All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy Elodie Torby, pinball nuts rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, miffed with syrup and honey, hopes to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, Welcome back Pinball Nerds, episode 523 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert and on today's show I am super stoked to have the one, the only Knaeda, of course, Chris of Knaeda's Pinball Podcast, the six-time award-winning host who just most recently got his sixth Twippy for the best pinball podcast in the frickin' galaxy. He's also probably the most provocative strident, as he would call himself, and to be honest, the sometimes oh-so-painfully honest host himself. Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you and it's the only podcast where you now have to call for the price so I'm happy to be here. Oh my god so uh... We'll talk about calling for price later on. Yes, yes, yes, yes and don't worry I will never make you call for price if you want to buy coffee, comics or cards off me I always tell you straight up what it is so Chris... Oh that's awesome. That's the way it should be right? You should know how much you're going to pay. I don't understand it. We'll talk about it. It's the weirdest thing ever. Like just tell people what it costs. Exactly. Now for those of you who might be new listeners to the show, especially since I've moved over to the Poor Man's Pinball Network, you may not know that almost two years ago, to the day, I tried to have Chris on my show. And at the time I had like 11 messenger windows open with four or five people telling me why I shouldn't have you on the show. I had two or three people telling me they wouldn't listen to the show anymore if I did that and wouldn't support me anymore. And then I had two or three people saying, no, you got to have this guy on the show. He's the only one who talks, tells, will tell you the truth about his opinion about a pinball machine. So I'm so glad I finally got you on here. I took a little bit of a leeway for, you know, I I basically I did I know you've done a couple like just a short hiatus for a month or two I took a whole frickin year off but ever since I've came back I was excited to have you on the show and I was planning to have you on the show I think in the fall when I returned and then Drew of course had you right here on the poor men's pinball network so I didn't want to replicate a guest for you know all the tribes members and all the awesome listeners who listen to the poor men's pinball network but I finally got you back on the show and the first thing I wanted to ask you about Well, it's a bit of an elephant in the room and I just want to squash the beef crisp before we move on any further. Sure. You've been calling me Orbiter Albert for like three years. Now, do you do this because you like to have your own little nickname for me or do you really not know that my nickname is Orbit Al because my name is Al and I like to hit orbit, so Orbit Al, Albert. Ah, well I didn't know that, so apologies for calling you Orbiter all these years. I mean I think it's also fitting, so my bad. So Orby. Yeah, I mean Zach started calling me Orby back in the day, you know, and then I think Franchi and Jack Danger both call me Alby, which I think that's totally cool. It's only those two guys and my cousin Brandon who call me that. I really don't give a shit what you call me. I'm completely open to any names. You know, unless you call me a C-grade pinball podcaster, then I'll get upset and say, no, I am a C-plus grade podcaster. I don't know. The numbers don't lie. No, anyway, like, I'm happy to call you Orby. So Orby, what's shakin'? You wanna talk TPF? Yes, dude. So I wanna know, first of all, give me like a vibe check. A lot of these people listening were at TPF, but for everyone who wasn't there, first day Hey, Kevin. Hey, Kevin. What was the vibe like in comparison to other years at TPF? Yeah, it was awesome this year. Obviously, I think we're now well past the COVID fears and you don't see many masks and everyone's back in action. So I think everyone had a great time. There was a lot of new games, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of energy. It was as exhausting as a show can be, TPF, but in a good way. And we'll explain why. Okay. It is great. So I know that one of the things you like to do when you go there is you like to do your steak dinner there at Perry's and treat kind of, you know, all the Kaneda fans. How did that go? That was great. I had to pay for all my votes, you know, as they say. That was great. You know, look, I think the main point of a show like TPF is just to hang out with everybody, right? Right. The truth is you can't really experience the games in a good way at these shows. All the games are on at the same time. They're so loud. The lines are long. So when you're there, you kind of lap the show floor a few times, but then you end up just wanting to grab beers and food with your friends. And I think that's what makes the show so much fun. You know, we're so used to talking to each other on Facebook, on Pinside, if you're not banned. rout bunnezoomverylendace standsuiqeoygoastoreverbte here I go enjoy the show so for my very first TPF, I don't think I'll do the I'm a fan of the tournament. For my very first expo, I don't think I'll do the tournament. I think I'll just be there for the beer, the burgers, the babes, you know, the having fun, the hanging out with people. I'll be there for all that kind of stuff and I'll probably skip it for once. I'll be just like Kaneda and be a non-tournament player. Well, and yeah, and the tournament's like upstairs. I always feel bad because like when you see where they have it, you really are disconnected from the show. And I think, you You know, what's also a shame is there's no way for passerbys to sort of walk over and see the tournament really because it's all so relegated to a small area. So I think, you know, when you go to TPF, I would just mingle and drink beer or whiskey. Yeah, or whatever. You know, it doesn't really matter but just have fun, get out there, see everybody. Did you, I got to ask, did you get to hang out with many of the people, many of the tribes people? Did you see Ian or Drew? Yeah. They came to the happy hour. We were sitting in the same row at the Twippies and I'll say this, they are the most lively bunch in all of pinball. I wish every row at the Twippies was the tribe. Well, no, we need more of it. You know, I was thinking about that too. It's like when you go to the award show, it's a little docile for how, you know, how excited people usually are and I think they took the bar away from the Twippies so I think maybe I'm sure they need to get the whole room a little bit more boozed up, but the tribe is so much fun. You guys have, I think, the most fun out of anybody, next to the Kaneda Club members, that's for sure. Hey, I'll take the second most fun of any of the tribe members. So I can't wait. Someday I'm going to be in that row and perhaps, you know, not really an elephant in the room, let's say the mouse in the room. I don't know if you're going to stick with this, but I did hear you say in one of your acceptance speeches or live streams that you may choose to not run next year. Is that, are you gonna, right here on the Pinball Nerds Podcast, are you gonna, you know, is that gonna happen or are you gonna run again? Look, after winning six years in a row, I think it would be nice to let someone else take it and for myself to present the award next year. So we'll see. I mean, obviously my fan base might not enjoy that because they like to see Kaneda win, but I think it's time to let someone else have it. I also think they should introduce a best new pinball podcast category, you know, to sort of incentivize new people to the hobby. And that way you can mix it up. And also, I don't know, did you see someone did this like weird fake award show where it was best short form and best long form pinball podcast? And I thought that was interesting, too, because, you know, my shows definitely short form, it's about 20 to 30 minutes, I get right to the point. But most other shows are over an hour. So it might be interesting. So that way you could break it up. So we're not I'm not all competing on the same level. I do like that. If they ever give away a Twippy for the best solo podcast, not behind a paywall, in Canada, I might even have a chance at second or third. So I'm very excited for that. I don't care if I ever win a Twippy. I don't edit my shows. I know when I listen to your shows, the sound quality is top notch. I'm using an $80 mic. You're probably using a $400 or $500 mic, I'm assuming. You also do fantastic editing. You can pick really cool songs that make sense for the shows. And speaking of, I haven't listened to your shows, I haven't been part of the club in about a year now, but I want to announce here on the show, I'm going to join the club today. Oh, awesome. And Albert, you might want to wait until two more people join because Mr. Kim Mitchell is giving $200 to number 600, because we're right at $596 right now. But I'm going to lose a few at the end of the month, because once that huge $5 bill Also, at the end of this show tonight I put together a point-based survey of the top Gloer pinball teams in the 12 years of construction, spices the wind and heat is having more momentum all around the world. Who better to help than one of the top boxes of shocked people's handmade inflation reports bats may get in their play. I'm a fan of Pinball and I would listen to it and sometimes I would listen to your show and your thoughts and your reviews of a particular game or just anything that's happening in pinball and then I find I would find I would either partially regurgitated or it would swear it would sway my views so I think what I'll do is I'll just like wait a couple days typically until I like until after I have mine out because I did find some Sometimes, you know, I wasn't necessarily copying you word for word, but maybe I was really excited about a new thing in pinball and then you kind of like shone the light on why it was sucky. I'm not going to use the term negative Nancy or Debbie Downer, but, you know, sometimes you would do that and then I go, yeah, maybe he's right. Maybe this machine sucks. Maybe it's way overpriced. Maybe I don't want to buy it, right? I don't want to buy it, right? Well, look, everything's overpriced. But I like things and I don't like things. And look, I think, you know, when you look at anything we're observing, right, there's only so many different angles you can take on this hobby. So I totally get it. Like if I come out and say, hey, Galactic Tank Force doesn't have any interesting mechs in it, it's hard to get that thought out of your head. Yeah, I know. And it does it, by the way. It does it. We'll talk about it. Well, anyways, I wanted to thank you so much Thanks so much for coming on the show. You know what, the two things when I'm listening to you from time to time that rub me the wrong way are that I do think from time to time you are not humble enough I'll say, but I think you would agree with that. And the other thing is yes, from time to time maybe you're a little too much, you know, a little too harsh. But that being said, if you did a pinball podcast or a Kaneda livestream and you were like hmmm, I'm not sure if I really like, like if you weren't really bringing it home, If you weren't really pressing the issue, nobody would care, nobody would listen, and you wouldn't keep winning Twippies, right? So you have to kind of say it with some pizazz. You can't just lay down and be like, oh, I don't like this, or I kind of like this. When I used to podcast like that and I was wishy-washy, I would get like 50 to 100 listeners. And now that I just straight up tell my opinion, even though people disagree often, I get a couple more listens. I don't get 5,000 like when I was on your show, oh my god, but I get a little bit more. How do you walk that line between being open and honest, because you know that's what the Kaneda fans want, and also at the same time not being too negative or too down? Oh, I don't even care. I just be myself. I mean, that's the key to why I still do the show after all these years is I don't hold back because I don't really care if the manufacturers get upset. I don't care if distributors are mad at me or fanboys who order the game are mad at me. What I love about doing my show, it really is the only creative outlet in my life. energy sports, aesthetic mobility, et cetera, fitness, every single day, stretch back James Krenner, Matt Wertheim, Kevin catastrophic clever, attributive journalism, belongs at the You know, they're getting some kickbacks, they're in it for, to help their buddies out at the companies and their distributor buddies and I'm not like that. I think we need to get more for the amount of money we're paying for these games right now. Do you disagree? No, I mean, especially at these prices, like I mean, I have a $6,000 Toyota Corolla sitting in the old gravel parking lot here at Homesteadia and like, you know, you can't even get a Stern Pro for that, you can barely get a home edition for that nowadays, right? It's three Mandalorian toppers on your vehicle. Isn't that crazy? It's insane. Put three toppers on top of your car and you double the price of your car. That's absolutely insane. And another good way to look at that is, you know, how many, you know, $20,000 pins have came out recently between Elwin's Bond 60th and that's $30,000 Canadian. I paid $87,000 for my house with seven acres of land. Like, that's three pinball All of these games are pinball machines for the cost of my house that I can live in for the rest of my life. Like it's, to me that's insanity. Yeah. However... Yeah, no, yup. Well I was, I was just gonna say the great part is, is that like you always say, hey, if you can afford it and you wanna buy the pin, go for it. Good for you if you have that type of disposable income. But at the same time, if you just want to go play the game, you can still find it on location pretty much, you know, most of these games other than Bond 60th and maybe just like, you know, the highest caliber level of GTF or whatever. It's funny because, with only about two and a half minutes right now, there's nothing as time-like as toy pucks! It's super impossible to not say an affordably uneventful amount of money to buy came out there before I arrived into the store, because a toy put was not quite in their specul You're in the wrong fucking industry. Go over and buy sports cards or comic books that can go up 10, 20 times the value, or stocks even, or crypto. Well, maybe don't buy crypto, but... Don't do that. Well, let's go ahead. Well, I think most people, Albert, they buy their games to enjoy them, but they also know that to get new games, they might want to move that game on someday. I think what people are not going to be used to is losing thousands of dollars after a year of ownership, right? Since I've been covering this hobby, you know, circa like 2014, 2013, basically people would buy a game and they would lose a few hundred bucks, right? Maybe 500 to a thousand at most. Now, now you can buy a brand new Jersey Jack Toy Story Collector's Edition and you're losing $4,000 in six months. Like, that doesn't feel good because if you just wait, you could get the same exact game in six months and save $4,000. I mean, who wouldn't want to do that? Exactly. I would. The numbers don't lie, right? So if we were to look at every pinball machine that's been released in the past, I'll even say two decades, let's even say since the year 2000, maybe one in 10 to one in 15 of them, the LE version of it, slowly climbed up in price. But like, you know, 90 to 95% of these pins are either going to just maybe kind of hold their value or slightly decrease. And a lot of people said to me, what the hell are you doing? I bought Pat Lawler's masterpiece, and I'm kind of joking here, but Rollercoaster Tycoon for $5,000. I played the shit out of it for two years, put just under 1,500 plays on it between me and my family, and got way better at pinball, enjoyed the game. I mean, it was a little bit too easy, so it played for too long, but the point is I sold it for $4,800, and people are like, Oh, you could have got an extra 300 for it or something and made money. And it's like, you know what? It cost me $200 to have one of my favorite pinball designers, pinball machine in Orbeez Arcade for two years and have both my sons both get better at more modern pins because it was our only modern pin that we had. And I just, it was a blessing. Like I enjoyed it, you know? And for me, $200 to have, you know, an awesome toy in your house for a couple of years and play with that's not losing money. Every time I played a game of pinball machine at home, it saved me from going out and playing You can go to the movie with your family for under $50 nowadays. I think more than 1 in 10 Stern LEs have absolutely held their value or gone up. What's helped all the older Stern LEs is now that they are making a thousand and games are 13,000 brand new. If you have like a one of 500 LE, which you originally bought for $7,500, you're sitting pretty right now. Right. Those games are never going to go anywhere south of what you bought it at. So I think the market is very interesting right now. But let's do this. Would you want to, let's go down the games at Texas. You want to talk about what's new and what we think about each? I wanted to. Which one do you want to start with? I wanted to start with what I consider probably the pooper, the stinker of them all, which Yeah, I haven't played it yet, but did you get the chance to play Queen? Oh, yes, I did. Okay, give us the Kaneda full rant. Well, no, I mean, look, when I walked up to the game, I think Queen looks like a game that was designed and made 10 years ago, which it was. This is an Andrew Highway game. This is the second, or I guess his third game, right, after he did Full Throttle, Alien, and then Queen. We're going to be talking about the game that was released in the early 2000s. It was a game that was designed by my friend Dave Sanders and he worked on Alien. It just feels like a game that if it came out 10 years ago, the reception to it would have been much better. It's currently in the market. The flippers are weak. The shots are not that interesting. The code is not that interesting. Everything about it just feels sub-par. And the thing that's not sub-par is the game is around $10,000 or more, depending on the trim level. And I just think it's a day late and a dollar short. And I don't think they're going to sell many of them. And I think there's no way to get people excited about it. And I don't even know like how many they're making. This game was, remember it was like revealed last August and then they didn't get them out and now it's out again. And amongst all the new games, I think Queen and Spinal Tap will be the two games that people just forget about pretty quickly. Well, I already forgot about Spinal Tap. It's not even on the list, Chris, so you're right about that. But I don't even think it's out. Let's give, let's, if you could, just for fun, because I kind of have these ranked how I'm guesstimating just from live streams. Give me a letter grade for this I know you like doing that I know in our overwoke society everyone just gets a pass but I curious like would you give this a D a C It sounds like you somewhere in that range What would you give Queen Yeah, I think Queen gets like a C- if A is the best. I think some games fail to execute on the design, right? So then you got to give some Ds in that, but I think it's like a C, C-. But again, you know, with these prices, I don't think anything that's less than a B plus, A minus, you would even consider buying. So a C minus to me in pinball is a failing grade if you were to ask me. But yeah, I give that a C minus. Okay. I think moving next up on the list would probably be Scooby. What do you think of Scooby? Oh, wow. Well, Scooby Doo is interesting, right? I think it's a game that is Spooky's best shooting game to date. It's an easy game to shoot. I mean, I hopped on the game and my first game playing it, I think I had to work to get the ball to drain. And so it, cause it's like a fan layout and the shots are wide open and it's like, there's not a lot of left to right action to throw the ball into the out lane. So you're really shooting up the middle and you know, in that fan layout style and it's always returning the ball to the flippers. So it's easy. Now look, here's the caveat. As I was talking to people at In The game looks gorgeous, it's a beautiful art package, it's a great theme for Spooky, it's just a game that's gonna, I think, be divisive because of how easy it is. So would you agree with me? Like my thoughts were this is probably their best pin that we've ever seen from Spooky, maybe arguably TNA, but I think between the artwork, the callouts, and just everything else with Scooby, I think it probably is their best pin ever. Would you agree? I probably would put Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty, okay. I always forget you had that. Yeah, no, simply because Rick and Morty from a theme standpoint and a call out and a fun factor and you can't get to another end of the spectrum. Like Rick and Morty is fast and brutal. You're holding on when you play Rick and Morty where Scooby Doo is like you could eat a sandwich with one hand and play the game with the other. It's kind of like that. But you know, again, but this is what's good about pinball. And I think sometimes we have a tendency to try to look at each game in a vacuum. But it's a good thing that a company can have a portfolio of products, right? You could have the fast and brutal Rick and Morty. And you could also go buy a TNA remake right now, right? I don't think they're sold out. And or you could buy a Scooby Doo, depending on your skill level or what kind of game you're looking for. So I think if I were to rank Spooky's games, it would go probably Rick and Morty, then Scooby Doo, then probably TNA. The older, you know, the older Spooky games, they were arguably difficult games from a design standpoint to get into. And I still think Halloween and Ultraman are like a lot of stop and go in that game that I'm not a fan of. So I actually think, you know, games with more flow and speed are more enjoyable. I quite agree. I think Halloween is probably one of their, will go down as probably one of their worst games just because, like I stated before, I'm a decent tournament player. You know, I've played over 200 IFPA tournaments in my life and like, you know, I managed to qualify for A Division at Pinburgh and those in-lane lifters still get me every time. Like, you know, I look up at the screen for half a millisecond and all of a sudden it's coming out of the in-lane lifter and it's gone. And they're tough. There's a lot of rejections from a lot of the shots on Halloween. I don't think Halloween's gonna go down as even in their top five to be honest. But give me a letter grade for Scooby and then let's move on. Yeah, Scooby I think is like a solid B to B-. Okay, that's fair enough. So okay, so far I've got them in the right order. Now here's where you might disagree, which is totally cool. Cool. Next up is Scott Danesi's new P3 Multimorphic game, Final Resistance. So did you get to play it? Just one game, so I'm really not that qualified to give feedback on the game. But look, here's my thing, and I'm going to be candid. I have a real difficult time with the Multimorphic platform because I just, I see it all. Like I see what he's going for. I see the strategy behind it. I've been following this platform for over a decade. I still don't even think they have 400 games out in the world after 10 years. Right. And I, and my concern is, is, and I heard that Jerry's going to release another game this year. And so at what point is he going to get manufacturing to catch up with the games? Because most of the Weird Al's have not even been shipped or built. Now you've got another game and then you're going to release a whole nother game. And so I think the real story I would love to hear is why did Scott Danesi move over to Multimorphic? Why didn't he say he why didn't he stay with Spooky Pinball? It's probably a story there. There's probably some monetary reasons why he switched. The game is great, but for $11,700, I just can't imagine that's where I would go with my money. Just because if I commit to the platform, I'm then saying I'm going to have to probably buy some of the other kits, whether it's Weird Al or Heist or Cannon Lagoon or whatever it's I just don't want to commit that much. I don't want to have like $15,000, $20,000 in a multi-morphic platform. Because what happens when you go to sell that? You've got to find someone who wants all of it and then talk about that person doesn't exist. I don't know. What are your thoughts? Well, I agree with most of what you're saying. I think that what Jerry is trying to do is very commendable. I'm glad that someone is taking a little bit of a different take with it. I do agree with you, of course, if the only pinball machine by them that you wanted was Final Resistance, even if you're a massive Scott Danesi fan and you buy all of his pins, you're not going to go out there and spend 11k plus another, you're not going to go spend 15k US to go get this. But let me ask you this, if you already owned a P3, wouldn't Final Resistance be like a no-brainer for three grand to get? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you have to get it. I mean, once you own a P3, you kind of would be silly not to get the new games because then why do you own a P3, right? It makes absolutely no sense to buy a P3 like just for Weird Al because the whole point is that it's a modular system, right? To pop games in and out. So yeah, absolutely. I think you'd buy the game. And also look, I'm gonna say it right now. Now, this is the single most impressive mechanism out of all the new games is the mechanism in Final Resistance. And I also want to say this, the crane in the heist and the mechs in Weird Al, Jerry is putting more mechanical wow into his games. Even though he's only doing a top one third of the play field, he is trying and being more creative with mechanics Then every other single pinball company's game that just came out and I think that is an embarrassment to the other companies that this seems to be the only company that's trying to engineer mechs nowadays. Where are the mechs in all the other games? Where are they at? That's original, that's creative, that's big, that's... they don't exist. I don't see them anywhere. He's got that big tank firing balls like it's it's action-packed it's it's it's awesome it loads the ball I could just look look at that compared to the tanking galactic tank wars we'll talk about okay that's more impressive is that next okay so to give a score like multi more big I you know I would give it like if we were to look at it in a multi morphic score I again say B- but it's a little harsh sounding but again like if you have a multi morphic you would definitely I definitely get it. Is it enough to buy the platform for people who love TNA? Probably not because TNA was half as much money. But now that TNA new is like nine grand, maybe, right? Maybe go in and pay a couple thousand more and get this modern version of TNA. I agreed with your Queen and your Scooby grades. The Final Resistance one, I think that it was, I think it's probably a B+. I don't know if it would be more fun or not than Heist or Weird Al. Those three I still have to play and I can't wait to try them. I do hear what you're saying with the manufacturing issues. To me personally, every time that Scott Danesi does a sound package, the music and the sounds and everything that's happening in it is so cohesive. I think that that's a huge advantage, especially if you're not playing it somewhere loud like TPF. Here's the thing, and I watched the stream last night, and I just want to say for the record, and again, none of us come to these games without bias. And I want to say that American Pinball has done the worst job launching this game, revealing it, and now the first stream that we ever get, it's not even officially from them, is in a loud arcade. I'm not a fan of the game, but I'm not against the people streaming it, but you gotta be kidding me that this company, after making this game for two years, is gonna showcase this game in a stream and not even give us their own stream. Why did they give this game to Arcade Hollywood to do absolutely nothing with other than make a terrible trailer that turned everybody off to the game because you used all those full motion video clips, which isn't even the way you would showcase the game because those clips aren't like predominant. I'm going to be up on the screen, you know, so that's my thing is I came at this game super excited. The launch underwhelmed all of us. The game leaked early. We all saw it. So here's the thing. I finally get up to the game and I want to say like when you walk up to the game, it's beautiful. It's colorful. The light show is amazing. You know, that's the new thing in pinball. Light shows are the new toys, right? The light shows amazing. And then I was, you know, focusing on the shot s. And I was focusing on the magic in the game and where would the magic come from. And I want to say the game shoots fine. There's nothing wrong with the way the game shoots. It's a little bit of a stop and go game. There were some air balls on some of the games I played. Some of the games like the playfields were so dimpled by all the air balls hitting the playfield off of that, you know, center targets that you shoot up the middle with the tank. I just think the game is all over the place. And I think it's really hard even after playing it like 20 times and watching the stream last night. It's all over the place. Like you've got a game about tanks and ice cream and then franchise marketing it like it's a 1950s sci-fi movie which it's not and then you've got dubstep music and even when you watch the animations they're all over the place. Like some stuff is full motion videos, some stuff looks like it's 1990s like done on a computer. I don't know really what to think about this game, but I'll say this Albert, what I think is happening is we had high expectations for Dennis Nordman and Zofia Ryan, you know, we were going to get some Bally Williams magic put back into pinball, and on that front, I'm severely disappointed by the lack of mechanisms and magic in this game, and just putting three magnets in and stand up targets and aliens that pop out of tanks, no. Where's the mech? Where is the mech that really took some engineering creativity to figure out? There's way more mechs in Oktoberfest and Houdini, both of which are far more packed than Galactic Tank Force. They just don't look as pretty, and they don't have a light show. But I just don't see the two to three year in the making game. I think Nordman's been wanting to just make this game for a decade, and it kind of feels like it. Go on. Hit me. Okay, I gotta push back a little bit here because I, first of all, I 100% agree, I am completely clueless as to why they have Steve Bowden working for them, one of the top tournament players in the world who could have really shown us this game. I know 15 minutes into the livestream someone said, guys, are we gonna get to see more than three flips? Like, it is a brutal frickin' game. up The middle post was up during the defense mode for your first few shots on the tank and it hit right between the flipper and the up post and it shot up in the air and hit the glass and came down and went down. So that can be fixed with code. Whether or not that's going to start chipping or smashing glass, I have no clue. But I just want to give them props where props is due because I will agree, I don't know if discombobulated or not cohesive is the best way to explain it. The storyline is more off the rails than one of my friggin' solo podcasts, okay? So, the story mode's all over the place. I don't know who's good, that, that, you know, crazy lady who's calling people losers, is she the bad one, is the aliens the bad ones? Thank God the coder gentleman who was on there last night, he did explain it a bit better, so now we figured out the aliens are trying to steal the cows that make the best ice cream ever. And if just Steve Bowden or someone had said that, then we'd know it. Can I ask you a question? So here's my issue. When you walk up to the game, you don't know any of that. Right. It doesn't tell you that. No? It doesn't say like, hey, hey, tank commander, like, the galaxy's greatest ice cream is under attack. We need, like, there's nothing, nothing. You don't have ferret whispering over your shoulder when you're playing the game. And that is a colossal fail. You can't have an original IP game and not find a way to do the storytelling properly. Go on. I totally agree with you, Chris. I will never get the two hours back when I rewatched the Texas Pinball Fest, 52 minutes of AP, and I kept waiting, just, guys, tell us who's the good guy, who's the bad guy. Are we in the tanks and we're shooting at the cows and the aliens, or are we shooting at the tanks, the people trying to come and kill us? Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please subscribe, like, and leave a comment. I really appreciate it. I will see you in the next video. Take care! I'm talking about Pinball Dude. My listeners don't want to hear you go off topic talking about ice cream. Full circle. And here we are and they're talking about fudge and they're talking about ice cream, stuff that you put on ice cream and the different toppings and it's like, I get it's supposed to be hokey but it also has to make sense. You have to tell me what's happening and who's the good guy and who's the bad guy and what do these clips mean. I'm not going to use the term that you love so much that it's growing on me but after watching the live stream I I wanted to try to come at it. I watched your livestream last night. I will say it was extra spicy, a little extra strident. I don't know if you had a little extra sake before it or something, but I will say this. The light show is by far the best light show they've ever done, and I like those weird like pin stadium things they have along the side. The sound effects, the sound effects, they're leaps and bounds from the crazy like air to hot wheel sounds and stuff, so that's The shots actually look the most interesting of any AP game ever. The code seems like it's still very, very early, but they said they're working on that. So I think the code seems fun and it's very reminiscent of an 80s Bally game. The artwork is... Let me ask you a question. What the hell have they been coding for two years? What the hell have they been doing? I think they were trying to work on the ice cream sprinkles. Legends of Valhalla was a game that was already done. They just kind of polished it. What have you been doing? I do hear you. The code's not super awesome. I don't get it. Like, when you have one game, you gotta come out of the gate the way Jersey Jack does with like pretty much code complete. You can't come out of the gate like this and then I gotta buy a game because they don't have the coding team that Stern does. Like, there's no confidence. I don't have any confidence that American Pinball is gonna just like make a game that's, you know, gonna keep getting better and better and better. They just don't have a, they don't have a past precedence for that. But anyway, go on, I cut you off, but I just- That's okay, they don't, they don't have a Raymond Davidson, they don't have a Tim Sexton, they certainly don't have a Lyman Sheets, rest in peace. But I do think that because it's more of a simplistic game, the coding's not going to be that complex to, you still have to get it right. And again, I haven't played this, this is just for me watching about an hour of the live stream last night and another hour this morning, so I haven't even seen all of it. I think that we have to give praise where praise is due. Look, some parts of the animations, they... some parts of the animations are good and other parts are like, meh, you know, they're kind of mid. That being said, other than the Hot Wheels animations, I think this is their second best animations and the Hot Wheels animations were just clips from, you know, the whatever, the cartoon thing. So that was just like Rick and Morty animations are the best animations for Spooky, right? So overall though I do want to say to you know everything that Franchi did is incredible. Everything you know do I think... All right it's not it's not it's not his best art package. I mean look at the playfield. There's not like go put it next to Munsters. I mean it's it's it's okay like but here's the thing it's like I love Franchi's Translite and the game doesn't feel like that at all. All of that stuff. That's a 1950s sci-fi translate. And then this dubstep music comes on. And I really wish they would have made it more of that 1950s music and weird, like, here we are in the Nordman, whatever the hell universe, galaxy is, and the ice cream, and come at you like an Ed Wood kind of science fiction theater 3000 kind of sci-fi film. None of that. None of that is happening in the game. None of it. Now all these things aside, would you agree with me it's by far their best machine so far? Sure, but the bar is pretty damn low, you know that. Like I don't, I mean look, think about American pinball's poor, they haven't sold a thousand games of anything to date after all of this money, like poor Mukesh, man, the guy put his faith in all these people. I telling you if Kaneda was running the reins over there I be having a lot more games sold Like this is like again like he telling people 2 of these sold You know what my mole tells me They sold around 400 so far Yeah, 2,000 seems really high for the feedback I've heard. Wait, if they had sold 2000 to date, they would, all the LEs would be spoken for. Uh, go on pin side, all available for sale. I'm still getting emails as of this morning, I can get the Signature Edition and the LE easily. Yeah. So what do we think about the tank cabinet though? Like what do you, I mean that thing is like, it's like they, they focus so much on the cabinet and it's like, it's interesting, but it's hokey and it's, I don't know. Look, would you have it in your arcade? Would I have it in my arcade? Of course not. Would your buddies tease you if you had that? Probably. But let's say that you own a Dave & Buster's or any type of even pinball arcade, even like John down at Jack Bar. If you have that and you have it at the end of the row, it's eye-catching. People are going to see it and go, what the frick is that? Right? But if that was at Jack Bar, some drunk dude would kick the tank tread thing into pieces in one day. Oh God. Like, you can't put that on location. It's gonna get destroyed. Well, that's the problem is, you know, if you have your own home arcade, I really, now, they were trying to tell us, oh yeah, if you're someone who likes jukeboxes, you'll also like pinball machines in the size of a tank, and it's like, it only looks really cool with it folded down, but then you can't play it with it folded down. I honestly thought there would be some... You gotta buy two. Yeah, you gotta buy two. You gotta have one next to it and one open and one not open. The one thing I didn't like was the price increase. And when I told this to Little Orby Jr., I was showing him the video with the tank and the tank...the tank...the one-off tank that can move around at TPF, if that was like 20k, fine. If you could get one that moved around, right? But the one thing that he just thought was crazy was that how much more you have to spend And just to get, what is it, a signed apron and a thermos. And what a slightly different, like what is different with the one that costs like five grand more? It's the 3D Translite, which in person doesn't look, it doesn't look good at all. It doesn't. The regular Translite looks better. The signatures on the apron are pointless. You get a thermos, you get a banner, you get some other stuff. I heard they were trying to figure out, they might redo the armor on the signature editions. The fact that American Pinball, though, and I mean this, the fact that they did a call for price on this signature edition, and then when you called up, the distro told you $17,500, $6,500 more than the LE of the same tank cabinet, same... That's a jerk move, and I don't like it, and I think it indicates a lack of respect for the community. This is my thing is I thought American Pinball was one of the few remaining companies with a soul and then they go and do that and it's just like let's challenge to see how many rich flex guys are out there that are gonna jump in on this and again I have a friend who bought one for $15 and so he already got like $2,000 or $2,500 off what they're saying the call for price is and so if you're listening to this right now I wouldn't go anywhere near that signature edition. I think they're going to be giving them away for like 13 grand in just a couple months. It's not worth it. And I'll get you a thermos at Walmart if you want, if that's what you really need as a pinball fan. I just think, I think the whole thing, I think they should have made one tank edition and then make the deluxe. And I think they should have changed up the Translite and the art package a little bit somehow. But it's just American pinball. I'm just going to say this Albert and I and they're the they don't understand marketing at all like at all and I've offered them my services and they they don't know what they're doing and look at how they brought this game to market it was a total joke and I know we're not in this for the marketing but even the way they priced the games was such an insult to the community. That was the one thing, that was their one redeeming factor. Everyone would say, you know, but Hot Wheels cost less than, you know, the Hot Wheels, you know, bottom level is, you know, has as much as a Stern premium, but it costs less. And that was always their redeeming factor was they were priced so well. And David Fix would always say, no, we're not going to raise prices. And then it felt for the very first time a little dirty. It felt like they were, you know, gouging a little with the $15,000 call, which I saw in Australia is $32,000. I think in Canada it's $29,000. Like, that's a lot of frickin' money. And for a pinball machine that only looks cool when you're not playing it? It's like, what? Yeah, and the other thing is this, and Albert, I want to ask you this question. Like, if you worked on something for two or three years, right? And you put a lot of effort into it, and you needed the game to be a hit because Mukesh is watching the sales, wouldn't you have some self-respect and actually reveal it the right way? Why are they still not streaming it on their own accord in their own studio with Steve Bowden playing it? They have no respect for their own game. And the fact that they brought it out like this tells me more than I need to know ever about them as an organization and as a company. And they should have gave the game to Greg and Zach to do a featurette on it the way they did it for Pulp Fiction, the way they did it for Godfather. Those 20 minute videos are all we need to know what's in the game and it's done in a professional way and the fact that they have yet to do that shows me how much they care about their own product. Well, you said it all right there. I know sometimes you and I aren't, you know, one of our frenemies is of course Mr. Zach Meny from Straight Down the Middle and him and Greg over there did such a fantastic job with the Pulp Fiction one. Do you believe that if AP had got Straight Down the Middle to do a featurette like they did for Pulp Fiction and they have for so many other games, do you believe that this would have A Zach would have made sure that the editing for the video would tell the story of what was happening in the game, which is half of my problem with it. But do you believe they would sell 20, 30, maybe even 40% more pins if it had just been released properly? Yes, yes, and I think they would have done a great job, and I think it's what they do best. I mean that. And, you know, so, like, look, let's, let's, let's go for Galactic Tank for us. Let me give it a score and let's go on to the other games. I give this game a score, I think it's, I think it's a B. I think it's their best game to date. I think the reason to buy one is if you just want something different. And I think, you know, I see it on pin side. Guys like Iceman, they're going crazy. It's like this is a game for people who just want a different flavor of ice cream, no pun intended. If you don't want another Stern or Jersey Jack or CGC game, you want something weird in your lineup, American Pinball will happily oblige you with one of the weirdest games in the history of pinball. I think the jury's still out on whether or not the game is good or has magical moments or has staying power, but it's definitely weird. I'll give them that, but I didn't see anything that blew me away. Okay, nothing blew me away, but nothing was like, you know, a huge concern. Other, you know, because our expectations are nothing. It's not like they're making Back to the Future, Jaws or Matrix here. They made a game that we didn't even have any emotional connection to. So it's for people who just want something wacky and weird. And if you get it, I'm happy for you, but it's not, it's not for me. All right. Before we move on, I'm going to say, first of all, Well, thanks to Stephanie and one iPod, one pinball, they did as good of a job as they could streaming it. Stephanie's a really, really good player. Like, she's way better than I am. So, the fact that she wasn't able to have long games shows it is fairly brutal, especially if you're shooting for that tank. I know that you said there's not lots of cool mechs in it, but honestly, if we think back even two or three years ago, that tank mech was cooler than half the mech Stern was putting in their pins. Maybe not as cool as a JJP mech like the Rocking Boat or something, but that mech's pretty cool. It's not as good as Scott Danesi's tank, we all know that. But the other mech that I really like because it's a throwback to 70s and 80s games is that movable target. And we saw on the livestream, every time you hit that movable target, it switches to the other side and it almost looks like the thing at the top of it from above looks like a UFO, but it moves back and forth as you hit it. So between that and the diverter, to have three different toys that you can hit as a player and it causes the toy to do different things, that's neat, right? I mean, but Albert, like, think about it like this. You're telling me that moving target is as cool as like the crane in Batman 66 or the T-Rex or the Billi- like it's just, come on, it's 2023. It's 2023. I mean, that is not engineering. The engineering is the pirate ship in Pirates of the Caribbean that Eric Minior made. It sways back and forth and then there's a cannon shot and, you know, I don't know. I look at this stuff like every year we should see stuff that elevates creativity in pinball, elevates what's been put into a game before. This, I could just put my finger underneath the playfield and move it back and forth. Look at me, Zofia Ryan, I'm one of the best engineers. Come on, where's the engineering? Where's the engineering? Don't be mean to Zofia. Come on. She didn't do anything wrong here. I think so. That was, okay, that is still to this day one of the coolest mechs. I'm just gonna give this... Go ahead. Yeah, let me give you one last statement, and I firmly believe this. There is a lot of these designers from the Valley Williams era. We saw it with Pat Lawler, we saw it with John Popadiuk, and we're seeing it a little bit with Norman now. These guys were on a pedestal because the engineers at Bally Williams made all of these designers into rock stars. And we've seen what they do without that kind of team. And it's nowhere near the level they used to have. And I think the real magicians in pinball were the Bally Williams engineers and nobody even knows their freaking names. And it's not Pat Lawler. Go on, Albert. Hit me. I think that I'm giving GTF for now and I haven't played it yet but I'm giving it an A- so I'm gonna disagree with you on the B because I think it's a decent light show I think it's the best sound effects I've ever had okay shots fun code good art very good art I know it's maybe not Franchi's best package but I think that if you get the lower end model and you really were looking for something different it's different we always ask for different I don't know if it's different good or different bad yet but I'm gonna leave it at that and I do want to thank I do I want to thank the people who streamed it because I know you were complaining about the sound and such but for a dude like me who watches hundreds of hours of tournament pinball, God, if we could get background noise that quiet. Now, did it showcase all their callouts? Of course not. But anyways, let's move on to good old what I think is next in the list which you might disagree with, I suspect you might, but I think next in the list is Pulp Fiction by CGC and Play Mechanics I believe, right? So tell us your thoughts on Pulp Fiction. Did you play it? What did you think? Yeah, yeah. No, I played it. It plays like a solid state older game. It's obviously a lot slower than the modern games we're used to. Right. Game is beautiful. It's beautiful in its execution of the thing it's trying to execute, right? So if you think about the Pulp Fiction movies, the characters in it are taking place in the 90s, but they're stuck in the 70s, right? So Quinton wanted a game that is modern, that looks like it came from that period of time that Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are stuck in, like late 70s, early 80s. It's Pulp Fiction. It's just such a cool theme. I think it's hard to sort of look at the game other than the fact that it just oozes cool. And I will say, like, I don't know yet if people are going to get tired of the call outs after we hear them, you know, 50 times each. But the gunshot pop bumpers were awesome. The throwback art style was awesome on the cabinet. I like it. I mean, I know it. Again, some people are divided, but the game had a constant line throughout TPF, and it just goes to show the power of a theme. Out of all the games, this one is the hardest one to go get an LE on. I mean, they sold out in one day, and now people are offering $1,500, $2,000 for a spot. I think this game is the epitome of a movie poster that you get to play and with those five songs. Isn't it funny how we're like, oh, it's got five songs. That's nothing, five songs. I mean, there's 22 tracks in Guns N' Roses, right? There's like something like 15 in Foo Fighters. It doesn't have all the songs, but it has the main ones. And, you know, it's single level. I think we all wrote this game off, so our expectations were really low when it came out. And then again, I think, I think the Straight Down the Middle video, when that hit, and you saw the passion that the team put into this game, I think everyone realized, oh, this isn't just like they mailed it in like this, this is a, a many years in the making passion project between Quentin Tarantino, Mark Ritchie, Mr. Sharp, and everyone over there at playing mechanics. All of a sudden, you're like, damn, I want one. And I don't know how you could watch that 20 minute video and love pinball and not be Well, I'm in the same boat with you, like, even just the details, like, even some of the things you didn't mention, like the speaker grills are the most beautiful I've ever seen on any pin, that door, the coin door, such a throwback, and then the arch style with, it's not quite monochromatic, I guess it's whatever, like, you know, trichromatic or something, the three different colors and just the way that you, that, the artwork itself looks like a throwback. So, uh... Well, it's silk screened. We're so used to digital printed playfields now, and that is old school silk screen. That's why the colors just pop. And will that last longer? Do you know? I think, yeah, absolutely. Like, think about it. Like, old games didn't used to have all the issues the new ones have. All this digital ink does not stick to the wood properly, and that's why we've had so many issues. Well, this one was hard for me because I obviously I like modern pins but I also am a huge fan of the 80s and 90s. That's what got me into pinball originally. I'm a massive Quentin Tarantino fan or at least I was till somewhere around Django Unchained. But, you know, the game has everything you would want. It has all five songs that you would want. It has, you know, where he turns around with the gold. Did you ever see that actually happened? With the suitcase? John Popadiuk, Fabulous Randall Whitaker, Larry stolen, Frank Pen slow,espère news, Well, as you got all the call outs from Pulp Fiction, like it's just cool. Like I get that's it. Like if you're if you're looking at the pinball demographic, 40 to 60 year old, most likely Caucasian men who are bored with money to spend. Perfect theme for pinball. Probably one of the best themes for pinball of all time. This will be a keeper for most people. And people think I'm shilling it because I put it in order for one. No, I'm not an idiot. The This is like perfect for pinball. I would say you would be shilling it if you bought like 10 and you were trying to like slowly sell them but obviously I wish I bought 10. I mean yeah obviously you're gonna buy this and play the crap out of it. This is You want it to go up in value. This is one of the last few games you can scalp and the other thing is this with that topper which everyone loves think about it like this that topper comes with the game comes with it and the game is less than ten thousand if Stern made that topper it would be two thousand dollars. So now you're talking the game's like $7,000 if Stern had made it because the topper would be $2,000 to bring it up to $9,500, whenever it is $9,600. I like that CGC is putting everything in the LE. I feel bad for you SC guys. You can hear the SC guys right on pin side, oh yeah, I don't really need the topper, sure, sure you don't. I think it's the second coolest topper in pinball because maybe the third, maybe I would have to see it next to the Black Knight one, the automated one, but I do think the Mando topper is my favorite and that's even, I hear it looks way better in person. Have you got to see the Mando topper in person? No, I haven't seen it. I don't think they had it at the show. They didn't have it, no. I don't really care about the Mandalorian though, you could put anything on top of that game, what a miss that thing was, but we won't waste time on Mando. Okay, so you're giving Pulp Fiction, what would you give it as a grade? I would, Pulp Fiction, you know, with execution and everything, I think I give Pulp Fiction a solid A, and I think it is, I think they knocked it out of the park. Well, I, uh, Franchi's gonna love you using that term by the way, but I agree with you, I was gonna give it a straight A, I already have it down here on my sheet, so let's move on to, I think we pretty much agree Pulp Fiction looks incredible, good on them for doing that. I know that, um, I don't know if CGC and Play Mechanics are going to team up to make more pins, but I really hope they do because for their first pinball machine, they did a great job. So let's go. Mark Ritchie, Mark Ritchie's already working on his next one. He's been working on it for a while because this game has been done for a while. That's awesome. Scoop. There you go. You heard it here first on the Pinball Nerds Podcast. All right. So next is The Godfather. Now, I think this is the one we disagree the most on. You mean Who Framed Roger Rabbit with... Hey, I like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In fact, I like it better than The Godfather, so... But tell me, did you play it? How many games did you get in? Were you shunned by Eric Minyer again? No, I'm just kidding, but did you get to play it? What do you think? Yeah, I played a few games of Godfather. You know, look, I'll say this, and it's interesting because I saw yesterday Eric announced how many total parts, or maybe he did this at the seminar, were in like his last three games. So this game actually has more parts in it than Pirates of the Caribbean and Guns N' Roses. And then you stand over the machine and it's their most, I think it looks totally barren. And I know there's a lot of parts for diverters and ball pathways. Look, I think this game, I've been sharing my feelings on it. And I know they just dropped a new code, I think yesterday, that added more clips and more call outs from the movie. You know, he had to kind of go for muted and whatever, you know, he couldn't really do it as, you know, maybe... The cabinet looks great! Yeah, the cabinet looks great. The cabinet looks great. The playfield with the sparkles is okay. I know there's not tons of mechs in it, and I will agree with you, the one thing I don't like about it so far is I don't love either of those sculpts. They both don't seem to be on par with the theme. It's similar to, you know, what we were saying with Galactic Tank Force. Everything's not cohesive together between the music and the artwork and the back glass. So this is the same way It kind of like you know they have the bright hot rails at the side and you know all the different colors and everything which looks spectacular but make more sense in Wizard of Oz or make more sense in Toy Story don make as much sense in Godfather I get that but I do think from listening to you know in reading pin side about it I do think from a rules standpoint it seems like it going to be super deep very interesting really different the fact that yo You can steal different territories from other people is like super nerdy and you know if you played Settlers of Catan or any of these type of games. We're gonna make a fun game. I think, you know, you're gonna enjoy that part of it. So, I think someone's gonna love that. You know, I get that, but when is Jersey Jack gonna stop with this like role playing game way to approach rules of pinball? I don't wanna play Final Fantasy rule sets when I play a pinball machine. And I get it. Like, look, this is it. This is like Jersey Jack is going all in on this approach and some people love it, some people don't. I'm not a fan of these like overly complex rule sets that require like, you know, all this studying over and over. Like even like look at Guns N' Roses, 22 patches? What? 22 patches! 22 characters and Pirates of the Caribbean. I don't know. I'm more of a fan of like Lehman's approach where you can make a game deep but it doesn't have to be confusing. Right. I don't know, look, people love it though. Look, Jersey Jack's got its fan base and this, and I have a friend, his name is Derek, he loves these deep rule sets. I mean, he loves spending like months putting 6,000 plays on the game to figure it all out. I'm like, alright, I'm good, like, I don't have, I don't have that much time. When I'm looking at this list, when I look at Queen, Scooby, Final Resistance, Pulp Fiction, and Godfather, my guess is I'd be sick of Queen in about a week, Scooby in about a month, Final Resistance in three months, Pulp Fiction in about a year, but I think even with me being a decent pinball player, it would take me years to probably figure out all the nuanced rules and all that kind of stuff. Is that good for on-location play? Not necessarily, but I think several people said there needs to be more feedback. We all have bias and I'm not gonna lie Jersey Jack out of all the companies cold shoulders me the most but here's the thing the big problem they have now is everything they're making is so overpriced if this game was 9,000 or 8,500 for the LE and 12,500 for the CE which it should be considering what their older games used to cost I think everybody looks at this game much differently the problem is who's gonna go buy this game right now? You're gonna lose. I'm looking at them just from a I can't afford any of them so I don't care. I'm looking at as a guy who's just gonna walk in as a dude who loves pinball and I'm gonna play it on location and of all these pins we've looked at so far I would be tempted to go to Pulp Fiction but I'd probably go to Godfather first and that's just me being honest. So what you're saying is if Godfather was priced like a Stern Pro you know what I mean? Or even if it was like how Jersey Jacks were a couple years ago for their lowest end model, would it not be an A plus? No. Okay. No, no, no. No, no. So here's the thing. It's like I just have this real thing with theme integration. And I think Jersey Jack always sort of beats their chest as like nobody... Jack has said this, nobody gets more assets than us. I'm a fan of the movie, but I don't think it's the best. I think Guns N' Roses is the exception because Guns N' Roses, they got everything and then some, right? But if I look at the theme integration in Godfather, they don't have Robert De Niro, they don't have Fredo, they couldn't get it all. They have some clips that they're putting in the game, but you don't feel like you're playing the Godfather movie. They went off, and I get what they did. I saw the featurette, I understand their approach to it, I mean, I'm a huge fan of the movie. I like the featurette. I understand their approach to it. They made more of a mobster game that peppers in stuff from the movie. But to me, that's not the Godfather. And that's just my personal opinion. It's like a game that has like, it's surrounded by things that are Godfather elements, but it doesn't feel like I'm playing through the game. I'm playing the horse head mode. You know, I'm at the dinner table as Robert Duvall talking about how I want to get Johnny, and I put everything into the movie! And the guy tells me off! And then he wakes up the next day... Like where's... where... where are the moments in the movie that come through in the pinball experience? And you can't just pepper them in as like, cutscenes, in between stuff! Hey, Kaneda! I'm talking to you right now! Hey, you know, if you don't like Godfather, I kick you out of the family! Like it says Bada Bing, like there's a part... It says Bada Bing in the game, I think. Like what is this, The Sopranos now? I thought it was an East Side Mario's commercial. All right, so give me a letter grade. Give me a letter grade. I think Godfather is a C+. Okay, all right. I got to give it a straight A, and I would need to play Pulp Fiction or Godfather. I don't know which I'm going to like better. Again, if I was just stepping up to play it in an arcade, maybe I would have a bit more fun on Pulp Fiction because the rules are quicker and easier to figure out, of course. All right, so before we talk about Foo Fighters, I do have to just announce this. Jack Danger, you are formally banned from the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Do you hear me, Jack? I have been a supporter of you for years and years and years, and I thought for sure after us having hundreds of hours of conversations on Dead Flip that when you finally released a pin, you'd come over to my pinball podcast first. Now thank God he hasn't gone on like 10 other podcasts and said no to mine. And he hasn't even said no to me, but he hasn't said yes yet. So Jack, that's it. I saw yesterday on Facebook that you said that you like to catch up on all your pinball social media and stuff like that where you're having a shower. So if you want any chance of getting back on my show, Jack, you're gonna have to do it. A podcast from your shower. And I mean it. And if you're not gonna do it from the shower, you're banned, Jack. But anyways, let's talk about Foo Fighters. I still love Foo Fighters, but I'm a little, I'm mildly perturbed with Jack because I really thought he'd come on the show. But anyways, let's tell me all about playing Foo Fighters. He's trying to sell games, man. He's trying to sell games. I know he's busy. He needs to come over here. Like, if I can get over a thousand listens with a David Dennis or a Craig Bobby, Jack Danger's got to get two or three times that. And who knows? If two or three thousand people listen to the show, maybe one or two is swayed by something he says. Now, they're selling so well, he probably doesn't give a shit. I get it. All of the above. I'm not going to get into too much detail here. I'm going to just talk about the game. I think it's a great game. I just think it might be super rad because I spent thousands of hours helping, you know, being in his chat and, you know, being part of that whole community. I thought I would get the exclusive for the podcast, but it's fine. I think if I saw Jack in person, I was like, dude, can I do a quick chat with you? All right. We get it. You wasted your time. He's not going to waste his. Let's talk Foo Fighters. Let's do it. Yeah. No, I think this game is... Let's talk about, I want to talk about Foo Fighters from a standpoint of where were our expectations going in, right? And how we kind of left after seeing the game. So I think everybody was like, ah, Foo Fighters, I was one of those people. I'm like, ah, Foo Fighters, you know, who cares about Foo Fighters? Like, they're not that popular. 20 million albums sold, Nirvana sold 80 million albums, Guns N' Roses more popular. So I didn't have high expectations of the pinball machine itself because of the theme. And I think this is one of those great examples of the creative direction they took with the theme was absolutely brilliant. You know, this Saturday morning cartoon featuring the Foo Fighters, right? It feels more Scooby Doo than Scooby Doo even does. And they've got to protect the earth from aliens invading. And then the animations, I mean, this is by far Stern's greatest animations to date. I think what I love about this game the most, out of all the new pins, it feels the most cohesive. It feels like they had a creative vision, everybody was on the same page, everybody knew what they wanted to create, and they made it. And it feels like, the game just oozes that. It oozes like this was a collaborative effort and everybody hit it out of the park. I think the game shoots great. I played it a bunch of times. Of course it's going to shoot great because it's made by, dare I say, Keith Elwin Jr., Jack Danger because he's a great player. And you know probably Elwin helped a little bit. And that's good. That's the benefit of having Keith Elwin in the house is I think Stern is a company that shares knowledge with each other. They're not like Bally Williams back in the day where they were all competing with each other. I think the game shoots great. I think it's one of Zombie Yeti's most beautiful art packages to the point now where we're getting used to his beautiful art packages so it doesn't stand out as much. But I love like the, I think on the premium they've got the, it looks like it's an ad for a toy of the Foo Fighters in the van. I love that. Yeah. I think the only thing that I, not that I didn't like, and I've said this before, at these prices, I don't really see a lot mechanically that was sort of innovative compared to games like Godzilla, compared to some of Stern's other offerings. And that is the one thing I would have liked to have seen is just a little bit more mechanical wow in the game. And I don't think it has anything mechanically, like if you've got aliens and you've got UFOs like, you know, make the ball disappear in a magnet or teleport somewhere else or fire, I don't know, lock balls in the van. There's really not anything mechanically happening that is that innovative. But you know, it is what it is. That's the new trade off in pinball. If you can have good artwork and good light shows and good code and good flow, you know, what's the new saying now? That shots are the new toys in pinball? And that's right. That sure as heck is the case in 2023. So what I'm hearing you say is that everything is good other than the main like, you know, the work's incredible, obviously. Shots seem really fun and unique. And you were saying Elwin Jr., but I really think there's almost more Gomez in it than Elwin, personally. But I haven't played it yet, of course. Yeah, maybe. Now, why didn't you buy it? That's what I'm curious. Because I don't like the Foo Fighters. Now I've been turned on to more of their music. And it's good stuff. It's perfect music for pinball. I just don't... I don't, you know, I don't want, with music pins, I only want to own music acts that I love. And, you know, I mean it when I say it, I would buy a Taylor Swift pinball machine in front of a Foo Fighters pinball machine. Are you listening Stern? Are you listening? No, you know what, I don't absolutely hate T Swift, but I would certainly rather a Foo Fighters just because, I mean, the same way that you feel about Guns N' Roses is how I've always felt about Foo Fighters. I've got to see them live in concert. I've been following them since Nirvana, obviously. I know we're similar in age, but like, you know, to me that was more so during my come-up, right? Like I was 17 in 1997, right as they were on their precipice of releasing their biggest album. So I think overall it's good and I do applaud Jack and I do applaud Stern. Again, I hear what you're saying. It would be nice if there was a little more mechanical in it. I do think that the, you know, the big bad guy right in the middle, that is kind of neat how you can, it's a bash toy, it also can hold the ball, you know, I do think that is kind of neat. It's obviously not as cool as some mechs that we've seen, you know, like in Houdini where it shoots the ball across the entire playfield or something like that. But let's move on past that. I've kept you way too long and I want to be able to let you go and get back to work. Plus I have two big shows tomorrow for the coffee company, so I've got to do that. I have two quick questions for you here. Number one, first of all, thank you so much for ordering some Angry Alpaca coffee for me way back. We didn't give Foo Fighters a score. I'll give Foo Fighters an A-. Okay, I gotta give it an A+. It was the only one on here that I was like, it's gotta be an A+. Maybe it would be an A++ if there was like one more extra cool rad mech. You gotta admit though, that bottom dead post bar that shoots the ball back in is pretty insane. Like, that's pretty cool. I mean, now, now it's on my shelf. Chris! I'm a coffee maker. I use capsules. I need to get one of those capsules where I can just put the coffee into the capsule. Okay, yes. Every single Dollarama, every single dollar store on the planet will have a little Keurig capsule. Reusable one for a buck. You save the planet and worst case scenario, you spend five bucks at Walmart for a grinder. I'm going to ask Drew not to fire me from the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast after he put in our largest order ever and it's not going to get there for MDC. Can you give a shout out to Drew to say be kind to Orby, he fucked up, he's sorry? Yeah, be kind to him, you know? He's filling your airwaves when you guys are too lazy to do shows, so be kind. I wouldn't say lazy, I think Drew is busy as hell because he's working like 60, 70 hours a week probably. He's selling houses, he's not a poor man anymore. We know, we know, we know he's making more money now. I had to bring me over there because now that he's wealthy, you know, I got to keep up the poor man side of it. So anyways, no, I'm totally just kidding. But Drew, I'm really sorry. And to everyone going to MDC, I apologize. I did restock my store because of that. And I will throw in a free pack of Pinball Nerds Podcast rating cards because I apologize. It's not going to get there. Hopefully, Drew will have it for a future show or he's going to fire back to me and then I got to sell it. I don't know. Screw you, US Customs. The last thing I wanted to talk about was when, you know, a couple of years ago, you I had some beefs going back and forth and I would often say that you had too many personal attacks and you were too negative, all that kind of BS. But what I did want to applaud you for is in the last year, in the last year, maybe two years to be honest, Chris, you've really dialed in and when a company is fucking up and a company is doing something shitty, you call them out on it. But when a person, you disagree with a person, you try almost to avoid it and just not even talk about it. And I want to applaud you for that. A couple times I think you've got drunk and maybe, you know, said a couple things you regretted, which we all do that. But do you think it's possible, I don't want to pat my back too much, but do you think it's possible a couple of the times that we chatted and I was hypercritical about your personal attacks and such, do you think that I helped sway you at all to maybe keep the show a little bit more positive and a little bit less about personal stuff? Yeah. Was he? It was all you, man. It was all you. No, I don't think it was all me. I'm just saying, like, can you give me, like... I did it for you. No, like, did I help a little bit? A little bit. Yeah, no, the thing is this, is like, nobody listens to my podcast or my Facebook Live to hear personal attacks, right? And nobody's taken more arrows in the back than myself when it comes to, you know, people calling me out, constant jabbing. It's fine, I get it, you know, that kind of stuff is clickbait. But I think our last few years, I've just gotten into this really great groove, I'm a fan of pinball, pinball is my passion. I love doing my show and drama and negativity doesn't make it more fun. And I think calling out the companies is not drama, it's just calling it like it is. And I think I wouldn't have the following I have. I have more subscribers than every single other pinball content creator combined on Patreon. Every single other one, right? Why is that? It's not because I'm just being a jerk, it's because I'm saying stuff that other people agree with. And that's why those people subscribe. And also the shows now are 20 to 30 minutes, right to the point, unlike this show. I'm just joking. I'm sorry. They're right to the point. And it's easier, but it's easier when it's just one guy going. It's a lot easier to just cover off on everything happening in the hobby, say my point of view, and then move on. And I've also tried to avoid any of the real drama. I got into a little bit on a drunk rant when people say the numbers don't lie and then they don't share the numbers. That annoys me a little bit because I worked really hard for all the numbers I used to get and I've always been very transparent about my numbers. I've never hid how many people listen. I've never hid how many people subscribe to the show. And that's it. But I don't really... At the end of the day, we're all in this to entertain people and have fun. And if it crosses the line and starts to become personal attacks, everybody loses. I mean it. Everybody loses. You're right. Now, that's it. That's it. Nobody's here to be a downer. Everyone's here to celebrate the thing we love. And I think, you know, Kaneda's Pinball Podcast fan club and the Facebook lives have been nothing but a lot of positive energy on a weekly basis, right? We keep this community entertained when most of these companies, even though they just... The only way you're going to get new entertainment is if you connect to the content creators, because we fill the gaps between game launches, and there's going to be a big gap coming up now. Well, speaking of the numbers don't lie, I am always shocked if I happen to miss a Saturday morning spectacular, which I always try to make, but if I happen to miss it and I go and watch on the Sunday or the Monday, I'll see sometimes 1,500, 2,000 people are watching this after the fact. So I can tell you this right now, I appreciate your Saturday mornings. It's become part of my Saturday morning routine no matter where I am. Like I've had to pay extra data fees just to watch you talk on Saturday mornings when I'm not home. So thank you so much for everything you do on Saturday mornings. Thanks for being the most honest, even though sometimes painfully honest, pinball podcaster on the planet. Keep doing what you're doing and I'm going to let you go and go join the club. Anything else you want to say to all the listeners before I let you go, Chris? No, I mean if you want to join Kaneda's Pinball Podcast club, we would happily have you. Just, I guess, Google search Kaneda's Pinball Podcast on Patreon. It is only $5 a month for the greatest pinball podcast, the second greatest next to the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. And Albert, I'm really happy to have you back in the club, brother. And that's it. Everybody enjoy your machines and let's enjoy pinball together. I think it's a great hobby to be in and I'm super happy to be a content creator in this space. Thanks so much, Chris. Keep it positive and have yourself a rad weekend buddy. I can't wait till the spectacular tomorrow morning. So until next time pinball nerds, remember to eat, sleep and breathe.