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Pinball Industry News: February 2019 Re-cap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·1h 17m·held·Mar 2, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Feb 2019 pinball recap: American Pinball trademarks, Stern Insider Program, small-batch builders gaining traction.

Summary

Jonathan Houston and Martin Eyre recap February 2019 pinball industry news, discussing American Pinball four new trademark registrations (Poker Run, Sherlock Holmes, Valkyries, Robin Hood), Stern's new Insider Program subscription service, Pinbook tournament sellout, Texas Pinball Festival updates including Ed Van Der Veen's retirement and mayoral run, and emerging homebrew/small-run developers like Riot Pinball with Legend of Valhalla and Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle Castle in production.

Key Claims

  • American Pinball registered four trademark titles: Poker Run, Sherlock Holmes, Valkyries, and Robin Hood, possibly for upcoming games but could be speculative registrations

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston and Martin Eyre discussing trademark filings, with specific game titles named

  • Stern's Insider Program costs $29.99 per year and provides early access to promotional content, webinars, and podcasts with design crews

    high confidence · Martin Eyre correcting Jonathan's initial price estimate; both hosts discussing program structure

  • Stern operates a three-tier information release system: distributors first, Insider Program second, general public third

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin analyzing the Insider Program's competitive information advantage

  • Pinbook tournament sells out in seconds; Pinbook is the competitive tournament component of ReplayFX but ReplayFX itself has no ticket limit

    high confidence · Hosts clarifying relationship between Pinbook and ReplayFX after initial confusion

  • Ed Van Der Veen retired from Irving, Texas police department on February 28, 2019, and announced mayoral candidacy for Midlothian on March 1

    high confidence · Hosts discussing Van Der Veen's career transition; Midlothian is location of Texas Pinball Museum

  • Haggis Pinball plans to unveil Celts at Texas Pinball Festival, not Wraith (which will be unveiled later)

    medium confidence · Martin Eyre citing Haggis Pinball website but noting uncertainty due to typical changes in plans

  • Scott Gullix's Riot Pinball is working on Legend of Valhalla with playfield designs already drawn

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston reporting on Riot Pinball LLC development progress and Facebook posts

  • Spooky Pinball has completed production run of Total Nuclear Annihilation and released a new code update

    high confidence · Hosts discussing Spooky's current production status at end of episode

Notable Quotes

  • “They may just be speculative trademark registrations, just to make sure nobody else takes those.”

    Martin Eyre @ early — Explains common trademark strategy that doesn't necessarily indicate imminent game releases

  • “Either by deliberate leak or accidental leak or malicious leak maybe, most of the other titles have been pre-announced or certainly well known about and aspects of them have been released to the public domain long before Stern actually put out any kind of press release.”

    Martin Eyre @ mid — Indicates Stern's historical inability to maintain information secrecy, making Insider Program's tiered release questionable

  • “There is a time to sell the game and there a time to talk about the game. And as long as they're selling the game, they're not going to talk about what a terrible time they had with the licensor.”

    Jonathan Houston @ mid — Attribution to Greg Freres on Star Trek game; suggests Stern Insider Program content may remain promotional rather than deeply insightful

  • “Pinberg is the tournament that's at ReplayFX so you can still go to ReplayFX, play the free play games there and watch all the tournaments you just can't compete in them unless you're signed up for Pinberg.”

    Jonathan Houston @ mid-late — Clarifies confusion about venue structure and tournament access

  • “For a small company that's still very impressive to have the game in production a year after it's being revealed.”

    Martin Eyre @ late — Acknowledges Spooky Pinball's competitive speed in moving from announcement to production

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonMartin EyrepersonAmerican PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyHaggis PinballcompanyRiot PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyEd Van Der Veenperson

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: American Pinball registers four new trademark titles indicating potential upcoming game pipeline

    high · Hosts confirm American Pinball trademark registrations for Poker Run, Sherlock Holmes, Valkyries, Robin Hood; also noted for slot machine use

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern launches tiered insider program to monetize early access to promotional content and webinars

    high · Stern Insider Program announced at $29.99/year with early access to videos, webinars, design team podcasts; operates three-tier information release

  • ?

    community_signal: Industry observers skeptical of Stern's ability to maintain information secrecy given history of leaks

    high · Martin Eyre notes contract games (Supreme, Primus) stayed secret but commercial titles leaked; both hosts question Insider Program's value given typical leak patterns

  • $

    market_signal: Pinbook tournament tickets sell out in seconds despite presumably limited slots, indicating very high demand relative to capacity

    high · Both hosts confirm Pinbook sells out immediately; Jonathan initially confused whether ReplayFX itself also sells out (it doesn't)

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Ed Van Der Veen, Texas Pinball Festival organizer, retires from police force and enters local politics

    high · Van Der Veen retired Feb 28, 2019 from Irving PD; announced mayoral run for Midlothian March 1; hosts speculate on impact to festival organization

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.232

0:00
American Pinball registers four new pinball trademarks. Stern unveils their Insider program. Pinbook sells out in seconds. Again!
0:19
Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston from Pinball Magazine, and with me is... I'm Martin Eyre from Pinball News. And welcome to this month's recap of February 2019. And usually we say, what a month it's been, but actually this month was rather slow. It was. I think everybody's kind of waiting for March and April and the shows that are coming up in those months to announce things. So yeah, it's been a relatively quiet time, but it doesn't mean there hasn't been a number of events in the pinball world. No, that's true.
0:56
Actually, we made quite a list. So we just named three, but there's a lot more. But it's just short news. So hopefully, let's see if we can keep this under two hours this time.
1:07
Ah, so we keep it under one hour, actually. Yeah, okay. Well, I'm not trying to push it that hard, you know. But anyway.
1:15
So let's start with American Pinball. Yes, and they have been busy registering trademarks for, Well, what we have to assume are upcoming games. They may or may not be. They may just be speculative trademark registrations, just to make sure nobody else takes those. But I don't think any of them are actually licensed as such, although some of them do have license or have characters we might be familiar with, if you want to go through what it was they actually registered. Sure. Well, the four trademarks are Poker Run, Sherlock Holmes, Valkyries, and Robin Hood.
[name withheld pending review]
person
Gary Sternperson
George Gomezperson
Greg Freresperson
Steve Ritchieperson
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
ReplayFXevent
Pinbookevent
Texas Pinball Museumvenue
Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castlegame
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
Wrath of Olympusgame
Legends of Valhallagame
Celtsgame
Wraithgame
Deadman's Handgame
?

event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival scheduled for late February with Haggis Pinball and Spooky Pinball reveals planned

high · Hosts confirm attendance at Texas show 'in a couple weeks'; Haggis plans Celts unveil; Spooky has game in production

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Small boutique manufacturers (Riot, Haggis, Spooky) producing limited-run and homebrew titles; larger manufacturers exploring acquisition of designs

    medium · Hosts discuss Scott Gullix's Wrath of Olympus failing to reach production with Spooky; Jonathan suggests Jersey Jack could acquire designs; Haggis planning show reveal

  • ?

    design_innovation: Riot Pinball exploring EM-style cabinet constraints with Legend of Valhalla (no ramps); Haggis using retrofit cabinets

    medium · Martin notes Haggis's cabinet appears to be EM-type without height for ramps; Jonathan counters Total Nuclear Annihilation works without ramps; Riot's Legend of Valhalla CAD designs suggest similar constraint exploration

  • ?

    product_concern: Community concerns about American Pinball's narrative-heavy design approach (Houdini) potentially being applied to Sherlock Holmes

    medium · Jonathan critiques Houdini for excessive biographical detail interfering with gameplay; expresses hope Sherlock Holmes avoids similar structure; Martin suggests easier-to-understand mode system

  • ?

    code_update: Spooky Pinball released new code update for Total Nuclear Annihilation after completing production run

    high · Hosts mention new TNA code update; Spooky reportedly 'very happy with it'; update available before Texas Pinball Festival where it will be publicly playable

  • ?

    industry_signal: Pinball industry has proliferated number of major shows throughout year, offering multiple attendance opportunities

    medium · Hosts discuss Rocky Mountain, ReplayFX, Texas show, and other events; note abundance of show opportunities prevents missing important events

  • ?

    licensing_signal: American Pinball's trademark of Sherlock Holmes appears viable due to public domain status and no trademark protections on the character

    high · Hosts discuss Conan Doyle books being out of copyright; note multiple TV/film adaptations (Cumberbatch, RDJ) without licensing barriers

    • 1:58
    Okay. So, obviously, a couple of characters there with Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood. Poker Run, it's just a card-based game, which we haven't had for quite a while. Right. Although obviously card games used to be really big back in EM days But it seems to have gone out of fashion recently So it's interesting to see Poker Run Which is almost like Casino Run from Jackpot Right And Valkyries which is Well, I'm not entirely sure what that would be Me neither So Yeah I'm not suggesting that would not be a good title I have no idea what it is So I come to think of it, wasn't there some sort of Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie Skies or something? But I'm not sure whether that's anything related or whatever. It was Vanilla Sky. I don't know if that's anything to do with it.
    2:55
    Anyway, but I think probably the biggest buzz has been around the potential of doing a Sherlock Holmes game. Right. Because I would assume by now the Conan Doyle books are out of, Well, at least the characters aren't trademarked because there's been plenty of movies and TV series portraying Sherlock Holmes over the years and quite a bit of a resurgence in interest recently with, obviously, Benedict Cumberbatch playing Sherlock and also... Dalton Watson. Robert Downey Jr. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Robert Downey Jr. played Charles Sherlock Holmes as well in the movies. So, yes, of course, Martin Freeman was Dr. Watson, who was in The Hobbit. So lots of pinball-related things there. Bentec Cumberbatch, of course, doing the voice of Smaug in The Hobbit. Right. So they've both got some pinball history to them. Right. So of the four titles, like you said, it seems that Sherlock Holmes has gotten the most support, I would say, from the pinball community, as far as I could see. But I'm also a little bit, well, I wouldn't say worried, but if it would be anything like Houdini, I'm not sure whether that would result in a good game. What more sort of mysteries or inexplicable events to try or tricks or tasks to complete Well it's not only that but if I look at the structure of Houdini I mean the game is basically like a paper on who is Houdini and what did he do and accomplish and what did he spend his time on up to the point that I really don't care and I really don't want to know. And all these details are in the game, taking up time during gameplay and all that, and it's really annoying to me. So if that would be the case with Sherlock Holmes, I'm not sure whether they would turn it into a good game, although I do think that Sherlock Holmes as a theme might be very suitable for pinball.
    5:16
    Oh, I agree. but I don't think Sherlock Holmes probably doesn't need the level of explanation in the way that Houdini did. Houdini doesn't need that level of explanation. I think people understand who Houdini is and what he's famous for, and the same with Sherlock Holmes. So as you said, hopefully they've learned from that first game that it's a little less in terms of the lecture on the life of the character. The best way to hopefully go back to our resolutions that we expressed for 2019, I think even though Shuttercons is a detective theme, which should have some depth to it, because obviously these cases aren't that simple to solve. But the challenge would be to make it actually an easy to understand but difficult to master game. and especially the easy to understand part seems to be rather conflicting with a theme like Sherlock Holmes.
    6:20
    Well, in a way, although you could easily understand there would be a series of modes, each one relating to a book and then you have to complete them all, solve the mysteries by making the shots and when you've solved all the mysteries, you get to, I don't know, the showdown at the Falls with Moriarty,
    6:38
    the kind of wizard mode at the end. that would be reasonably easy to understand even for somebody who's not that familiar with it with all the intricacies of the stories right, on a totally different slightly related note, I did visit the Baker Street Sherlock Holmes Museum earlier last year well there you are I live in London and I go past Baker Street station every single day I've never been there yeah okay, I had some time to spare last summer and I was there with my sister and we thought this would be interesting. Actually, it was. It's a very small... Well, it's a museum, I think. Obviously, the gift shop is bigger than the actual house where Holmes supposedly was residing. But let's keep in mind, it was a fictional character, so he never lived. It was a fictional character, yes. Yes, until very recently. Well, not very recently, recently, That place was a bank. It was actually what's called a building society, which is like a sort of mutual type bank owned by its members. And it was for many years. I don't know what it is now, 221B Baker Street. Right. Well, it's basically a sort of museum, and it's completely decorated like Sherlock Holmes was actually living there with a bedroom and with a bed in it. And basically, if it wasn't for all the tourists, they might still be living there.
    8:09
    Yes. But it's a very popular sightseeing thing or whatever you want to call it, because there was a long line of people waiting to get in there. So anyway, those are the four trademark titles that American people have. Obviously, Robinhood also has been done multiple times.
    8:35
    There's one thing also to comment on this, is that American Pinball registered these trademarks also for use in slot machines, which may or may not indicate that at some point they might be interested in developing slot machines. It could also be that Pinball and slot machines are in the same category as far as trademarks go, and that they get the slot machine trademark together with the pinball trademark or vice versa, whatever.
    9:05
    Yeah, it's interesting that there hasn't been a Sherlock Holmes or a Robin Hood slot machine up until now. I'm not sure whether Robin Hood for a slot machine would be interesting because as soon as you win your jackpot, the machine robs you of your money because then you're rich. Yeah, on the flip side of that, if you don't win anything, then it takes the money of somebody who did win and gives it to you. So that's good.
    9:31
    Right. Okay, so anyway, you've got those four titles. So not wishing to prolong that too much more. Let's move over to Stern, who have unveiled a new money-making scheme for them called their Insider Program. Right.
    9:48
    And basically the idea is, you know, you pay $20 a month. $29 a year, I think it is. Oh, you're absolutely right. I was thinking of somebody else. Yes.
    10:01
    Yes, about $30 a year then, $29.99 or something for a year's access. And that gets you early access to various promotional stuff, promotional videos.
    10:16
    Webinars with design crews and all that. Podcasts with design crews. all that kind of stuff. But it also needs to be mentioned that while you might get certain background info earlier than other people,
    10:40
    their certain distributors and dealers will still receive all that info before the people are actually paying for that info. Right, so it seems like they've set up three tiers of releasing the information First of all to their distributor network Secondly to the insider program And thirdly to everybody else And of course all that assumes that nobody in the distributor network leaks it out in advance And then nobody in the insider program also leaks it out in advance to the rest of the world Yeah, that's an issue that Stern really has not been capable to keep secret for most of the commercial games, I would say. Because actually the contract games, like the Supreme one and the Primus one, well, they were sort of like coming as a surprise. Yeah, absolutely. They were kept under wraps very well. But, yeah, as you say, either by deliberate leak or accidental leak or malicious leak maybe, most of the other titles have been pre-announced or certainly well known about and aspects of them have been released to the public domain long before Stern actually put out any kind of press release.
    12:11
    Right. So still I find it odd. Okay, so there might be webinars for distributors and dealers that might be made available afterwards once a game has been released to the Insider Program, which tells me, like, okay, so you get to see what the distributors are being told. but you'll probably get to find out weeks after the distributors were actually informed. And then probably also some of the pricing info, and I can assume that would be edited out, but we don't know.
    12:57
    So it seems to me that, like, well, you call it a money-making scheme. First of all, I'm not sure how many people would sign up for something like this. And second, it seems like a lot of extra work for Stern. Well, absolutely. I'll be surprised if it actually lasts beyond the first couple of years, because in order to keep the value going, it is going to be a lot of work having to produce exclusive content. And you mentioned things about, or at least they mentioned things about Stern parties, getting exclusive access to parties, if you're a member of the inside. But none of this has actually come to pass here. So until it does, you've no idea what it is you're paying for if you subscribe up front. So you might as well kind of wait until there's something you really want to be part of and then sign up. I don't think it's a calendar year sign up. You can sign up at any point, and then your subscription runs for 12 months from that point onwards. But it does seem like a huge amount of effort. But, you know, maybe it's part of their plan to build up their, you know, global lifestyle brand label that they put on everything they send out to try and make Stone Pinball, you know, have some increased level of cachet to it. And if you're part of the insider, which is, you know, a lot of other brands do this as well. If you access, you know, try and charge for an insider program to give the same kind of level of of preview or exclusivity. So, yeah, it makes perfect sense to give it a go. You know, if it doesn't work out or it turns out to be too much effort for it, they can they can always quietly sort of discontinue it at some point. Right. It may not be the nicest thing to say, but let's not forget that Stern Pinball, basically every press release that we've seen announcing a new game from them is basically the same press release with a couple of word changes. I mean, the template for the press release is definitely the same. Okay, the game gets announced, and we're very happy to be working with this. Then there's a quote from Gary Stern. He's oh-so-happy to be working with this and this party or whatever and giving us compliments. It's going to be a wonderful game. Yes, absolutely. And basically, it's every game the same press release with a few slightly changed details. Now, the average public might not be aware of that, but you and I as journalists, we are. So that makes me a little skeptical that they are now all of a sudden going to show all this insider information to their insider program. In fact, there's a video for the Insider Program in which you have a – there's a shot of George Gomez and a couple of designers walking into the engineering area where George Gomez is like waving at the viewer or the cameraman, whatever, like, come on in with us. But from what I understood, that's not going to happen. It's not like you're going to get all X's and that you'll be going like, hey, Steve Ritchie, what's your next game? Oh, I'll be working on the, oh, because you're an insider program, I can tell you right away. No, that's not going to happen.
    16:26
    So in that sense. I'd be naive to assume that, yes. Yeah, so I'm not sure whether I see any added value, but maybe I'm spoiled as a journalist, and I don't know. I think Stern do produce quite a lot of multimedia content for their games. They do promotional videos, behind-the-scenes stuff, making of, that kind of stuff. So if you're getting access to that earlier, maybe there's some value to that. But in the end, everything's going to be out there for everyone to see. And basically, as soon as anybody on the Insider Program, well, not anybody, but virtually anyone on the Insider Program sees it, they'll share it, and it'll get out. And then you could be looking at literally seeing it 10 minutes before the rest of the world does.
    17:11
    Right. But then again – We'll see how it goes. But I agree with you. Yes, Stern is doing a lot of multimedia content. On the other hand, the content that they are making, if you're really interested in the behind the scenes of the making of a game, like I've been trying to unveil in Pinball Magazine, previous issues and all of the things that happen to the design team and inspires them, or what's the reasoning behind a certain toy, or all that kind of stuff. They don't go into that. No, you get a five-minute video, which is probably very expensive to make. You get single quotes, one-sentence quotes from people from the design team saying something about the game. but you still don't get the insights behind why they went with a certain thing for this or for that, or we had this on the table and we completely scrapped it because it wasn't reliable enough, or all that kind of stuff, the stuff that people usually are really interested in, that's not in, they're not showing that. There's two levels, though. There's the promotional side of it, which is all about selling the game, And then there's the detailed enthusiast side, which is probably where I'm thinking that the webinar is going to come in. It's where you will actually be able to ask those kind of questions to the design team, which maybe, you know, if only the insider people can actually ask the questions. Right. They're the only ones who get the opportunity to do that, and everybody else just gets to see the stream afterwards. Right. There's some value there maybe. Right. but then I'm reminding myself while you're saying this I remember talking to Greg Ferris about the Star Trek game which they did I know it wasn't like five years ago or maybe even more and because once the game was out I was interested in getting all the details And basically Greg said there a time to sell the game and there a time to talk about the game And as long as they're selling the game, they're not going to talk about what a terrible time they had with the licensor getting everything approved and all that kind of stuff. so it's a nice gesture to see the Stern Insider Program being initiated but I'm still curious like you said, how long will it last and will it actually be providing any background info that's actually interesting for people to find out or will it be like, no we're still selling that game and we're not going to bite the hand that's feeding us in a sense that they're not going to be discussing any, let's call it, work relations with licensors and approval processes and all that kind of stuff. No, I think that's absolutely fair. No, as you said, there is, as Greg said, I guess,
    20:22
    they are selling the game until they're not selling it. And then that can be many years later, they start talking about exactly how everything went in the design process. But, you know, give them a chance. Let's see what they come up with, and I can make a judgment on that. Sure. Okay. And then our next headline, Pinborg sells out in seconds again. Yeah, apparently so. And that's all there is to report about it. So the segment lost as long as it took. I'm not tournament players. I'm not anymore. although I certainly have an interest in tournaments but I haven't been to Pimberg you haven't been to Pimberg, we're not going to go to Pimberg because we don't play in tournaments but there are plenty of people who do and the whole thing sells out literally in a matter of seconds from the opening of sales for the tournaments well the interesting thing is that obviously it's a tournament, I get that but I have been visiting or attending various pinball shows, I actually have no idea whether it would be fun for me as a non-competitor to go to Pimberg.
    21:35
    Well, you're talking about going to Replay FX. No, I'm talking about Pimberg, actually going to Pimberg where, you know, would that be fun for me as a non-tournament player just to be hanging out and playing some games that are not part of the tournament area? And, you know, would that be fun for me? I understand there are vendors and all that kind of stuff so it could be interesting but in terms of whether it would be I have not been Pinberg is the tournament that's at ReplayFX so you can still go to ReplayFX, play the free play games there and watch all the tournaments you just can't compete in them unless you're signed up for Pinberg and that's what's sold out so it's still part of a bigger show it's like at the Texas show they have the tournaments there but you still go to the rest of the show and there's no limit on ticket sales for replay effects so yeah I'd like to go there even as a non-tournament player these days just to see the whole place it's got to be a massive spectacle to see and even bigger than I guess going to Papa so maybe we should look up our agendas and see whether we, hmm, seems we both haven't been there yet. Yeah, well, maybe. I certainly haven't got anything scheduled for that time of year yet.
    23:06
    What are we looking at, June, July, something like that? I think so, yeah. Hmm. One of my New Year's resolutions was to go to different shows, and it may be that my work schedule means that I'm actually forced to go to different shows this year. I can't go to the ones I was going to go to. Oh, I thought you weren't allowed back in. That was something else. No, no, no. We don't talk about that.
    23:32
    I'm not sure we meant Stern or the US in general, but yes. Interested to go to some different shows and I want to try and see if we can get to, Rocky Mountain this year, but it looks like I've got a big project that's finishing around that time, so maybe that's going to be ruled out.
    23:54
    That's the great thing about pinball at the moment. There are so many great events to go to that if you can't get to one of them, well, hang on a couple of weeks and there'll be some more events out there for you. Yeah, well, it's going to be an interesting year for you as well, in the sense that obviously, since you're based in the UK, and well, there's the Brexit thing going on and we just have to see how that will roll out or what will happen down the line in the sense that we still don't know whether it will take place or whether it not will take place and how it will affect everybody else in Europe and outside and who knows, you might not even be allowed to leave the country anymore.
    24:33
    Okay, well, let's not get into that because we could turn this one-hour podcast into a six-hour podcast if we get into Brexit discussions. But, yes, it's all a bit unknown at the moment. But it will sort itself out one way or another, I'm sure.
    24:47
    Right. Okay. So, well, we mentioned in the beginning that it was a relative slow month, but there's a couple of newsworthy items I guess we can quickly run through. And by quickly, I mean it will probably take up half an hour. But still, let's try to do it quickly.
    25:04
    Okay. So you and I are both going to the Texas show later this month. In a couple of weeks' time. Yes. In a couple of weeks' time. Oh, my goodness, it's creeping up. So, no, it is. By the time you listen to this podcast, I expect it will be about two weeks, I think, until the Texas show.
    25:23
    So, yes, and at that show, we knew that Haggis Pinball, the Australian start-up, would be attending and would be bringing a game with them. Now, it turns out that they're not bringing the game that's called Wraith, with them, which I think they were planning to, or maybe people were assuming they were going to be bringing that, because that's the one that they've been promoting most heavily. But they will be bringing another game, which is called Celts. Well, I'm not sure whether they are bringing that as well. At this point, I have to be honest, I have been watching their video updates, which are interesting, but actually, to be honest, I have no idea which game they are actually working on and which they are bringing if they are even bringing a game so don't um um pin me down on whether they are bringing a game yes or no and that's completely up to them i'm just going on what it says on their website at the moment which says that uh they will be unveiling the the celts game at texas does it also say when that was written no um obviously things are liable to change you know all sorts of things could happen as customs, as disasters that could get in the way, as shipping, all sorts of things could happen. That is their current and latest, at the time of broadcast, plan is to reveal their Celts game, C-E-L-T-S, but not Wraith. Wraith will be unveiled at a later date. Right. So interestingly, in their currently latest video, we see a lot of progress or basically what we see is the guy who is making the videos sending down a cabinet from an existing game and preparing that for the game that they are currently working on. Now the interesting thing, or maybe not that interesting, that cabinet is sort of like a an em type or early solid state cabinet which means that it doesn't have the height to allow play fields to have ramps and all that kind of stuff so it could be interesting to see what kind of game they will be reviewing if anything because it appears to me that the cabinet would not allow the the game to have ramps and all that kind of stuff that could still be very interesting i mean total nuclear annihilation doesn't have any ramps and i think that's a very interesting game but just something that occurred to me like okay that might be a challenge or not i don't know good i'm glad we cleared that up yes um so that's one one company which will be uh well plans to be unveiling a title at the texas pinball festival um let's just jump ahead a little bit there because there's a little more texas pinball festival news right isn't there about particularly related to um one of the key organizers of the show ed van der veen and who has been, well, up until very, very recently, has been a sergeant in the police department. Yes, of the city of Irving in Texas. And he retired this month, February 28th he retired. And surprise, surprise, March 1st he announced that he will be running for mayor of Midlothian in Texas. So The Midlothian being Particular interest to us Because that's where the Texas Pimble Museum is located Right, so obviously Ed Vanerheen is a Very active member in the Midlothian Community And So with I guess one door closing He's opening another window Yes, absolutely So that's how it goes well for Ed And maybe talking to Mayor Ed Van Der Wee I don't know when the actual election is I have no idea either But it's a very interesting bit of news That I figured that we should mention And like you said, we wish Ed best of luck With his plans to becoming a mayor Yeah, exciting times what with the show coming up, the museum opening, and now a complete change of career. So, yeah, good luck to Ed and Kim as well, and hope that all works out well. Right. So, moving on, more news. Well, Riot Pinball is a company that has been building new designed pinball machines, but in rather short runs, even if multiple games.
    30:46
    Scott, I'm trying to think of his last name. I can't help you with that one, I'm afraid. Okay. So the company is owned by Scott, and sorry, I forgot his last name. I can look that up quickly. But he did Wrath of Olympus, which was a wide-body game, with a very packed white-body game with an upper play field and a very impressive game, I have to say.
    31:15
    He did that, and he built it as a homebrew game. And at some point they even discussed or talked to Spooky Pinball to see whether the game could go into production. but apparently the bill of materials that the economics just didn't work out so sadly that never happened and now they're currently working on a new title which is called let me look it up here legend of Valhalla well right so And I need to mention that in the meantime, in between, they also did the bingo-type play field, which was manufactured by VP Cabs.
    32:13
    The Deadman sort of poker-themed Deadman's Hand. Ah, yeah, Deadman's Hand, yes. Yes. They did that, which I thought was interesting. And so they've been working on a couple of things. And the interesting thing about Legend of Valhalla is that they posted actually pictures on their Facebook of the actual cat drawings of the playfield. So they're already in that stage, which is pretty far along of the design. So hopefully they will be building games soon or a game soon and bringing it to shows, which is what they did with Rats of Olympus as well.
    33:06
    But that still doesn't mean that we might actually see a production of such game in the sense of, well, like a factory, you know. So we still have to see how that would work out. Now, speaking of that, before we started recording this, you and I were having a little chat, and I figured, like, why doesn't a company like Jersey Jack Pinball step in and basically buy one of these designs by Scott and take it into production themselves? and if up front something like that would be known that might be something to take into consideration during the design so that it would actually be manufacturable. Yeah, I think my suggestion was that I don't think Jersey Jack Pimple is particularly short of designs at the moment but we both agreed that we could see how it might well be over the next few years. And if someone like Scullock, who did Wrath of Olympus, or he had some more designs, I mean, on the Riot website, you can see a design for Alice of Wonderland, for instance, and it says coming soon. And you can imagine that would be a very good theme for Jersey Jack Pinball to make, a family-friendly title with lots of possibilities and lots of modes suggested from the various scenarios from that book and the movies that have come from it. Although I might think that Deepwood might be doing Alice in Wonderland since that was one of the games that John Popper was working on. Yeah, well, as we've seen recently, there's no reason you shouldn't have more than one game with the same title with different approaches to it. We've seen that.
    35:15
    Well, let's not go into all the different ones and some of the ones which are coming up in the near future as well, which we're probably not going to talk about at the moment.
    35:25
    Right. But, yeah, it certainly says on the Riot website and they have a design for Addison 1.0 that says coming soon. Yeah, I did look up Scott's name, Scott Gullix. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. So I did look that up. So we'll be keeping an eye on that. And usually he's at various shows, and if we run into him, I'd love to hear him out on what his plans are for Legend of Valhalla.
    35:59
    I think it's interesting to see that this is sort of like a Viking-type themed game. We haven't had those in a very long time, so that could be interesting. I am pretty certain that I can already predict that the soundtrack will sound a lot like heavy metal.
    36:24
    Well, let's keep it in the Scandinavian metal scene, that type of music. That would not surprise me at all, but I might be completely wrong, but I don't think it's going to be like Kygo, tropical music and that kind of stuff. No, probably more Queensride than anything. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Which is, okay, energetic to play pinball too.
    36:50
    So we have some other titles which are potentially coming up and ones which are in production at the moment. So let's go to one which we're doing at the moment which is Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle from Spooky, of course, and that's on the line. Now they've finished making Total Nuclear Annihilation for, well, say for now, but maybe forever. But if they get the orders in, I'm sure they'll make some more. But there's a new code update for that game. Do you know anything about what that brings to the game?
    37:26
    Apparently they are very happy with it, but that's not a surprise. They said it's probably the best spooky game ever I'm not sure I remember who said that But I hope it is for them We'll get to play it in a few weeks at the Texas Pinball Festival So we can judge for ourselves Yeah, where it was revealed of course one year ago Yes And for a small company that's still very impressive to have the game in production a year after it's being revealed. I know other companies that take longer after revealing a game to take it into production, and some companies even reveal games five times and still never go into production. That's true.
    38:13
    But to be fair to Spooky, it didn't take them a year because they were waiting to develop the game. It took them a year because they had all those total nuclear annihilations to build, I sure they would have liked to well they happy to make those but I suspect Alice Cooper was probably ready to go some time ago Yeah but well it good to see that they still working on code and polishing up the game and improving it and adding modes and what have you
    38:45
    And it's not really a surprise that the game was updated, because we already know that Scott Danese has been looking at audio aspects of the game, I think, and some other people as well. So at some point, an update was very likely to come out.
    39:04
    Okay, so that's a game which is in production. Actually, on the note of Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle, obviously last year at Texas Pinball Festival, the game was revealed, and we could play just a single ball as you were playing it. for me since I haven't attended any other big pinball shows in the US where the game was present for me it will be actually a chance to play the game and see what to get more familiar with the game so to speak because obviously the code develops and now we get to play full games I expect so you can yeah you'll be able to see the difference I'm sure apart from the fact you're getting two more balls for your game if nothing else so yeah let's look forward to playing that game in Texas in a couple of weeks time now one company which is has revealed their intentions to produce a game is Great Lakes Pinball Right. We mentioned them last month on our podcast. In their expose game. Yes. And last month they revealed their character called Leroy, and this month they revealed another character called Sasquatch Bruce, the forest florist. And the character looks a bit like either a... My first impression was it was sort of like a Bigfoot character. Right, okay Well we had him Bigfoot appear in a few games Or certainly a Bigfoot type character appear in a few games Obviously Whitewater springs to mind As well as Lexi Lightspeed And not to mention The belly Bigfoot game Which was the other Hercules sized pinball machine But apparently there were only One or two built and The game was destroyed after many years of being in storage at Belly, and nobody wanted it or whatever. I don't know.
    41:25
    Yeah. But we still have the pictures or some pictures of it. Yeah, and this new character, Saskatch Bruce. I'm not sure the forest florist is necessarily a particularly flattering description or doesn't enthuse people necessarily, but I'm sure they have big plans for what they're going to do with that character in the game. Could be hilarious.
    41:50
    It could well be, yeah. Maybe it's taking the theme in a different direction to where we thought it was going. Right, okay. So, moving on, there's two, well, we discussed Stern Pinball briefly, but there's a little bit more news involving Stern Pinball, being that the spike schematics have been, what's the word, published on the internet?
    42:21
    Yes, that's right. There have been a number of problems in the past with various versions and there have been many versions of the spike control system and in particular the node boards and the way that they have in some cases become unusable and people had to buy replacements because they were no longer in warranty after a reasonably short time. And they weren't that cheap to buy either. So I think people were looking for ways to repair them. And up until this point, Stern had never released any schematic diagrams for those boards. And they announced recently that they were going to put all the schematics for their spike system boards on their website by the end of February. and almost entirely true to their word, they put nearly all of them on their website. So if you do go to the support area, you can scroll down and look at the different boards in the Makeup the Spike 1, Spike 2 system. And if it means anything to you, it's interesting reading. I think they've been redone specifically for the website. I don't think they're the ones which were necessarily used internally because they've been cleaned up a bit, I think. But even if you can't read them yourself or they mean nothing to you, it does mean that the information is out there and maybe other people can actually have a good shot at repairing a spike board, which is no longer functioning, unless it's down to the internal code of some of the chips on the controller board, the controller chips on there. which is going to be harder to get to. But if it's a component-level failure, then there's a good chance that it can be fixed now, without having to buy a new one, which is good news. Well, that depends, because obviously these boards are using microelectronics, which are making it a lot more difficult to repair them. It's not like the old board sets where you're just like, oh, I need to replace this capacitor and this resistor, and off you go.
    44:33
    it doesn't work like that anymore. Well, it kind of does. I was looking at the schematics earlier, and in essence, they're the same. But yes, there are a lot of surface mount equipment or components on there which requires a little more skill to remove or replace, but it's not something that's beyond the realms of the hobbyist to do. But if he gets to some of the surface mount microcontrollers, then that's much harder, and that is certainly specialist work. But it doesn't mean there won't be people out there who will offer that service. Right. Now, what's interesting, or at least I hope it is, are the schematics detailed enough that it would allow basically anybody to start building their own spike board? it would to a degree except it's got it actually comes down to the firmware in the controller chips which you can't necessarily get to it's not quite clear yet just how that works because it's also possible when you program these things to make them impossible to read so once you've written the code to them you can't then connect up to them and read the code back and see what it's doing Right. So it may not work that way, and you can be sure that Cernan can release that proprietary code for anybody to make them themselves when they can sell them at a good premium. Right. So I think the answer to that is probably, in the most part, no.
    46:18
    Okay. Hold on. I think my phone is buzzing. Or is it your phone? Not again. My phone's not here, actually. You must have owned on charge. Right. No, then it must be me. Here it is.
    46:34
    Well, it's our monthly returning guest, who needs no longer any introduction, Gary Flower calling. Oh, correct. Oh, wonderful. Let's see what he has to say then, shall we? Well, I know that he's not going to the Texas Pitbull show, but it could be interesting. No, he's going to the Midwest Gaming Classic. Yeah. I understand there's some exciting news from that show. Okay. Well, let's see what he has to say. Yeah, this is going to be really good. I'm looking forward to this. I've been talking to Gary, as you have. He told us there's a lot of stuff he wants to tell us. So let's see what he's got to say. Okay. Oh, crap.
    47:15
    He just hung up. He's so impatient. He knows that we're doing this podcast and he takes a little time to read his intro. Oh. I mean, we aren't exactly doing his full biography of his life in pinball, so he should give it a 30 – well, whatever.
    47:32
    I'm sure he'll be back soon to tell us – well, I'll say back. He'll be on soon to tell us all the latest because I'm sure he's got a little bit exciting information he wants to impart. Yeah, well, and speaking of the Midwest Gaming Classic show, you and I will both not be going there, which is a pity. but the show is the same weekend as the Flip Expo event in France, which is actually where we are going. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a shame there are so many shows. Well, in a way it's a shame, but crashes are inevitable, and we couldn't miss Texas, I don't think, even though we do both want to go to the Midwest Gaming Classic as well. but it's just a bit too much of a gap between those two shows for us to stay out there for the entire duration. We've got work to be getting on with.
    48:26
    Yes, exactly. Now, the interesting thing is, Jack Warnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball will actually be going to the Flip Expo show.
    48:37
    Again? Because he was there last year where we interviewed him together. Yes, and so I am assuming that we are going to interview him again, which really makes him a regular guest on our podcast. He's certainly on more frequently than Gary. Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.
    48:56
    Now the interesting thing is, and this is pure speculation from my end, so I have a suspicion. there's a rumor that the new Jersey Jack game is certainly not going to be revealed at the Texas show although we might see the limited edition Yellow Brick Road of The Wizard of Oz which is a new model basically and we still have to see whether it will be stripped down or not or whatever but the next new game people are sort of expecting maybe partly because of this podcast suggesting it that the game might be revealed at the Midwest Gaming Classic well Jack told us he was going to be revealing two games this year so that would imply a first half and a second half game right well he actually narrowed it down to a spring game and a fall game so well spring with the Midwest Gaming Classic show being the midst of April already. Spring's almost over by then.
    50:17
    Yeah, and as I understand it, there's a good chance that Stern Pimple will be revealing their next title at the Midwest Gaming Classic. So I don't know whether another company would want to get in on that as well and try and take them on or whether they prefer to add the spotlight to themselves? Well, in a way, I think it would be interesting if they would, in the sense that... Oh, definitely interesting, yes. Obviously, Stern is expected to come out with the next Steve Ritchie game.
    50:50
    Jersey Jack will be coming out with a new Pat Lawler game, so you have basically Steve Ritchie versus Pat Lawler battling it out in terms of who gets the most attention and which is the most talked about game and how will people respond. Now keep in mind that Stern last year at the Midwest Gaming Classic, they showed up with what was it like 20 or 30 Iron Maiden games? That was the new game by then, so they really made an impact over there.
    51:24
    If they have a new Steve Ritchie game, I would not be surprised if they would try to pull off a stunt like that again.
    51:34
    Yeah, I guess they got the same kind of space in order to do that. And I can't remember, I think Iron Maiden, was Iron Maiden, I mean, was revealed before the Midwest Gaming Classic last year, wasn't it? Yeah, it was revealed, but I think it was the first show where the game was actually shown. We had seen pictures, there was an online reveal with photos of the three different models and so on, but it hasn't been at a show yet. Yes, that's right, because they didn't reveal it at Texas, but then they announced it fairly soon afterwards, didn't they? Yes. So Midwest Gaming Classic was basically the first big show, or the first show that had the game, and CERN made an impact by showing up with that many games. So they might do something similar. interestingly in and again I'm just speculating and suggesting and I'm not implying anything but it could be interesting since there's two big shows in the same weekend one in Europe and one in the States it could be that Jersey Jack might say you know what we're going to reveal our game on two different shows at the same time because Jack's already at the show in Europe, so why not reveal the game there as well?
    52:59
    Well, obviously it means that Jack can't announce the game at both of them, so it would allow maybe Pat to announce the game in the Midwest Gaming show and Jack to do it in Europe. Right, so that could be a scenario that I would like to see. Let's call it that. So it's, again, pure speculation, but it would be nice. nice to see if companies can do different types of reveals and approach things in a slightly innovative way rather than just doing the standard here's the game, you can play it but to spread it out across the world that would be interesting it would be an interesting opportunity I guess let's call it that so I'm not saying that that is going to happen but it would be interesting and who knows who's listening and, you know, okay, yeah. So we don't speculate, we create the rumors over here.
    53:59
    Well, that's some more speculation then. Our good friend Joe Kamikau has been speculating or creating rumors, shall we say, about the possibility of a much anticipated but up until now unfulfilled pinball license. I'll let you actually give the details of that Okay There was a Facebook discussion Where A Harry Potter themed Pinball machine was brought up And where Joe Chemical actually Mentioned That You'd never know what's in Stern's Engineering department Something like that along those lines Which obviously Triggered some people to see if they could get any further details, which they couldn't. But it is interesting to note that Joe, who's working for a slot machine company, and that slot machine company does have the Harry Potter license. Now that did surprise me, because I didn't think that, given everything we've heard about why Harry Potter can't be used in a pinball, it would certainly tend to suggest that putting it into a slot machine would be even less desirable than it would be in a pinball machine. That's one way to put it. I was actually surprised in the same way. I figured like, if pinball is already considered to be too evil for JK Rowling, then how come slot machines is okay? But apparently, if you just waive a check with enough money on it, and that's purely speculation from my end, I apologize for that. But then all of a sudden doors opened, and otherwise the room was to be shut.
    55:55
    Yes. I was absolutely, well, flabbergasted, gobsmacked, whatever you like, to find they're doing a slot machine with Harry Potter because that doesn't go with anything I've heard in the past about why the desire from J.K. Rowling not to see Harry Potter-themed items appear in bars or certainly not casinos or anything like that. And yet there it is. So maybe the rules have changed. No, no, but if the license has been acquired then it's a possible release before too long. Before the license gets too cold and forgotten. It wouldn't be the first time that a slot machine would be designed and in the end turned down after all. We don't know the details. So, for all we know, such a slot machine might be designed and still declined after all the design work, although that would be kind of surprising, I would say. But still, we don't know the details of the license. Maybe we, you know, we'll just have to see. maybe it's just a pitch to uh to warner and uh to jk and they say you know show us what it would look like and we'll say yes or no right so so um it's all very premature and we have no further info on that but it's interesting and as we've seen with the beatles um if joe cam and cal gets behind it then all of a sudden uh pinball themes that um have been desired by some for many many years do become a potential reality so to speak Yeah yeah The ones people thought had been impossible in impossible in the past suddenly turn into actual product Right So that good On the other hand I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of Harry Potter.
    58:05
    And I also haven't been the biggest fan of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. But those were movie trilogies that have seen pinball machines being themed around these trilogies. But with Harry Potter, I think there's like seven or eight movies. That's way too much material to work with to put in one pinball machine, I would say. I agree. Yes, you could do an early years, you could do a later years, you could do the first three books, you could do the first... Three seems to be a good number, the magic number in some cases, for doing pinball games because you can obviously have the three different movies or the three different books as different strands through the game.
    58:57
    But yeah, I agree. There's so much material to work with there. It's daunting and it's overwhelming, really, the amount of possible things you could put into the game. So yeah, it could lead to a series of games or the license could be split in various ways. We'll see.
    59:19
    Indeed, there is a license. Right. Maybe the best way to do with a Harry Potter themed game is not to go into each of the different movies at all. Maybe just do one with the main characters that are in every movie, which are a bunch of the teachers and Harry and his friends and the kids who are not so much his friends, but they are in several of the movies as well.
    59:52
    So maybe do it just a character-based game could be maybe the way to go for Harry Potter, to make it appealing for everybody who's seen maybe just one or two of the movies.
    60:07
    Well, there's lots of ways of doing it. It could be a sort of fairly superficial in that in that way but it could be you know in it could break down so once you get deeper into the game you get more and more detail from it but from uh if you're just playing it simplistically you know it's that is exactly what you see what you just described but um if once you start getting beyond the you know into the into the deeper levels of it and getting into wizard modes and all that then you can bring all that into play but let's not get too bogged down in something which you don't even know exists because there's another company which is also talking about building games but hasn't done anything yet. I wouldn't call it anything, but they haven't built a great track record.
    60:55
    Well, yes, they have. They've certainly made a name for themselves. I'm talking about Pinball Buzz, who are the publisher of the Pinball Adventures series of publications, I suppose. Are they magazines, publications? No, they're books.
    61:13
    They announced the Pimble Adventures series, which is a 10-book series. So there's 10 volumes in that series. The first one was with Tautaki, and that got huge or massive negative feedback. The quality of the paper was rather poor, I would say. Very thin, non-glossy. Basically, the book looked like it was printed on somebody's inkjet printer, which is not very desirable, I would say. Some images were taken from the internet in a very low resolution and blown up. And there was a lot of negative feedback around the first volume that was published last year. And interestingly enough, the second volume has just been released or published, whatever you want to call it. And that was shipped to people who had pre-ordered the whole series. So some people received this second volume, which apparently is slightly smaller in size than the first volume, which I find rather odd because I think if you get all 10 volumes, you really want them to be all the same size so they align nicely on a bookshelf or something like that. But aside from that, there was a note in there that apparently indicated that they are looking into building or designing pinball machines themselves.
    63:05
    I'm not sure how serious we should take that. But if it's the same quality as the book, then I'm not sure whether that's a good thing.
    63:14
    Hmm. Well, let's not prejudge it. But yes, it's certainly, I don't think it's got any relationship to the Penn & Teller interview that they have in Volume 2. Volume 2 is a pinball event, it's all about magic, and includes things like Circus Voltaire, which is not exactly magic, but Magic Girl, and other magic-themed games. But it does talk to Penn & Teller, and they're certainly creating a video game, or have created a video game. So maybe they're also interested in doing something in Pinball. Right. That would be interesting. Now, the interesting thing is, or at least I think it's interesting, I haven't seen anything about this, but maybe I haven't checked up on my Pinsight or other forums lately. Obviously, Pinball Buzz is publishing the Pinball Adventures. and they also published a Pimble Avengers calendar for 2019,
    64:19
    which you and I both were not very impressed with. Yeah, certainly in terms of the artwork quality. And also, well, I suppose the timing's all right. It is at least out and available if you wanted to get one for 2019. So you've got another, what, 10 months of use out of it. And for $30, I don't think it's too expensive. But, yeah, we didn't particularly like the pictures that they'd used or the way they composited them. But, okay, so for $30, I can think of another printed pinball publication of 360 pages. So if you're looking for a calendar of 24 pages or if you have $30 to spend and you want actual content, then may I suggest you buy Pinball Magazine No. 5 instead? And that will probably take you the rest of the year to finish it. Well, you see, if only you printed at the very top a different date, you know, the first page is January 1st, second page January 2nd, it would double as a pinball calendar as well. My God, you're so clever. You see? I should have done basically every issue. Since I do one issue a year, I should do that with every issue. I should do issues of 365 pages, although that would be 368 to make it work.
    65:48
    And then basically make it a calendar. There you go. Brilliant. What a genius idea. Absolutely. I will look into that. Now, getting back to Pinball Buzz, what's interesting, looking into their shop, Obviously, we're familiar with the Pinball Adventure series and the calendar that we just described. But they also announced a series called Greatest Pinball Machines,
    66:18
    which apparently appeared to be books as well, where they will be focusing on the pinball machines of a specific manufacturer. So either it's Belly or Data East or Gottlieb, Sega, Stern or Williams.
    66:37
    Yes. Looking at a different number of top games from each of those manufacturers, it doesn't – originally we were looking at – I think we looked at like 20 – the top 20 machines, and then we both sort of saw they had a Sega one. We thought, well, what are the top 20 Sega machines going to be? And in fact, they're only doing 10, I think, of the Sega machines. So whether they're going to the Mimosa. I think there are only 10.
    67:04
    They're doing all 10 Salem Machines. But, yes, I don't think these books are actually available yet. They are on the shop on the website, I should say, for Pinball Adventures. But I don't think you can add them to the cart and buy them just yet. Yeah. So the interesting thing is I'm looking at the contact listing for the Godleap volume. and basically it says if you love pinball then you love the top 100 most popular pinball machines we explore in this 10 volume series interesting including stargate joker poker devil's dare black hole class of 1812 rescue 911 frank thomas bickert haunted house freddy nightmare on elm street and operation thunder um so that's like completely ignoring that god leap actually made electromechanical games.
    67:58
    Hmm. Yeah. If we look at the most successful poker games that Gottlieb did, then Spirit of 76 comes to mind, which was one of their biggest sellers, but Simbad and Cleopatra were also over 10,000 of units, which was very, very big at that time. And I think of all the... Well, Joker Poker did very well. That's a good game. All the other games listed here didn't actually... Well, 100 Horse did okay, but that had its issue in its day. And the rest of them... If you're just looking at production numbers,
    68:51
    it should be a completely different list. This is just like the last game from Gottlieb that they sort of got their hands on, but certainly not the best off, I would say, or the top sellers. Yeah, I wonder how their top, you know, in inverted commas, top machines are chosen for this and for all the other manufacturers. Right. Is it some kind of, are they taking the ratings off the internet or are they just the ones they've got access to? Right. But to keep up with their tradition of poor printing, even the thumbnails of the flyers on the website are of very, very low quality. So they are consistent in that way.
    69:41
    We'll just have to see. But I find it rather interesting to see that they already announced this whole series. and I do have to mention that I actually think that they announced the Pinball Adventure series. In a relative short time, they came up with Volume 1 and now Volume 2 within just a matter of months.
    70:05
    So as a publisher, I have to be impressed with that because I know how long it takes me to publish an issue of Pinball Magazine. But on the other hand, if I look at what's happening on Pinsight, on the forum, they are not building the best name for themselves right now as people obviously have issues with the quality of the products and the content of it. and instead of listening to the people, they're more attacking people, which is not the best strategy to build yourself a good name, a good reputation, I would say. Yeah. Well, on the plus side, they have announced what all the different themes are for the 10 volumes that they're going to produce. So if you want to go to the pinballbuzz.com website, you can see what Volume 3, Volume 4, and so on up to Volume 10, what the themes of those are going to be, things like space, horror, science fiction, Wild West, and movies, music, and sports, and that kind of thing. Right. So let's see which ones might appeal to you. Right. So I guess the model in which they are working is rather clear. So obviously in Pinball Adventures, they pick a certain theme. And with the world's greatest pinball machines, they pick a manufacturer and they pick a bunch of games from one brand and just throw it together. And that's basically what they do.
    71:42
    So we'll see how they develop. And like I said, apparently they expressed an interest in starting to develop pinball machines as well. So we'll keep an eye on it. Busy times. Busy times at Pinball Buzz. Yeah. Apparently pinball is not as hard as everybody makes you believe it is. I mean, even a publisher can do it. Yeah. So. Yeah, well, you've shown us how easy it is. So you obviously led the way. Yeah, well, I think because we made it look easy, there's so many people trying to do the same, what we are doing. Or at least a few. But that's okay. Yeah. competition is a good thing and the more information there is out there the better I think so let's round this up obviously this is the month of the Texas Pinball Festival that means aside from Martin and myself hosting our So You Think You Know Pinball pop quiz at the happy hour at the opening of the show on Friday so make sure you're there on Friday at the happy hour at 6 p.m. in the bar area. We'll be hosting our, so you think, you know, pinball pop quiz with prizes donated by Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, American Pinball, Spooky Pinball, and, well, those four at least are confirmed. And I'm still working on a few other manufacturers to see whether we can get some swag from them to give away as well. So if you want to win prizes, make sure you're – There's a selection of prizes. Yes. And, of course, you and I will both be donating prizes as well in the form of magazines from my end and whatever you may have. Any stuff I can scrabble around in the Pinball News prize box and throw in the suitcase, that will be on the prize table as well. So now, obviously, at the Texas Pinball Festival, there will be plenty of pinball celebrities, I would say, in the sense of pinball designers and programmers, people from the design team, all that kind of stuff.
    74:05
    So let's see. Well, let's put it like this. Make sure you check in for our next podcast because we might have interviews with people from the Texas Pinball Festival, and you might want to hear what they have to say. Yeah, and I've actually asked, because I'm going to the Arcade Expo show the week before, and I've asked the owner of that, John Weeks, if he'd be willing to do an interview for us as well. I haven't heard back from him yet, but I'm sure he's got a lot of good stories about how that amazing facility came to exist and what a huge number of games he's got there and how he deals with that.
    74:48
    I have a story on that. It must be. Yeah. It'll be good to hear from John in the next podcast. But that's not confirmed yet, but we'll see what we can get from Banning. The funny thing is I'm actually planning to interview John in Pinball Magazine No. 6. He was actually scheduled for an earlier edition of Pinball Magazine, and I interviewed him. I recorded the entire interview on my phone, and two weeks later my phone died. Oh. So I lost that interview. So I haven't been able to publish that, and I haven't been able to interview John after that. But that's a little side note. But I am considering John for Pinball Magazine number six.
    75:38
    Make sure you mention that to him as well when you see him later this month. I shall remind him that you're waiting for his call.
    75:48
    I think it would probably be me calling him because if I have to. Okay, let's not go there. But, okay, let's round this up. This was one of the most interesting pinball news that we could find for the month of February 2019. If you're going to the Texas Pinball Festival or Arcade Expo the weekend prior to that, Martin will be there. So if you see Martin walking around, do say hello. He always appreciates that a lot. And if you're going to the Texas Pinball Show, we'll both be there. so make sure say hello to both of us because we both like to hear what you think of this podcast and Pinball Magazine and Pinball News because it's feedback is what makes them better than ever each time so yeah we look forward to seeing you there or if we don't see you there then we'll be back next month looking back at the month of March together with the reports from those shows and all the other events that have happened and any of the podcasts that we can pull together. Thank you for listening and until next month. Goodbye.