Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, September 14th. This is episode 254. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Tony, we have stuff. We did their stuff. Stuff happened. Yes. But we're in the intro. Is there intro stuff? There is intro stuff. Uh, uh, there was a big thing going on. Huge. Everyone's probably, probably no, nobody, no, nobody's heard of it. It's the 10 year anniversary of, uh, wargaming's world of warships. I was a closed beta tester for that game. Oh, so I reinstalled it cause I haven't played it in like six years. and i've been playing it and it's fun i like i've played a fair amount of it a lot of stuff has changed since since since the last time i played it so it's like a living game it's still yeah supported oh yeah oh definitely okay it's not like their game that they rolled out and then canceled before it even got its official uh release launch because it was doing so poorly in early access um so it's still yeah no it's still it's a little light uh during the week um except for like in just the prime game time in the evenings but fridays night saturday servers were super full no big wait times to try and get uh matches that weren't 50 bots well i haven't done a lot because work has been like we have strategic planning and stuff so i've just had a lot where i'm just like sitting and watching movies instead of yeah i mean however uh the new season of marvel rivals did come out so i started that yesterday and i went back so since you're familiar with overwatch you know how the ranked has the metal system yes it's the same with with rivals they have a metal system however unlike overwatch which does placements and then you're in a you're in a tier and then you move up or down depending on how you do with marvel when they launch a new season it's kind of like i ended the last season in silvers you know it's like silver two or whatever and so but they start me at bronze three in the new season now i've been up into i believe into platinum before i just don't always play a lot of competitive in it i usually am doing like quick play or other types of matches that they've got in the game but so since i was in bronze three i was like instead of queuing up you can even get a lot of the achievements or the the dailies or weeklies or whatever you're working on uh with ai battles which sometimes is the easiest way to earn things that are really grindy so i will often do that however i went ahead and just did competitive because bronze three people are worse than bots and the whole time i'm there and and stomping them and after these games i'm like i'm exclaiming why am i here why am i with trash like why did they kick me down to bronze three this is stupid these people are getting dunked on by a master interesting and it's like then i got up to bronze two and i actually lost a game finally so maybe that's where i belong that time i had more losers on my team than the other like it was no longer enough that just a couple of us were could be enough to carry the team to victory right but just like people that are just like they're they're picking they're it's all the it's all the stuff that would always frustrate everything they're picking the wrong characters like they're like this is rock paper scissors you are constantly a rock they are paper we are suffocating do something there's something they're like no i must become even more of a rock it's just like rock two electric boogaloo oh my gosh just like They'll be like, hey, look, they've all got flying people. Let's all play melee characters so no one can hurt them. Look at Iron Man up there. Oh, I guess we die because no one can touch Iron Man. How inconvenient. I wonder if someone could possibly switch. No, we can't do that in bronze. No. So anyway, the moral of the story is quit kicking me back down to bronze three. All right. That works. So we actually have interesting things in video games and in pinball. But we start with the pinball segment because that is tradition. And so we have a new reveal finally. Stern pinball. Do we? We do. Ish. I know you have thoughts. And Tony's messaged me about his thoughts. And he actually started a little bit ago before we clicked the record button to share with me his thoughts. And I've told him. I'm supposed to save it. Save it because we have this segment designed. And you, our dear listeners, we save it for you. And I think you'll appreciate it. Or maybe not. We'll find out. But anyway, so Stern has revealed Star Wars Fall of the Empire. I do have a link in the show notes to Nap Arcade's article on this if you want to read and look at some photos. He's actually got a lot of photos up there so you can take a good look at it. This is the first Cornerstone powered by Spike 3. So the main things to note with Spike 3 that we've seen that are, I think, to the end user really critical. There's some stuff about, like, wireless headphones and things like that. But it's got an improved audio system. So it should sound better than the Spike 2 games. And the screen is larger than Spike 2 by about 35%, and it's, I guess, a true HD screen. I don't know what the prior one was. I read some—Nap Arcade has some details about the additional colors and stuff. But what I do think Tony will appreciate is the 35% larger screen. It's still a game where you look, and the Translight is most of the space. It doesn't feel like— That's a good thing. Yeah, it doesn't feel like a Jersey Jack or a P3 or anything like that. In terms of this game itself, this is designed by John Borg. Code is handled by Raymond Davidson. I think this is the first time Raymond has been lead on a game that is not a music pin, so congratulations to him on that. Pricing is the same as the last Cornerstone, so $69.99 for a Pro, $96.99 Premium, and $12,999 US dollars for an LE. the le's are limited to 770 because 1977 get it seven seven and then they're well wait we can't do nine one thousand nine hundred and seventy of these things because there's no way we're selling that many so we got to make it 770 you get it tony do you get it oh it's i get it all right so in our internal uh one note i've shared a number of images though i think you've seen pretty much all of this since you've seen the teaser trailer i watched a little bit of the footage myself uh but it's it's a fan layout uh game uh the differences between the premium and the pro are pretty significant i included a an image for us tony of the feature matrix however there's so many things it's it's hard to read basically what the pro has with the premium is the motorized target in front of the Death Star. They have the Death Star 2.0 in this one, so there's like a drop-down door to go into it to destroy it. So that's there on the Premium and the Pro, and then there is also the Salacious B. Crumb drop target is in both. That's like it. The ramp for hyperspace is a lift ramp on the Premium LE. It's static on the Pro. So all the sculpts are basically gone on the Pro, like the TIE Fire one, the Darth Vader head, the Stormtrooper. Those sculpts are all just on the premium LE version. Oh, and the big thing that I thought was the coolest thing, they have a straight out of GoldenEye, though it's manually controlled in this, a force ball save. So the ball is going down between the flippers or whatever. It can fling back up or it can go back into the shooter lane, depending on the positioning. Yeah, that's premium LE also. That's not on the Pro. So anyway, I guess in terms of different art packages, in terms of Pro Premium LE like you would expect, the – I don't know what else to say. Like I guess let's just talk about it. It's kind of got like a pop on the left and the right instead of a cluster of pops. you have the Death Star is kind of like the center left shot the hyperspace where the Millennium Falcon kind of is is the center shot or possibly center right couple other ramp shots over by Jabba and that I will give it a few things and again we really have to focus on the premium LE but so there's a stationary AT-AT or some people call them AT-ATs I don't know the proper I don't know what the right answer is I always call them AT-AT It's an AT-AT. I've seen some people insist that you're not a real Star Wars fan if you don't call it an AT-AT. Like, I read that. Well. Granted, it was on a pinball discussion, so what do they know? It's literally an all-terrain armored transport. What do you call an AT-ST, which is an all-terrain scout transport? I mean, I always call them an AT-ST because I always assumed that. Atts. Atts. Atts. What do you call an AT-MT? I don't know. Look, I don't agree with them, and I also don't think the Empire would say something stupid like that. They're too busy doing target practice training. They can't be messing around saying, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Now that we've upset all the Star Wars fans, all the real ones, I do like that the wire form loops around to mimic the tow cable deployment. And it is a cool, simple, but cool mechanized AT-AT on the premium LE where it falls when you've tow cabled it. It does not do that on the Pro. On the Pro, it's just static. So there's that. And then I do like that there's a shot that goes around in a circle as like a pit for the Sarlacc pit. But, okay. You don't like hitting the Death Star? That's never been done before. Shoot the Death Star. I mean, John Borg did do that. That's Daddy's Star Wars game. Shoot the Death Star. Oh, and they got the voice actor. Not the one from the main movies, but another voice actor who's done C-3PO to be C-3PO. So they didn't get Anthony Daniels. They got the person that they've been using for the cartoons. Yes, I believe so. I don't remember his name. It's in the Nap Arcade article. You can read all about it. All right. Thoughts? Because this is an audio medium, and it's hard to describe. I don't want to sit here and try and describe all the shots because we're going to paint a picture of confusion. I think it is very clear. It is a fan layout. It is every other Star Wars game you've ever seen because it is the original trilogy with different art and slightly different stuff. But it's the same story. It's the same stuff. And it covers the original movies just like we saw in 92, just like we saw in 17, and then again in 19 when the comic edition came out. So, oh, yay, it's the same story we ever heard. I full on they're right it is the fall of the empire the stern empire this is so there was so much I would admit I was deeply interested you love Star Wars even if you don't say that I do enjoy Star Wars and I was deeply interested in seeing them do something other than the original trilogy my hopes for fall of the empire was that it would cover stuff after Jedi stuff from the books or Legends or something. It would be something other than what it is. I'll be honest, I'd rather it was the prequels. I'd rather it was the sequels than seeing the original trilogy. No, it's true. I would have rather that than seeing the original trilogy again. But somehow Palpatine returned with multiball? At least it would have been telling something that hasn't been told multiple times in the past. But people love the original trilogy i full-on thought we were going we even talked about it doing something like they did with jurassic park where it's its own little sub story thing that's based around the movies but not the exact movie and i thought that would have been a good thing but people they didn't do they don't they don't like that no i don't think they did it was because people didn't like it i think it's because they're scared they're scared to try something they're scared to try and do something different that or the licensor told them no it has to be this but i'm i am so supremely disappointed in this, I think it's a complete waste of the license. Even if it's fun to play, which there are things about it that look interesting. I agree with you. Wrapping the toe cable around the AT-AT looks like a fun use of mechanics and stuff, if not necessarily anything special shot-wise. But overall, it's just another version of what we've seen already utilizing this license. I mean there are so many other things that they could have done with this there are so many ways they could have gone there are so many different chances they could have taken you know what they could have done any of the TV series and it would have been better than this they could have done Ahsoka and it would have been better than this maybe maybe not The Apprentice or whatever not The Apprentice the... What was that one? I can't remember. I know what you mean. The Acolyte. Maybe not the Acolyte. It had some bold ideas to it. I love the part where they took their biggest name actor who probably cost them the most money and killed them in the first four minutes of the entire show. That was great. I was all like, dodge this. If you know, you know. Yeah, but it is. It is just one of those things that I'm sure it's going to be a fine game to shoot, and I'm sure it will be a fun game to play. I just think it is the safest, most boring route they could have possibly taken. They could have done anything. Can you imagine the fun they could have done using assets from Andor? Yes, I could. It would have been great. But instead, we got the same thing that we got five years ago. Well, it's a slightly different design. Technically, it'd be seven years ago because it was just an art re-theme five years ago. But still. I mean, they did Mandalorian. Right, and it was different, and it was fun. But they literally did Star Wars in 17. And we had another Star Wars in 92. And don't forget about the Sega one. Oh, yeah, and the Sega one, that was 87? No, no. It was after the 92 one. Was it after the 92 one? Yeah. You're thinking of the Hankin one, which was from the 80s. Oh, I was thinking of the Hankin one. Yeah, which is the one with Vader, the cool back glass, which was otherwise just firepower. Right. Yeah, there's the... So there's the other one. So there were two in the 90s. Yep. There was one in 17 that was remade in 19. And now this. Yes. Telling the exact same story. Yeah. And using some of the same stuff. Basically. It's, yeah. Shoot the testa. Yay. That's great. I'm so disappointed I can tell I don't know if the listener can tell If you can't tell I'm super disappointed The second I saw the trailer I sent a text to Dennis Telling him how disappointed I was I hadn't even seen it yet Because he was busy And I was so disappointed I had so many hopes I had so many thoughts And it's Stern it's going to shoot fine. It's going to be... It's a fan layout. Yeah, it's a fan layout. The absolute worst it's going to be as a shooter is going to be okay. Because they took no chances. They did nothing fancy. And they're telling the same story it's ever been told. It is just flat boring. boring and the art on the cabinets is fine i mean it's like the posters i think it was smart that the le i believe is the one with the hoth art and i think that'll help move units because hoth is the le's were going to sell no matter what eventually eventually but the the side art on the le could have been vader sitting on the toilet and it would have sold out i mean it's a little trickier though because you may not know but the 770 units for the le they're not being sold in europe it's only it's there i don't know what the deal is there's something going on i don't know if it's licensing or what interesting but yeah it's actually not no so the audience is reduced because i am unclear if like canada can get it or not or if it's just us but i've heard it's not going overseas they'll sell it out eventually maybe right away i don't know i mean it's star wars but how many people have like how many how many people have star wars that they just bought i mean star war like so okay man i think i'm gonna trade in my 2020 jeep wrangler for this 2021 jeep wrangler it's all new i mean i was gonna put it quite like that but um okay here's the thing so last weekend when I was recording the pinball show with Zach he had asked me if I was excited about this and I told him I was not then he cried no but he was like but why not concern but why not it star wars and i said well because i just played star wars no no no i i think i said something along the lines of well it's sounding to me from the name that they chose and me being so confident that they're going to want to use assets from the shows and the movies that i'm gonna get the original trilogy in some form i thought maybe it might be a little more focused like focusing on return of the jedi or something that i thought could have been done that i think i mentioned with you was it would have been really interesting like if they went ahead it doesn't really fit as well in my mind with fall fall of the empire but it's all a matter of perspective so what if they had done like rogue one stuff into a new hope that would have been more interesting than this like just focus focus in on the same time period but zoom in more or i want to think there was a rumor at one point where someone was like this is going to be the original trilogy kind of it's actually just going to be empire it just focus all on empire it's something that isn't all all of it well the focus on empire thing tells me somebody saw the side art probably yeah that would be my take so here here would be how i i would describe it i i watched a little bit not very much i've watched a little bit of the gameplay because i think they had about 20 minute gameplay video that was put out there and yeah it i think it's like it's not going to be as you know it shoots fine it's not going to be an objectionable shooter uh might play a little long fan layouts tend to be a little bit easier in general this seems like a game that was designed to do very well on locations and i i think it will do very well of course it will locations i am i am unconvinced that it's going to sell well i i did like the art granted it's like all the other star wars art poster art for the sides and the trans lights the playfield art reminds me of the it reminds me of the yeah the skiing yeah it's just it's just the the it's like the it's like that late uh 2000s stuff that we saw at a stern we got the rectangles with all the characters like the photoshop era it i'm not saying but the just the the compositions like the photoshop era so it's like hey look there's the yoda shot on the far left uh orbit and then we've got the i can't even tell shot the i guess the luke is you know in in that's wedge a wedge okay we got the wedge shot and then we got the 3por2 shot and then we got the londo shot and then we got the han shot and then we got the chewbacca shot and you see like it's it's all just these characters and then we got the big arrow behind all of them and we got the little uh rebellion symbol behind that and it's It's just – it's so – it's so basic. No, I guess that is Luke because there's a thing that says who it is underneath it. It says Luke. It does say Luke. Okay. So Luke – I just assumed they were going to try and bring in somebody interesting. Nobody knows Wedge. Not at the arcade level. Not at the arcade level. So – So, okay. So you got all of that. It's just – so the composition of the play field seems pretty paint-by-number. that'll be the way i'll describe it oh by the way uh yoda at the at the center drain with the flashing eyes i don't like it it's creepy it's creepy it's creepy his eyes don't flash in the movie why would you decide to do this i know he's supposed to be using the force to hold the ball but it looks like he's trying to hold the flippers down instead I mean, yes. So thankfully we are not shooting video today, so they are not seeing your motions. Yeah, I just – I'm so – so I know you're – I'm whelmed. I'm so whelmed. I might be underwhelmed. So you mentioned how disappointed you really were with just the decision on the theming and stuff. And again, like what Raymond does with the rules could make this be a really enjoyable gameplay experience. And the layout is going to be approachable, I feel. So that's not good because some people are really put off by really hard shooters. And John Borg is like the hardest shooter. That's the biggest surprise for me. Of all the designers at Stern, I think John Borg is the only one with consistently difficult layouts. And this one does not look like that. So that's a good change up for him because Turtles was brutal. Yeah. and I thought Guardians wasn't a particularly easy shooter either, but Soulless would be how I would describe it. Oh, I think that's a good one. Soulless. That is a good description. There is nothing particularly special that I see that would make me want to have this game in my home. The art is fine outside of the play field. The features are fine, and I'm not expecting every game to come out with some major innovation. It is impossible for me to see the Jedi Force save and not go, this is Goldeneye, but now I have to manually do it. And unfortunately, because I've just checked the feature matrix again to be sure, and it indicates that the use the force with Jedi save outling magnetic ball saver is not even on the pro. So the pro has to be targeted for arcades because there's nothing in it. I mean, I am – this is the first time I have seen a pro where I struggle to understand what was the major toy that they chose to keep in it. I think I know what it is. It's the lowering of the door to get into the Death Star 2. Oh, Jiminy Christmas. But it's just – I mean, what else are you going to say? That it's the salacious drop target? The sole drop target? No, it's... I just... No. It's just no. But look, you have the joy of the Pro Edition has an Ewok on a speeder bike on the side. I mean, I guess it's good that they kept the spinners. Is the Millennium Falcon on both? I don't know. I don't know. In our internal list, I only included a picture of the good one because I was so disheartened. good in quotes good as in the full featured yeah featured one but it doesn't matter um yeah i this thing better better have better play amazing and it's really going to come down to the rules because otherwise this is a i think this is a pretty forgettable release but you're right but It's got Pez dispenser heads right on the play field. They look better than flat plastics, so I'm going to give them that. It feels a little bit like they deliberately chose not to put anything on a spring this time, which I feel feels a bit forced. Like, I think he wanted things to be on springs. Full-on bobbleheads would have been more enjoyable. Ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket. But after the whole TIE fighter on a spring judgment with the Steve Ritchie version, I think they just chose to avoid it. Just long story short, it's a safe release. It's not – I don't think this is winning any awards, whatever awards are left to be won. I don't know. But it's just – in a way, like corporate-wise, it's like the right answer. That's the thing. It's so corporate. This is like – especially – I know there are life cycles on these things. Like there's a whole development cycle. it wasn't i'm not gonna necessarily say that they had this in the can ready to go for whenever harry potter dropped so they'd be like what's the one license bigger than harry potter that it was star wars i mean there are other licenses you could probably argue bigger than harry potter too but star wars is star wars nothing's bigger than star wars so it's kind of like all right whenever jersey jack releases harry potter the next stern game we're going to drop will be star wars to try and and get sales but again it's got the same number of flippers as the last star wars game did like i like it was a fan layout too i'm just i'm that's the part it's a different designer this one will probably play better because Steve Ritchie's had that terrible plunge but i'm just like i mean sorry to say it just did but i'm just like guys oh my gosh this is such a corporate decision oh it's that that is a very good way to i just i don't i don't hate it i just i feel nothing when i look at this i feel nothing and sometimes i feel like i've been in the hobby too long and i don't feel much with a lot of game releases anymore but it was genuinely interesting to look at and analyze king kong and harry potter and dune i not this right i don't i'm done i don't i have no interest in watching any more video of it i just i don't care yeah i'll play it when it is inevitably on location because it is Star Wars and thus the locations here will buy it. And so be it. And maybe it'll be great. And it would not shock me if it is a better game experience than the last one. But thematically, this scratches nothing. No. I mean, the thing is, I can see a reason to have Star Wars and a Mandalorian. And I mean, this is like, oh, what's this? This is my Star Wars collection. I've got Star Wars and Star Wars and Star Wars. And the Sega Star Wars. And Sega Star Wars. Nobody cares. It's like the people trying to collect the Star Treks. Yeah. Though the Star Treks all had pretty different looks. Yeah. Like layouts. And so do some of the Star Wars. It's the two most recent Star Wars games that are themed around the trilogy. It's just like, again, it felt like it's Star Wars. And I'm not saying it's wrong. We need to make it friendly enough to be in. I'm not saying he should have made it harder. I'm just saying there's – You could have done so much with the theme. That's the thing. Yeah, where's the – where's the – where's the Sarlacc pit not actually look like a Sarlacc pit? Like, I'm not – I get it. The ball has to roll around it, so they're not going to literally put teeth in the thing. But, I mean, like, wait, there could have been, like, a sticker underneath it, like, on the plastic or on the ramp or something. I'm just saying they're like, hey, look, the ball going around this habit trail mimics applying the toe kick. I respect that from a theme immersion standpoint, but that's also nothing. It's like, whoa. No, they bend habit trails all the time. It's not impressive, guys. Let's not pretend it's impressive. It's a smart idea. The Sarlacc pit looks kind of lame, though, by comparison. I don't know. The whole thing is. I don't know. It's just... So now the Death Star doesn't crack open like a Cadbury egg, instead it went in the Kinder Eggs, or whatever they're called. Now we go into it when the little door opens, but that's what the 92 one did, except that one was huge, so it was like a thing. Right. And here it's just a little guy. Don't forget the jump to hyperspace little ramp thing. Yeah. That we haven't seen that. But there I have to say Steve Ritchie's idea of the Hyperloop makes a lot more sense than just, oh, a ramp that goes up. Right. And I get it. The bill of materials wasn't going to support having an AT-AT that falls over and a door that opens on a Death Star and a Hyperloop. But here's the thing. At the end of the day, the entire bill of materials feels like a waste. I just I just I feel nothing about it I I did not think I can't think of the last time I was this disappointed by a Stern release I mean it just I guess it depends I'm thinking about my reactions I would say for me it kind of like because I think this will play competently and i think raymond will have a good rule set i think like i'll enjoy playing this more than john wick no you're not wrong but john wick took chances so i will i mean john wick had a had an interesting playfield art style at the very least yes i didn't love it but at least it was interesting um this it's it's not like it's going to come down to how like for a home experience it would have to totally come down to the rules because i already know this layout and everything else about it is not interesting so um like i guess to raymond no pressure but i mean i'm probably not buying it anyway so don't just like don't worry about don't worry about my my view on it but i'm just saying like it's not this feels like something that would be very readily forgotten yeah it's only claim to fame is that it's the first cornerstone with spike three Yay Spike 3 Instead of using a custom board we use Raspberry Pi I mean yeah What's got a bigger screen with more color depth options Wow I know It's still like not only 19 inches or something So it's not like I'm done with this I can't wait for their next cornerstone Jaws 2 no no their next cornerstone is another star wars tony don't be silly we we haven't seen brian eddy's version right that's what that's what's next it's going to be the brian eddy star wars and it's also going to be the original trilogy they'll all be the original trilogy they want to sell them they'll all be the original trilogy but but people will be very excited about the elwynn one yes which is also the original trilogy well yes i mean i mean but the toy will be interesting yeah yeah they'll have the beggar's canyon toy where they have where they have to bullseye a womp rat in the beggar's canyon toy i wonder would there be a shot where you have to turn off the tractor beam as obi-wan You've got to balance the ball. It's like that Marvel Madness game. Just for the sound effect. It's worth it. Okay. Last thing in the pinball section, Tony. We have an email from Russell D. It's not about Star Wars. Russell goes, Thank you for not writing about Star Wars. Yeah, he did. Good day, boys. I don't know what voice he wanted. You don't have to do voices. You're a grown man. You have to. you're a grown man dennis you got agency you can do whatever you want it's my one thing it's my one thing it's the only thing i have to value why do you think people feel the need to say a pinball machine has good flow it is a term that is way overused even to the point of many saying it about jaws which continuously or continually excuse me stops the ball it makes me cringe every time i hear it especially on a podcast how many games can you think of from the last five years released by stern that don't have good flow it kind of seems pointless it seems kind of pointless to always say it and don't get me started on it's a good shooter love the show you are always a must listen even if i'm halfway through another i will stop russell well thanks russell that's really kind of you um and we probably did we just say it's a good shooter if we did we said it's probably a good shooter yeah okay we qualified it there there russell All right. All right. So good flow. He raises an interesting point in the sense that there. Here's. I'll just open with this. Historically speaking, I've generally viewed pinball design in the in the modern era. Kind of think like. Nineties, maybe 80s, but 90s on in particular, as having two schools of thought, And there is stop-and-go play designed for you to execute precision shots, but not on the fly. And then there are games that were designed to let you keep the ball in motion, and you were rewarded with perpetual motion for doing that. And there were some designers that liked to play in both spaces, and there were a lot that tended to lean one way or another. Steve Ritchie tended to be a very flow-based designer. Pat Lawler was a stop-and-go-based designer. Jon Norris with Gottlieb mostly did stop-and-go. He did a few flow games, but he tended to mostly end up with doing that sort of precision-style setup where you might do maybe a – Lawler was really big about letting you set up a three-shot combo, but then the ball would be stopped and something would happen. So in that regard, I think Russell's correct in the sense that people are misusing good flow. It's like it's all the other cliches that we say, not even just world under glass. They knocked it out of the park. The art pops like no, like we have like a deck of cards of sayings. But the deck is eight cards. it's what and i'm just as guilty of it like no no i'm just i am i've done the same thing i'm just like that's where i i've some of it annoys me too like i i didn't really think about getting annoyed about the good flow thing the art pops pisses me off quite frankly because i'm like because it got to the point where i feel it's really clear that artists are literally going into the art program and just once they get done with the realistic color scheme they just dial the saturation up because that's what that's what y'all want and and somehow somehow you talked about me being an adult and having agency somehow this continues to impress people even though their entire collection is oversaturated it like i guess they have a type and that the color turned to 11 I mean it like again it like in watch collecting when you see someone they're like, hey, what should I get next? I have six watches, and they're all black dials. It's like, I don't know, white? I don't know how we would jump to that. We've got to ease them into it. White, and then maybe blue, and then maybe we'll get you something. But so. All right. So regarding that, can you think of any game from the last five years that Stern did put out that did not have, quote, unquote, good flow? Rush. Oh, that's an interesting one. I was actually going to say turtles. No, that also didn't have good. I don't know. But then this is that because it's a me thing and the shots were all on the on a weird spot. Like if I was making the shots, would it have flowed? Does it count as having good flow if you're bouncing it off the glass all the time? No. Yeah, so John Wick. Okay, that's true. My gosh, the last thing I had something hit the glass as often as John Wick was Galactic Tank Force. Yeah, but we're not allowed to branch out of Stern. He wanted to know Stern. So, I mean, most of them are designed that if you make the shot, you're rewarded with a shot coming back to the flipper. There's been an increased reluctance at Stern, I think in particular, to have shots that go wild. But they do have some. Jack Danger with X-Men, like if you went for the Sentinel head, that was a shot that would put you in danger. Again, Bash Toys in general are like that. So it's not from one of the last five years, but Borg's Well Walker on Walking Dead, that's not a safe shot. Right. Like, even though everything else on that game returns to a flipper pretty easily, the barn and the well walker don't. So it's like, does that game have good flow? I wouldn't describe Walking Dead as having good flow, personally. But many of the shots are designed to let you maintain control. I wonder if it's one of those things where it's kind of just become ingrained. So good flow means I enjoy this game. Yes. And just like, it's a good shooter means I enjoy this game. I think so Good Shooter is definitely even more meaningless which is probably why we said probably Good Shooter In my mind, a Good Shooter is a game where it doesn't feel like you're bricking off stuff constantly For me, a Good Shooter doesn't feel like the designer didn't know what they were doing It doesn't feel like the angles are weird or that the lanes are just that touch too narrow or whatever. Right. So like Turtles, maybe Turtles does have flow. To me, it wasn't a good shooter because I never was comfortable finding where the shots were on the flipper. So to me, it was Brick City. Houdini was Brick City. Yeah. You know, and so, but again, some of that comes down to me and them not doing, like Steve Ritchie is extremely predictable in his designs by his own design, by his own admission. He's like, he had an interview, I think, with Pinball Magazine years and years ago where he explained he keeps the lower third of his games the same for a reason. He wants people who walk up to his games to know this spot on the flipper will achieve this ramp. He feels that's what people want. I mean, that's not a terrible thing to do. So that's why his lower portions of the playfields look very familiar. he keeps them familiar because when he's drifted from that like star war star trek next generation it hasn't gone well like i look the slings were higher up and it did a whole bunch of outlaying feeds and people got annoyed because the game was harder than it looked it was going to be and it was like well he didn't want it to like it was only after extensive play did they realize that those slings were costing people the ball of course operators loved it but anyway so um why people say it is its habit there you go that's the reason all right video games uh continuing on we have another email uh i mentioned it last time because we did part of it richard a had written into us about virtual pinball so today i thought we could briefly uh go ahead and take one of the companies uh that is known in virtual perhaps i was gonna say the most famous at this point it's probably not the most famous i'd say zen's probably most famous but pinball arcade which yeah i think a lot of people who have been in the hobby a little while and were brought in from virtual pinball were brought in from pinball arcade done by far sight studio so a quick summary information that richard has provided us uh pinball arcade was first released in 2012 they had licenses from gottlieb bally williams stern sega alvin g um it looks like they've had over 100 tables released um they funded a few of those tables through kickstarter campaigns i remember a few of those uh in 2018 apparently they lost the rights to the bally williams games and they removed those 50 tables from the library uh using the stern license they did reproduce a few newer games uh including star trek and ghostbusters i remember there was going to be stern pinball arcade and it was right you know it was branded like that uh richard notes what is surprising about this is that ghostbusters was released on pva in 2017 while the real game was still in production. I did not know that. That's interesting. Looking at the update history on Steam, the last Pinball Arcade release was in 2018 with Big Buck, Hunter, and Woe Nelly. They did not directly support cabinet mode or a multi-screen setup, and a third party offered a way to enable cabinet mode for those who wanted to put this software in their virtual cabinets. And they did, I guess, maybe still do have apps on the mobile devices. So their focus has always been the recreation virtually of real existing tables. Richard notes that they had a few other partnerships. A company named Arcuda Pinball put out a full-size cabinet, which did have Pinball Arcade on it. They also offered a Steam code to unlock cabinet mode for Pinball Arcade, and they offer an unlock key for a standalone bundle on their website. So he had five discussion points for us. The first one, we'll just go through them one by one. So the first one Richard asks us is, does Farsight still exist as a studio? He could not confirm that it does or does not. Well, I can't confirm anymore. Confirm even. He was able to confirm. The likelihood of, they might still exist on paper, but I'm not sure that they're actively developing. I doubt it. That's probably the best way to say it. I've not really heard anything from them in forever. I haven't played it in forever. I haven't either. I don't even have it installed. I haven't in years. Okay. His second discussion topic for us on it is why do we think that they failed? He seems to believe, Richard, that it was a lack of diversification. He thought that the loss of the Bally Williams license may have led to their demise. he also thinks that they had a problem by not having any original tables of their own to fall back on, getting back to that diversification but he wanted to know what our perspective is on it my perspective is I think Farsight failed because the revenue generating model wasn't set up in a way that they could make enough money with the output that they were doing that would be how i would describe it now that ties to his it's not necessarily diversification per se like like zen and its original tables like they don't recreate real tables at all the output is what's what matters because you have to this is basically it's not a subscription software so you have to keep selling dlc that's the model right so there are plenty of real life games you could continue to convert into real games but is i don't think they had a big enough team to do it they definitely didn't have the funding to do a lot in advance which is why they had to do those kickstarters right and that was never a good sign because that meant they weren't operating with enough capital to really go into like you don't hear about zen studios needing to do a kickstarter in order to secure the license to family guy to do an original family guy table a part of the reason why they i think they were just so slow at it is given that these were real games yeah they had a starting point but that also meant everyone was comparing the virtual game to the real game like this doesn't play right this isn't shooting right this shot doesn't feel the same like they had to make it feel like the real game an original one it's whatever you come up with so right as long as it works it works so i it's not so much the diversification i just don't think they had an acceptable development cycle um they had to spend you know they had to do big campaigns to get the big licenses they to exploit on the nostalgia like t2 and adam's family and twilight zone like they i think they had a kickstarter all of those um the and fundamentally because their model was built on the nostalgia of the physical games of the past it was going to just get harder and harder because they started with the a-list stuff like look at their when they would do their packs like pack one has got getting you like i don't remember anymore i think it was like medieval madness and attack from mars and twilight so i was like by the time you're like on pack four it's like you're doing alvin g and and gottlieb like people don't care it's like the demand was less and less people remember adam's family from the 90s they do not remember no good gophers as much not as much and they don't remember um teed off even more than that like it's like you were just stepping down more and more so that's my thought what what do you think i i think you hit it on the head and for converting newer games the licensing cost for newer games is just higher uh because you have to get the license because you've got to get the license in multiple levels to get licenses on, like, Star Wars games and the like, as we've been talking about Star Wars so much today. It's just an increasing cost to even start before doing anything. And since they are, as you said, physical tables, if your physics engine is not absolutely perfect, people are going to notice it and they're going to complain. And I do think that started to come up with them more and more. So that's a good add-on that I didn't think about is I don't think they ever refreshed their physics. Zen did. They had pinball FX, FX2, and FX3, and there were major physics changes and improvements. And since they're not replicating real tables, people couldn't go, oh, this doesn't feel right because it's not a replicated table. It's its own special thing. And since they're doing that, they can do whatever they want. and let's be honest at this point zen probably just has ai build their tables anyway who knows they seem to come out with a lot that's been a while since i really watched them all right a third discussion item that he said is uh brought up is why no cabinet mode and and he noted that there was a rumor that gary stern didn't want the cabinet mode but why do you think tony that uh farsight never put in cabinet mode natively uh my guess would be because it lets them get the license cheaper because they don't have to worry about somebody doing a virtual cabin okay my uh my thought is because uh and sorry richard nobody cares oh there's that too like there's there's no money to be made with that how many like we're gonna sell tens of copies to people that weren't gonna other i mean honestly like who who was gonna buy cabinet mode they didn't already own the program it's just nobody cares right it's just there's that is a convenience factor that was not going to make them it's not worth the programmer's time that that's my argument there's that was actually smart of them it's not to invest time on making cabinet mode um discussion item four where are the stern tables are they unable to produce anything else from stern did they lose the license is the license up for grabs i think it was such a worthless waste of time that stern didn't see a reason to continue it i think i think you may be right it was very weird that nothing really like i remember the star trek one coming out I didn't even know about the Ghostbusters one. And then it was just, so I don't know if there was a falling out. No one ever said anything. And I noticed at the time because I was like, I thought this was going to be like a, I thought it was a really clever idea. We're going to do this and we're going to whet the appetite for people to go to the arcade and then play the real one or possibly with, you know, the bigger spenders actually go out and buy the game when they realize, oh, this is actually existing. It's being built right now. I don't know if the development cycle was such that they couldn't. Like they were going to be off the line. That'll be what I'll make up into my headcanon. The games were going to be done being built by the time that Farsight was going to be ready to have the game out. Otherwise, they needed all the designs so early in advance, and maybe there were concerns about leaks or whatever. I bet it just didn't make Stern any money. So why bother? And his last item, he just notes that to purchase the entire collection on Steam right now, when he checked, it would be just over $100. Do you have any thoughts? Okay, sure. I would say it does sound a little – it is high for what you honestly get. Especially missing all the Bally Williams games. Yeah, yeah. Which are the main reason to get it. Yes. What I would say is most people aren't going to pay the $100 because I think most people will not buy all those packs because many of those packs were not worth getting. Anyway, thank you for the discussion on it. Tony, other video games. Well, the big game news, as we talked about last time, was Silksong. Get Good Noob. The Get Good Noob platformer. It was popular. And by popular, I'm talking all the consoles and Steam had server problems when it came out to the point where people were having issues purchasing it because they were just having so many issues because so many people were buying and downloading. Just Steam on day one had over 500,000 concurrent players. Just Steam. That's a lot of nuts. That's a lot of nuts, or wasps in this case. Yes. So I think you can safely say that this was a very popular release. I think even more popular than people probably expected coming from Hollow Knight, which was, while very popular, very niche. This seems to have gotten a much broader hit, probably because so many people were looking forward to it and they got hyped so much. I've heard a lot of stuff about people who are not familiar with platformers or Hollow Knight having problems bouncing off the difficulty. Yes. And that's where my get good noob comment came up because I've seen some online discussions where people have been like, is there anything I can do? Like, I don't want to, other than being told to get good noob, like, I'm just really struggling with this game. Well, and I've heard some people who have a lot of time in Hollow Knight were having problems because this character moves different than Hollow Knight. So it requires some adjustment. but overall the reviews are incredibly positive and it has been doing very well for itself and i think uh the companies that made similar games who are like hey we're gonna wait made a good choice yes uh we don't really talk about it very much but evo was not that long ago And then Evo's owners, RTS, was purchased by a Saudi Arabian company, Qadiyah. It's literally like that megacity project thing that they were doing. I'm not really familiar. Yeah. They were doing this like giant mega city where they were building like a huge like city that was like almost like a wall that was just and it's falling apart for obvious reasons because that's a lot of that's a ton of money for a ton of engineering stuff. But they purchased it. So suddenly Evo is now owned by Saudi Arabia. and this was not very popular with the overall fighting game community. Lots and lots of people pushing for you to go play grassroots games and local tournaments and lots of push to go to try and convert a different tournament to be the big tournament instead of EVO. I don't know if they'll be successful in that. I don't know how they could be successful in that, That Evo's been too big for too long for it to just fall away. Especially over ownership. Yes. If Evo changed practices, they can self-sabotage the way that E3 self-sabotaged. Totally possible. In fact, there was a time where there were so many sexual harassment scandals, I thought Evo was going to self-sabotage. But they purged out the problematic people. Yeah, they need to basically screw up the tournament. That's really the only way. getting mad because someone owns it that you don't want i just like again kind of like the cabinet mode for most people nobody cares yeah and i think that the thing is is is this is like so many things where you listening to where there the extremely vocal minority and the actual minority just couldn get less Unless you see it manifest I assume this is driven by concerns about they'll be less friendly to certain marginalized cultures that are in the gaming space. That's the general concern. But until they do it, you're asking people to presume it will happen. Right. and it's it's tough it's tough to do that yeah and especially for something that's been as big as evo for as long as evo has been big even i mean i'm not a huge fighting game guy i like to play fighting games but i've never really paid attention to evo and stuff but even i've seen the memes and and the the the videos from the giant like super evo moments i usually watch evo weekend i usually catch some games the stuff that i don't usually play i just sit there and and watch it and be like, it looks easy. And they're like, you can't do anything. He's like, it looks easy. I could do that. Oh, look, he's just hitting buttons, man. He's just button mashing. Oh, no, he pressed a button. Woo, button presses. Oh, no, he went, oh, he tried to do 4D. I was like, I don't know what that, yeah, 4D, yeah, don't do 4D. That's stupid. What a loser. 4D. Nintendo had a Direct. Not just any Direct. They had their biggest Direct ever. People were hyped. It was over an hour long. It was insane. Lots of stuff. Again, like I do with most of these type of things, I'm not going to talk about everything. I'm just going to hit the high points. There's too much stuff to talk about everything. Don't leave out Donkey Kong. I left out Donkey Kong. Okay. So we got the first, I'm not even going to call it a trailer. I'm going to call it a teaser for the Mario movie, the new Mario, the second Mario movie. Is it the same as the first movie but with a slightly different layout and a different lead art? Oh, wait. No, sorry. I was back on pinball. Go ahead. How did you know? But, no, this one, it's the Super Mario Galaxy movie. And they used that chance to announce that they were putting out Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 on the Switch and Switch 2. so so do you know is the mario galaxy movie is it the same is it the same mario and luigi just like oh now we're on a new adventure or is it like each one's its own parallel universe and these like they didn't just have the whole experience with i'm gonna guess they're the same i don't know what i'm trying to figure out is at the end of the mario movie there was kind of that little hook teaser with a Yoshi egg in the Brooklyn sewer. What does that have to do with him going into the galaxy? Okay. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's different. They're not to be seen as sequels or prequels. Maybe they're all... Well, certainly it can't be a prequel. Oh, they did a multiverse. It's a multiverse. It's the Super Mario multiverse. This time it's not going to be Chris Pratt voicing. It'll be Chris Evans. It'll always be a Chris. It'll always be a Chris, but that's required. That would actually be worth it, probably. Just for the lulz. Speaking of Yoshi, though, there is a new Yoshi. Yoshi! There's a Yoshi game. Is it like the old Yoshi games? Yeah, it's kind of that whole thing, but you're in stories or books. Or a movie? No, not a movie. Yoshi's too intelligent for movies. He's too educated. What does PETA think of Yoshi? Are they concerned about his treatment in the Mario Kart game? I haven't seen it yet. I think the concern would be you throwing Yoshi into the lava so you could make the jump. Look, that's unfortunate, but progress requires sacrifice. uh uh there is a new roguelite called storm lancers which is very much and uh based on like the old 80s style anime uh and it's like an adventure game almost like a it almost felt like a uh oh like a like a double dragon or a kind of or like like an old school ninja gaidan type side-scrolling adventure thing. So that could be interesting to see. They've got Dencom. It's this weird survival Minecraft, Stardew Valley-like Australia game where I'm just assuming everything kills you. And everything's purpose in life is to kill you because it's set in Australia. Yes, a good assumption. I mean, I think that's just what it is. I mean, it's all death. There's going to be the stage where you have to build the walls and hold off the emus. Drop bears. Drop bears. Drop bears. There's drop bears everywhere. What I consider probably the most interesting, at least to me, thing is they're doing Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, which is like a complete rebuild, new version of Dragon Quest VII, which hasn't been out since the original PlayStation. I played like two Dragon's Quest. The first one, like the third or fourth. Yeah. I didn't get anywhere in any of them. I've played several of them. They've always been fun, but they've been doing all the 2D remasters and stuff. This is like a full-on, more like the Final Fantasy VII style remasters. The Switch, too, is getting the Final Fantasy VII remasters as well. There's a new Kirby game coming out where the most important thing, at least what everyone in my household was excited about is all of the new Amiibos that are coming. Oh, they still do Amiibos? Apparently they still do Amiibos, and this time they've got cars, and the characters sit in the cars, and you can take them out of the cars and swap them so they're in different cars. I don't know. I don't get it. But there was happiness. There was joy. There's the new Hyrule Warriors coming. This is going to be like the third one. It's for people who want to hack and slash like Dynasty Warriors, but they want it to be Zelda-based. They've done those with Gundam and stuff. They have. I liked the Gundam one. The Gundam one was great. It had some of the stupidest moves. It's like, oh, what are you doing? It's like, oh, I'm Gundam Wing. What happens? I hit these two buttons and the laser goes out and I instantly kill like 40,000 things. All of Asaku. I just clear an entire screen. I can do it like every five seconds. They're also getting Dungeon Warrior Origins. That's coming out on Switch 2 as well. We finally got a release date for Metroid Prime 4. You know, the game that was announced for the original Switch before the original Switch launched. I hear it is this year. It is this year. It's the 4th of December on Switch 2. May the 4th be with you. May the 4th be with you. I guess it'd be Deck the 4th, B-Wid. Pokemon Legends, ZA, because they figured, oh, it's Pokemon. People spend as much money as we want them to because it's Pokemon. So they're going to get Bear Mounts. They're going to get Bear Mounts. That's exactly right. They'll get Bear Mounts coming. They decided that Mega Evolutions are cool and everybody was sad that they hadn't brought Mega Evolutions back. So they're bringing Mega Evolutions back, and all you need to do is get the day one paid DLC to get them. Uh-oh. I don't know. That's going to make Pika very happy. My daughter was so angry. She's like, it's a really safe day. You already did it all. It's not DLC. It's just put it in the game. Those arguments died a decade ago. She's got to learn. We don't get to say those things anymore. It's like, if you want the extra special Megas, you've got to pay extra. You got to get the day one DLCs. Then there's the game that has my wife and daughter the absolute most interested. Pokemon. Pokopia. Pokopia. Is that paid DLC too? It's not. It's not. It's Animal Crossing set in the Pokemon world. It's Pokecrossing. It gets worse. Dennis, did you see the Detective Pikachu movie? I did. Okay. Remember like the big fighty bad guy in the Detective Pikachu movie was a ditto who had taken on human form? Yes. In this game, you play a ditto who takes on human form to make a farm and stuff to do on an island for your Pokemon friends. And it's got the ditto face. Apparently, my household is getting two Switch 2s to play this game. Nintendo knows what the people want. At least I know what Christmas gifts are going to be this year. Yeah, Christmas will be easy. That's nice. I just... Oh, my gosh. I just... I'll be honest. Combining Pokemon and Animal Crossing is something they should have done years ago. They're just going to print money. They're just going to print money. Yeah, but they should have done that with all sorts of, like, Pokemon. We should have had Call of Pikachu a long time ago where it's FPS. And it's like, get ready for battle, soldier. And each class is a different Pokemon, and they have their power. Like Squirtle can put out, if someone gets caught on fire from an incendiary grenade, Squirtle can put them out. I read, once upon a time, an extremely dark fanfic. set in the Pokemon universe where Pokemon, like all these kids sat out at 10 and only a few of them ever came back because most of them were killed during Pokemon battles because it was evil and Pokemon were evil. And the whole thing was just, I mean, it was like Apocalypse Now for Pokemon was how it was written. I mean, it was dark and the main character was like their friends were dying left and right and they were barely surviving and it was just a whole thing. See, there's like two or three games in that. There's a bunch of games that can be in there. I mean, they're getting Resident Pikachu. Resident Pikachu because they're getting Resident Evil games on the Switch too now, so they might as well make a Resident Evil version of Pokemon. See, the dude. Did you see, like, half-dead, half-mummified, cybernetically enhanced Pokemon chasing the characters down? Everybody's running around with ARs and stuff. So, yeah, it is 100% just their ticket to print money. They get to do it. And this wasn't in the direct But it did come out as part of the whole ongoing lawsuit saga with Pow World Somehow Nintendo got a patent That from every lawyer thing I've seen talking about it Nobody can figure out how they got the patent Because it is like the broadest patent ever Their new patent gives them a patent for the gameplay mechanic of summoning a sub character to let it fight another mm-hmm it is written so broadly that any game that uses a summoning mechanic could technically be violating Pokemon's patent. Final Fantasy's got a summoner? Oh, yeah. Pokemon did it first. Please ignore that you've been doing it since the 80s. No, Pokemon did it first. Dungeons and Dragons? You can summon stuff? No, you can't. Pokemon's been doing it first. What do you mean you created summons in the 70s? No. That's a Pokemon patent. It's written broadly enough that you calling a support squad it in in call of duty would be a violation because you summoned you summoned so you summoned a supporting character i don't know what is your favorite pokemon character not game oh my favorite pokemon character that would be probably swine up that whole that whole line swine-up, pillow swine. It's this fun little ground ice type. Mine's Pikachu. Wow, man. That setup was probably a little too long. That was a lot of setup. You're going through, giving a really honest answer and I'm just like, I just need to say Pikachu. That was so dad-joking. I didn't even know you had kids. It was Pikachu. It's their favorite. It's their favorite. It's their favorite. It's their favorite. I don't see how this – if they try to enforce this patent, they are going to end up so buried in court. I don't know how – and I don't know what the outcome of it would be. Like I said, I've watched like two or three different lawyer groups talking about it on YouTube and stuff, and nobody thinks it's a defendable patent. Right. So I guess that ends up – I assume they use the patent against Pal World, and Pal World brings it up in court and cites – Yeah, because that's the assumption. But literally other games that are of similar genres that came out around the same time – I mean, this would consider the Digimon games, the Yu-Gi-Oh! games. Those would be all ripoffs, which technically some of them might be. But it's just written so broadly. Yeah, I haven't seen anything that thought that the patent office got it right. No. But I haven't seen a whole lot either. I haven't really been looking for it. Yeah, it is a rather insanely – like I said, anything that summons a support character of any type would be, you know, suable. Because the Pokemons, nobody's ever summoned a character before. before Pokemon did it. Nope. Let's see, Pokemon came out in 97. Pokemon's very innovative. I think it was 97. And, uh... Let's see, Final Fantasy had summoners since, like, the 80s. Yeah, Final Fantasy IV had a summoner character. And that's, like, just a summoner character. The ability to summon in certain creatures to help you. It was, like, run from the beginning. Was it in 1, or was it in 1... Or was it started in... It might have been... It was not in 1. So it might have been later than that. I'm trying to think if it was in... 2 was very weird. It may have been in 2, though. The actual 2. The actual 2. Right. Not American 2, which is 4. Which is 4. It is definitely in 4. I don't know if... I don't... I can't remember if I've played the actual 2. I've played the actual 3. The actual 2 is, on almost everyone's list, the worst Final Fantasy game that was ever made. And I will confirm this. But it had some good music. It's Final Fantasy. Of course it had good music. Yeah, it just, the mechanic, it just doesn't feel good. Yeah. Compared to like every other mechanic. You know, they've always played around with different mechanics, and we've all had different. Yeah. You know, like the draw system, the materia system, all that. Yeah, I didn't like the draw system. I did like the materia system. This one got rid of the traditional, like, job leveling progress. It was just very different. It was innovative. It was just very different. Anyway. Everybody's favorite, the Blitzball system or the Meku Meku dress-up system. Yes. Where you change your clothes and you get different powers. Powerful clothes. It's the power of clothes. The power of clothes compels you. Yes. To not make a game that infringes on Pokemon. Yes. Be careful. Be very careful. But that's what I've got. That's video game-wise this time around. Okay. Well, if people want to reach out to us, they can email us at eclecticgamerspodcasts at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcasts. They can also support the show at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers for as low as a dollar a month. Or available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we will be back in just under two weeks. Yes. Because we're going to record a day early because of Tony's trip. When Dennis doesn't want to get up and record at 6 a.m. so I can make my flight. Dennis is a loser head. Well, Dennis wants to sleep. Just wake up at 3 a.m. like normal people do, Dennis. I know I should, but I'm being bad. It's easy. Wake up at 3 a.m., lift some weights, go do a four-mile walk. Get your day started right. Just my standard. Just what you do. It's basically my standard, but just later in the day. Okay. Well, I guess that's it. Cool. We'll be back then. Bye, everybody. See ya.