Pokemon! Gotta catch you and get you and me! I know it's my destiny! Pokemon! Oh, you're my best friend! In a world we must defend! Pokemon! Welcome everybody to the new owner of a Pokemon LE pinball machine. It made it up the stairs. Guns N' Roses made it down the stairs. Saturday was a very, very exciting, long, and somewhat exhausting day. For those of you out there, you know the story. I've had Guns N' Roses number 500 for a few years. I've unboxed it now for about like a year and a half, almost two years, and now I got rid of it. It is over at Automated and I put in its place for my little son Killian, Pokemon LE number 50. What are my first impressions of this game? I've played about maybe 15 games on it, but most of those games had Killian and Brenda and Cassian hanging on the machine. I haven't been able to just like play it for a couple hours, no interruptions and get a true uninterrupted feel for the game. But I want to give you all of my impressions of this game so far. I've been covering this hobby now for about 13 years, almost 14 years. So I've seen a lot of pinball machines and I really wanted to take some time to really think it through. Think about all the games I've seen. Think about how much money those games have cost. Think about what's below the glass in Pokemon. Is it enough? Is it too basic? What does this LE look like? What's the Spike 3 experience? This is the first game I've ever had in my house with the expression lighting system, and I'm coming from the greatest pinball light show of all time in Guns N' Roses. I mean, nothing beats that. But this game is brighter. It really is brighter. GNR has a lot more lights, a lot more going on, but this game is a lot brighter in a dark room than Guns N' Roses ever was. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think the Pokemon light show is gonna be nearly as good as GNR's, but let me just walk you through the day Saturday. So Saturday morning at around like 10:30 Frank from Automated shows up with two guys and the first job of the day was to move down the stairs my Guns N' Roses CE and for those of you who were here when I moved that thing up the stairs this was really causing me a lot of anxiety. Now, fortunately for me, I didn't have to do anything. These two gentlemen from Automated were amazing. They wrapped up GNR, they put the blankets around it, they got it down the stairs on the dolly, they made the turn, they didn't touch anything. They didn't touch the wall, they didn't touch the railing. And you know when you're moving like a 400 pound pinball machine down a flight of stairs, there's only like two to three inches of room between the game and something it can hit. You know how difficult that is. You also know how damn heavy these damn JJP games are. But they got the game. They got it out the door. They got it onto the truck and it is now at Automated. So I need to make up my mind on whether or not I'm going to sell the game. It is over at Automated. We just have to fix a few switch issues. There were a couple wires maybe loose on the game. I wasn't gonna do it yesterday. I was like, let's just pick this thing up. We can unwrap it at automated. We can fix any issues. And then if I decide to sell it, you will be the first to know on Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. A lot of you are like, well, no one really cares. I'll get something decent in return for a GNR CE. It's still a beautiful, beautiful game. Now, we unbox Pokemon in the driveway and then we bring it up the stairs. Of course, the movers were so happy because Spike 3 Stern machine weighs about 100 pounds less than the Jersey Jack machine. We get it up the stairs, we get the legs on it, we get the backbox up, we change the shooter rod handle to the master ball. I tried to put my PDI glass into this machine. It doesn't fit. This glass in this machine is in there pretty damn tight. And then when I tried to get the PDI glass in, it wouldn't even make it halfway up the cabinet. So I've got some PDI glass sitting right here in my room. I will say the Stern anti-reflective glass is really, really nice. And it doesn't really need any better glass than that. So we get the game set up and I said to Frank, you know what? I really don't want to play it. I don't want to play this game until Killian comes home. I really want the first experience on Pokemon Pinball to be with my little son and you can see the video on YouTube of me surprising him with the game. And you know look after a day of watching him play watching Brenda get onto the game watching Cassian play as well watching the whole family jump onto Pokemon was a moment I've never experienced in pinball in the 13 years I've been in this hobby. Now, you could say there's a reason why because he's only five and yes that is very true. For eight years of Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, I didn't have any kids so none of my kids could jump on the machine. But I've been dating Brenda for 13 years and the only game she really wanted to play was Batman but even then she didn't really, really, really want to play a lot of Batman 66. But I've never seen both Brenda's reaction to a game and Killian's the way they react to Pokemon. There's something about the inviting nature of this game. When I step back now and I look at this game, and it wasn't cheap. This game all in cost me over $14,000 to set up this machine in my home. And thinking about it, like this game is almost $2000 more than my Guns N' Roses CE was and is there as much in this game as GNR? Does it look as good as GNR? And here's the crazy part. There's a little bit of like yes and no. I really think aesthetically this Pokemon game looks amazing. The bright colors, there's just something about the bright colors. GNR's got that darker purple and it's just more of an overall darker theme. This game just pops. It's super bright, it's super inviting. Now there is no excuse though. When I look at the cabinet, come on Stern! These things should be radials for this much money. There is no excuse that a $13,000 Stern machine is showing up with just regular stickers. There's no gloss to them, there's no shine, there's no mirror effect, there's nothing. And compared to what you're getting at Barrel's of Fun and Spooky and everybody else, this is embarrassing. Stern. LE machines need nicer decals than this. It's not like the technology or the innovation required to make the cabinet decals nice is lost and you can't do it. Whatever you did on Batman SLE, that is what these $13,000 Stern machines should get. All of this is a very interesting game. I love the translite, I love the mirrored nature of that translite, you can definitely see that mirrored effect very very nicely, but this game is not about that. It's not about just the artwork. What this game is all about, and after playing it 20 times, here is the analogy, and my analogy, I hope you don't find this inappropriate. But going from Guns N' Roses all these years to Pokemon is like going from an abusive relationship to a healthy relationship. That is really what it is like. Guns N' Roses just abuses you as a gameplay experience. And you know, the light show's great, the assets are great in GNR, but the shots really—they are as bad as everybody says they are. And then you get on Pokemon and you rip one ramp into the other ramp and I'm like, I've never experienced this in GNR once. And then you go around the orbit and it's so fast, I've never experienced that in GNR. Everything in GNR, a lot clunkier, a lot less satisfying and there's just something so awesome in the Pikachu ramp. When you go up that ramp and it loops around real quick and comes back. The Squirtle ramp on the left has more than just one ball path and trajectory. The way the ramp opens up to lock the Pokeball and the battle arena in the middle is a lot more satisfying than it looks in photos. I'm going to say that it's a lot more satisfying to shoot that battle arena area than it is in photos. And again, as someone who had like Batman 66, I find that battle arena area more satisfying to shoot than the whole turntable in Batman 66. Now, the Meowth bash toy is fun, but it's not as good as the crane in Batman 66. But overall, looking down at this game, looking down at this game, it's really hard to analyze this game in a way that doesn't make each and every one of us a little bit of a hypocrite. I'm a hypocrite, me included. I can't spend years on my podcast slamming these manufacturers for not putting a lot more under the glass for this much money. And yet I jump on this machine and I'm having a ton of fun. I jump on this machine and it doesn't feel like anything's missing from the Pokemon world because so much of Pokemon is coming at you. I know it early on in the code and we going to talk about that because so much of this game is going to come down to the code it is like it fun to shoot there definitely a honeymoon period for everyone who has one right now but i think the thing that really pulling people in more than anything is just the way the game is inviting there something so cute and adorable about pokemon and the colors and the way this game is laid out with the artwork and the inserts, it's like you walk up to it and it just, it just invites you in like a warm pinball hug. Where other games, man, there's so much going on, there's so complex and so many games like you know you're never gonna get your head around the entire game. But this game, a lot easier, right? You qualify your Pokemon, you hit the Pokedex, you hit the purple shots and then you catch your Pokemon. And it's got the four different environments, it's got the four different main characters, and it's just really fun to shoot. And again, the reason why this is making a lot of us feel conflicted is are we allowed to praise this game for its simplicity? Are we allowed to look at a game that might not have three flippers or four flippers, that might not have a more complex layout like a King Kong or a Godzilla? Are we allowed to sort of take a game that is ostensibly a fun layout with not many shots whatsoever? Are we allowed to say in its simplicity is its beauty, in its approachability is its greatness, in its colorful nature is its warmth and its charm? Are we allowed to say that? Are we allowed to walk up to Pokemon and say, hey, the moment that Pokemon logo goes across that's that big screen. And you see the Pokeballs light up on the speaker grills. It just makes you smile. And the moment you see the clips and the music, the music in this game is phenomenal. The sound effects are phenomenal. The entire audio visual elements of this game, I think are some of the nicest we've ever seen on a Stern machine ever. And it's just getting started. And so yeah, like part of me feels like I should be making fun of how little is in this game because there's not a ton mechanically. Just think about it. There's not a ton mechanically in this game. There's not a ton of toys in this game interacting with the ball. Really when you think about the toys that interact with the ball, you got the Meowth, you got the Squiddle Whirlpool. Is the ramp that opens up a toy? Not really. There's nothing happening on the right side that interacts like the Pikachu that moves. Sure, but that's not interacting with the ball. There's a scoop on the right side. There's a magnet up the middle, but not a lot. Not a lot. The Pokeball doesn't open up. It doesn't lock balls there. And thinking about it now, like physical ball locks, I know there's one in the upper right ramp area, the post pops up and locks the ball. But for the most part, you know, if I were to say to you, what in Pokemon has never been done before? Doesn't really have anything. That in Pokemon is truly, truly incredibly creative. Doesn't really have something like that. But it's something about the sum of the parts and the parts are all charming that are making this game a real pleasure to play. And I think when you look at it like that and the fact that Stern does make all those other games, that this was absolutely the most perfect direction to go in with Pokemon. And when I watch Killian play, I gotta teach him how to flip. But he is having so much fun. And this is gonna be the game that I teach my son how to play pinball on. It would not have been as much fun if it was Guns N' Roses. Harry Potter would have confused him with so much going on on the screen. Name me another game that invites kids to jump on pinball better than Pokemon. And last night, and I mean this, I'm not even making this up, I was downstairs and all of a sudden I hear Brenda and Killian playing Pokemon without me. Alright, that's amazing. Once I heard that game going and I wasn't even invited, I knew that this game is something special. And the way it lights up, I will say the expression lighting with the railing lighting up at the same time. But it also goes in different sequences and dances around the machine. It's absolutely stunning. The art is absolutely stunning. The playfield artwork is absolutely phenomenal. The way they've got like the little Pikachu cheeks light up on the middle of the playfield by the flippers, absolutely stunning. And yeah, this game doesn't have like something magical you're gonna see the ball do. It just doesn't. And so where this game is really going to come down to really what going to happen with Pokemon is they going to need to code a lot of moments of magic in this game. That is my only long term concern about the game because I just want to make sure that it doesn't turn into a chopping wood experience to catch more Pokemon. Stern's really going to have to make sure that they do this game justice, that they throw a lot of unique different moments in the software into the game. So for example, there's a moment where there's like a Pikachu battle. They've really got to figure out a way to make the battles with the music and whatever's happening on the lights and on the screen really make the gameplay experience very transformative when those things happen in the game. And that is my one big concern because there's not a lot in the game. Will they have enough to really transform the different experiences and the modes of the game? Like I feel like there should be a mode where like Meowth is going up and down quickly maybe and you have to try to hit him. I don't know, you know, there's gotta be stuff. I think there's just gonna have to be a lot of fun additional stuff added into this game. And I do think it's gonna come. I do think Stern is gonna put a lot against this game because so many people have it and they wanna really make this game the foundation of what they know is a pinball machine that's gonna get so many new people into pinball. And that is a good thing. I was in the Pokemon owners club and there are still some of these curmudgeonly guys who don't even own the game that are in there saying like, this game sucks, Toy Story 4 is better, this game sucks, yada. Are we really still there? Are we still there where we want to rain on everybody's parade who's enjoying Pokemon pinball? Now look, I think this game makes hypocrites of all of us because it does, it actually does, it does support the excuse that as long as a game is fun, it's hard to put a price on that. But I will say, there's a lot of fun pinball out there in the world, none of it would have made my family come together like Pokemon. And that is the real intangible of this game. That I spent $14,000 but yet my family is having so much fun playing pinball. How much is that worth? How much over the price of a Walking Dead King Kong or a Star Wars is that worth? And I think George Gomez really made the right decision to make a game that everybody can jump on and have fun. And even if you like pinball and you like complex games, you are going to be so satisfied by the shots in this game. That's how smooth they are. It's very rare that we get a George Gomez game this freaking smooth and this baby shoots like butter. And right out of the box, I've only had one issue. My one issue was one of the purple targets by the left ramp just fell off. Like the sticker fell off. I had to put a little dab of glue and put it back on and now it's fine, but that's it. Everything else is working fine. My plunge is working fine. My auto eject is working fine. When I plunge on full, it goes around the orbit. When you hold the left flipper button, it opens up the gate. Everything is playing super smooth and also the playfield looks great. The clear coat on this game looks so much better than some of the other Stern machines I've seen recently. So I don't know what they did. I don't know what was in the mix, but I'm really, really happy with this game. And I think this game is going to be here for a very, very, very long time. And I do think that if you are skeptical about Pokemon, I think you need to play it like 50 times. I think you need to let the Pokemon charm win you over. There's a reason why this property is the most successful entertainment property in the history of entertainment properties. And we're all still just children inside and I implore you, even if you're wearing cargo shorts, just try to let the Pokemon magic in. One of my favorite parts is when you find a new Pokemon and the game describes to you who that Pokemon is. It's so cool. I love it. So yeah, I can't wait to catch them all. I can't wait to play more. But this is my very, very early first impression. It is the first pinball machine that is really perfect for the entire family to jump on. Stern, well done. Jack Danger, George Gomez, well done. It's going to be an amazing year for pinball, and this is just the beginning, baby. We got Transformers, we got Fallout, we've got Sonic the Hedgehog, and we've got Back to the Future and Goonies all coming this year. And it starts with Pokemon. It started with Harry Potter and Beetlejuice earlier in the year. I can't wait to cover this hobby all year round for you guys. Kaneda out.