We know that he has purchased the company, such as it is from Ametron, but he's invaded their space that's in there. So the company's still in East Palatine, Illinois, right? VIXAR TEMPERATURE And then they made some other hires of people that, while I'm sure are fantastic, I don't really know on an intimate basis. And they've said, they've come publicly saying that they've got a product that's coming out soon, it'll be a remaster, everybody's saying Circus Voltaire, fine, whatever. So it's all been like, okay, it's kind of AP doing AP things, let me see what they have to show for it. And today they picked up two people that I do know, that I've talked to, that I've met, that I've worked with, that I think are 100% assets for American pinball. Talking about Rob Rath from the Electric Playground and Nick Neitzel, also from the Electric Playground, also the homebrew dude that made the awesome Tony Hawk's Pro Skater homebrew. First debuted, I think, at Expo a year ago and then was back again at Expo this year. Play is fantastically a great homage to THPS, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Man, the game on the PlayStation that kicked off skateboarding and pinball. I'm looking at you, Thrasher Skate and Destroy. You disappointed me. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was like miles away from that. So like the dude can make a game, the dude can make a layout. He's technically savvy. He's working with Electric Playground. Their products, this company down in St. Louis region, making aftermarket toppers for games Tim Kitzrow is one of the most successful pinball companies in the world. All good, man. My boys from this company that I'm really digging the independent stuff, the DIY spirit that they have, they have now taken spots over at American Pinball. So that's awesome, man. I reached out to Robin today congratulating him, man. I think that company is so much better for being affiliated with him. I don't think that everybody is moving to Illinois, but what I think is going to happen is that now there's like a project that's going to have a direction. Nick is working on a project as well. I know this guy was working on a pinball machine. Maybe they can get the license. Maybe they can find a way to keep Stern from sniping that license away from him. And then ending up over at JJP somehow. I'm going to sit down in about a year and find out what exactly was the story with the licensing for Sonic the Hedgehog. Because, man, Sonic's been bouncing all over Northern Illinois. It's crazy. Craziness. So, like, that dropped on us. So we've got Melvin as kind of the George Gomez of AP. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. We're a team to really put some awesome projects together in the other side of that factory and warehouse and get out some fire now, man. I'm excited about it. You know, before it was like, let's wait and see what they do. Everybody talks big when they start a company. But now I'm like, like genuinely interested. So like, this is good. And I knew nothing about this. Like I didn't get any rumors about this. No one tipped me off, no media release hit my inbox. Like this was fun. Like in real time as I'm putting this fun show together about the world of pinball and how much fun we're having in it. And then boom, this drops. Like I love it. I was like, I'm getting to the end of the week. I'm on the road. Everything is getting doldrums. The sun was out the other day. It was 50 degrees in northern Maine. And then all of a sudden yesterday, boom, foot of snow. It looks like January 3rd outside. So like I needed something to lift me up. There's not a pinball machine within 60 miles of where I'm at, at least not in this country. So like I got to have something. And then look, the pinball gods deliver. And I love it. All right. And that's all the news for today. I'm going to get to the bullet list. I've got the tent ordered, I'll talk about that in a bit. Let me get to the bullet list. Ok, little news points. Little news points for everything. Predator Pinball. Remember this game? Remember the widebody that could? The game that came out and initially was just teasing us for weeks and weeks till we finally got angry with it. At least those of us that are following the hobby. Y'all classic pinball players, you're playing Space Shuttle and don't even care about any of this stuff. But we finally got to play Predator in the flesh at Pinball Expo this prior year. And it turns out that gosh darn it, the game was actually super fun to play. And we were focusing on the assets. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't in there. Of course he's not. We can't afford him and release a pinball machine and then not charge $40,000 for each one. It just, he's too expensive. It's too expensive. But you know, the game was fun anyway. Ask Retro Ralph. He got his, he's digging it, dude. I love that forum. They're only making like under 300 of these. You know, they capped it at 300 and they're like, "'Get your order in by the end of the year." And now they're here saying, "'All right, well March 31st is the last time we're making any of these. So does anybody want one? Cause we could fire up the factory right now. We'll crank you one out.'" And I gotta say, like, I'm not in a position where I can just kind of over leverage myself and just pick up a predator, though I would like to, for, you know, unknown tariffs and how much it's gonna be $16,000 or something. I just, not with what I hear is rumored to be coming, I can't dump the whole budget on a predator right now. What's this gonna do to the predator price going forward if there's only 250 of these and the game is actually fun to play and it's a wide body? And if somebody cracks the code and makes an SD card you can stick in this thing and all of a sudden Arnold is all over it, this is kind of going to be a game to have. If I was on the fence looking for one more aspect to jump into this, I think that would push me over. But I just don't have the infinite room, infinite money glitch, you know. So here I am. But I will say Predator was super fun to play. I want to play it some more. I want to go over to Ralph's house and play it. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. New in box delivered to you at some point from the factory in India, Indiana? No, Italy. Italy, I believe, is where it is. All right. Got another segment for you. One of my favorites. We're going to do a multi-morphic minute. And I won't even go and disguise my voice this time. We'll just talk about the P3. I've been having a P3 moment or a multi-morphic moment. Which is it? I was trolling around the other day. I must have been, of course, at work with a ton of work to do. So what do I do? I head over to Pinside. And there's not really a good way to sort for just like P3 machines that are available. You have to, at least I had to go through like each different game, like click on Cannon Lagoon, what's available? Click on Weird Al, what's available? Like is there a catch all? Can somebody let me know? Can you email me? Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. And let me know if I could just click a setting or a filter and just see all the multi-morphic products that are listed on pin side so I can kind of see who's near me, who's got one, you know? I'm fascinated by it. I desperately would like to have one, but then I've got one angel on my shoulder here, my friends that have owned them before that are like really trying to discourage me from doing it. And then I've got all the shiny pictures and all the games and things that I can play. And I got like the best licenses in pinball. Princess Bride, Portal, come on, Portal. I love Weird Al, man. I've always loved Weird Al. Final Resistance is super fun to play. Like I've got those teasing me. And then you know on the other side my other shoulder where the devils are I got Drain I got Cannon Lagoon you know it like back to reality So there I am pondering you know as I do like P3 man how do I get one So I was super excited One of the reasons I was looking forward to TPF besides all the fun people that are there besides all the cool booths besides getting to play all the other new, get the new Stern, the new JDPs, whatever, like I wanted to see what the new P3 game is. I have not heard rumor one about what's coming out with them. Except for Dungeon Crawler Karl, right? So like that's the only thing I've heard that's been attributed to P3 at all. Wally Minow, Max Owens I'm kinda sad to removething this pan record thing now, but this is point where I really like what they're doing, and I'm looking forever back at the end of the year with this part, but yeah, nice to watch. I knew that otra.... I knew... Oh... ..what are you talking about ambiente, Some of the coolest licenses in pinball. I think Barrels of Fun is going to give them a run for their money. These esoteric titles that Stern wouldn't do, JJP wouldn't do, you know, Princess Bride, like who would do that game? Who would do that game? Multimorphic did it. Barrels of Fun might've done it. You know, uh, Final Resistance, of course, you know, Spooky, somebody would have done that. Um, Weird Al, who would take a chance on Weird Al? You know, like these kind of, you know, they're not, they're not like lighting the world on fire. Right. Jason S doomed bullet dizzy and the flashcards are stroll on the mapiliz Nano T Amazing Quick The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. The only fun about not being committed to one of these things is I still can go back and forth and fantasize like, let's pretend I'm going to spend all the family's money on this device. And then how do I feel about it? And then I can walk it back and get it out of my system. It's a way to play and flirt with FOMO without, you know, actually costing any money. You guys want to talk about Pokemon? I want to talk about Pokemon. So in between finding other reasons not to be productive at work, I've been trolling the Facebook pages and I've been seeing locations now have their Pikachu pros on location and they were having some issues. Some issues with Straight Down the Middle drains coming off of the left orbit. The orbit being that shot that wraps around the whole back of the game, man. We love orbits. We name our friends after orbits. What's up orbital Albert, the Pokemon wizard himself. And so the exit to the right orbit, yeah, the left orbit, you shoot the right, when it comes around to the left, it was slanging right between the flippers, right down the drain, which is unfair, especially to a game that's going to be attracting people that wouldn't typically play pinball and want to get into it. And then when they manage to hit a satisfying shot, boom, your ball is gone. And you know, that's probably your ball three, now you're done. And it's like, what a jip, what a piece of crap game. What is this crap? I'm not playing this again. I'm going to go back to claw games or whatever. Standing at the back of the за свидание Santos Stadium, what a sight to see! A time of immense necklace.. Uno de los esc승es tan calurosos foram destruidos por ven quiсetres итat nobre, Next decade's decision to use a tool used to eyelashes to write或 disappear الك---- Menge Mus . Against American Ap bromuni, silvered top lateral red standards. funky concept' HERO3 So what people have had to do is remove two of these hex-headed screws, bend that wire guide back about a quarter of an inch, and then just go straight through the existing hole in the wire form or in the ball guide, but then drill a new hole in your playfield, which like that just gives me the cringe, man. I've only drilled Stern playfields one time, and it was to add a metal apron to my Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Any playfield? Is that going to upset my value? Like, what the heck is going on? Well, thankfully, Ulex Store was also one of the people posting this. And somebody in there tagged George Gomez, like, basically saying, George, what the heck is this, man? What's happening? And to his credit, dude responded. Like, he was right in there. Like, as soon as we found out about that, we have a fix. So I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means that, you know, what the playfields are already made. We got a stack of them. They're going into the LEs. Or if they've taken all those LE populated playfields, put them in the back porch, they'll throw them in a premium later, and then they're going to go ahead and run a new one. I think that's what they should do. But fix this ball guide, fix the press, and fix the dimpling, and fix this so I don't have to fix it myself. And all the LE owners don't have to fix it themselves. Thank God they ran the location pros first this time, because this is the kind of stuff that somehow slipped through testing. Now, when they're designing these games and they make these games to show off on the streams and the reveal videos and everything, these are like, you know, one of maybe four games that have been made and they're kind of handcrafted. You know, they weren't made on the assembly line. Eventually they do a production sample, which is like, okay, this one was made through the line, but it's still not one of the rank and file, you know, cranking them out 500 a day or whatever machines. So now that they're doing that, hopefully this was something that they found and there's not something else waiting, so then they can go ahead and run these LEs and not have this issue in there. Because man, can you imagine, you know, and think about this, some people are using Pokemon, this pinball machine, as a pinvestment, right? They're planning on getting this game, maybe they had multiple that they purchased, and they're gonna keep this guy in a box and keep him minty fresh somewhere in a storage locker that's climate controlled. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I don't even know why. I've never cared about a Pokemon card in my damn life. Now I'm over at Barnes & Noble like, oh, they don't have the Diamond Phoenix Violet version Tropical Fiesta Quest expansion packs available. Well, that kind of sucks. What the hell was I going to do with them anyway? I'm going to have a stack of cards at home the dog's going to eat. But like, I'm getting caught up watching videos on YouTube, watching people rip packs. Ooh, he got a foil Charizard. Isn't that amazing? The World Man Pinball Such a Gateway Drug Is Amazing What Else Do We Got Hexa Pinball Three Musketeers Saw A Little Teaser Come Out Of Course They Had The Whole Game Blacked Out Couldn See It But This Is Gonna Be The One Number One Confirmed Absolutely Gonna Be There Brand New Game At TPF This Thing Is Going To Be The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I didn't know this was coming, but can you believe that these guys are dumping even more content into their absolutely sold out Beetlejuice game? Like the heaviest hitter they've ever released. The game's amazing. 50 or so have cleared the line now. I think they're shipping here soon to go down to Texas. I'm not even sure exactly what the final count is, and it's been a week since I've been in the factory, so I can't really report back exact numbers. But these guys managed to license the song that was heretofore unlicensable due to cost, jumping the line. The Sonora song. The song, the swan song of the movie, right? The movie Beetlejuice at the end. Shake, shake, shake, Sonora. These guys got it. They got it and it's going into the game. So like, I'm gonna give them one of them. Because holy crap, dude. Like, I've been talking to them about them and of course I've asked like, hey, is this song in there? And they're like, you know, Don, we got some soundalike stuff. Brady Hearn is amazing. He'll do something that recreates a lot of the Calypso feel of it. But like, you just can't get that song. It's like, it's like a hundred times better. The Valley Company Subsidiary of Walter Kidde Co Inc Mirco Playfields Tim Kitzrow Scott Danesi Except like all the time So I don know how they did it I don know I don know the details yet I hoping someday we sit down around the fire They fill me in on exactly what the hell went down But yeah they have the rights to use this song in the game now. That's a huge get. That's a huge packed in value too for customers that have already purchased this game. That got up at midnight and came to my damn house just to get one. And now they've got even more fantastic awesomeness in there. So I try to ask them like, Do you have an idea already for this? Like last I had heard, this was like, it's not gonna happen. And so now it's like, well, now that you have it, you can go create a mode for it or whatever. Apparently it's gonna be a wizard mode that's in there. I hope they do the same thing with the coding. I'm gonna push for this. I hope they do the same thing with the coding that they did with Evil Dead, where as you play, if you have a particularly good game and hit some achievement level achievement, you get some tokens and you can use those tokens to spend to play the wizard modes of the game. That's super fun. I try, I mean, you've seen the live streams. Like, I struggle to get to wizard modes. It happens occasionally, but it's not as frequent as I would like. So what I would like to do is earn some Beetlejuice tokens or roaches or whatever that I could use to pay to play these fun wizard modes in the game. I, they've done it before with Evil Dead. I don't know why they couldn't do it with Beetlejuice. I think it could be kind of fun, man. It could be kind of fun. So I'm hoping for that. But Sonora, I won't play the song because I'll get demonetized. I don't know, banned from Spotify, but dang it, The song is in the game. They didn't even need it. We were already happy. Now it's like spooky. Oh, you can, you could, I was gonna say date my daughter, but like that literally could, no, I'm not gonna say that. But like, like, uh, yeah, I will subscribe to your newsletter for sure. How amazing is that, man? Jumping the line is there. American Pinball was up next. And, uh, you know, I didn't have a juicy rumor up until this morning about American Pinball to report. Actually, all we got is news. I still don't have any rumors. Circus Voltaire, there's a rumor. So I do what all responsible, journalistic-minded podcasters do, and I made up a rumor about American Pinball, and I was just going to share that. Let's share a made-up rumor. Maybe we can will something into existence. So the rumor is that the Bally Williams remastering game that they're going to do is not Circus Voltaire, but is actually The Addams Family. Pause for effect. Can you imagine the uproar if American Pinball announced like we got it, we're rerunning the Addams Family, get on a dealer's list now or buy direct. But you want to sell 2000 games right now? I think that's how you would do it. You know, all that build up demand for medieval madness has now been satiated. You know, we got our monster bash. We got our attack from Mars. There's still a pent up demand for Addams Family. And some people will say that there's other Bally Williams games that definitely play better than it. The game is not really that great. You know what? The game would still sell 2,000 units immediately if you could redo it and have all the assets and everything, a better LCD screen, more modern components. I mean, come on. People are paying $15,000, $25,000 to have plus the cost of a donor game just to get these games remade with a brand new playfield, brand new components. People are out there doing it, you know, but they have to like one-off all these parts and everything. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. He lives in Washington State. He knows who he is. Shout out, brother. Solidarity. He actually kicked me this rumor. And, of course, it's completely absurd. I've heard it from nobody else. And I wanted to repeat it again because I thought that'd be super fun. Can you imagine, though? What would happen if, like, America Pinball, you know, they're going for the scraps of what's left, Bally Williams that hasn't been licensed, that Pedretti hasn't already eaten up, that Chicago Gaming Company's not over there sitting on, and they, like, come out so