Ah, everybody wants to rule the pinball world. Welcome to Canada's Pinball Podcast. But here's the big issue. Nobody really is doing it. And I'm here to tell you right now. I think this year that was shaping up to be this like Slash of the Titans, like just a couple of weeks ago. I'm like Harry Potter versus Back to the Future versus Pokemon 2024 is going to be killer. And now here we are. It is July 3rd. And I'm here to tell you right now, I don't think any of those titles are coming out this year. And I have new information for all of you on this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast. And let's just rip the bandaid off right now. So I am hearing that Harry Potter might not even be this year. Okay, so now we're going to get Mark Seiden's game next. Is it going to be Muppets? What's it going to be? I heard now that if you warm up to the theme, you're going to think it's a great game. So what does that even mean? Like this game needs to be a triple A hit coming off of Toy Story 4 into The Godfather into Elton John. You know, three Jersey Jack games, that's about like four to five years of waiting for pinball machines. And look, look, people, we want triple A themes done right. And I don't know, you know, I don't want to have to warm up to a theme. And I don't think any of you listening to this show, if you're buying pinball machines at these prices, you shouldn't have to warm up to anything. Like the thing should arrive hot. Like you should hear what it is and want to hand your money over because they know what the pinball buying demographic is. You know, speaking of that, I saw Stern Pinball's merchandise like Facebook post the other day. And it's like Gen Z kids of all sorts of diversity. And it's like, come on, there couldn't be something further from what a pinball buying demographic looks like. And that's the problem in the modern world is you're trying to just like pretend that your thing is appealing to everybody. But newsflash, nobody who's like in their 20s is buying a freaking 7 to 13,000 stern pinball machine. Maybe these are supposed to be the children of the people who buy their games, but those people have better taste in clothing and would never walk around wearing a cheap Stern t-shirt. So that's my point with all of this, ladies and gentlemen. As I think about what's happening in pinball and the news I'm about to tell you right now, it just has me scratching my head. Because in the end, when you really think about it, is it that hard to really line up the kinds of games that people like you and me want? Is it really that hard? And the more I think about it, it's like actually music is not a bad way to go because you can pick a musical act that most people like 40 to 60 who grew up in most likely North America would love to have a pinball version of stuff like the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Motley Crew, Journey, right there. Those are four games. If they came out, they would do tremendously successful. Throw in an Eminem, throw in a U2, throw in a Michael Jackson. I've just given you seven musical properties, if they came out, they would sell thousands of units, right? Maybe throw in a, what am I missing right now? Who am I missing? That's a big shot in the music world that needs a pinball machine. What about the 80s icon himself, Prince, some Purple Rain pinball? Come on, we can do it. Everything can be licensed, people. Trust me. Everything can be licensed if you just spend the money on it. So here I am. It's almost July 4th. It's almost Independence Day. I think a lot of us out there are feeling a newfound independence from the FOMO of pinball. You know, I was ready to get everybody excited about Harry Potter and I said FOMO was going to come back and you guys were not going to be able to resist getting one. And now that's probably like a year or more out. And I think a lot of us are just feeling like we're tired of waiting. And even though wait and see is my mantra, how long do we have to wait to get consistently good games from all of these companies in the pinball world. It can't just be Stern Pinball. We need everybody else to be firing on all cylinders, and they're just not. Now the big juggernaut game that we all were waiting for it was the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future The stars were aligned We totally thought we were going to get this game sometime in the fall They were going to show it on like Back to the Future Day. And now it's not happening this year. And so if there's two words you don't want to go together, it's Dutch and delays. Now look, The game's not delayed because there was no release date. We know it's coming. We know it's coming. And we just want it. That's the thing that's like frustrating us. They didn't take any money on the game. They didn't promise us a release date. We just feel like we're ready for it. We've been staring at the big Lebowski for 10 years. And we would love to see how Barry and Joe K and Bob Gale, how this company that puts a lot into their pinball machines, We would just love to see how they're going to create that back to the future world under glass. We can't wait because we know that Dutch Pinball really knows how to put amazing levels of creativity into a game, amazing assets into the game, and their mechanisms are amazing. Like, it's almost embarrassing that Dutch Pinball 10 years ago has way more impressive mechs in its game than all the Stern machines over the last few years. Like, it's embarrassing. It has more impressive mechanisms in the Big Lebowski than are in Toy Story 4 or The Godfather or Elton John or Guns N' Roses, right? It's like you've got these major pinball companies. I don't even want to mention Spooky's mechanisms because we know they don't hold a candle to what's in the Big Lebowski. And so here we are. We're still waiting. Why can't someone rule the pinball world and actually make stuff in 2024 that makes what Dutch Pinball came out with in 2014 look dated. And the fact that the Big Lebowski still does not look dated 10 years later, I think it's two things happening. I think Dutch showed us how talented they are and the rest of the industry has been lazy for a decade and hasn't really brought much innovation and really hasn't created like a ton of wow worlds under glass in a physical form. What we got over the last 10 years was a lot of great artwork and we got a lot of great stuff on the screen and we got a lot of great code. But when it comes to looking down at a physical world under glass, I can tell you right now, not on one hand could you name five games that physically bring that world to life in a way that's absolutely magical and created a masterpiece under that glass. I challenge you. I challenge you. email me five games where when you stand over them over the last 10 years, the world just pops out in a way that blows you away. No flat plastics, no relying on artwork, not everything happening on the screen, but the actual game itself just wows you. So no Back to the Future this year. Great. That sucks. No Harry Potter this year. Great. That sucks. And now I'm here to tell you right now that Stern's next game, the game coming out from Stern Pinball next is going to be Jack Danger's game. Danger is up again with his sophomoric effort over at Stern Pinball. So it's not going to be John Borg. Now, if they do a Metallica rerun, of course, they're just going to do the old game. The next cornerstone from Stern Pinball, you heard it here first, will 100% be Jack Danger. I'm also hearing that it's not Pokemon. And so that just throws all those rumors out the window. So then it just begs the question, what's it going to be? What is Jack Danger working on? Now, here's what I think it's going to be. I think it's going to be Jack Danger on X-Men 97. I don't think it's going to be Pokemon. I think he's on X-Men 97. It makes total sense. And I think Keith Elwin is on King Kong. And I think those two rumors are the most solid going so far. And George Gomez has teased that Keith Elwin is the king of the monsters. So he's going to go from Godzilla to Jaws to King Kong, all monster movies, basically. Right. And so, look, Keith Elwin, King Kong, that feels like a huge take my money now kind of theme. The only question is, are they going to base it on the original King Kong movies, which I hope they do, because I hope it's like Godzilla and they do a throwback. And so now we've got no Pokemon, we've got no Harry Potter and no Back to the Future. It makes sense that Back to the Future is not happening this year, because if they're going to release Alice in Wonderland sometime in Q3 they have to build all those games and there no way they could build those Alice in Wonderland and then also sort of start making Back to the Future They just don have enough capacity to do that So that happening over there Speaking of a company that's never going to rule the world, Haggis Pinball. Now, you might have noticed I've been going after Haggis really hard of late. They've been in the news this week because Zach Manny is now honoring refunds for people who went in on Centaur. He didn't have to do it. He's doing it. I don't understand why there's even a debate about whether or not he's doing the right thing or the fact that you have to listen to his podcast to hear the details. It doesn't matter. He emailed everybody who has a deposit on a Centaur what they need to do to exchange that deposit for something else at Flip N Out Pinball. He didn't have to do that. As far as I'm concerned, some of these crybabies need to start taking some responsibility for giving a deposit on Centaur because anyone who gave a deposit on that game knew what a SHIT show all the fathom people were going through. And so I'm just at the point now where I think we need to just call it. Like throw in the towel on this company. It's over. No one's going to give this company money. They don't have juggernaut titles people want. The fact that they tried to get people to buy a $17,500 or oblivion edition of Centaur that comes with a motorcycle jacket and a helmet is stupid. I've been saying it since day one. this company should have ended with Celts. And they're just like an annoying in the corner debacle that should just go away. It's just crazy to me. I've been covering this hobby for 10 years and it's so hard for a pinball company to finally fail. Like Deep Root failed and burned through $51 million of other people's money. Zidware failed. Skit B failed. Highway Pinball failed. but we haven't had a failure in a really long time. Like even Andrew McBain's like Pinball Adventures is going strong. We've got American Pinball that every game they launch is a failure and they're still around. I don't understand what it's going to take to fail in modern times. But at these prices, you think pinball companies that aren't doing it right would be failing left and right. And I think a lot of these companies have to be in jeopardy. The ones that don't have sales. Like if you're not selling a thousand games a year, you are in jeopardy of closing your doors. And I think it's going to get harder and harder to make sales. You know, if you're Jerry over at Multimorphic, I mean, consumers are not blind to seeing what people are getting for these Multimorphic systems when they try to go sell them. I mean, people are losing so much money. You can go buy a Multimorphic with like all their titles and save yourself like five, six, seven thousand dollars. So who's going to see that and then go spend like $12,000 or $13,000 on one Princess Bride L.E.? You got to really have your head examined if you're doing stuff like that. And I think it's crazy to me that Haggis is still around. I just want to say this. I think Damien is a liar. I think Marty is a jackass. I think every time I hear him laughing out loud on his podcast and he hasn't made his customers whole, Marty, put the microphone down. Stop laughing. It's not funny. You've taken people's money. You don't even talk about your own company on your own podcast. It's embarrassing. Both you and Damien are some of the worst businessmen I've ever witnessed in all of pinball because you lie with a smile. That's the most dangerous kind of liar. They seem so personable and jovial on the surface. But then when they're not speaking into the camera for a YouTube video, that's a fake production video. and Marty's shoes are not hiding in the corner or Marty's not laughing with Jeff Teolis like everything's great in pinball. When all that ends, they know all too well that Haggis is on fire, that there's hardly any employees, that they're scratch building like two to three games a week at most, that there's no way they can survive this kind of business model. They know that. If they want to recapitalize, go to a bank, go to family members, get some personal loans going. don't go to the pinball community and try to raise your money by selling centaur spots and we all know you're going to use that money to finish the fathom builds we've seen it before i just hope by the end of this year haggis is gone gone gone gone i think american pinball is going to be gone as well mukesh is not going to keep doing this like if they come out with cuphead next Ryan McQuaid's cuphead the forever in the making joke of a title that's not going to sell at all it's over because people here's what's going to happen Jersey Jack's got a lot of stuff coming we know Stern Pinball is going to keep crushing it we know Spooky Pinball's got some great titles lined up just those three companies alone are all we need I mean that those three companies alone are all we need and here the good news we also got Barrels of Fun they a great company they done it the right way They going to make games that I think I think Barrels next game is actually going to be a level or two above what Spooky Pinball is putting into the marketplace. Heck, half of the guys over at Barrels come from Spooky Pinball, and I think they're going to hit it out of the park with their next game. So now you've got Stern, you've got Barrels, you've got JJP, you've got Spooky Pinball, You've got four companies right there. Then you throw in CGC, which takes forever, but at least they get people games eventually. And those five pinball companies, I mean, let's face it. Those are the only real five pinball companies doing something noteworthy in all of pinball. There are so many other companies that if they went away tomorrow, would you even care? Would you even care? Now, I would add to the list of those five. The other ones that I think are getting it done are Dutch Pinball. Okay, so now we've got six pinball companies. Do we need more? All right, from there, who else we got? Multimorphic. You know how I feel about that. If Multimorphic went away tomorrow, is anybody really sad about that? No. All right, so six. Dutch. I don't put Multimorphic on the list where if they went away, people would be sad. You then have Pedretti Gaming. If they went away tomorrow and you weren't getting your remake of Funhaus, is that devastating you? No, you know, then you got the pinball brothers with ABBA, you know, ABBA, Queen, Highway Pinballs, Alien that they fixed. You know, they went away tomorrow, right? If I told you tomorrow you can't have an ABBA pinball machine, are you going to be devastated? I don't think so. You know, then there's like the new to the market stuff like Turner Pinball and Pinball Adventures. You know, the conclusion is. So basically, we have six companies that are really the ones everybody's paying attention to. Those are the six companies that we talk about most here. I didn't even mention American Pinball because they're not part of it. They used to be. American Pinball used to be part of that smaller circle of companies that you actually took seriously, that you were willing to sort of buy a game from, that you were actually anticipating what their next launch would be. Nowadays, nobody cares. My point is this. 2024 is going to be interesting. Here's what I think is going to happen. I think between now and the end of this year, the two big things that will happen in pinball will be Jersey Jack's inaugural game from Mark Seiden and Jack Danger's next game. I don't think we're going to care much about John Wick. I know we don't care a lot about John Wick. I think if they do remakes of Godzilla and Metallica, that's cool. That's sort of par for the course for Stern, but it's not going to keep people talking for very long because both of those games are going to be old games and maybe Spike three becomes the other major thing we talk about. But other than that, other than that, I'm really not expecting that much. I've got some curiosity around Alice in Wonderland. I really do. And I need to talk to Melvin and get more information about this game. But man, this year that was supposed to be the Slash of the Titans and everybody ruling the pinball world seems like it's turning into another sort of like we'll just have to wait and see. My worry about all these companies, people, is as the economy continues to go the way it's going, as inflation goes the way it's going, I think more and more people are just going to be content with the pinball machines they have. They're not going to chase all these new games. And I think these companies are all waiting way too long to get the kinds of themes and build the kinds of worlds under glass that we really want. They're waiting too long to get these things to market. They really are. And as we watch all of these games, Torpedo and Secondhand Value, I think they're all going to be in for a rude awakening. We can't buy all of your new games, even if they're better games, because we can't find someone to buy these older games that nobody wants. I can't afford to lose $3,000 to $4,000 on all of these games. When you look at a guy like Don who bought all those games during COVID, if he tallies up the amount of money he's going to lose on all of those games, probably $20,000 when all is said and done. When you factor in all the money on mods, all the money on armor, losing $20,000, how is that an exciting hobby to be a part of, everybody? Everybody have a great 4th of July. Turn the pinball machines off tomorrow. Turn the barbecues on. And we're gonna get more episodes of Canada's Pinball Podcast. Who's gonna shock us first? Is it gonna be Mark Seiden or Jack Danger? Both of their games are coming out right at the same time. I think that's going to be the fun battle of 2024. Later.