, somebody else is buying legs. So now I've got two or three people buying legs from the same guy. So it puts a little bit of a strain on us. And, you know, personnel in itself is a supply chain issue, right? You know, if I had 50 people, which, you know, we have over 50 in the production area, but what I'm saying is if we had another 50, could I get another 50 games? Probably. You know, but where are you going to get those 50 people? It's just like, you know, we are looking constantly. I mean, I have two HR people who are constantly going through resumes, through applications all the time. And we even have on American Pinball's website, if you go into the About Us, there's the hiring section. So you can go right in there and click on it, and you can fill out information if you want to get hired at American Pinball. So we continuously try everything to find personnel and also parts, just try to keep that in mind. I look forward to the time very shortly when I can say the supply chain is now fixed and everything is flowing in and games are flowing out as fast as we can build them. And that will be absolutely awesome. Now, speaking of personnel, since American Pinball and most of the other pinball companies are all in the Chicago area,
    59:42
    basically that means you're competing with each other for the same personnel. To a point, yeah. Yeah, to a point.
    59:52
    Is that a problem in the sense that some companies might say, even if you are just a temp working on the line, they will not allow you to work for another pinball company? or is it not that harsh or is it not being played that hard? Well, just know that, okay, so my competitors both have their own staffing companies, so they have their own people that they're staffing through a staffing agency and so forth, and we have our own staffing agency too. So very rarely am I pulling Joe off the line that's starting to come work at American, okay? That's only if Joe left that staffing agency, went to my staffing agency, told them, hey, I make pinball machines, and they said, okay, come work over at this place. So that very rarely happens. It does. Mostly when it does happen, it's more senior-level people, people who have been in the industry who are a little bit higher up.
    60:51
    And, you know, they might have problems that they didn't want to work for this company anymore because they felt like they were put off to a side, pigeonholed, not being used to their fullest. And they're like, yeah, I could stay there for the rest of my life and never worry about it, or I could make something in the industry and make a name for myself and change the things that I can contribute, right? So unfortunately, I will say that some of the other pinball companies have a very closed door, approach to staffing, sort of like you cannot get a meeting with certain personnel or people, or if you talk to them, some other higher-ups, they will say, go through my secretary and go through the normal chain of command. I have an open-door policy. You know, I have it where everybody on the line has my business card with my cell number, okay? and they can call me if they have a problem. And then I will deal with it with HR or I will deal with it where it needs to be. And we promote within, right? So there are people there that have been there for a good period of time that, listen, let's continue to grow as a family.
    62:11
    A good friend of this show who is writing an article for one of the, and who usually tries to break in right about now, which is our good friend, Here's a flower. He came over, and I gave him a tour of the factory, all right? And he walked through the factory, and later on he tells me, he says, this is a pinball factory with soul, meaning that you have people working together for the common good of enjoying to build pinball machines. They are the people who are all together. They have love in it. There's no division between management. There's no division between design and R&D and production. Everybody here has a goal to produce the best machines possible, and they have the fun and they want to be there. He says, you got sold. He says, I was bad at a couple other companies. You can see a little bit of a division. You can see a little bit of other things, and you can see some definite problems. But in the long run, he says, and he's writing up a new article for Replay Magazine, which he's going to talk about his visit to American Pinball and seeing a company that's family-oriented and has a soul to want to put together a great machine.
    63:34
    And is that something you think you'll be able to maintain as you grow in size and produce more titles, have three lines running? you think that's going to be able to be maintained down the line? Absolutely. And I'll tell you why. Because I came from a company that had great soul. And what I'm talking about, Martin, is innovation concepts and entertainment, ice. Think about this. This was a company that had just shy of 400 employees, 21 game lines producing the finest arcade games in the world. the owner of ICE, a good friend and a mentor and a man that I truly, you know, next to my grandfather, I adored, Ralph Coppola. When Ralph was in the building, he made sure he went down and talked to everybody on the line. He went down there and greeted people and talked to people. He would check with some friends that had been working for him. imagine this, an employee who's been working on the line for 20 some odd years to Ralph, and he would walk down there and ask him how his wife's doing, how his kids are doing, how are they going today, did they get into college. He worried about that stuff because that was, he always considered the whole division his family. and that man worried every day about bubbles and crashes of markets because he basically said those 400 people are his family and he wanted to make sure those people were employed and always had a job. So, you know, learning from him and also knowing the history from Gottlieb and what Elvin and David did in the history, I walk the line every time I'm in the building. I talk to people about their kids. I talk about where they are. If they have a problem, they have something, I'm talking to them and trying to help them, especially Jack. You know, even if that means, listen, Dave, I'm having problems getting through. Okay, you know what, I'm going to give you a couple gas cards, you know. Here's some gas money to get to the business, you know. You know, can I help you out with some other stuff? You know, hey, I need a little time because my mother is sick. Take all the time off you want because you're family, you know.
    66:00
    That philosophy has been missed by many companies. But to have that philosophy within and to use that to manage the people, listen, they'll work harder for you, right? And I see that so much at American. I have people who come in crazy hours and want to be there because they feel part of the family, and they are. They are my extended family. The American Pinball has become this family, and it's growing, right? And can we, sure. You know, families grow, too. You know, they have more children. Sometimes the children leave, right? So the employees leave. That's all right. They're still part of the family. They still have that pedigree that they were with us. We still, you know, reach out, and if we can help them, we will. You know, so it's one of those things. So there's a lot of growth that is happening, and I'm happy to say that we're going to maintain the family orientation of this company for the common good, right?
    67:03
    That's our vision. That's interesting. Okay. It's certainly interesting. What you just described reminds me of Dave Gosley, who used to do that the same with many of the people in the factory that were working for him in the 60s and 70s. Absolutely.
    67:22
    And why did that? That made Gottlieb huge, right? Yeah. You know, Gottlieb was the king of pinball. Gottlieb was the pinnacle. What happened to Gottlieb were some missteps, which a lot of companies make, you know. I mean, you can make a misstep. I think one of the biggest missteps Gottlieb did, and I'll just touch on this, and I think a good friend of mine, Michael Gottlieb, will tell you the same story. he says that when they went solid state it was thought of over like several martinis and said okay let's use this guy Rockwell Technologies and let them design our board system and we have to go to solid state but that was only after they had many drinks and had to do something about it because they weren't being you know so taking that I continuously look at the industry and say okay what's better is this the best thing? You know I think Martin you and I talked about this a while back and I touch base on this was the playfield problems right Like you and I talked about it that in the 90s playfields were designed done and dusted They were going to last the test of a nuclear explosion, right? And what happened? Well, you know, you continuously evolve. There's continuous changes. But listen, what has been done, we keep perfecting, right? I'm happy to say that American pinball play fields are really, you know, standard above the rest, right? I think they're well built. People don't have problems with it. And that is just what we need to do. But in the long run, we continue to build for that quality, right? I mean, yes, you have to be innovative. You keep looking at new things. But there's reasons that I have games out on test. And those games out on test are what we try new stuff that the public doesn't know, that the innards might be a little different, maybe a new power supply, maybe a new set of coils and some new software or something. But that's just to see how well it abstains from breakdown, right? And then after a long, rigorous test, do we finally pull the trigger and say, okay, we're going to put that into our game? Because I don't want a substandard part going into my game that's going to cause a nightmare. Everything I test has to go through a life test. Everything we do goes through a burn-in, okay? I want, you know, I don't want people to say, oh, did you ever even look at my game? Yeah, it burned in. It went through so many levels of testing and so forth to make sure I'm giving you 100%. And you know what? It shows, right? We have those people who love our quality and say, man, they build a great game, and that's the reason. And if we need to make adjustments, we do. Right, well you've been kind enough to appear on our pincast quite a few times now David, I think every time recently certainly that we've spoken to you've said you have the ambition to release two titles a year at least and well it's Legends was announced in October last year so obviously there have been issues with supply chain and staffing and various other changes in the industry which have impacted on your ability to produce your existing titles, let alone release a new one. But is there any information you can give us about when we might be hearing about your next title? Well, we do have a game coming out this year.
    71:06
    And I will say, listen, not only did I pull back to make sure that we were good with the game for this year. Listen, my competitor also didn't release a game this spring also because there's a demand out there, right? And this is kind of an out-touch base a little bit about Legends of Valhalla. Legends of Valhalla was great. It is a great-selling game. High demand. People love it. And some people have called it a sleeper. Yeah, and it is taking the industry by storm quietly. It may have not been, listen, it went up against Godzilla, okay? It's tough when you go against a title like Godzilla. I mean, it's a great game. But I will tell you that I love Legends of the Hollow. It has gotten a lot of people were surprised by the rules. And listen, Steve Bowden, even Michael Grant, Both of them worked heavily on the rules to perfect that game a lot more via player's game, and a lot of players are taking note of this game. We were at Texas, and people loved it. But I don't want to be that guy that looks like he's out for kind of the money grab. And what I mean by that is that I could have released the Legends of Valhalla Classic and started pumping those out. I want to get the Legends of Valhalla Deluxe Limited Editions into all the collector's hands before I release the classic version of that. There will be a classic version. It will be somewhat, have some of the toys, not toys, but some of the add-ons removed from the game to bring the price down. But at the end of the day, people are going to love it just as much as they do the Deluxe. but I want to honor and support those people who bought the deluxe model by getting them their games first. Okay? I want them to enjoy that game. I don't want them to be sitting six months or a year later saying, I ordered a deluxe model of this and I haven't gotten it yet. All right? I want you to have that deluxe model before I make the announcement of the classics.
    73:25
    That's just me giving back to the industry or even back to the collector because, you know what, They're the ones who stepped up and said, I want to buy this game. And for those 500 people, most definitely. And let me touch upon that for a second. Originally, we were going to release 300 games, and all intentions was to release 300 games. We announced it on Saturday morning at 8 a.m. Chicago Central Time, which, Martin, what time is that there in London? If it's 8 a.m.? It will be 2 p.m. 2 p.m., which I don't know many people wandering around in the middle of the afternoon in London waiting to see what's happening in the pinball industry. Jonathan, what time is that in the Netherlands? An hour earlier.
    74:13
    So, okay, so 3 p.m. So by the time that social media and everything hit, it was about 7, 8 o'clock in Europe or going into the evening, right? And then on a Saturday. By the morning, Sunday morning, 24 hours from that time, Europe, Australia, all the rest of the world had already stepped up and said, hey, we want this game also. We were over 500 games already by 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, or 8 a.m., 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. We were already over 500. So we said we're going to pull it back to 500. and by Sunday night, the numbers were just growing, and they're still growing, okay? We have tons of people. And we told them, listen, continue to go to your distributors, see if somebody cancels. You can jump in on that for the deluxe limited model. That's still true today. There are some distributors who have had people pull their orders or whatnot, but for the most part, anybody who's gotten the game hasn't sold the game, okay? They still have the game. They love the game. They want more of the game, and we're continuously giving that. So that's just a benefit for us. So was that a money grab? No, that was me just making sure that the rest of the world had the same opportunity. Was there more than 500? Yes. Is there still more than 500? Yes. There are many, many people who still want this game, the deluxe model, and are the people who are currently with the distributors on a waiting list for the classics when it gets released later this year. But first of all, I want to get those deluxe out. So you've still got to get the deluxe ones out, and then you've got to go through the classic production before you can even start talking about the next game. No, no, no, no, no. So the deluxe model will be done, and then the classics, the next game will be already getting there for production, right? And then when we announce the classic, we will still have the new game being produced, and then we'll make the release. Here's the other thing. We did this with Legends. We had so many made before we announced it, right? And then we also had those put out in locations because, hey, I have been producing this thing so that we could do what we call a street rollout, right? A street rollout means that there are locations across the United States and possibly Canada. I don't know if you did Canada. And we probably will do this again to help give back to the community and give back to the locations. And what I mean by that is, listen, I know what locations went through with the pandemic, right? They did not have the numbers where they needed to be. they had been struggling when the pandemic was over and they were struggling um with getting people back into the locations to enjoy the game so american pinball did something that most i don't think my competitor has ever done i sent out 10 games to 10 of the top locations and i didn't even charge them okay i paid for the shipping on that and i uh i basically um gave them six months to pay the game off, right? So they got a trial run on this. And because they were the street locations, they had people lining up, showing up at their locations just to play the new game because they were the first ones to get it. It not only helped the locations, it helped the industry, right? And it helped the locations financially because I know some of these locations couldn't afford a brand-new game coming out of a pandemic when they could barely keep the doors open, right? So now all of a sudden they have a new game, they have people coming in, they have people redefining them, and they're buying drinks, they're buying other things, they're finding this, and it just helped in the long run. So that's why we wanted to do street rollouts, and we're still going to do street rollouts. That's one of our key distributions is to take, you know, listen, I'm not going to tease you for two weeks or a month and let you keep guessing and let Pinside go bananas over what that sound was or what this was on a thing or what it could be. I want to show it to you and say, here it is, go play it, enjoy it, and it's ready. I realize this is very early on because you've only ever done it once before, but do you think pulling the game out on location at the same time you announce it helps sales? Sure. or is neutral, or could potentially damage sales, because there's an awful lot of fear of missing out, people putting orders in straight away as soon as the game is announced. Whereas if they can go and actually play the game, then in some cases it might turn out that the game isn't quite what they were hoping for, and that could knock sales off. It could, but I want to tell you this right now. It gives you more of credit that you're building games. Oh, yeah. If I go around and say, listen, I'm going to build this game and nobody sees it and I'm taking orders, what kind of, I mean, you're basing it off the credit of that person, right? I mean, I think of all the people who saw Raza, right, or the other games that another company was putting out. So to put a game out on location and say here's the game, it is out there, gives you a ton of credit because you've made the decisions, you've built this game, you know that this is great. This is something that WMS used to do, okay? They used to put this stuff out there. They used to put them out there and let people play them and make sure they're out to distributors so that people did it. But you've got to remember, back then, Martin, that was mostly all distributor-based. Now we're a ton of it. It's home-based. So what am I going to do, send it to people's homes? No, I'm going to go the same route. I'm going to put it in barcades where people venture out and play the newest game. In fact, you know, listen, I know barcades that have games and people go out. Yes, they'll make the decision. They'll buy it or they won't buy it. I know people who literally were on the fence, put in orders, and when they finally saw the game and played it, canceled. So I would rather have the people play it and make sure that they want to buy it, okay? And right now, all my people who bought Legends of Valhalla know that they want that game because they've played it. I have people who have played it at Texas. I have them at Expo, Midwest Gaming Classic. all these big shows, including a show that's going to be this weekend, Northwest. Northwest, yeah. In fact, it's going to be in the presidential suite at Nitro Pinball. They have two Legends of the House up there for people to enjoy at the Northwest Game Show. Pinball and All-Kings Show. Yes, sorry.
    81:31
    It's five words put in some order that lead up to a pinball show name. You know, I don't care if it's, you know, Southern Pride Pinball Expo or whatever. I mean, it's usually something that has pinball arcade in some order. So, but no, listen, when people put their hands on the machine and they play it, like I said, they find out that this is a great game, you know. It is. I'm one of them. Thank you, Jonathan. I'm glad you enjoyed it. But, unfortunately, I still don't have any Deluxes available for you, So continue to contact your distributor if you want to buy one.
    82:10
    Get yourself on a list. But, no, listen, I mean, I think that putting the game out there for people to enjoy gives me as a manufacturer more of an information so that they order it because they enjoy it and want it. I don't want to have it where, you know, I make an announcement, I sold, you know, a thousand games. Nobody's touched it. When it finally gets to the distributor, you know, 50 or 60 people play the first sample of the game and go, you know what, cancel my order. I'd rather go with this other one. So there's a reason I want to put street locations out there so that people can play them. And I think we mentioned it briefly at the beginning of that answer that the next game will be announced later this year. and I think you've already confirmed previously that it'll be Dennis Nordman's design with Chris Franchi on art. Is that correct? That is correct, yeah. And I tell you, Chris Franchi art, I mean... I mean, listen, Chris and I are friends. We've been friends for years and his artwork is always spectacular. And I also made an announcement to you guys, maybe you remember at the Texas show that we are doing Barry's last game. Barry Osler's last game will be coming out in 2023. And then Dennis's game for 2023 is already in the Whitewoods stage. So know that we are kicking it up a notch, but I want to continue to support the people who are buying the games, and I really, really, really don't want to hurt them. If you've stepped up and you're buying a game from American Pinball, let's say it's a limited deluxe, trust me, I'm 100% thankful, and I continue to give little things. In fact, one of the things I signed off on last week, and most of the people will be seeing it shortly in the mail, which is very cool, is a set of side art blades for a deluxe model for Legends of Valhalla. So those who bought a deluxe model, you may get a little package in the mail, which will be your new art plates for your game, and they'll be going on all the games going forward. So register your game. That's the other thing I want to point out. Register your game. If you've registered your game at American Pinball that you bought a deluxe version of Legends of Valhalla, you will be getting the updates. You'll be getting the side blades. You'll be getting anything that comes out for that. So make sure that you register those in there so that if you didn't get the Art Blades, hey, you're going to get that little present that's going to be, hey, look, I got a set of Art Blades for my game. I didn't even know I was getting them.
    84:58
    Very nice. Very nice, indeed. Does it also count for international customers? Yes, it does count for international customers. Of course. Top class service from American Bidmore. Absolutely, sir. Hey, I'm a collector. Like I said, I want to have those little perks and so forth. And it's funny because we went around and around and around at the beginning about Art Blades. And then it was finally, somebody said, you need Art Blades. And I'm like, yeah, I know. And I went back to Scott and said, Scott, you need to do Art Blades for this thing. And he said, okay. And he did it up. And I'm telling you, the artwork, it fits thematically. It looks great. It works well with the cabinets. People love it.
    85:40
    We've already seen it. I showed it to a bunch of people that are just, you know, guys in the industry and not only that. We just are like, okay, this is the art package, you know, it fits.
    85:51
    Great. Well, we started talking about what's happening at Pimble Expo earlier in this interview. And I think we're getting towards the end now. And we will later be talking to your colleague, Rob Burke, about what he's been up to over the past few days. But is there anything that you can tell us that the two of you are working on or have planned for this year's Pinball Expo?
    86:19
    Yes. In the true Pinball Expo, get ready, okay? You know, we always say that. Get ready! Because we're going to have a show that will, again, just blow people away.
    86:35
    We did the first year show. It was interesting. You know, it was the first time in that location. Yes. Do we need to make changes? Absolutely. Have we made those changes? Yes, sir, we have. We are adjusting the times of the show to be better for everyone. If you're coming to the show, it's going to be the show that you want to be at. We've adjusted also the tournament. We had a beautiful setup for the tournament last year, but we're going to take it another notch further. We actually are making it better for the tournament players. Are we going to make it a better experience for everyone? Yes. What we can use from people, and I'm just going to throw this out to you real quick, we could use people that are clubs, people who are part of leagues, anything. We could always use more games at Expo. So Expo is built because it was to bring people together to introduce them to Pinball Expo. If you go back far enough, there was no Pinball Expo show. There were no pinball shows in the industry, right? And that just started bringing people together. So Expo is to bring people together, and that means bring your game. Show it off. You know, we're going to have some tournaments where we're going to show off, you know, the best in show, right? This is the best mod. This is the best game that we, you know, has been gone through, and it's a total restore, and it's a gorgeous machine, and we're going to give that the award of best in the show. A few years ago, I think we did that with The Crawl, right? So, you know, there's not many shows out there that, you know, continue to do that. But I continue to ask for people to bring games to the show to help support Pinball Expo, and they have in the past, and we continue to push that. but you know we're we're looking at the floor design it's going to be completely different than what we did last year and it's going to be something people are going to be amazed by right and listen we're timing everything just right so that there'll be new games there there'll be games that people are going to want to play and it's just going to be the show continue to grow into our new location it's 60,000 square feet for crying out loud it's a big room and we did a pretty good job last year, but I think we can do even better. And trust me, there are a lot of leagues, a lot of clubs that will support us. And, you know, there are guys out there who are probably listening to this. We are even talking about doing some league play, you know, team leagues and so forth. Bring your games down, show off your collection, and promote your league and your collection in the free play area. And that free play area is intertwined this year with the whole vendor area. So the vendor hall and the free play area is one and the same, and it's going to be nice because you're going to be able to go and see Stern's new games and then play some free games right next to it. You can go over here and see what's going on in America. You can go over here and see what's at JJP. You can go over here and see what's going on in Chicago.
    89:43
    I'm giving everybody a free billing. In fact, here's a little spoiler. I already know a young man who I've known for many years. I know him as Bug. He came up to me and said to me at Texas, I want to be at Expo. I said, Bug, we'll have Spooky at Expo. You guys can have a nice booth. We already talked about that, and we're going to put him in a nice location. And he's going to, you know, again, just show off his games. He's going to be part of that experience with us. So we're happy to have Spooky there. JJP Chetown Gaming of course Stern and of course American so it's going to be a great show it's going to be the pinball show man this is Rob is passionate about it he's been doing this for oh good 38 years you know I was going to say 40 but you know we'll say 38 okay 38 edition right but you know this is something that's been a dream of his for two years before X-Pro right right so you know And, you know, it was supposed to be one and done, and now it's going on 38 years, you know. We have this book of records of the longest running show. So it's going to be a great show. Right. Just keep going back to the American, not American, go back to Pinball Expo's website and get the updates. There's updates continuously happening on Pinball Expo's website. PinballExpo.com. Right. Yeah, right. Very good. So now speaking of Pinball Expo, thank you for the plug so far. having met Rob Berg yesterday he gave me a flyer for a new international tournament that will be held on the Thursday of Bimble Extra can you talk about that or is that not something that you're concerning yourself with it's nothing I know about it but I don't have enough information to give you I just know that we've been working on that so that's going to be huge Rob's World Cup Yeah, it's a dream that, you know, listen, Expo, this thing has been going on for 38 years. It's the granddaddy, as people call it. There's been growing pains in Pinball Expo. We all know about that, and we're now past that, and we're in a new location. So, yes, the granddaddy championship is going to happen. Rob has you know, Rob has had a vision for 38 years and he's continuously bringing that vision and one of those things to have the big championship there you know there's a lot of things, I mean Pinball Hall of Fame for crying out loud was started with Expo, there was no Hall of Fame before that and there are other things that you know make people stand up and take note that this is the big show so I think at the end of the day we have a couple other surprises and listen the American Dream Challenge had been pitched by Rob to a couple other manufacturers over the years let's just say and they've always said no no no we're not interested in that and Rob's one of those things was wouldn't it be great to have some homebrew guy getting hired by a pinball and making their pinball I just think that would be the coolest thing ever. And I have to say that 20 years ago I agreed with Rob at that point, and I kept pushing, pushing, pushing with Rob, and I'm happy to say that we're finally going to do something like that, and we've done it already with Scott Gullix and Ryan McKay. And I think this is just moving along. It's a passion. It's a family thing for American and for Expo. It kind of works perfectly hand-in-hand. Both of us, all of us have the same passion, so it's great. Great. Well, thank you very much indeed, David. David Fix there, Executive Vice President of American Pinball. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, guys, and I look forward to being back on here. And I'm also looking forward to seeing you guys again. We'll go out for drinks. We'll talk, and it'll be great. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
    93:57
    And there you have it, David Fix. Yes, thanks again to David for joining us on the PINcast. Yes, this was an interview that ran a lot longer than I was expecting it to be, but lots of great information. Thank you for that, David. Yes, it always seems to be the way. We think we've got a few items to talk about, and it will be wrapped up, a bit like this PINcast itself, in a few minutes, but nearly an hour later, there we are still talking. But hopefully it was all time well spent Right, okay So that covers our coverage for American Pinball for this month, I suppose Moving on to Jersey Jack Pinball Yeah, not much news from them really, is there? No, we're still waiting for their next game to be announced the date of May 23rd was rumored as being a special day in the supposed license for that game Toy Story and probably lots of special stuff happened on the 23rd regarding Toy Story but we didn't see any announcement for a Pimol Sheen I don't think anything is going to be coming out in the next week or two but I think we are looking towards June aren't we, as being the announcement month. Right.
    95:22
    So I think there are limited opportunities if they want to launch it at a major event, which they generally do. They normally launch their new titles at a pinball show somewhere. So by the time this goes out, I think we'll already know that they won't be launching at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade show. Right. So, yeah. So what other shows are there in the upcoming month? Well, have a look on the diary and find out for yourself. But we can only speculate at this point because nothing is confirmed until it actually happens in the pinball business. Anything can change at the last minute. There can be delays. There can be all kinds of reasons why things don't happen. Right, yeah. But, well, that date of the 23rd, well, nothing happened. And I think Jack was on holiday in Aruba and posted on his Facebook that he was on holiday in Aruba. And people quickly figured out that if Jack's not there, then there's probably not going to happen anything.
    96:35
    So, yeah. What I found out The game has been The upcoming game has been on the line But there have also been rumors That it's no longer on the line And I have no idea Whether that has to do with That they are building a bunch of games For Europe And then going back to Guns N' Roses And then starting production for the US Because it takes time For games to travel overseas if they want a large quantity to arrive in time? Yes, I don't know. They just say that the Guns N' Roses production is officially winding down. So that would mean that they are either producing the next game or producing some older titles. I can't imagine they're going to let the line stop unless they have run out of parts. We talked about supply chain issues many times and we did with David as well just now, as you will have heard. Every company is suffering from that. So, as he said, they build the games that they can build. Right. And, of course, that's going to delay any announcement as well. I mean, every company, every Pimble company is facing these supply chain issues. And if you can't build the game, then what's the point in announcing it? Well, I don't know. I mean, traditionally, companies have announced games and then gone into production afterwards with varying amounts of delay, depending on which company we're talking about. Yeah, but in this case, we're talking about Jersey Jack, and with previous games, Jack learned his lesson and said that he would only announce a new game if he has a number of units immediately available to sell. Yeah, that's the ideal But, you know, supplies being what they are at the moment You have to do what you have to do, don't you? True, true Oh well, we'll see what happens this month Well, perhaps we can go to Well, hopefully next month we'll be in a position to report on the launch of JJP number 7 But in the meantime Well, somebody who might know something more is our good friend Gary Flower Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, Gary was over in the US recently. Perhaps he'll have some insights he can tell us about.
    99:07
    You want me to give him a call? Yeah, give him a call. Let's see what he's got to say. Okay, well, call in Gary.
    99:14
    Hi, guys. Hey, Gary. Jonathan. Hey, Gary. Thanks for calling. I'm involved in the Jubilee celebrations at the moment. Right. Could you call me back? Because I think the band's just about to kick off. Oh my God, what's that noise? Oh dear, bad time. Just started up the national anthem. I feel quite a bad thinking it out, because it's the national anthem. But I think our listeners, they probably don't want to listen to the whole piece. So we'll try and get back to Gary a bit later, if we possibly can, if time allows. otherwise we'll move on then to what else has been going on in the pinball business and let's head down to a Commonwealth country to Australia and see what's been going on with Haggis right, so, well I've seen photos of the first Phantom game, Phantom Revisited game being picked up or delivered, whatever it was Yeah, first one off the line I think. Yeah, and also a second one. There's some people complaining that it doesn't look like a proper production line. Based on the info that we received, I can see where that is coming from, but oh well, I'm sure they do the best they can to build the games as quickly as they can. Yeah, there haven't been any actual updates directly from Damien at Haggis or anybody else at Haggis themselves, but just the pictures of the new game, which I have to say looked absolutely great, but really, really well made inside and out, although it did look a little bit dark on the playfield from some of the pictures that I saw. So whether that's just a camera issue or it really is dark, I don't know. I mean, obviously it's got RGB lighting in it, so the actual light level is going to change during the game. But at the time one of the pictures was taken, the central area looked pretty dim. Well, you can always adjust the brightness on that picture. Oh, absolutely, yes. That would help, yes. On that picture, at least, yes. Yeah.
    101:37
    Thank you. Oh, well. Always helps. If nothing else to report from Angus, then we're moving on. I think we will move on, yeah. Yeah. So the gift that keeps on giving, Deep Root Pinball.
    101:51
    Really not a huge amount of news from them, except that very strange events occurred when the deeprootpinball.com website came back online, having been down pretty much since the SEC announcement was made. But it's come back with the same logo for Deep Root Pinball and a string of hexadecimal characters,
    102:15
    which, hexadecimal pairs of characters, I should say, which, if you convert them to ASCII reads, check back soon for something interesting.
    102:26
    How interesting. It is indeed interesting. That's interesting in itself. You don't need to check back. Yeah.
    102:32
    But I kind of assuming that that domain is now owned by was one of the assets that was picked up by Chris Turner of Turner Logic If you remember Turner Logic was the company that was writing the code for the game and also bought many of the assets of the company in the auction, including things like the life insurance policies, but also a whole bunch of IP. Right. Although, well, we just talked to David Fitz, who apparently is also interested in some of the IP of DeepRoot and he mentioned that that stuff hasn't been auctioned yet. Oh not all of it, no, some of it may have been. It's unclear exactly what was included in the auction items. Right. But anyway the site's back so might be worth keeping on deeprootpinball.com to see if something interesting does appear. Right, okay and that's That's the most important news, I suppose. Yeah. And, well, we'll keep an eye on it. Getting back to the other side of the world, Home Paint Factory in Taiwan have been basically pre-assembling lots and lots of parts for the production of this final TAPS, but we haven't received any new details on when the game is about to be launched or revealed, or whatever you want to call it. No, it was supposed to be built this month, but according to the website of, I think it was Highway Games, who are the homebrew distributor in Australia, Yeah, they say it was meant to be built this month, but it was also meant to be built last month, and it wasn't built then. Or at least it wasn't available for sale then. So we don't really know. It's a familiar story, but interestingly, or not, depending on your point of view, Highway Games have set up a company called Final Tap Pinball Pty Ltd, presumably to market and sell the game. So it looks like they're probably a little bit more than just distributors for Home Pin. It sounds like they're going to be the go-to place for Spinal Tap Pinball. Okay. So, well, we'll keep an eye on that as well. And that's all there is to report from Home Pin. Yes, a lot of nothing much happened, but it's going to happen soon in this month's Pincast. I will have a chance. Well, just ting it up for next month's one where everything will happen. Right. So, okay.
    105:20
    Well, Pitbull Brothers had a delayed shipment of alien games. First of all, they announced that a container was ready to ship, but the shipping was delayed. And I think eventually they shipped out two containers, one heading for the US and the other for the UK.
    105:43
    Wow, okay. I guess the UK one is probably going to be a distribution point for other countries as well. It could be, yeah. Yeah, because I don't think, I don't know how many, whether it's a full container or a half container or how many machines are in there. I mean, normally you get, what, 33, 36 pinball machines in a full container. Yeah, I think 40 plus ones were supposed to ship out this month, so let's assume they did. Okay, so that's coming from Pedretti, I assume. Yeah. Pedretti Gaming in Italy. Yes, with a little bit of news on them as well, if you want to touch on that now. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they released new code for Rudy's Nightmare, Funhouse, Rudy's Nightmare it is, version 0.88. Yes, indeed they did, and I downloaded it. All 517 megabytes of code. Yeah, mainly because on their website there was no information about what had changed. Or indeed on their social media feed there wasn't anything. So I thought, well, there's bound to be a readme file in the code. no, there isn't, there's just one file called funhouse.code and that's it, so I've no idea what's different in this version hopefully somebody does yeah, so, but we won't be discussing that this time I did see some news from actually March 25th which I'm not sure that we covered but where Pedretti Gaming were excited to announce a new sub-licensing agreement with Planetary Pimble for several more 2.0 titles like Funhaus. And they already started working on their next 2.0 game kit. Which, of course, they are not revealing which game it will be.
    107:43
    But since Planetary is involved, it's very likely to be a Williams game from that era. So it could be Whirlwind or well, Brighter Pimble seems unlikely, but any of the alphanumeric or numeric games from that era. Well, it does say that their game kit was using the fast retro platform, which is designed for System 11. Right. Well, obviously there's 11, 11A, 11B and 11C, so there's a big range of games there, but it could be things like, as you say, Brighter People, it could be Whirlwind,
    108:16
    Earthshaker. I think. Yeah. Aspire comes to mind. Is that like 2000 even? Yeah. Elvira and the Party Monsters back into that bring out a new Elvira game one of those for literally months right oh well so it looks like they will be having a lot of fun once it gets out the rest of the world as well so that's it for Pedrecci Gaming in Italy tying in with the Pimble Brothers heading back to the US Spooky Pinball not much new to report they did release a new code for Halloween and Ultraman version 1.07 with a revamped wizard mode some rule changes and a few bug fixes how did I do that? not a big update but interesting they changed the way the wizard mode works and Bug did a nice video on YouTube showing how to achieve that new wizard mode on both Halloween and Ultraman. Right, okay. And Buck was also featured in an interview at a show that he was at, being interviewed by somebody who actually had no clue what he was talking about. Sorry to say, but that's really the impression that I got.
    109:47
    And the interesting thing from that, what I understood is that they already expanded their current factory, but they are planning to extend it even further next summer, which I'm not sure whether that is this year or next year.
    110:02
    But apparently the company keeps growing, so that's good for them. Yeah, of course. Another company that we keep expecting to announce what their next title is going to be, and it could be coming any time soon. Yeah, because Halloween's on to a man They must be well through those runs by now Yeah, probably winding down as well, yes Yep Okay, so that's Spooky Pinball Up in Benton, Wisconsin So moving a bit further south There's a little bit further south To Chicago Gaming And... No news Oh, there is nothing Absolutely nothing Okay, well we didn't need to hang around there very long then, did we? No, sorry about that Okay Well, we had a very nice event organized by Dutch Pinball. Yes, indeed. We went to Barry's factory warming party, which was held at their, I should say, new factory. Well, it's 18 months they've been in that factory now. And they held a party to warm the place on Friday the 27th of May. Yeah, which basically was last Friday, a week ago Yes, that's right, yes And very nice it was as well, very well organised There was free drink, free food, tours of the factory Free games to play And lots of people to talk to there Yeah An interesting group And even as someone who doesn't speak any Dutch There were probably at least half a dozen English speakers probably more who I got chatting to during the course of the day.
    111:45
    And it was very interesting going around the factory as well and seeing, you know, we've been around pinball factories a good few times and so Barry's very kindly offered to do his tour in English. And I said, no, no, it's all right, you carry on in Dutch because the other 19 people in the group, they probably don't know that much about how a pinball factory works because they were not pimple people necessarily, they were sort of friends and family and well-wishers, and so you explain it all to them, because I can pick it up as we go along, because I kind of know how you put together a pimple machine, whereas other people don't even know what a ramp is or the fact you have to put switches on them and that kind of thing. Right. But as non-biased as you are, what do you think of the factory? I thought it was great, I thought they were using the space really well, and I thought it was quite hard to imagine how they could have been building the big Lebowski game in a much smaller space, because they seem to occupy the entire space that's in the factory at the moment. They had sort of clearly set up into an assembly building area, a playfield population area, a cabinet populating area, and the complete machine testing area. Right, and then a boxing-up area. Yes, that's right. Well, which wasn't actually in use because they had nine complete machines waiting to go, but they don't box them up until the last minute.
    113:13
    Or at least, I suppose, they kept them there. Yeah, it could have been there for the show. Yes. They had a bit of wiping down after the show to get people's fingerprints off the nice shiny lock bars. But it looked an impressive sight, I will say. and let me do a blatant plug for Pinball News and there is a report on the event along with over 50 pictures from it where you can have a look at what we saw although I'm afraid you don't get any of the free drinks or food. No, and I did a sort of photo report as well on pinball-magazine.com so you can take a look at that as well my impression of the event. You didn't stay that long, neither did I, but I think I got everything. I was in a different factory tour than you were. Yes, you were. You were on the second one, not on the earlier one. Yeah.
    114:13
    And I wasn't mind-worn as to what was being said, unlike me. Yeah. So, no, well, it was a very nice event. Thank you very much for inviting us in this case. and oh well there's not much other news from Dutch Pimble to report no as we heard earlier from David Barry did say that the supply of parts continues to improve slowly he says things are better than they were at the worst of the supply chain problems in 2020 but it's a slow and gradual improvement.
    114:57
    And they're all looking forward to getting supplies back so they can ramp up production and start employing more people. Yeah.
    115:07
    One thing that I found interesting, which I think is not a problem to share, obviously, finding personnel has been a problem for many pinball companies, as David Ticks also expressed. What I understood is that Dutch Pinball now found a new Source to tap in from Or whatever you want to call it Which are seniors That have been working Already in assembly At other factories And for some reason have been Let go or whatever And are looking to get back On the In the job Or looking to get a job Most companies won't hire people from the age of, I don't know, 60 and up, but Vary is more than happy to do so. Yes, indeed. If you're the right fit, then you're the right fit. And apparently that turned out to be working very well for them. So there's that to report, I suppose. Great. So best wishes to Vary and everyone at Dutch, Pimple in producing all the remaining orders for the Big Lebowski. Yeah, oh, we still have to mention their next title, which of course was not revealed at the... No, there was nothing at the factory tour, we couldn't... There was no clue whatsoever to be found of what a possible future Dutch Pimple title could be. be everything was if there is anything to show it was hidden yes I think they are busy enough doing what they're doing without although work is underway on the next title I do know that right okay so yeah another company like Chicago Gaming with basically nothing to report is Multimorphic which doesn't mean that they're not doing anything they're busy building just the opposite yeah they're very busy um building weird l playfield modules and uh and p3 games um but there was no other news to report no new games or um software downloads yeah exactly updates or yeah no no new product releases this month. Right, okay. From one company that has some updates, still yet to produce games, but the updates keep coming, is Pimble Adventures. Yes, again, this is a familiar story. So they hope to be shipping their first title, the Polly Factory, within a month. You can say which month, but one assumes it's going to be the month of June. So they do have an interesting page on their website at pinballadventures.com slash punny-progress-page, which shows you the progress of the first ten machines they are building. The first one does have a name against it. At least I think it does. It says build, but that might mean something else. But it does suggest that it's been allocated to someone. The others don't, but they all seem to be in the same state of progress, shall we say, which is that the cabinet and the playfields are all done, but the mechs and toys are only at 50%, which, who knows what that means. Does that mean that they've got them but they haven't fitted them?
    118:48
    It probably comes their way around. And then the software, or the control system as well, which is incomplete. So I think they are, well, maybe they should start shipping in a month if they're at that state, but there's still a lot of work to do. The playfield's looking pretty good now, I think. I think we mentioned this before, some of the toys on there have really nice paint jobs on them, so who knows? But that's the first game.
    119:19
    They also were giving a sneak peek of their next game. Yeah, which is called Elements, Death Farmer's Secret. We've known that for many, many months right now. It's even on their website, amongst the titles that they are working on. They posted a photo of a populated playfield with artwork, I should say. So probably like the first prototype of the thing.
    119:49
    Yeah, it was a slightly strange angle, but it did show they still got the hexagonal window in the playfield, which I think was, I don't think it leads to an under play field, a mini play field, I think it's more a lighting effect, sort of infinity lights in there, but that may have changed, I can't wait to be proved wrong. One slight weird thing, or unusual thing about it, was it seemed to have a wooden bottom arch to it, rather than the usual metal or plastic ones, a nine ply wooden arch, So, plenty you can do there to make it look really nice. That could be one of the elements, couldn't it? Oh, probably. Earth-coloured wood. Right.
    120:35
    And that's basically all the news I like to find about Pinball Adventures. Indeed. But we keep an eye on them, and hopefully their games ship out soon. At this point, I don't even know whether they have any distributors. But the good thing for them is if they can crank games out, the demand for games from any manufacturer is extremely high. So this is a good time to start cranking out games. Yeah. As we've seen and we've heard, other companies are being held back in their production by lack of part supplies. So there is a big shortage and a big number of back orders waiting to be filled. So, yeah, anyone who has got games to sell, it's a seller's market. Right. So, moving on to another new company that has already gotten into pinball,
    121:31
    Bitronic, and tied in with the Quetzal Pinball from Spain, where Quetzal did the design for Super Hoop, their new game. we know that that game started shipping and the news that I can report is that Freddy's Pinball Paradise in Germany is a distributor apparently for that game and they are now offering Super Hoop for a tag price of 5,795 euro including VHE which comes to 6195 US dollars to make a comparison. And the interesting thing is that there's quite a few pictures shown of the play field on the website of the Freddy's Pinball Paradise webshop. And the game is already equipped with convoluted plastic protectors. I assume it takes some time to get these exactly correct, that they line up with the plastics on the game. Yeah, unless they were able to get the original drawings from the manufacturer. Right, but then still you need to install them on the game, which is also not a 20 minute job I suppose. I've done them myself, yeah, it's actually a little bit longer than that, but it depends how the game is put together in the first place, and whether any of the mounting screws are hidden under the mechs, or anything like that. But the game looks very nice, it's not the deepest game in the world, there are six modes to complete, and I can't wait to get my hands on one and play it, but for those in Europe interested in buying one of those, it's available at freddyspinballparadise. Yes, the address is shop.freddys f-r-e-d-d-y-s dash pinball dash paradise dot d-e for Deutschland.
    123:50
    Right, okay. That sort of rounds it up, but we still have an interview to share with our listeners. We do. This was prompted by two things, really. the first of which was the fact that Rob Burke was at the Dutch Pinball Museum and that's where you went to see him, isn't it? Yes, it is. And the second reason is the fact that Pinball Expo put out an announcement that they are holding a new World Cup tournament which I think we spoke about with David Fix earlier as part of the new features of Pinball Expo for this year and that's on Thursday the 20th of October, where teams of two,
    124:37
    a maximum of two teams per country, can register and represent their nation in the new Pinball Expo World Cup tournament. But let's hear more about what's going on with Pinball Expo and Rob's other plans, as you spoke to him at the Dutch Pinball Museum. Right, let me play that for you So I'm here at the Dutch Pinball Museum And I happen to run into Rob Berg The organizer of Pinball Expo Who is here already for a few days Today in Rotterdam But you're staying in Amsterdam right now, I understand Oh yeah, we are Okay, so can you tell me quickly Why you're here and what exciting things are happening in your life? Well, that's a great question. So there's a trade show called the Private Label Show in Amsterdam, and I wanted to go to it, so I figured let me tie in some other visits with this trip. So I end up going to Italy, Milan, and I hooked up with the people that are building the Pinball Brothers game, Alien. Yeah, Pedretti Gaming. Pagetti Gaming, yep. I also heard you're hooked up with Anthony Ramone.
    126:00
    Yes, you are correct. Your intel is excellent. So we're there for a couple of days, or one day. Actually, that night we took a drive down to Bologna to have dinner with Tony Ramone. Right. Been trying to get him to come to Pinball Expo since he was a baby. So finally, hopefully, this is the year he's going to say, yes, okay, I'll come. well that was a great visit I hadn't seen him 20, 30 years my gosh ridiculous right and from there where did I go next I have no idea I think you went to Amsterdam I did you go to France or Germany first no no France or Germany but I went to Amsterdam for the trade show so I figured since I'm here let me hook up with some people I was hoping to see Robin from Pinside that didn't happen and I saw Koos yeah Koos Huckford on the The Backglass King. Yes. And that was very great and interesting. And then I met Melvin Williams.
    127:02
    Prototype collector? Yep, prototype collector here in town here. And then I met up with Max Rogams. Rogams? Yeah. But nonetheless, he had a wonderful collection. Yeah. And I'll tell you what. Max is the guy with his team that met the girl. working. What's amazing to me though is how rich the industry is in this part of the world. Including Italy and I just never realized that there was that many people diehards that were into pinball in a big way. It's a small community but yet it's a big community. There's some serious collectors here. But all of them are very friendly. To have you come down, I heard you came six and a half hours to see me one way. I mean, that's pretty great. One and a half hours. But I appreciate seeing you. Oh, yeah, well. It was like a homecoming. I could have passed up on the opportunity. You know, you're not here every day. So, obviously, most people know you from Pinball Expo, the show that you have been organizing for 37 years now. Yeah. The 38th edition coming up.
    128:17
    Is there already anything you can say about it So then it will be fantastic and everybody needs to be there. Well, you know, last year we moved to a new location, and we had a wall that separated the two exhibition halls. This year the wall is going down, so we're going to have 70,000 square feet of vendors. And we have a lot of vendors that didn't come last year because of COVID and so forth that are coming this year. My guess is we're going to have between five and seven pinball manufacturers there. so it should be quite large and it will be representative from many factions from coast to coast and all over the world so there's still a lot in the works but it should be a very exciting event. Right okay if I'm not mistaking is the second week of October? Yeah October 19th to the 22nd. Yeah so I try to make it so you could make it and you could attend so And hopefully this will be the year.
    129:20
    Okay. Well, there's currently no COVID restrictions, so that's one block. One positive. But, you know, with Chicago, who knows? Yeah.
    129:28
    And then something that you mentioned earlier on, which I'll repeat for our listeners, you're working on opening up a location of your own. I am. So, you know, all these years, I've been collecting since the mid-'70s. So you bring out your calculator, you know, it's like 50 years. And the games are just sitting there. And I have a certain number of games in my home, and some people have seen the YouTube of my home. But I figured, why don't I bring these games somewhere where everyone can enjoy them? So I bought a grocery store at 30,000 square feet. I've been spending so much time the past year tearing it down, gutting it out, cleaning it out, replacing roofs, which is not cheap, putting up signage and so forth, with the hope of opening up to the general public. And this should be called past times. And it will hopefully be open sometime in the fall. When, I don't know. But it will be all aspects of pinball, from pre-flipper to flipper,
    130:34
    all aspects of the video games, Pac-Man era and so forth. there will be a lot of games there between the video and the pinball probably around 500 or 600 games so you know there will be a situation where you pay one price to get in and anyone that's listening to this podcast if you come to our venue and mention you heard me in the podcast you get in for free so that's exciting you'll see people remember by the time you open so that's ok we're currently sitting in the sort of restaurant slash living room area in the Dutch Fingal Museum in Rotterdam this museum besides having a large Fingal collection which is very interesting it's also very decorative there's lots of decorations over here is that something they could plan to do with past times as well I do and some of the ideas they've used here I've thought about using but they've really expanded it to a whole new level and they have done a fantastic job of making it very comfortable and very interesting and very educational.
    131:49
    This is the complete package here and anyone that's listening to this that have never been here, they've got to see it to believe it. Okay, so we've got a bit more expo coming up and hopefully you'll open your own location around the same time. I expect there will be flyers for the new location at Pinball Expo. Yes, there will be.
    132:12
    Okay, well, let's round this up right now. Greetings from the Dutch Pinball Museum, from Jonathan Huston. Rob Burke is here.
    132:23
    I was going to say, thank you for seeing me today and coming here to visit with me. You're very welcome. And I welcome all of our listeners, your listeners, to come to the Expo. We would love to see you. and with COVID being gone, it's going to be much easier for everyone to come there and have a good time. Right. Well, I suppose a lot of people didn't see the new location yet due to COVID, so if there's no new outbreak, I encourage everybody to come to Schaumburg. Check it out. You know, one thing we're going to do is we're going to extend the vending hours. It seems like the number one complaint is more hours, longer hours, so we will be doing that. We're going to have the seminars, of course, but perhaps less seminars, some more vendor time to do these things. Plus, you're going to see, if all goes well, we'll be touring Stern again.
    133:13
    And Stern is just getting bigger and bigger by the day with what they're doing and what they're producing.
    133:21
    The industry is on fire right now, to put it bluntly. Well, in multiple ways, I suppose. I mean, the business is booming, but at the same time supply chain issues are also causing internal fire so to speak yeah it's unbelievable so but anyway thank you for your time and it was great seeing you thank you look forward to seeing you in the fall so there you go thank you thanks for doing that interview jonathan um unfortunately i had gone back from the from the netherlands just a few days earlier than that i wasn't able to get down there and join the two of you. But some good news for anybody who wants to visit Rob's new pastimes operation, which we think is in Warren, in Ohio, which is where Rob's home is. So, yeah, just say you heard about it on this Pinball Magazine and Pinball News pincast, and you can get in for free. Yeah, but it still will take probably around expo time before that opens. So busy, busy weeks or months ahead for Rockberg. Indeed. All that up. Yeah. And just the other bit of news, which we also touched on earlier, actually, was about the IPA World Championships at Pinball Asylum in Fort Myers in Florida. The new world champion there is Eric Stone, who you may or may not know is a well-known TV personality in the area because he's a weather presenter on the local TV station down there. And having won, he was then interviewed and talked about his win on the local news and was there with his very impressive, huge, great trophy that he won for being world champion. So congratulations to Eric and to all of them. won tournaments there and hope everybody enjoyed themselves. It was hard to imagine he didn't. It looked like a great location and in a great part of the world. Right. Okay. So, and that rounds it up for the month of May, the FNL Industry News. Yep.
    135:41
    So we're heading into June and we're expecting at least one new game reveal. but who knows if a money factory ships then we might have two or well who knows what happens there might be other manufacturers as well announcing their next titles we're still waiting for homepane as well and well we have well of course we have internal info that we can't share yet but there might be more news coming this month so it looks like it's going to be a very exciting matter yes so we look forward to joining you at the end of June, the start of July, probably the first day of July, when we'll be looking back at all those exciting events that happened in this month. So until then, from me, I'm Martin Eyre, the editor of Pinball News, and from Jonathan, who's... Yeah, that's me, the editor of Pinball Magazine. We wish you a very happy June, and we'll see you next month. Thank you. Bye-bye.
    136:50
    you