Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, June 8th. This is episode 247. My name is Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we actually have a number of things this episode. There's stuff. There's a new console. There was a game event-esque. There's a new console. I mean, technically. It's out now. It's out, but it's new. There's a new pinball machine. When you said new, I was thinking announcement. I'm like, what did I miss? No, no, no, no. It's just that it's actually out now. It's the culmination of everyone's happiness and joy of waiting for their one game. For their $80 games. but what's been going on over the last couple weeks I have basically been working around the house a lot and I have once again people loved it a couple years ago when I started doing a bunch of health stuff and I've started doing a bunch of health stuff again but I have no funny stories you're either inspiration there's no people looking at me and me making funny stories as I walk past them and stuff because unlike before when I was doing walking while my daughter was out running cross-country and stuff, this is instead I'm going and doing walks at like 4 in the morning. I saw a cop the other day, and it was like the only living human I'd seen on any of my walks because it's 4 in the morning and most people are asleep. I actually had a cop come by the house on Friday. They wanted your ring video. They did. Yep, you knew. They were very sharing. So apparently it was, I guess, a hit and run, I assume. A pedestrian was hit by a car at the curve by the house. And they knew that it was a black SUV. Hence how I did, you know, my clever detective skills. I deduced it was a hit and run. And I loved the comforting of the police officer said the lady who was hit is OK. She has a broken leg. Wow. I'm like, our definitions of OK are different. So you say she's OK means she's not dead. Right. Whereas when I hear someone's OK, it means they don't have broken things. Right. See, to me, we are not the same. To me, an okay in a hit and run like that would be like, oh, they're just bruised and shook up. Not like, no, no, it's fine. They just have a shattered leg and what's going to turn into major surgery requirements. Yeah, that is a very different definition of okay. So that was the closest I got to excitement. Unfortunately, the vehicles, this was not in front of the house and the vehicle didn't trigger the cameras because I keep them pretty narrow. because I don't want to pick up every car that drives by on the road. No, understandable because otherwise it's just going to be triggering, especially when it sends you the message saying, hey, there's something going on. Oh, I disabled those. It's just like, ugh, that's where the spiral of paranoia falls in. I need to be alerted every time there's a vehicle that goes by. I mean, maybe if you're out in the country, that'll work okay. But around here, I mean, I'm on a relatively busy side street. That does not work. I let it do that for three days. And I was like, no. You're like, no. How about no? How about no? That was a pretty good impression. That was a very good choice on your part. So you've been doing your morning walks. I've been doing morning walks. I said it's nothing interesting. It's just I'm trying to decide. Basically, no surprise to anybody who knows me, I've been diagnosed as a diabetic at this point. So I'm trying to be healthier because I had a very adverse medical reaction to one of their fancy new shots, and it was very bad for me. So I cannot take those kind of things. So I have to do it the old-fashioned way. I can't just take a shot to make my blood sugars better and everything. So I've got to be old-fashioned about it. So that is what I'm working on now is getting healthier and being a better person. So if Patreon members get to level one, we get 100 Patreon members, will you agree to do another 5K? Is that what you're asking? No. Oh, okay. No, no. Well, okay, never mind. Maybe next year. Feel free to not support us at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. I tried to get us there, guys. I know my knees and I cannot handle that. Not now. Do they have like a biking 5K? They're much more than 5K. Yeah, because it would be pretty easy to bike a 5K. Yeah. It's like, hey, look, I pulled out of the garage for a dime. Yeah. No, no, no. Now, if we got to, let's find something crazy. I'll do something crazy. Hmm. If we had 1,000 Patreon members. Oh, my God. But nobody has a thousand. I do the scooter cannonball, which is literally riding a hundred and fifty CC scooter all the way across the United States. It takes like three weeks. Oh, wow. I don't have that much vacation. So I would never. I actually agree that you would have just barely. Only Tony would do that. Guys, I'm not taking a I'm not taking a scooter across the country. That's a joke. I'm not actually going to do that because I don't have a I don't have a hundred and fifty CC. Oh, well. And I'm a fat man to be on a 150cc scooter even. It's going to be like the clown on the tiny little bicycle. Hey, what if we got to 100 Patreon members? The listeners don't know, but you've been discussing getting a bike. I have a bike. I haven't ridden in three years. We could agree to bike all of Mill Creek up to Nelson Island and back. Well, you can, whatever version you're allowed to use on Mill Creek. Parkway. Well, yes, I couldn't take a motorcycle on Bill. No. That would also not be that interesting at all. But we could get a little. I don't know, man. I don't know what people complain about. I did this thing in like 12 minutes. We could get little GoPros, though, and mount them on the. That would be what the Patreon funds would support. It would be to support us riding a bicycle. Right. I don't know what they want. Yeah. They probably want us to do another movie discussion. I think we should. I think that would make people much happier than a GoPro of me sweating on a bicycle or sweating while I walk. Email us at collectivegamerspodcast.gmail.com to let us know what movie topic you want us to do. And we can plan maybe to do that when we record the next episode. Only email any of your Patreon members, though, because it only gets uploaded to the Patreon people. So otherwise, your opinion doesn't really matter very much, quite frankly. At least with this. You could join and then – I mean it's a whole dollar a month, but you could join and then do the email. But otherwise it doesn't – yeah, I really don't care. Otherwise, I mean just because it's not for them, why would they want to email in? It wouldn't make any sense. But some people like to see the world burn, and they would ask us to rank the Twilight movies or something. That would require me to watch the Twilight. Exactly, and that's why we have to control this and make sure that it doesn't spiral out of control. Now, just on a quick movie discussion. Oh, my God. What have I done? I watched The Accountant 2 last night. Oh, okay. I've not seen that one yet. I've seen the first one. It was actually good. Have you seen the first one? I loved the first one. I thought the first one was great. The second one I didn't think was quite as good as the first one, but it was still really solid. Okay. It was actively enjoyable to watch. I will plan to watch it. Because I was watching it while I was putting in my notes for the podcast. so once the movie was over then I had to finish my notes because it pulled me in enough that I wasn't able that I wasn't putting in the notes and watching so I really enjoyed it okay good yeah the first one was fun yeah it was I have to finish so okay do we want to move on to what you've been doing yeah well I haven't been doing anything I still played a little bit of Yakuza but not enough to just really talk about work stuff's been keeping me busy about once a week on the weekend. My dad comes over and we work on his Black Hole project. The game is almost functional. Tony and I tried to play it, and unfortunately, there's a short in one of the connections about the power supply. So it almost started, and then it started to do speech, and it just went... And I had to turn it off. It's a Wookiee. Yeah, that's basically what it sounded like. I think that was a pretty good impression. But speaking of pinball, that doesn't sound like a Wookiee. Jersey Jack pinball. Are we sure it doesn't sound like a Wookiee? We're not sure. Well, I've watched a number of videos. I have not watched the gameplay video yet. However, Harry Potter. Yeah. And full credit, just like we gave full credit to Stern, full credit to JJP, who did a Thursday launch very conveniently timed for this show. Yes. The respect shown will not be forgotten, Jersey Jack. We appreciate the respect you have shown us. So we are going to spend some significant time here talking about Harry Potter Pinball. It's probably the most anticipated game of the last, what? Of our lifetime. Four years, at least, people have been talking about this game? Basically, ever since Kamikau indicated that Jersey Jack had the license. Yeah. So then it was known. So I do have several links in the show notes for people who have not yet consumed anything on this. Pinball News has a very good write-up that will summarize all the information. It has a lot of close-up photography. I also have a link to the official trailer on YouTube. And then Retro Ralph's YouTube channel features a featurette. It runs about 20 minutes, sort of discussing the making of the game. I do not have the link to the gameplay video because I haven't watched it yet, so I didn't bother linking something I didn't know. So let's start with the basics like we like to do. So design-wise, this is Eric Meunier design. Joe Katz was lead on the software, which pleased me because Joe's software, he's not the one who leans really, really, really heavy into the multiballs. So that made me – I tend to prefer his rules as maybe a better way to describe it. Dan LeChick – apologies for all mispronunciations, by the way – who was the lead on mechanics. David Thiel is back doing music. He was briefly affiliated with Deep Root. He did Star Trek for Stearns. Music like Thiel is right up there with music. Also, Pierce Pierce Colbert also helped with music and sound. Art was a mix. Jean-Paul de Win, who also helped with animations and probably led on animations. He's always led on animations. Jesper Jesper Abels and Johnny Wiegel. Johnny also helped with animation. And then Olaf Grimmie also worked with Jean-Paul de Win on animation. and then uh the call-outs so they did not get an actor from the film to do customized call-outs they got Marc Silk who's done a number obviously he's a voice actor uh he plays the sorting hat and i'm not sure if mark's done the sorting hat before like i think there's like stuff at uh universal or something right like a harry potter world he may have done it for that i didn't look too closely into it i don't know i did check the original actor who did the sorting hats voice passed away, I believe, in 2022. So he obviously was not available to do the call-outs. Game additions. Let's go ahead and, well, no, let me, I'm torn on where I want to go next. I think I'll go ahead and- We're just going to go straight to video games. So that's it. We're done. We're good. There was a thing. That's what it is. Let's go to video. Yeah, there's a thing. There's a thing. I was wondering if I wanted to go into the additions first, but I won't. Let me go ahead and start with the game features because these are universal to all three models. So all three models mechanically have the same features. This is a four-flipper game. It has three spinners. There's an interesting outlane save. It kind of looks like a drop target that pops up. It's called the Protego mech that just sort of blocks and closes that off. The left drain, kind of like Wizard of Oz, has a minigame that you can do to save the ball. I'm not a huge fan of the minigame ball saves. The Godzilla one was okay, but anyway, I guess I'm throwing in some opinion here. upper playfield in the back left of the game for quidditch uh which i don't think surprised anyone seeing a quidditch uh feature in the game i think yeah i think it would have been kind of assumed and it being a mini playfield makes the most sense it does um another in terms of some other kind of features there's a wand ball lock on the right hand side uh there's a uh the whomping willow that gets the tree and when is it the second movie i don't remember which movie it was Maybe it was the third. They all blend together. Well, the tree started to be in multiple movies, but it wasn't in the first one, I know. Anyway, it's got the car in it, and it actually moves around. There is, I think the main, to me, the main mech has to be the grand staircase, which is kind of in the upper right. So, think Godzilla building. This is a game state changing device. So, it has three different entrances, but it functionally provides 13 different exits. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. and then obviously it's got several other sculpts representing elements of the game and movie wise all eight films have clips they have the audio as well there's like the the Hedrig theme music is in it David Thiel obviously has done a lot of custom music as well but there are basically asset wise it's a very complete package as near as they've described it it's what people wanted from Toy Story and did not get Yeah, yeah. Another example, if we want to do an Eric Meunier example, was Pirates. So they had clips from all the Pirates films, but you never saw the actors except from behind on the clips and stuff. In this, you actually do see the scenes where it doesn't feel like they're having to take angles where you can't see faces and stuff like that. So there are three editions. The collectors, and they did not raise prices on the- Which surprises me. I expected a price increase. I originally thought so. We've known the price for a while now, so obviously this doesn't come as a fresh surprise, but it was a surprise to me initially. So the collector's edition, $15,000. Again, this is no longer unlike prior games. This is not capped at a set number. They purportedly will only sell the collector's edition for a limited period of time. So it's time limited rather than number limited. Mina Lima, the design studio that went and did, I think, a number of the covers for some of the books. they were affiliated with a lot of the design in the film as well and they've done anyway they've done a lot of harry potter artwork they did the artwork for the collector's edition and when you look at it uh in our internal notes uh for tony's benefit i've included some of the choicest photos from pinball news you'll see that one because it's much more whimsical i i i love it i i i think that one the art the cab art is just awesome it's my favorite cab art easily um it also the Collector's Edition has an interactive topper with several moving elements to it. It also has a projector feature. Collector's Edition has undercab lighting. It's got rear lighting. The armor on it is gold, not like WWE gold, but actually like nice-looking gold. Gold-mirrored back glass. The back glass is also different. It features the owl. Was that Hedwig? Is that the name of the owl? Hedwig, yeah. Yeah, it features the owl on the back glass. they do their direct print playfield and plastics have sort of a sparkle effect to it. So basically they do the glitter playfield. Golden Snitch shooter rod is on a knob is on the shooter rod on this. And it does have a different apron, which fits the art theme and a different lockdown bar than the other two editions do. Wizard Edition, which is your $12,000 model, has radcals. It's got sort of a color shifting armor to it. I couldn't really see that feature very well in the photos I looked at. Yeah, that's probably one of those things that looks better in person than it can in photo or even video. Cinematic Art Blades, and it does have a different topper. It's sort of a stagnant Quidditch play, I guess, field, the Quidditch field with the rings and stuff. It's a static topper. Arcade Edition, which is $9,999, so they could say it was under $10, just has a decal art package, black armor. And the back glass is not back glass. It is a trans light, but it is the same look visually as the. In terms of what it displays as art wise, it's the same as the wizard edition or the middle tier model. So the arcade and wizard versions feature the movies for the art. And we talked about the much more whimsical and I think, quite frankly, better art of the of the collector's edition. however the playfield glitter aside is the same for all of them which is a movie looking playfield so i i think that is my least favorite part of the collector's edition is because it's such a tonal shift that because that said still the collector's edition is i'll go i'll go a step farther i think the collector's edition of harry potter is jjp's best looking cabinet full stop i i'm thinking i'm trying to think of all the cabinets that they that they've had i i mean i'll say yes i i think you're right it's because it's complicated it's a complicated and it actually is as i understand this is kind of covered in the featurette i think at one point i believe Eric Meunier is the one who's explaining it but the way the art is done when you like see the side of it uh it's going up and around it's telling different parts of the movie in order elements from those various uh from those various stories so it's actually it's very cohesive it is super cohesive but uh and i think it with the uh all right i don't i don't love the back glass on it just hedwig flying out of a out of a like the flames of a phoenix or as maybe the way i would describe it is a little basic to me compared i can't say i dislike it i just like it's not nearly as interesting as the cabinet and backbox sides right so true but it's also running into the standard where i've got an issue with a lot of lcd games is that the back glass is just a tiny little strip yeah there's no real estate there's no real estate they did what they could And they got his wings spread, so he's occupying the full span of the glass. But, I mean, it's not like what's going on on the other ones. It's just, like, battle pose stuff. So it's not like it's a whole lot. The other versions are very, let's have a montage. Yeah. But, again, it's pinball. Do we expect different? I don't. No, no. That's why this. The Wizard and Arcade are not winning any awards. Yeah. No, that is why the collector's edition. As soon as I went through the pictures and when everything came out, I was like, wow, that is just so different. And the more you look at it, the more you see and just flat out the prettier it is. Since we're sort of talking art right now, what do you think of the play field art? I think we're both in agreement that it is jarring to see the movie play field. I don't want to say phoned in because there's a lot here to really like about the overall game. but disconcerting. It doesn't fit. It would not... I don't think I would make a purchase decision based off of that. No. But again, I also would never buy a game, even if I love the cabinet art, I would never buy a game over the preferred cabinet, personally. Right. Like, at these prices, I wouldn't. I know other people will. Right, and they will. I will say, in my mind, that for a machine that is probably going to spend more time sitting in looking pretty but turned off, the cabinet art on the collector's edition is the way to go to me. Oh, absolutely. But again, it's $15,000. But it's $15,000, so that's... I mean, you'd only appreciate it. I mean, we were just down, when we went to look at the black hole I've got, we were just down in my game room, and it's like, well, unless you're in my room, unless you're where Godzilla is, you don't see the cab art. Yes. You see one side of one game. That's how my room is. So just in my... I'd have to put this on the end, and I'd only see movies one through three of the collector's edition. Right, you wouldn't see the other side. It's like, that's it. That's what you get to see. But it is definitely – this is a machine that the people who have more room or I've seen some people who have like – they've got room for like five or six machines, but they've only got three because they've got them spread out enough you can step between the machines and you can see everything. for someone in a situation like that I think that'll work really well for them but back to our original art discussion I think the play field art is perfectly fine it's just jarring on the collector's edition because it goes from the whimsical and fun to this photorealistic style movie art I think and again I'm not an It's been over a decade since I've seen anything Harry Potter. Like, I'm not – this is not my theme. So I've heard from others mention that when you look at this, well, it does better than Wonka with its hair. Let's have the same Wonka. I know that was a big gripe of yours all over the play field. It was the same pose of Wonka all over the place. These are very familiar poses used in their licensed materials that are applied to the play field. So I'm going to say a lot of this is probably a licensor restriction. Probably. overall I think it an okay package on the play field I will say I think this is one where Zach many my cohost on the pinball show would probably agree with me We have not talked about this game yet but I give them kudos down at the flippers They just focused on the three, you know, whatever they're, whatever they call it, the golden three or whatever they're referred to the, you know, the Ron Harry and Hermione, right? Those are the names. I think like, it's not a huge montage. It's just, it's so they get to be bigger. Um, I do think that when you do see this pose, especially in smaller form, it does look like, mom, can we have Ron Weasley? We have Ron Weasley at home. He doesn't look right. When I first saw it, I thought maybe it wasn't the right actor. I thought of any actor, he should have been the easiest one. So anyway, I don't think that's the case. I just think it looks a little weird with the pose. but other than that there's nothing about the play field art that stands out to me yes nothing about the art itself jumps out lots of stuff on the play field jump out that I think are wonderful touches and are very interesting but yeah on the art it feels especially I don't know it feels especially that lower third lower half just feels like I'm looking at a movie poster. Sound-wise, that's the one thing I can't really say a lot on because, again, with YouTube and the rules, this is where the questions of what's going on with the audio is very difficult because there's limits. There'll be DMCA strikes that shouldn't be DMCA. There's always that. So I can't really say a lot other than I have full confidence in David Thiel's work. I can't think of a sound package he's done that I have not liked. It's like Jerry Thompson at Stern when he's on the project. I don't worry about the sound. And Marc Silk, we're very familiar with his voice work. So I'm sure he does a very good job. Again, I've never thought he's done a bad job. He's a professional voice actor. He does his stuff. And I also don't think a lot of people are – honestly, when it comes to sales, here's – well, we can get into this. But when it comes to sales, it's Harry Potter. It didn't have to be this good. It's actually – it's clear to me that they tried. Very much so. I mean, I already said visually that the CE is my favorite cap of any JJP cap. But you can tell this was not phoned in. This is visually very much on brand and very good for the Harry Potter. I think Harry Potter fans, they had a good service done to them on this machine from a looks perspective. So let's talk a little bit about the gameplay. Obviously, I mentioned I have not yet watched the gameplay video of it in terms of getting a good feel for it. I actually had someone reach out to me, indicate who has played this game, and they feel it is a very good playing game. I think they described it. I don't remember if they described it as JJP's best playing game or Eric Meunier's best playing game, but high praise regardless. That is, yeah. So I want to focus more on the feature. Obviously, they've done a really good job. And this, I think, is pretty typical for J.J.P., world under glassing it, lots of sculpts. There are some flat plastic choices in certain areas, but overall, like the Quidditch playfield has a flat plastic conveying one of the people playing it over near the little loop. But the whomping tree, that's a nice little touch. Having a ball lock happen to look like a wand is a nice touch, a la the sword in Deadpool. What I find probably, like I didn't even notice it at first when I first looked at these pictures. It wasn't until I'd been going through them more in depth when I was going through them last night. The thing that really jumped out at me and I really like is how they've arranged so that each of the four flippers represents one of the houses. I mean, it has a color and a crest. it's got the color and the crest on them so each one so this is so gryffindor slither and hufflepuff and ravenclaw are each represented by one of the flippers and i think uh the art on the wizard in arcade edition whereas there's kind of like the story of the movies in order uh on the collector's edition on the other two versions i think the right side is good and the left side is evil is how they've done it. So again, you can kind of see in some of the internals that I've provided some of the sides of the thing. I may have only shown one side of the cab. No, you showed both sides. Okay. I couldn't remember because I'm very lazy to kind of get at what they were trying to go for there. But so to me, all right, mechanically, I'm going to say this is not to the level of Wizard of Oz in my opinion. but it masks it very well. I can see that. Now, you know, we could get into whether there's a, and here's why I'm saying that. To me, there's really only one toy of note and that, but it's a very cool one and that is the spinning staircase that does the game state stuff. Right. Because other than that, that you have a ball lock that looks like a wand, okay, that you have an upper play field that's an upper play field. Lots of games have upper playfields. You have a shaky shake tree. it's much better than a concrete grip avatar knife on a on a sling um but like mechanically the only thing that really catches my eye is that spinning staircase what do you think of that i mean it reminds me of the godzilla building i've seen it moving it definitely moves faster than the buildings on a belt so it has to because it does have to go up and down this is not going up and down this is spinning kind of like the trunk in theater of magic right because of all the wire forms and stuff. They've got it so when it's in different positions, it's got all these different ways that the ball could exit back out. I think it's interesting. As long as it moves, like you said, at a decent speed, it's not like the building where you're sitting forever. Don't get me wrong. It's not Maverick slow. The building does get frustrating. It's one of those things where you're like, this is really cool when I first saw it. Then I was like, 200 games later, go go godzilla and smash the building a little faster i thought you were angry i mean they do a really good they do a really good setup for it and stuff uh my actual least favorite thing about the godzilla building is when i have balls locked on it and i lose and then i have to wait for it to drain and you can't start a new game till the building comes back up right and it's just like that's almost 30 seconds i'm gonna go get a drink it's like 20 some seconds for that to happen. It's really tedious. I do, but yeah, I do. I think it's an interesting idea. I think how it feeds and works and I think that's going to be the big thing is how bad is it at letting you know where the ball is going to go? How much is it going to be you searching for where the ball is coming out of? With so many exits. Yeah, where I wonder, again, not having looked, if it's going to be more like along the lines of a Venom where in maybe a number of the modes, like the ball's locked, the mode's starting, it positions for that particular mode in that particular movie. Because the way it's going is like – again, I should have watched the gameplay video, but I already watched so much stuff, and I have other things I need to do. but from what I understand and what I've heard you know it's like you start you pick a film when you want to go and I think they're like maybe five scenes from the movie that you would go through and then so if that's maybe those are the different states and it's not constantly going to be moving around while you're in a mode maybe right be one way to control for it from the speed I saw it like I don't think they're going to run into a whole lot again it's got so many different exits even if you were to shoot it while it was still moving the ball seems to be able to get somewhere Right. You know, I'm not worried about ball hangups or anything like that. That is really interesting because what I want to say is this is a good I think it's a good Mac in general concept. I respect it because one, the staircase is iconic, but the bottom line is in the movies, it's not particularly important in my view. but for pinball what better element than something that's a state changer in the movie to use as a state changer it's just it's so it's such a good fit for pinball even though like if you were to ask me to try and brainstorm from what i've seen in the harry potter movies stuff to put in harry potter that staircase would not have been in there i wouldn't have thought about it thought about it either but it makes it makes so much more sense because anything else would have probably been so focused on a single movie to have also been the big primary mech right it would it would it would have been maybe almost even jarring where the staircase is a thing that was at least given lip service throughout and that's where like the whomping willow for me it's kind of like given its movement and stuff in the way they designed it i get it like it's gonna visual and people recognize it but you could have just as easily said let's not have that let's have the train instead right Like that sort of thing. Or where's the spider? We could have the spider. Or one of the, whatever those protective little things, the stag, the magical. Patronus. Thank you. Sorry. Again, I'm not a Potter fan. You have not gone to HarryPotters.com and done your thing to find out what house you are and what your Patronus is? No. Should we do that as a Patreon thing? is we'll sit there and do it live. If we get to 1,000, we'll do it. You can go in and put in, you do the thing and find out what house you are and what your Patronus is. No. Actually, even if we get to 1,000, I don't think I'm doing that. But it's fun. All right, maybe we'll get to 1,000. I've done it. Yeah, but you're fun. I'm Slytherin, and my Patronus is a Rat Terrier. Really? Yeah. I didn't know rat terriers were an option. How funny. Or it might have just been a terrier, but it was a terrier. I mean, everything else about it to me is kind of fine, but in the usual JJP vein, like the Death Eater. Okay, he's got flashy flash eyes. He's got like a drop in front of him. Yeah, that's fine. A little magic cauldron pot thing for the ball to fall in. Yeah, that's kind of neat, but it kind of reminds me of Oktoberfest. Overall, it looks nice. I think it looks nice. Anything you don't like from what you've seen? Not other than, once again, the LCD takes up so much. I always hate the loss of the back glass. I always like the back glass on a game. But overall, nothing that I've seen yet. I really want to play it. I will say this is probably the most interested I've been in playing a JJP game in a while. Yeah, I'm interested to give it a try. It's weird for me because Elton John was such a surprise to me where I didn't have a high level of interest in trying it, but it was so fun. I don't know if this will – that's where I'm curious. Will I actually think this is better than Elton John? I don't know. My one – I'm not even going to call it a gripe. My one area of concern is the upper play field. I don't think it looks fun. it looks super easy to loop. And I don't like upper playfields where you have to, where you can spend a lot of time on them. Right. That's kind of where, but like with game of Thrones, well, that was one I thought I felt it had reasonably short ball times. There was a lot to shoot for there. There's just, again, it's an upper play field. It's small. It's one flipper. There's not a whole lot to shoot for on it. Um, it seems like you go around and you, you, uh, you loop a wire form a whole lot. or you, Or you go and you hit the spinner and feed that. That's like two shots. But you see, here's the thing, because I'm not a Harry Potter fan. My answer would have been sacrifice Quidditch. You don't really need it as a play field feature. But I think maybe for the actual fans of the books in the movies, Quidditch is so important to them that this was actually the right answer commercially. Probably. This was not the right answer dentously. Dentously. Yeah. Yeah, and everything else, I'm just curious where I would need to try it because I'm like, yeah, I want to see the Ball State stuff because I had the same concern as you about – is this going to be – everyone loves the initial magic. But as a general rule, I like to think no matter how many – I don't care it's got 13 ball exits. You're going to figure it out, and you want to figure it out. They did this with Godfather. godfather there were like 26 different shots or feeds feedback out and it's like it was it felt very overwhelming and in a way it was um but that game did not have legs like people in the end it looked really impressive i remember when we tried it we were like it's okay but like i didn't want one i don't know very many people who did and so so there's that aspect but that's really it it's really just the upper play field uh and wondering how the the ball flow is but the initial feedback i've heard has been pretty positive about that i mean the layout a lot of it's back from the flippers uh so there's a lot of room for the ball so i don't think it's going to feel sloppy in a in a sluggish floaty way or anything like that eric's of course done a number of games now so uh so yeah i think it's going to play at least fine i think it's going to i think i think it'll be in the top half of their players but i think so unless we're something really surprising yeah i i don't i think they i think they've really tried on it so um in terms of other thoughts uh this has come up uh i'm actually i'm not all the way through it yet i'm in the process of listening to slam tilt podcast they had their cluster vuck where they very cleverly named um uh regarding the uh and that's when they have a mix of guests on um and they talked a little bit about of course jk rowling and politically she's become a very controversial figure yeah and there was some discussion about uh impact on like they went into even if people were willing to play it or not um i want to only focus on it from a from a commercial standpoint because i don't i don't like diving too much into politics but it's impossible to separate politics from some things in my view do you think sales are going to be affected based off of people a segment of the population that does not like to support jk rowling at this stage i think that this will i will say yes there will be people that would have bought the game but will now not buy the game but commercially i still think this was a license that jjp is advantaged for getting that that that that the sales they gain are in excess of any protest That's why I said no. I figured that was. I know you'll be like, yeah, of course. There will also be people who will refuse to put quarters in it. Absolutely. But will this earn more on location than John Wick? Yes. For sure. That's the thing. I don't think any protest stuff over this game is going to be bad enough for this game to not be huge. And I think that's true on location or in terms of ownership. It's the same. Hogwarts Legacy is the case in point. Bruce with Slam Tilt brought that one up. Yes. I know people who refuse to buy Hogwarts Legacy because of JK. But I also know it made a bucket ton of money. Yeah. And it's, again, people are in love with this franchise. And it's just, it is, it's the, I've described it like this on the Pinball Show before. I don't know if I had here, but I will. This is the, in my view, probably the, I don't know if I want to say the, I will. I'll be bold. This is the best license for someone to do that had never had a pinball done before. Oh, I will agree. 100%. The reason I hedge a little bit is you could argue, well, maybe Pokemon would have been better. There are some bigger – I mean this isn't the most profitable franchise ever. No, but I – But it's iconic. People love – either they love the books and or they love the movies. I mean there are a lot more people that are that than there are me who saw all the movies, but I don't own any of them. I don't love them. But I also don't hate them. They were entertaining. I've probably seen Goblet of Fire the most. I mean, here's the thing. Like, with almost everything, the books are better. But I think the interesting line is there has gotten to be a point over the last many years where people have had to start to make a decision when it comes to stuff like J.K. Rowling's and Harry Potter and a variety of the other things of do they not do something because of somebody involved with it or do they separate their thoughts on the product from the creator? And there's a – and that's – it's, you know, as a – like as a debate standpoint. And again, despite the goofy name Clusterfuck, I do want to give the episode a lot of credit because that was where they – I mean they were asking that question. It's like it's the separating the art from the artist and also like what what you care about and putting your money where your mouth is and what happens when those things collide. Because there were all sorts of hypotheticals thrown out like like Trudeau and the abuse stuff. And it's like I knew people who could no longer look at games he designed and feel good about themselves. And they sold them like there were. Yeah, there were podcasters who said that, like they got rid of all of their Trudeau games as a as a collection. There are others who could say – I probably put myself in this boat for an example where it would be like if it was already existing, I could be okay still owning it like how I own Silver Slugger. But I would never buy a game from a company that would hire him now. Very true. But someone else might say that's still a whole team. I'm going to look past that and own that game. For me, yeah. You struggle more with that. But that's the – Right. I have the same issues with the rehabilitation of J-pop that keeps attempting to happen. Every time I see it, it just drives me nuts. It's like, why? Why would you keep trying this? Yeah, I mean, that could be an interesting topic for us, too. I almost wonder if that one should be at some point a Patreon topic because it's kind of controversial. And I don't want to have to – I feel like I'm going to walk on eggshells trying to explain. Here's where the rub happens because there's people arguing about this online. What a shock. The reason why they argue about it is regardless of what someone says where they're like, this is my like, I can't. Let's say they say I can't own this because of the political positions and the funding that the author of these books uses to support causes that I disagree with to others. They can't. They always see when they hear that. Even if you say this is the decision, I'm making my own personal decision and acknowledging that people can and should be able to choose what they spend their own money on, that the person who is going to buy it feels judged because they didn't make the same determination. I can understand. And because of that, they get very sensitive. That's where this really drives in from. I can see where people – I can totally understand where people get that feeling. And that's why it's hard to have that conversation. So it's one of those things that I mean, it's like I think everybody's allowed their own opinion. I mean, if somebody's opinion is different than mine, that doesn't you and I have spent careers working around people who have very different views. Oh, yeah. So you will learn that, like, in order to keep workplace peace, you got to learn how you're going to be able to tolerate other views, even if you vehemently disagree with them. So anyway, I want to go ahead and give kudos to Bruce and Ron for actually having a pretty depthy discussion on trying to figure out where – and all these guests who were on had – and they had different views. Some were like, I won't put quarters in it or I'll put quarters in it, but I want the tournament event to give money to a cause that opposes J.K. Rawlings' views or I'd be willing to buy it. I'm I'm the J.J.P. agreed to this license before a lot of this blew up. I mean, it is what it is. Why would we punish them for that? You know, all those layers. It's very, very interesting. I'll ask you another thing. What do you think about J.J.P.? And we kind of discussed this before the game came out, I believe. But what do you think about their decision to not number the C.E. in particular, that they're doing time limited, which they still haven't defined the time period versus. Oh, yeah, there's only a thousand of the C.E.'s. they're going to make a lot of money. I agree. But I will back that up. They're going to make a lot of money because for probably the first time, the CE is genuinely that much better looking. I mean, there are a lot of people that always want the best version no matter what. So there's that. It is not uncommon for the limited versions or the CEs or whatever, in my opinion, to not look as good. Sure, that's very true. That's true for all the companies. For all the companies. We see that. We talk about that with Stern a lot. There have been times where the pros have had, in my view, the overall best art package. So, I mean, that is, but in this specific case, they're going to make a lot of extra money for it, in my mind. I think that, I agree with you, as I noted, I think they're going to make a lot of money. I think this was very from a from a especially I don't know how bad J.J.P. needs a hit. There's a lot of people that felt like they need this game to do really, really well. Like that. While Elton John has gotten a lot of positive buzz, it did not initially out of the gate. A lot of people were very concerned about the license. It was a it's an aged pop star. A lot of people don't associate the music with the style of him. It's not rock, hard rock. It's stuff that gets made fun of in movies like The Rock, like Rocketman. And so with all of that said I think them not limiting themselves to the 1 because I think they can sell more than 1 CEs even at the 15 that this was the right decision I think you're right. I will note that all of the decisions that they seem to have made with this game is about that short-term profitability, which I think for them makes sense, and not long-term value retention to the people getting the games. which from my perspective is great but it's all a matter of so here's here's what i am going to say to folks especially with this especially since we still don't know when the end of the ces is going to be done but apparently they are like people will talk bolted to the floor all day long in the end we know it's basically a bunch of hooey yes if you don't have to have this right away oh what a deal i think you're gonna it's just like godzillas like if you want to get like a Godzilla premium. What better game from Stern to want a premium of? There are so many of them out there now. You will easily be able to find one used. I know there were, for a time, they were more used than new. That was the pandemic effect, and just production couldn't keep up. But that's what I think Harry Potter, it's going to be like Guns and Roses. They're going to be everywhere. And in this case, I think even getting a CE, that was always the fear. If it's 1,000, it's going to be hard for me to get the limited version. I don't think there's any reason to fear. I think you're right. This is a situation where the company has made a decision about the company, not about the end user, because the company gets nothing when you resell your machine. They don't get anything. It does nothing for them. Honestly, if anything, it costs them a sale. so why should they cater to the end users having a higher profitability when they sell their machine and so you can talk about you know loyalty of whales and all of that the thing is with harry potter though i think for the company this is the right decision because because it's it's a special enough license to so many people that the potential is there I have a very hard time believing one of the I only get LEs in collector edition whales is going to go, oh, this one's not limited edition, so I will just buy one of the lower versions. I have a hard time seeing that as the choice they make. And even if it's the choice they make, I have absolutely no ability to see JJP caring because it's still a sale. yeah no i've i've seen it uh not in the way you yeah that you've described but i i have seen instances where some of that that basically get everything doesn't mean they keep everything and some of them start to be like this is big like when they take a even rich people get annoyed when they take a big bath on a game well yeah i lost four grand on this thing like if they can't start making stuff that can at least hold some value i'm going to downgrade to the middle version right which makes sense if it's because they're like i just i just don't like throwing away four thousand dollars on my 250 play game or whatever right but but also if the game loses that much value in six months there's a problem with that game to begin with generally generally it's usually multiple to me that feels like the problem is less about uh the game than it is about the fact that you're just buying everything sight unseen, unplayed, and you're buying it just to have it. Which, still, at least that hypothetical person played the game, unlike the people who buy them and don't even open the boxes and just set them aside as a commodity to hold. That did remind me. There is another thing I didn't care for on either of the two versions with it, and that's the topper. Oh, I haven't seen a topper that I've cared about in a long time. The Quidditch topper, is it's it reminds me of the the stern flat plastic topper era uh the moving moving one at first it kind of interested me from like this moving diorama and then you saw all the moving elements and they all look kind of cheap yeah um like a child's mobile that hangs over their crib uh the projector might be cool but um it's unless you're in a darkened environment it's really hard to notice projectors and stuff so i right i wasn't really impressed by those but i wanted to go and throw that in i mean i mean really has has there been a really a topper i mean i know there's topper people out there that are oh yeah they're they're they're they're amazing but i've seen very few modern toppers that can top i don't know like whitewater or quite frankly i i will always be all about the simple joy of whirlwinds fan yes that's that's still a favorite and that's still a favorite of mine um i did see a thing uh where some people i think it was kinetica so i'll give him credit uh since that's where i i'm pretty sure i saw it but was a discussion about some concern that even though this is harry potter and notoriously expensive license by jjp's own admission and so far by initial reaction a pretty attractive looking game that the thought is this is a title that you should try and appeal to the Potterverse on, but media coverage has not been that great outside of the pinball world. When Stern has a new game, IGN does a piece. Right. I grabbed my phone just now so I could look, and what I see is Replay Magazine, but that's an arcade coin-op thing, mentions it. Intergame mentions that that's a gaming thing. There's Pottermore, did cover it, whatever, I guess it's a Harry Potter universe. That's a Harry Potter thing. And then Joe Blow, which does movie stuff. I didn't even know they had a website. Apparently, they had a thing about Harry Potter coming. But I will agree with the kineticist's angle that this seems like there isn't all hands pushing. One of the things, and this may be a unicorn that doesn't really exist. There's this theory that with the right license, you'll bring people into the pinball. It's $15,000. You will not. It's $9,999 if you want the ugly one. You will not. And this is a theory we've talked about in the past when it comes to pinball. And it is a theory that I will always stand on the fact that no theme is enough to get somebody to come in and buy a new in-box game when you're talking about something that costs the same as a car. that is a level of spending that is beyond a lot of people's if they're not pre-designed and planned for it if they don't budget for it and set it up you're not going to get get somebody who's just like oh they made a harry potter pinball game i guess i'm gonna go buy myself a harry potter there are people who won't buy an 80 video game which i can understand because i normally wait but that's like, oh, hey, I'm going to wait for this to go on sale. You know what? $15,000 doesn't go on sale enough to make that an okay purchase. Yeah, I mean, I will say, yeah, there are probably some level of high dollar Harry Potter fans that maybe would get this to add to their Harry Potter shrine, but we're talking like less than a dozen folks. Yeah, it's such a small group it doesn't matter. So where the potential would be would be on location play. People would drop quarters in and maybe go and play at a location because it has a theme that is interesting to them. And maybe the arcade edition solves that, but it's still $10,000 to get your arcade a game. And that's, again, especially if these are going to take a bath secondhand, not because it's a bad game, but because J.J.P. is going to make so many of them like they did G.N.R., does that end up being a really good investment? Does Harry Potter make enough more coin drop to justify the difference from buying a $7,000 Stern Pro and losing your $500 on your Stern Pro? I don't think that they're going to take a bath on it. I don't think it's going to be something that – I do not think operators are going to be all like, oh, I took a bath on this. But at the same time, they are not going to be like, I made an insane amount of money on this. But bath – maybe bath – well, not maybe. Bath was not the right word. I meant on the resale. So let me give the – let me do a different hypothetical. Let me say they have King Kong. You have King Kong or you have Harry Potter. Let's say the cheapest version of both. So $7,000 King Kong, $10,000 Harry Potter. And let's say in the life of operating the game, and they operate them for the same periods of time, what I'm asking is, if King Kong makes $5,000, and then they sell their $7,000 game for $6,500 after a year, and you have Harry Potter, which makes $7,000, and then they sell what was a $10,000 game for $7,500, The ratio says Kong was the better investment, even though it brought in less coin drop. They both made them money once they got rid of the game. If they never got rid of the game, both of them after a year still didn't pay for themselves. But why get Potter if you know it's going to sell for more than $1,000 less than you bought it for, and you could probably get within $1,000 for the Stern? that's that's i'm wondering do you think that's a likely scenario that will keep operators resistant i think it's a scenario that some operators will think about but honestly because of the popularity of the theme uh i think a lot of operators might hold on to power longer then they will come again and it's well where you draw the line i i mean i mean that that that's just part of it because if you put King Kong and Harry Potter side by side in a pizza place, I would be amazed if you did not see far more kids and families on Potter than Kong. Just from the recognition and name drop. Sure. But if it's a long, I mean, there are other aspects. Like if it's a long play, it can only get so many plays per hour. Right. And we're not necessarily going to know. We will when the operators tell us. Write in at collecticarespodcast.gmail.com and let us know how much you made off of Kong after a year and how much you made off of Harry Potter. Thank you. They'll do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. But, no, I can see where the thought could come from, but at the same time, I mean, maybe you don't want to drop Potter at a bar nearly as – no, you know what? Probably it would still go huge. I think so. It would go gangbusters at a bar, honestly. Anyway, well, JJP, congratulations on the new release. Oh, the other thing about the promotion strategy, which may have come into play, which I'll just add in, or one may wonder, is Ken Cromwell is no longer at JJP. That's true. I saw that. I saw that note the other day. He now works for Flip N Out Pinball. So. And this is not the right venue. I'll have to point this out on the pinball show. So on the Pinball Show, we also have a Discord. But unlike a Clicker Gamers Podcast Discord, you have to be a Patreon member to be on the Pinball Show's Discord. One of the Discord members then asked, well, when is Ken coming in on the Discord? And I replied, and I'm like, Ken's not a – he doesn't pay the podcast. He doesn't get to be on the Discord. He's not a Patreon member. Just like Greg Bone is not a Patreon member because he doesn't subscribe to the Patreon. on and they're like but this is flipping out discord i'm like this is not flipping out discord this is pinball short discord and they're like dennis you work for flipping out too i do not work for flipping out zach couldn't afford me for one and i don't mean that in a because then he'll be like challenge accepted or something like no you don't i would require so much more money to work private sector than what i make in public service that it would be stupid to pay me yeah i as uh as another public sector person i understand there there is a i can be bought but why would you pay it right there there there is a very different feeling because i've worked private i've worked public and working public it yeah it feels like what you do is for a reason and it's serving people and it matters where when i've worked private it was none of those things. It was a paycheck. Sure. And that's, and lots of people, Hey, I would work private for enough money. It would be fine. I don't need the warm, fuzzy feeling from serving my community and, and, and doing stuff when I have the warm, fuzzy feeling from the money that I'm rolling. Absolutely. Unfortunately, in this scenario, the money that I would require would be a six figure pay increase. Oh, an increase, not just a dollar amount, an increase. That's really impressive. Yeah, I mean, it ties to a dollar amount, so I could state the dollar amount, but I think people would understand. Okay, so he has to pay him at least $100,000 more than he currently makes. And the answer is yes, that would be one of the conditions. I would also accept that deal, Zach, just to let you know. But here's the thing, what would we bring to the table that you couldn't get for far cheaper? Oh, absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. So it would be silly. So people who want to be on the Patreon over there need to pay the Patreon fee. If you're willing to pay me $100,000 more than I currently make. On top of your current salary, yes. At least $100,000 on top of what I currently make. I would enter discussions. I will totally sit down and talk to you. Yes. I mean, I don't know what I could bring to the table other than maybe walking around in a maid's uniform with a freaking coffee cup to hand to people. because I'd already sold my personal self-esteem. Why is Tony in a Casey Butler's uniform? It'd be like Clue at that point. I'm just walking around. So anyway, we did get a couple of emails moving on for Harry Potter. Butts, he's one of our Patreon members You remember when we thanked Butts for becoming a Patreon member Yeah His name's Butts We thank Butts That's right Butts wrote in via Patreon But I thought this was a good one to share publicly And he said More people should do 2.0 kits for Gottlieb games A lot of decent layouts with just trash software Instead they make them for already good games Well thank you Butts That's a good point actually That's I think it's a solid idea I've heard this Again, I guess I have to give another kudos to Slam Tilt Podcast. This was years ago, but I think maybe it was Soren who they were interviewing who's done a lot of code rewrites for System 11 games, if I'm remembering correctly. But anyway, this has come up about, okay, well, Gottlieb, with their parallel development, is notorious for having some pretty trash rule sets on some pretty interesting layouts. In fact, Silver Slugger, I mentioned earlier, the Trudeau game that I used to own. quite bluntly it is the best single level layout i have ever played yes it's better than hoops yes uh it's better than anything i mean it's just like there's not an inch of wasted space on that play field and at the time i owned 10 games and it was the worst on rules of all 10 easily and so if only it was easy to develop a kit or just reprogram the ROMs but i know the the issue i'd heard with my reference to soren was well you know what it was written in and how to do all of that and the learning curve versus the games that they made more of and were more popular the system 11s where you're affecting a lot more you know a lot more people would get to experience what you've done it just wasn't there for godly like you'd have to you have to figure out a whole new thing and do it i had wondered how hard it would be because i was i at one time i wondered if i could for you because i even at at that time i even knew how i wanted to rewrite the rules like i had a i had what i thought were some pretty simple solutions to make it uh so that you could like multiball would no longer be random and there would be a way to activate the multiball ball lock separate from the current rules where it was all a mystery award and that was all i thought you needed to do to make silver slugger a pretty good game but i didn't have the skill set i i will say silver slugger had some of the just most satisfying spinner rips yes in fact you want to talk about another three spinner game there you go compared to harry potter yeah silver slugger very nice spinners those aren't those stupid plastic gotley ones these were the metal ones oh yeah they were so satisfying yeah that was my best spinner game uh we have one more email in the pinball section uh from jeremy jeremy wrote in hey guys long time listener first time rider was listening to this week's episode about remasters, and I think a missed opportunity was Kiss. I played it for the first time this weekend and was surprised by how well it shot and the overall integration. With modern Spike 2-3, it would go a different level. Plus, the opportunity within the Kiss collector market and the current inflated price puts it above most of the other titles discussed. Keep up the amazing work. Truly love the show, even if I don't understand the video game section. well thank you jeremy for writing in what a great suggestion kiss is a really fun game not the old bally one the stern one it's actually i mean i hopefully ray day's not listening if you are i apologize for bringing up a bad memory right but i still remember after we came back and and we recorded an episode after we had been to nub's pub and we had played kiss and you said this is so much better than rush and the thing is i agreed with you right it plays so much better it does it does um and so that maybe that's more to do with layout than rules right that's why you shouldn't feel that the uh but yeah no kiss i think is a is a really good layout and that would it would be a really good one to remaster it would because um there's plenty i think on the rules i remember when the game was first kind of first out and it's like you always played lick it up like that was the strategy to score like so there were balance issues that i don't know if they ever fully got resolved so yeah a remaster definitely would be warranted for that for that title um yeah i i think i i agree i i think of that that's one that i hadn't thought of originally but it does make a lot of sense and i think would fit into the lineup real well and probably make a decent amount of selling also i want to say for the first time you've ever written anything that was a very that was a very nice email thank you it was and i just assumed he was from the south well yeah you did the impression okay so video games tony what's been going on because i know there's been quite a bit harry potter can't distract from everything correct there has been quite a bit and uh there's been so much that especially on the release front and the news front because we've had uh a sony state of play uh summer game fest the indie game there's been like five game fest making announcements and showing stuff from games We're not going to talk about anywhere near all of them. And it's okay. I will give you the secrets on all of those games. If it's a fantasy-based game, it looks like Elden Ring. If it's a sci-fi-based game, it pretty much looks like Starfield or Mass Effect. There you go. That's what you need to know. All the games look the same. Very little caught my interest out of any of these things I watched. But again, there are some good things out there I find it interesting We talked a little bit about There was that weird Art Deco looking Atomic Hearts game Or Atomic Heart game that came out That kind of retro futuristic set in Russia Weird robot ladies game There's a second one on the way And they're developing an MMO set in that universe as well So that retro-futuristic aesthetic has definitely done something for them. Okay. I didn't know people still tried to break into the MMO market. They are. Not everything can be hero team shooters. And, I mean, most things are hero team shooters. But, yeah. There is a new big RTS coming out, Game of Thrones War for Westeros. is a RTS set in the Game of Thrones universe. So that will be interesting to see how it goes. I don't know how big the RTS market is right now. I guess we'll find out. Most stuff I feel like has gone either full like 4X or very action-y. Because I can't really remember the last time a big RTS released. Yeah, no. I don't know. I can't either. Yeah. So we'll see how that works out. We – not a new announcement, but we saw more information from the new Onomusha game we talked about a few months ago that they'd announced. And it looks cool. There are a series of other just interesting things. We saw the first look at 007 First Light, which is the James Bond, like the young James Bond game, and everybody's having the whole, oh, this guy doesn't look like James Bond. The character doesn't look like James Bond or what. Yeah. We'll see. I interested to see how a James Bond game goes if it designed less like the old shoot type games and something more like what we got out of the new Indiana Jones game and the like Marvel token fighting souls is a four V for four V for four V for Marvel fighting game that's been announced and it's coming out. Is that that arc system works one? That's that arc system works one. Yeah. I've been hearing people got really excited about it. It, it, it, it, It really gives off Marvel versus Capcom vibes. That would be why. Which would be why. Except for it's all Marvel. It's just Marvel versus Marvel. Marvel versus Marvel. But as a 4v4 system, it looks interesting. What is the combination of probably the dumbest thing I saw, and at the exact same time, the most visually striking and doing its own thing was felt that boxing. It's worth watching the trailer. Okay. Because it is a video game where you play a puppet, like a Muppet type puppet. Okay. Who's boxing. Yes. Kermie is ready for combat sport. It is a puppet boxing game. The sweet science. Some of the trailers I saw in these things, I didn't even write it down in my notes, but the trailer for Scum is worth a watch. Not because it makes the game look good, because it doesn't. But because the trailer feels like it has realized that all games are the same, and that there's just this weird, ridiculous meta going on, and the trailer embraces that meta. But it's worth a watch of the trailer. Who knows what the game will end up being. One of my favorite announcements came out, not even from any of the things, from any of the big events I was watching. I just saw it dropped. uh alcat games announced that they're doing the expanse uh osiris reborn which is from looking at it it's mass effect of the expanse universe okay i really like the expanse show it's like mass effect is fun and the expanse is fun i could get behind this so i it is one of those things that i was just like okay i i i i can i mean the video that it's just like a cinematic right uh like announcement thing so no gameplay no no real gameplay but it's just kind of giving you the feel for the game and it it's good it looks cool so um but there was lots and lots of stuff announced but i said everything i mean like mortal shell 2 code vein 2 were both announced i played code vein and but the thing is is maybe this is me it's probably all you are but i'm sitting here watching mortal shell 2's thing And I'm like, okay. So we fully embraced the Elden Ring aesthetic. Elden Ring made a lot of money. And then Code Vein 2 came up. I'm like, oh, look, it's anime Elden Ring. Anime Elden Ring, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it could just be me. Maybe I'm just jaded at this point. I will tell you something that made me very jaded. when the announcement came out, EA canceled their single-player Black Panther game and closed the studio that was developing the game, Cliffhanger Studios. But as reports have come out from the studios, they were using the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor. I read about this. Oh, my gosh. What? Why can't we? I understand. I read an entire article about the problem with using the Nemesis system is because it is under patent. Right, yeah. So you have to get the rights to use the Nemesis system. Trust me, especially your open-world action games, it's worth the rights to get the Nemesis system. It's so cool. It made those games so much more fun and so much more replayable that I actually cared about and finished all of the Mordor games, and half of it was just wanting to make sure that by the time I finished this game, that that SOB was not going to come back again. I wanted to be sure he was dead. For the first time in any video game, did I really feel hatred for one of the characters I was playing against. Just because the character comes back and like half of his head is missing from where I had killed him. And he's like, ah, except for now he's five times harder. No. Yeah. It was a great system. And any game that can get the rights to it and use it should. It's just, it adds so much depth to the game. I was so disappointed when I read that they were actively putting it in and that game got canceled. I'm like, oh, EA, you don't have to do more to make me hate you. I already hate you. so yeah i did read about that one now also uh and another announcement that came out i think this this one dropped during the sony state of play uh they are doing a full final fantasy tactics remaster that it will include includes both the original and the enhanced versions of the game that has come out over time okay i think i've played the enhanced one i've played the original I played the original when it originally came out in the U.S., and it's a fun game. But supposedly this also includes massive fixes for the camera, which I remember was always terrible. But, yeah, that's exciting. And then the really big news is Switch 2 is out. Yes. If you were lucky enough to get one. Were you? I wasn't because I didn't try. On the other hand, some people tried, and then less than a week before release date, Target and Walmart canceled a bunch of people's pre-orders less than a week before the release date. Just out of nowhere. People were just getting. Say it ain't soon. I can't because it happened. No. Which is probably better than those people who went to their GameStop and picked up their Switch 2 that they'd waited for after midnight long. GameStop, so excited to have people come in. I know. They're like, wow, there's people coming. It's amazing. They love us once again for a short time. Yay. And then they found out that somebody in the back room had stapled everybody's receipts to their boxes. and because of how nintendo packaged it those staples went through the box and since there was no other protection straight through the screens of the switch twos so they opened their switch twos up to find that they were dead it's not oled it's o-d-e-a-d yeah i mean i don't know i want to blame gamestop on this or it's like i think I put my blame on both. I would expect a little bit more protection on the screen from Nintendo's packaging. That said, who staples receipts into boxes instead of just using tape? That's true. That's true. I mean, it was a problem that happened at a single store. so i can guarantee you what happened is one person at that one store was told hey let's go ahead and take the receipts and put them on all the game all the switches so that when the people start coming in with their receipts we can just grab it and hand it to them the one theirs and the guy's like okay oh no i'm out of tape that's okay pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop see i took it as basically your scenario where the manager is like, you need to attach the receipts to all these boxes. Do we really have to? I don't want to do it. Stapler. Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack. I hate my job. Thwack, thwack, thwack. No one's supposed to come in at GameStop. I'm just supposed to sit here and be stoned and eat Cheetos. Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack. So that's how I saw it. So we have a different version. Yours is rage. He folded the little back end of the stapler back and everything. Oh, yeah. So it was like, thwap, thwap, thwap. At least it's better. You got to do them quick. So thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. It could be worse. It could have been the big hardware stapler for doing some click, click, click, click. Yeah. But overall. How do you not feel it going through the screen? I don't know. I don't know how you would not. That's why I think, thwap, thwap, thwap, because he's smacking it. He's not feeling anything. Oh, wait. Instead of the trigger crew chunk construction staplers, they make those ones that are designed like a hammer, so you just hammer staples in. But overall the launch went very well I've talked to A couple of people that have been Very much enjoying Their time on Mario Kart Because it's the only game that came out that was worth anything There are rumors of even more Enhanced editions which I'm sure will cost Extra money to get the enhanced version but they're talking about enhanced versions of Cyberpunk and several games for it. So we'll see how that rolls out and how that goes. But overall, what I'm hearing has been pretty solid. Yeah, same. I feel like the game, and we've talked about this before, I feel like the game choice at launch is light compared to what you normally see at a launch. It feels light. It felt like, and it's been a while since I, When PS5 and Xbox were coming out, I want to think normally you tend to see something like, I don't know, over a dozen games. Right. But maybe less than 20. I mean, obviously, they can't have everything out right away. Right. But still, it feels like if you take out the games that are just enhanced editions or games that are already out. New stuff. You want to see about. There's only a couple. I think you want to try and see at least 10 new things, ideally. Yeah, and I don't think they got that. Yeah. But still, the launches are good. I've seen one in person. It's bigger than I thought it was going to be. I think it looks nice. I saw a photo online of a Switch 1 by a Switch 2, and I was actually like, wow, they really made it a lot bigger. Yeah. And the Joy-Con magnetic release action looks really smooth. I've heard it's better. Yeah, it looks real good. I mean, I'm pretty impressed by it all around. I mean, I'm not going to buy one, but I just don't play my first Switch. I haven't played it in years, so I'm not going to get myself another one. But I will say it is very – it seems to be going very well as a launch overall for Nintendo, which is no surprise. and I'm sure having the launch here in the summer is going to let them rebuild stocks for Christmas time, which will be very good. I've seen and heard that they did a pretty good job. I mean, you mentioned the cancellations with Walmart and Target, but a number of places I heard did actually have quite a few for walk-ins, and so a lot of people, like the attempt to control the scalper side does sound like overall it was executed pretty well. It does. From what I read, it was an article out of Europe, but several retailers in Europe actually got an unexpected shipment of Switch 2s. Probably all the ones we were supposed to get. Probably. The tariffs. That slipped in. Got rerouted. That were dropped off three days before so that they would have floor models that they could put out that were not pre-ordered. So they had all their pre-orders fulfilled, and then they got a handful for every store that got shipped in so that they could actually have ones for sale on the floor, which is something that we haven't seen in consoles in quite a while where you could walk in. If you didn't pre-order an Xbox or a PlayStation, to be fair, that was COVID screwing everything up. But if you didn't have them pre-ordered, you weren't walking in and getting one for months. Right. So I think overall Nintendo's launch went really well We'll see Hopefully they'll get some more games out Before too long And it'll continue to be good I did see where Their Nintendo chat feature The transcription Is not censored Which I 100% expected it to be censored Because this is Nintendo But apparently It's not censored So it transcribes everything that is said. We'll see how long that lasts before they patch that out. But it's definitely going pretty well for them. I have heard that we heard quite a while back when they changed the voice actor on Mario. It's now come out just like I read it yesterday or the day before that the Princess Peach voice actress has been replaced. I saw that yesterday. And she did not know she'd been replaced. She knew she was when the game came out and she wasn't, and she hadn't done any recording for it, and there's somebody else's name on there is how she found out that she was no longer being Peach. So, but, and that was a discussion that was kind of had between some of us that how much of this is people making, them making changes because of the ongoing uh sag after strike uh how much of this is just that they're timing people out because they've been doing the voice forever yeah she's got a younger she got replaced by the younger peach young peach young we gotta have young we can't have peach sound like she smoked 12 packs a day for the last 30 years poor peach Peach sounds like the old lady from Monsters Incorporated Ross That's her name, Ross Mario Mario, I'm in another castle, Mario So Yeah Trying to see what else I have I said It's about everything I had Cut things kind of short considering how much there was And our concentration on actually having a pinball topic. We did. We did. It's very exciting. And, oh, I should have mentioned it in the pinball segment, but I'll go ahead and just throw it in here because I'm too lazy to do the editing that would require me to move it. So Pinball Brothers has started to do their reveals regarding that they do have Predator. Really? Yes. And it's believed to be an asset-based Predator. And the only image I've really seen is the art, which they went with a very interesting direction. It's the, the heat vision of the predator is the art style on the sides and stuff, which is kind of cool. That's kind of cool. It wouldn't go with anything else in the room, but it's kind of cool. So anyway, we might actually have another pinball topic relatively soon. There was some thought that they were waiting, trying to outweigh Harry Potter. And like, you know, some of these smaller companies might not be able to just sit and wait forever. So given their, you know, the rumors of delays on Harry Potter and all of that, that they maybe made their move because they felt like they had to. I don't know. But I don't know anything about the layout or anything. But anyway, FYI. So that's probably going to be the next one that we do get to talk about. Interesting. Is Predator. I seem to recall there's like a Predator TV show coming out. Yeah. Yes. On like The Hooligan or something like that. I saw a trailer and I was a little confused by it where you're like following a young Predator making his way in the world. Yeah. I can't make it sound like he's like got his first job at a office or something like that. And then, of course, I've also heard similar that American Pinball was doing the same with Cuphead trying to wait out, though I'm not really sure because of the last reports I had heard was that Cuphead basically was not software ready and they didn't have anyone left who seemed to be able. I don't know. Right. But here's the thing. Does anybody really think that Cuphead is going to be injured by Harry Potter? i mean the thought is all about like there are some people that let's say let's say you get up on january 1 tony and you're like what a great new year and uh for my hobbies this year i'm going to buy one pinball machine and they're okay so in that instance you probably do but let's say let's say Dennis got up and go, ah, what a great start to a new year. I'm planning to buy four pinball machines to support my hobby this year, but I'm only going to spend, uh, $20,000 on those four machines. Now I can't buy four machines new for 20,000. So where's the math of what am I going to get? So the thought is like people, they want to drop a game. This is what the belief thought is, is that you want to drop a game in a window where people who hunger for something new, if they've got the resources can get it. If you drop too many games at once, people don't have the floating capital in cash to buy them all and they're not buying them on credit. So you'll get suffocated, especially against quote-unquote better games. And games from bigger companies are going to be generally seen as better, even though they're not better playing, more reliable, easier to get a hold of, less wait time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I've seen some people, I won't say plenty of people, but I've seen some people, for example, that have said online Like, Harry Potter looks okay, but I wish I had bought Evil Dead. Like, they think the world under glass looks better on Evil Dead. Okay. Which, I'm like, I could see it either way. But even Evil Dead has a higher following and is a higher level of license than Cuphead. I mean, this is like the place like, I'm only going to go to one concert this year. Am I going to go see Taylor Swift or am I going to go see Sailor Biff? I understand what you're saying, Tony. I don't want to focus so much on the specifics of the title, so maybe I should. It's simply the notion that if you can release a game when no other games are getting released, some people are just going to buy it because they're desperate for something. No, I can see that argument. That's the thought that people have regarding a lot of these little, like, where does a space hunt come in? Where's Hexapet? Their best chance is to be the only game that comes out in a given month. Evil Dead, set aside that Evil Dead is a known cult following and that the game turned out really well and all the rest of it, it came out at a great time. It had no competition. The only competition was Stern, which always has something up for competition. Right. which was, I think when Evil Dead dropped, it was still really Metallica remastered, which was what was getting talked about. So that's the thought. They were trying to find a period where Predator and Cuphead and all that. It's like when you know Kong is coming out, which, okay, it's Kong, but you know it's Elwynn. So that's a franchise unto itself. It's a franchise by itself. So you're like, okay, I got to dodge that. There's Dune coming out. Oh my God, you know the Dune cult is obsessive. So that's one. and then Harry Potter, the greatest licensed who have never had a pinball machine yet. It's like all these things. They're trying to find a spot where it's like, where does, because they know. Little Cuphead doesn't have the cult following of any of that. Kong even has a bigger following than Cuphead. So what's a little guy to do? Try and Carl Weathers the storm or try to slip into the eye of it. Predator almost felt like he wanted to try and slip into the eye of it. Right. Cuphead appears to potentially be waiting for, because honestly, from all the rumors of everything I've heard for 2025, Harry Potter's the last of the big ones. It's all downhill from here. Right. Like, there's some speculation that Stern will do another remaster this year. It'll be Walking Dead. Okay, it's not going to have the success of Metallica. No. So there's that. There's some rumor that Stern has Pokemon, on but i think that's expected to be 2026 so it's like i think we're past it i don't expect jjp to have another game out this year i think we'll be building harry potter's all through the end of the year i think so uh so i mean that's the thought i don't know if it's true or not we'll see well thanks everyone for getting through the episode with the pinball video gaming and then follow up pinball segments uh if you want to reach out to us you can email us at collective gamers podcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash a collective gamers podcast you can also support the podcast for as little as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers we're available on twitch and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and we will be back in two weeks with new topics well maybe we might have to revisit some of the old topics because i don't i have no idea we're entering the summer period it's usually a slower period yeah um you know we had expected harry potter in may uh i think it's going to be a little quiet for us until probably closer to August. But we'll see. We'll see. Until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.