Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol, whenever you're in trouble. Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol, we'll be there on the double. No jobs too big, no pups too small. Paw Patrol, we're on a roll. So here we go, Paw Patrol. Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up. Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Kaneda. It's been a rough few days in this household. We have a stomach virus that started with Killian. He passed it to me. I then passed it to Brenda. So I was up like all Super Bowl night every hour vomiting, right? It wasn't fun at all. We're all still recovering. Killian is still home today. He's manipulating us. That's why I played the Paw Patrol theme song to start this episode. So you know what it's like being Daddy Kaneda in this household trying to pinball a podcast. I got a little one downstairs. So if you hear Lion Guard music and you hear the banging of toys in the background, that is because he is home again today. He manipulated us. He threw up right before school because he knows if he does that, he gets to stay home and watch TV. The same way I wish we could throw up before going to work and stay home all day long and just play pinball. So what is happening in the world of pinball? We've got the conclusion of pinball at the beach. It seems like the big winner at the show itself, listening to everybody give their feedback, was The Evil Dead by Spooky Pinball. It seems like a really chill show. I will admit, I wish I could have gone. If they do it again next year, I think this show is going to be on everybody's radar. I didn't see anybody at the beach. That was the one funny part. I'm like, it's pinball at the beach. Sit by the pool. Have like a pina colada with your favorite pinball personalities. And all the footage I saw was under a white wedding tent. I didn't see anybody shirt off at the beach. Well, we all know why you don't see the pinball community with their shirts off. You know, it's more of a community that goes into a swimming pool wearing a T-shirt. But man, it looked like a really good time. And everybody got to play the new games and hang out with each other. So it was a really great show. So congratulations to Kim and Ed and Spooky Pinball and Stern Pinball and all the people who went down there. Jersey Jack was down there. I saw Ken Cromwell. I saw George Gomez. It looked like a really great time at the beach. And I know they probably sold more Evil Deads after the showing at the show itself. The game is still not sold out. But what's interesting about Spooky Pinball is this company really has pulled it back. If you think about it, when they released Scooby-Doo, they announced 1,969 Scooby-Doos. And then when they released, what was it? You got Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. they were making 888 of each title. The fact that they are now only making one title, 888 of them is a sign that Spooky Pinball realizes we don't wanna oversaturate and oversupply the market with our product. They also don't wanna just make the same game. Like I bet they are so tired of making Scooby-Doos to the point where A, nobody wants it and the secondhand value just deteriorates. So I think they've been very wise in understanding what's the right amount of games. And look, you can make an argument that they might be making a little too many Evil Deads. I don't think that's the case. I think over time, they will eventually sell all of these games. They're very close. They look to be around maybe 100 or so games short of selling out. You know why they're not selling out right now is by the time they make 500, 600 of these, you'll be able to get one for less money than they are new. It really does make no sense getting at the back of the line for Spooky Pinball unless you wanna show support. And when I see this company out at the shows and I see all the smiling photos of the Spooky family with the community, it really does just make you want to support this company. And for those of you out there, if you're George Gomez, and look, I get it. Like, Stern Pinball makes in one week what Spooky Pinball makes all year. When you think about that, it's not even a comparison. Jersey Jack Pinball has so much money and so many resources and can make so many more games as well. But there's no denying the fact, if you're like Jersey Jack and you're Stern Pinball and you're looking at where the lines are forming, where is their enthusiasm in the community around a new game, and you walk over to Spooky Pinball, a company that 10 years ago made games as atrocious as America's Most Haunted, and you walk over to Spooky Pinball today, and you see what they're bringing to market, you have to be so impressed by this company's ascension ascension, by their progress, by what they're putting into the pinball market. I mean, they're putting into the market fully featured stacked games with beautiful artwork, amazing theme integration. Heck, they're even like wide body games. Like they're giving you everything and then some. They're putting a lot of effort into the toppers, which you would charge another seven, for They charging And so look there no denying the fact I think the new bell of the ball at this show was spooky pinball And I do think it a little bit of like a wake call for everybody else And look, there's always going to be room for these boutique companies. I think the wake-up call is spooky pinball is giving people what they want. Not necessarily the themes they want, but everything else is what you want in a game. You want a theme that's integrated in an amazing way. You want a lot of toys. You want interesting shots. You also want a company that makes you feel good about buying from them. I feel like that's something that's lost in the pinball world. There's a little bit of like arrogance and hubris and all this sort of like attitude where like we're too good to engage with the pinball community. I mean, think about what's happening right now with X-Men, right? Where's the engagement from the X-Men design team to talk the buyers off the ledge? These buyers are all wondering what's happening with the game. Are they going to do more for the code? Are they going to do this? Are they going to do that? Are they even listening to our feedback? I am shocked that Stern Pinball has not invited like 20 X-Men owners into Stern Pinball, fly them over and say, hey, look, we've been reading your feedback on Pinside. You have a lot of really interesting ideas on how to make this game better. We're committed to making this game better. We want to capture your feedback in a very professional way and sit down and help us make this game the game it can be. No, they're not doing any of that. Maybe they're reading Pinside. Maybe they're not. But if you're an owner, you have no idea. You have no idea what the future holds for X-Men's past, right? You have no idea if they're actually going to make those eight modes more entertaining. You have no idea if they're going to code in more side quests to the game. You have no idea if like going into the future even means anything in the game. You're in the dark. And I think the old days of like, well, Stern's just going to make it great like James Bond and Stern's just going to make it great like Batman 66. I don't think that holds water anymore. I don't think that's the case here. Now, we all want that to be the case. But again, it's a company that seemingly is leaving its owners in the dark. And I think the goodwill that Spooky Pinball continues to create in this community is going to really, really pay off in spades when these dudes have a game like Beetlejuice, when they have more mainstream stuff. I mean, most of you are walking up to Evil Dead, and it's not a dream theme. But they're a company that makes you feel as a buyer. They're giving you a dream scenario. You just feel good. You feel ingratiated into the spooky family. And as more and more of us are becoming very discerning with how we spend our money in the pinball hobby, it's becoming quite clear. the companies that go the distance not just on the games themselves but the companies that are going the distance in building a brand that you feel pride in owning is going to go a long way and i don't see a lot of it in pinball the old days if you just put it in a box it's gonna sell those days are over we need to see more transparency right i mean look at a game like avatar have you seen mark seiden pop up at all over the last like three months if he's not out there publicly getting people excited about the game why should you be excited about the game it doesn't make any sense if i worked on something for two years even if it wasn't good you know me i can't even shut up and i don't even make a good product i make a freaking pinball podcast that's five dollars a month and I don't shut up about it. These guys are making twelve to fifteen thousand dollar products that they want you to buy. You have to make thirty thousand dollars before taxes to buy Mark Seiden's game. The dude should be out there all the time putting a face to this, explaining why he made this, getting you excited about the game. But he's not. He's not. Not even their marketing department is out there. It's almost like they don't really care. And that's my thing. We're getting to a point now where this hobby, as big as it's gotten, it's the smallest it's ever been. Let me repeat that. The bigger this hobby gets, the smaller it actually becomes because there's less room, there's less money to go around, and where people will ally and where they will throw their support are with the companies that care, the companies that listen to them, the companies that bring out themes that align with what they want. If Barrels of Fun comes out with Dune Pinball, I've heard you people loud and clear, you don't want Dune. If David David Van Es placed his bets on Dune Pinball being where it's at, and most of you, I put up a poll, like 95% of you don't want Dune, then what is that telegraph? You've got a company making games doing zero market research. Why? Why would Barrels of Fun, a small little boutique company, and look, I also think that Barrels, you know, a lot of that company was born in the shadows of spooky pinball. They haven't done a good job of being transparent. Do they talk to us? Do they do a lot of Facebook lives? Do they let you behind the scenes of the company? I think the problem with barrels they also overly consumed with keeping everything a secret that they stopped talking to people And I know the people working on those games like Robert Blakeman I think Aaron at Fast Pinball may be working on that stuff. I'm not sure. Aaron, sorry. Fast Pinball, all capital F-A-S-T. Make sure you capitalize it all or else I'll come at you with a cease and desist. You know, there's a lot of good people over there, but they don't speak. And it's like, why not? And here's the thing, David. If it's Dune, you might as well just say it right now. You might as well just say it. You might as well get it out there before the Academy Awards. You might as well rip the band-aid off because now you know through the polling of people like Kaneda that this community isn't like gung-ho about Dune. So if it is Dune, you should warm them up to the theme. Don't make the same mistake Elton John made. if Jersey Jack told you sooner it was Elton John, told you what songs were in it, they would have had a better reception to the game because you don't want like 95% of the potential buyer base hoping and praying it's not going to be Elton John, hoping and praying it's not going to be Dune. But we're at a whole new period in pinball, right? It's like we've got big themes like Harry Potter coming. I've heard a lot of your feedback about Potter people. A lot of you people don't want this theme as well. And I understand it, right? If you're like 45 to 65, is Harry Potter for you or is it a kiddie theme? Now, the consensus by some of you older curmudgeons is that it is a kiddie theme. And, you know, I kind of get it. I understand it, right? Harry Potter is a little kid. This isn't Luke Skywalker learning his lightsaber. It's a little boy that is living under his parents' staircase or his step-parents' staircase, and he learns magic, and he's got little whiny friends, and they run around trying to find out who the bad guy is, and it takes eight movies to get there, right? It's not Star Wars. There's no Millennium Falcon. There's no Han Solo. There's no Chewbacca. There's no Darth Vader. It doesn't have the same gravitas for a lot of us that Star Wars did. There's also so many damn books and so many movies. Yes, it is a huge property, but I do understand how some of you don't think it will translate well and appeal to the pinball buying demographic. Now, we shall see. I'm on the record for saying I think secondhand CEs will go for 20K. As I think about that more over the past week, maybe it was a little bit of my flu or my head cold getting to me. That's a lot of crazy money, especially if they're going to make a thousand of them and you need to make $40,000 before taxes to buy one single pinball machine. That's never going to be rare. It's never going to be hard to get. It's never. And the more I think about it, maybe I was wrong, but we shall see. I just have a feeling that there is a pent up desire to jump on a FOMO train. D&D did not create it. X-Men did not create it. The last time we got it was Metallica. And there's way more potential Harry Potter buyers out there than Metallica buyers. So I just think that's where we're at. This entire collector community is built and runs on FOMO. The problem is nothing has made anybody feel any FOMO in years. So I think there's a lot of people who have waited on the sidelines. I think there's a lot of people that want to jump on the FOMO train. And I think when the game hits, if it just has a few magical things in it, the Jersey Jack package is always spectacular. are and like there's not going to be any uv lighting issues with this game like avatar and it's look it's not a theme you hate like avatar i think avatar brought out the worst in a lot of people so i don't know you know it could possibly sell out instantly i still think it's going to sell out instantly because the way i look at harry potter is this i look at it like jersey jack is only making a thousand games right because i don't think anybody wants in le i think the way they've structure their business model makes an LE stupid to buy. If you have 12,000, you have 15, the $15,000 CE is so much nicer than the $12,000 LE that I almost don't even consider the Jersey Jack LE to be an option. And when I look at it like that, I think everybody who wants a Harry Potter, all like 5,000 people are going to want the CE. So I think there's going to be a much greater demand for the only version you want. And nobody's going to want the LE version of the game. And I think Jersey Jack did that to themselves. And I think it's a reason why, you know, you're seeing more Avatar CE sales than LE sales. And the same thing will probably happened with Harry Potter. You know, when I look at this hobby right now, I posted on Facebook, this incredible discounted game. If I'm in the market for a pinball machine right now, I'm not looking at all this new in box nonsense. You know, I'm not wasting my life away on pin side arguing with like the 20 alcoholics that are hyper posting on there or the multimillionaires who can fly around the world to every pinball show but never hit the gym once. I'm not going to spend my life doing that The thing I going to do is say hey I want to have pinball fun And where can the best pinball fun be had for the buck What the best bang for the buck And there a lot of really really great games out there And you know now that Stern going to remake stuff like Walking Dead, how about this for a rumor? What if the Walking Dead remake is just codename for Ghostbusters remake? Think about it. Aren't ghosts Walking Dead entities so maybe kanade is going to put that thought in your head that the walking dead as a remake is just a smokescreen sort of code name for ghostbusters coming back look everybody we know that ghostbusters is going to come back tron is going to come back we know that the walking dead will most likely come back anything with dots that was super popular is going to come back because Stern can run all those DMD games as LEs in LCD format. That's the loophole they're going to use. They're never going to make a new LE of a game that came out with an LCD screen. But if they bring some of those older games back, ACDC, they're all going to come back. Seth Davis is under tremendous pressure to keep the numbers high, to grow the company to fit the size of the factory he's in. So they're all going to come back. And it's just anybody's guess what the order is. But my point is this. There are some really great bangs for the buck right now. And the one I'm looking at and I'm saying to myself, wow, if you have $6,000, right, that's cheaper than a Stern Pro. that's almost half the price of an evil dead fully loaded that is almost a third of the price of a freaking jjpce or a stern le with a topper that's two grand for six thousand dollars you can go get a dialed in le machine and have a blast i mean i always loved dialed in i always wanted one more than it really spoke to me. It lacked a little bit of the personality I was looking for in a game, but at 6,000 bucks, it's like, wow. The amount of effort that went into that game, it's a satisfying game to shoot. I know the SIM card is a little frustrating, but man, like look at the code, look at the overall presentation of that game. When you stand over a dial, Dan, you know, you gotta realize like that's Pat Lawler's, like that seemingly was the game he thought would be his masterpiece. He put everything into that game that he wanted to. And yeah, it falls down a lot because of the lack of personality, but it's a damn good $6,000 game. It is probably the best $6,000 game your money can buy. And so I think we're going to get to this new period now over the next couple of years where a lot of really good games that they made a lot of, or the demand was never fully there. I think we're going to see the prices keep going down. I mean, the next stop on a $6,000 dialed in LE is $5,500. And the more we get new games and the more new product is commanding such a high price, I think more and more of us are going to look for some of these used games where it's just a great bang for the buck, where it's just pure pinball fun. you buy these games at the bottom of their depreciation and you won't lose three to four thousand dollars i mean i think the idiotic move is a dungeons and dragons le if you bought one why you just lost three to four thousand dollars oh because i want the game because yeah i get it but most of you are not going to keep that game and my point is this yeah if you really love dnd and you really want an le why wouldn't you just wait and get one for 10 g's why that's the reality that's facing everything right now. So I think it's a really good time to look at some of these used games. I think, you know, we're not gonna get Harry Potter before Texas Pinball Festival. That's the new rumor. I wish TPF would confirm for people whether or not the next Jersey Jack game is gonna be present. Because if it's not, there's no reason to go to TPF. I mean that. Like, I'm sorry guys, but if you wanna have a pinball show, you need to give people a compelling reason to go and having a new game launched and revealed at your show is something these show organizers sort of need to work on because why bother then? There's so many shows now, right? You played everything new at Pinball by the Beach. Are you really a month later gonna go to Texas? If Jersey Jack's new game was gonna be there, yeah, that's a reason to go. If the Twippies were gonna be there, yeah, that's a reason to go. But as is, I don't see a reason to go unless these shows really find a compelling reason to get me there. And yeah, the people are the main reason to go. But man, I'm not going to fly all the way down to Texas. I would much rather be at Florida on the beach versus TPF where there's nothing but like a Perry's Steakhouse to walk to. Everybody, thank you for tuning in. We're still getting over our sickness. I want to thank you guys for your support. We're still just a little bit over 700 subscribers. I don't know what to do. We need some new games. I get it. I get it. But this is still, I think, the world's most entertaining weekly podcast about pinball where we don't show anything and we tell you it like it is. Kaneda out. Paw Patrol, we're on a roll. See, we got Paw Patrol. You can watch more Paw Patrol in the free Nick Jr. app.