Long December, and there's reason to believe Maybe this year will be better than the last I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving But the days go by so fast Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up Oh, welcome everybody to the world's pinball podcast that is once again ineligible for a trippy. We don't need awards, people. We just got the most entertaining show about pinball every single week. I know I've been a little bit delayed recently on getting you episodes. That's going to change. I've just been in this sort of like really different headspace recently. A lot of people got laid off in my company and it's been hard. It's been hard thinking about what we do and what we talk about for living in the pinball world and compare it to so many people out there. 4,000 unfortunate people lost their jobs the Monday after Thanksgiving. So let's all be thankful that we're even in a position to buy these pinball machines. So what is going on in the pinball world? Well, if you caught my Saturday morning spectacular, we had a really great interview with Jersey Jack and we got some news from Jersey Jack that we can now put some things to bed. We can put to bed that there will not be a Matrix pinball machine by Jersey Jack. That's unfortunate. I think all of us out there would have loved to have seen that theme translated into the Jersey Jack platform, that beautiful lighting system raining down the green. Neo on his search to figure out what's going on with all the agents, the slow motion fighting, the use of maybe magnets rotating around. So now all of a sudden the only Matrix game that's ever going to come out is that reskin of Johnny Mnemonic. Now, do those games go up in value even higher? I think they were going for like 20 grand or something or $30,000 and there was like eight of them made. You know, these guys who make these like big trouble games and Matrix games, Why don't they just make them to order? Like who's going to dial up Warner Brothers and be like, hey, guys, I know you got like an $83 billion deal going on with Netflix, but those 12 guys over there have made an illegal pinball machine. They're never going to shut you down. And I know that people are offering this guy like $50,000 for his Big Trouble in Little China game. And he said, no, I don't understand. No, dude, just make six of them. make eight of them. Nobody cares. I work in marketing. These companies have such bigger fish to fry. They're not worried about a few boutique items happening over here, especially if you can do these sales like under the table at a pinball show. So, you know, that being said, we're not going to get a matrix. He also said when we talked about Ghostbusters, that's the new theme that maybe Jersey Jack has Ghostbusters. He says, I don't want to make a theme that's already been made before. It's funny that Jack would say that. Hello, Guns and Roses. Hello, you know, Hobbit, Lord of the Rings. Jack has made games that have been made before. And so you can't tell me if they could get the Ghostbusters license that they would not do it. Now, I was in the room when I asked him that question and I read his body language, because I think when I asked him that he might have been off camera and he did not seem like it was an out of left field thing. He didn't seem like he was very like he almost felt like he was hiding the truth a little bit. So I think there might be a little bit of truth that they might have the Ghostbusters license. So I wouldn't 100 percent close the door on that. Now, we can with 100% certainty, close the door that Steve Ritchie is not making a Top Gun pinball machine. Tom Antonio Cruz, just to start the conversation, is a $15 million thing. And I agree with Jack, you can't make Top Gun without Tom Antonio Cruz. Now, I heard that you can make Big Trouble in Little China. Kurt Russell won't join the project and do custom call outs. But I heard you can get all the footage from the movie a la Beetlejuice, right? They didn't get Michael Keaton to do any call outs. And look at that game. Look at the reception to Beetlejuice. And I think there's enough in the movie itself with Jack Burden's one liners that you wouldn't even need Kurt Russell to do original call outs. I think you can make it work. And that is a theme that absolutely I think everybody listening to this right now, a lot of us would be in on a big trouble in little China. You know what else do we hear from Jersey Jack We also heard that Jack is going to continue to make unlimited collector edition games I should have pressed on this a little bit more Because if you call it a collector edition how is it a collectible if it is unlimited? Like simply by nature, those two things don't make sense. And I do think it is a bit of a marketing mistake. because I think Harry Potter is unique. And I think they sold a lot. He said he sold over a thousand CEs. I've heard that it's closer to 3,000 collector's editions have been sold. Now, whether or not people trade them or not doesn't matter. When all 3,000 are out there, yeah, there will absolutely be a decrease in the price of the game because they will be everywhere. And, you know, also the thing is this, when you don't set a number, like a total amount we will ever make, you have to remember what that also means. It means that like four years from now, they could do another run. And that's the other thing. I mean, all we have to do is look over at Stern Pinball and look what happens to the value of these games when the threat of another run is like hanging over everybody's games. Stern has done another run and another run of LEs they said they would never do before. And it's the same thing. If you say your collector's editions are not limited and then, you know, you make 3000 and everyone thinks they got something that might be worth like 14,000, 13,000, then you do another thousand run. They're just going to keep going down and down and down. Now, look, I think sitting above all this, though, is the right point of view that Jack has. if we just make magical games that are masterpieces, people are gonna never want to sell them. The analogy I was trying to use is when you marry the right partner, which is Brenda in my life, you never wanna get a divorce. You never wanna sleep with anybody else. You are super content with what you have. And I think Harry Potter pinball for a lot of people is simply that. And that is why we are looking forward to what's next from Jersey Jack. I brought up Sonic the Hedgehog. We all know that it's Steve Ritchie's next game. And so, you know, that game, he said, is going to come out sometime in the middle of next year. So I think we're going to see that game sometime in like May, June of 2026. So a little bit of a pause in the JJP land. We talked about JP to win. He said, you know, they would love to have him come back and work on future projects. It sounds like his talents might have already been applied to Sonic the Hedgehog, which is great. And then we're going to get, after Sonic, we're going to get, it would be like Mark Seiden's next game, and then we'll get Eric Minier's next game. So in the world of JJP rumors now, it's interesting. Removing Top Gun and removing The Matrix from their portfolio sort of creates a little bit of like a Wild Wild West. I haven't heard many other themes thrown into the JJP space, we've heard some stuff like Beastie Boys. We've got the Ghostbusters rumor. But I think what they're going to make is another licensed movie pin. Now, I was trying to get out of Jack. The truth about the demographic and the things we're into is 80s and 90s nostalgia plays so well. We saw it with Beetlejuice, right? We're going to see it with Goonies. We're going to see it with Gremlins. You know, Dune, you know, didn't hit. It didn't hit that demo. But I want to say this when I went to Automated Amusements and I wanted to just play Dune and the moment before I jumped on the machine Todd Tucky comes over to me and says hey I just want to let you know I think his name is William the worm in the game doesn't work it's having some issues and I was just gutted because I'm like man see this is a thing it's like I just want to play the game fully functioning and the game there had some issues. There were people playing it and I stood over and I watched them play the game for a while. And I will say this, the animations, not just the animations, the clips, the quality of the clips on that Dune game are stunning. I think the video assets in this game look better than anything on Stern, than even on JJP. It's like a smaller monitor, but it's much nicer, much crisper than anything. I hope the new spooky monitor looks this good because the like the contrast and the way the blacks pop and just the quality of the clips are so good. And the way they handle the clips in this is so good. And because you get the full screen often and I love the way those two screens on Dune, like the things like integrate with each other. There'll be like something like a bubble will be floating on the monitor that's below or the screen that's below the glass. And then it goes up into the monitor above or the LCD screen above. It's so cool. And I really do think, you know, if they can get these games working and they can get themes that people want more, Barrels of Fun is going to do just fine. They have a very beautiful platform. And, you know, as I was at Automated I noticed a few things I noticed a few things When you see all the Sterns lined up next to all the JJPs next to Dune you kind of got everything there They didn't have any evil deads. The reason why there's no evil deads is they're all sold. So anything that's there, it's funny, anything that's there is unsold because that is a showroom. Anyone can walk in and buy that specific game. So there's a little bit of a, you don't wanna be there. Like you don't want to be on Mike's show floor because that means there is not enough demand. Like there's not a Jaws 50th on the floor. And so I just want to say like when you see all the company's games lined up together, that is a moment that I love. It's like when you go buy a car and there's just a row of car dealerships and you can cross shop everything. You know, you're not like stuck in tunnel vision. You're not just looking at only one game at a time. And I will say this, seeing all the company's games lined up and they had everything there. Star Wars, King Kong. They had Jaws. They had Metallica. There was no Walking Dead remastered. I don't think they have it yet. But I just want to say this. When you see all the games lined up, it is so obvious that Stern Pinball just can't really sell a product that is north of $10,000. And I mean that. And I mean this, you know, as I look at the people at Stern and I think about them, they've got the best product that's like between six and ten thousand dollars. But once you go over ten grand, their product just doesn't cut it. It just doesn't look the part. And, you know, I don't care how fun it is. It just looks so much cheaper than what everyone else is giving you for ten to fifteen thousand dollars. and I think they have a real problem there and I think it's a problem that's not going to go away and I think buying new in box sterns over ten thousand dollars is just going to be a losing proposition moving forward and the sad thing is if the rumors are true the next stop for stern is they're going to raise their prices again and it's just not going to work so besides like the theme. I just think their platform just looks bad. Like, for example, I step up to their latest platform, Spike 3 Star Wars. The lighting is just still so outdated. It doesn't look good. Like, I don't get it. Like, does the Pro have different lighting than the LE and the Premium? I don't think so. And then you look at the lighting in a game like Dune, in a game like Harry Potter, you know you look at other stuff and it's just so much better and so I think Stern just needs again to reset and think things over and it's not just me saying this if the rumors are true and I don't know this is like a crazy rumor that they only sold 200 the Walking Dead remastered 200 now maybe that's just 200 LEs but really you do have to have your head examined if you bought a Walking Dead LE Remastered for $13,000 because you know the game's going to be worth $10,000 in just a few months. You know, an interesting moment happened to me when I was at Automated. I'm sitting there playing. I was playing Toy Story Pinball and I haven't played Toy Story 4 in a long time. And I will say, I don't know if it's how the game was set up. I don't know if you need to change the IO board in that game as well. But that game plays like it's in slow motion compared to Elton John, compared to Harry Potter. It's so slow. And there's really, look, the consensus on Toy Story is accurate. It's just kind of boring. Like the shots are just not great. The flow is not great. Nothing happening in the game is magical. It's just not a good game. It really isn't. It just feels like you're playing in slow motion. Willy Wonka is so much better. But anyway, I'm playing there and this gentleman walks over next to me And he starts playing the machine to my left, which is Guns N' Roses LE. And he's like, hey, man, how you doing? I'm like, hey, yeah, how you doing? And he doesn't know anything about pinball. He's like, yeah, I think I'm going to buy three machines from Mike. I'm like, cool. Like, what three machines are you thinking? And he asked me, like, well, what's your favorite machine? And I was like, well, you know, that's a really hard question. I would say, like, my favorite machines are games that are based on themes I love. And they have a lot of magical moments. and they create wow in pinball. And so I said, Lord of the Rings is probably, out of all the games I've ever played, I still think Lord of the Rings is kind of the best pinball experience I've ever had. I just love it so much. It's got everything you want and then some. And it doesn't rely on only the screen. There's enough mechanical wow in the game. All right, so here's the thing. So he is like, here's the three games I'm gonna buy. It was Pulp Fiction. He's like, because I love the movies and I love the call outs. I'm like, OK. He's like, and Guns N' Roses, Ellie and Jaws 50th. He's like, Mike's going to give me a good deal on all three. Now look this guy does not know he talking to Canada of Canada Pinball Podcast He doesn even know I know anything about pinball And I did tell him like look let me ask you a first question How much do you like Guns N Roses Because you really going to have to like Guns N Roses to own the pin And he's like, well, I love Guns N' Roses. And he's like, also, I'm going to get a really good price on a brand new LE of this game because I heard he has a lot. And I'm like, look, if you're going to get a Guns N' Roses at a really good price, and I'm talking, you know, probably somewhere around $7,000 to $7,500 new in box, it's hard to say that you're not getting a lot of pinball. Like I think that is a really good price for a GNR machine. Okay, so you get Guns N' Roses, you love GNR. And look, for a newbie, if you want a game that's just gonna wow you, like GNR like fits the bill. And if we go from there, if you think about it, like Pulp Fiction is the one out of the three. He's like, I'm gonna get the LE. And I'm like, all right, all right, all right. I worry a little bit about a newbie buying Pulp Fiction because I don't think it has the wow per se. I also think it's a really difficult game. And I think after playing a game like Jaws and GNR, I do think Pulp Fiction will instantly be the one that the guy's gonna wanna get rid of the fastest. It just doesn't have as much. I just find Pulp Fiction to be a bit boring. I get it. I understand the concept of it. But next to Modern Pins, it just doesn't hold a candle. But the real eye-opening thing about meeting this gentleman, If you think about GNRLE, Pulp Fiction LE, and Jaws 50th, the guy's probably writing a check for $25,000 for three pinball machines. And, you know, for those of us out there that are like, pinball's dying. More people are not coming into the hobby. I don't know. I really don't know. But I do know this. Sometimes it's easy to get into a little bit of a bubble, a microcosm. I think our Canada Club is one of those. Pinside is one of those. And even though you and I might have a point of view about pinball, a lot of these newbies, they walk into a pinball showroom and they have no context for anything. You know, I was talking to this guy, the one that just bought that like Star Wars premium for $8,000 and thinks it's an amazing game. In his mind, it's an amazing game. In my mind, it's not. And, you know, I know that John Borg just recently did an interview and he's telling everybody that he only had like eight or nine months to work on the game. And the normal pinball production schedule is like 18 months. If you're Stern Pinball and you have anybody even in a marketing department, how do you allow John Borg to do interviews and reveal that about the game? See, the problem is this, is the moment you hear that, why would you ever want to own one? It's not like he only had eight or nine months and he crushed it. He had eight or nine months and it looks like it because it doesn't look good enough. It doesn't elevate at all. And so it just baffles me that you're trying to sell the product and John Borg, who's the designer, is saying things that would make me stay away from it. And so here we are, everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, we're in December of 2025. You know, Beetlejuice, are the games still going for 5,000 over instantly? I don't know. I don't know. I went on the marketplace. It seems like it's cooled down a lot. The instant FOMO that hits right away is always the strongest, like the first couple of weeks. But I think now people are starting to realize, like, you know, you'll be able to get one. You're never going to get one for 10. But who knows? If the game comes out and it is insanely good, which I think it's going to be, I don't think they're going to trade hands very often. As I said, I think this game, Beetlejuice, Winchester, games like Gremlins, games like Sonic, games like Harry Potter, I think there's a whole new wave of games are going to become the foundation of all new collections moving forward. And I think that the old stuff, you know, it's just all going to be out there. And also we're going to expose this thing, the whole drop ship factory that's over there in Chicago. I know the warehouse. I know the name of it. I know the address. We're going to get photos of it. And you're going to see that there are like thousands of games unsold sitting in a box. What do you think is going to happen to the pinball market when all of these games have to make their way out there eventually? It's going to happen. It's going to happen. the white walkers are coming baby to the value of your older stern machines everybody look it's going to be a good 2026 in pinball i know a lot of stuff that's coming i didn't even talk about back to the future i've got some news on back to the future i'm going to talk about uh soon but everybody be good have a great monday we'll be back this week with more episodes of canada's pinball podcast canada out Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah