All right, are you ready to go back in the booth there? All right, I mean, I can record right now. You can go ahead, hit the button. Yeah, all right, everybody, studio audience, you ready to go? All right, let's hit it. Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode 162 of Don's Pinball Podcast. Devastating episode coming up for everybody today. I'm going to cover what's exactly happening at the American Pinball Warehouse, first impressions of Metallica's premium, having it at home, and also some spooky news and a pizza review. can i get a little reverb in my monitor yeah that's perfect all right oh we're live swinging a dump it's been like seven days it seems like the last three days have seemed like seven days from being stuck at a rest area bathroom stop on the interstate in in rockport illinois or whatever rockford to picking up metallica premium taking it off undressing it doing a live unboxing running back down to chicago hanging out with my friends both at american pinball and also at spooky pinball and having pizza at a couple different places and getting humbly last night and now I'm sitting in the chair here. It seems like I haven't had a chance to sit down for the last 36 to 48 hours. What's going on, everybody? How are you doing today? Give yourself a shout out. And let's settle on in. So first off off the bat, let's start with American Pinball. If we're going alphabetically, that is the place to start. Now, I had gone to the IAPA, International Amusement Association, fun time craziness that happened in Orlando, covered that already. and at the time there was that big to-do about AP again the rumor is they're about to close their doors or whatever and so I thought to be helpful I would go talk to the guys myself David Fix and his sales manager Ron a heck of a couple of nice guys and in between just selling uh Hot Wheels with Abandon from the show floor they managed to talk to me about their new upcoming project everybody's heard the rumors but what's actually happening and uh i will say that i i have before conflated production and development so when a game is in development versus a game is in production and on a production line but that's what the question was right the rumor was that you know parts wouldn't even be ordered for the new game until like all the barbecues had sold and apparently there was you know 60 sitting unsold or blah blah blah so i asked for clarification there what i got was the factory had four left which has now been updated to three um of like new in box le barbecues you know that need to go out i'm sure there's more at distributors but that's what i had heard and what i was told um and then either i don't know if this was supposed to be candidly i don't know if the question was fully understood but i took the response to be that the new game was actually already in production meeting on the line in some capacity Now, listening to other news sources, I've heard a game is not on the line. I've heard a game is on the line, but not the production line, which is completely confusing. So I thought, you know what? I live local to this place. Maybe if I just go down there, I can see what's really going on. So it seems to be that the game is for sure not actively being built in production going into boxes. There's not 60 of them sitting there waiting for the launch or release or anything. But a machine has gone through the production line. Like there's a production sample that has been made. All this is just extremely nerdy nuance and nomenclature that I'm beginning to understand, right? Game is in the late stages of development, it seems like, as far as like getting all the video assets where they need to be, getting the photos where they need to be, getting the sound clips to where they need to be, making sure that that up post fires when that multiball ends, you know, those sorts of things, right? Game otherwise, from what we're hearing, is, you know, polished, and we're in that pre-release kind of window where, you know, nothing's really solid yet but will be coming in fruition. So what I can confirm, though, is that there's not games marching off the line right now like a I Love Lucy episode and people are stuffing chocolates down their blouse. yet, but that should be coming soon. And it seems to be that the distribution network will hear this first and then the fan network will hear this. And when we'll hear this, I don't know, but I can safely say it's probably between now and 12 to 16 weeks from now. I think, I think that that's reasonable. So let me just kind of clarify that a little more. Um, I met and sat down with the guys and we really hammered it out yesterday. Like, all right, what is actually going on here? What they were not able to do is take me through a full factory tour to see the line. Now, I've seen it before when I was there in the development of barbecue. Houdini's were on the line, I think, the last time I was there. They did a tour for Expo, so everybody got to see that. And the reason I couldn't get back there is because while there's not new pinball machines going off of that line, something else is in development back there, whether that is distribution deals or other some such. What they did confide in me is that there are other aspects to the business besides just pinball rushing off the line. I think this is a point that people get hung up on when you come with the lens strictly of pinball, right? We know that they have a beautiful production facility. We've been in it, right? All of us have been there on either official tours or just stopping by and graciously walk through the halls. tons of parts tons of playfields tons of boxes like everything you can need to build a factory and then if you were to look at the last 12 months you know of this company their big launch of course being barrio's barbecue challenge didn't seem to be burning up the charts as far as like there's one in every every home and garage in the nation so on the backs of the sales of that one machine how could you float an entire company for a year especially with you know all the trucks that are coming in and out of there, all the employees that they have there and all the other aspects of the business and things And I think that true right If we were looking strictly at can they float themselves in the backs of just that one release the numbers don number right And it turns out because there a lot of other products product lines and other production facility kind of things that they can speak to officially due to NDAs with other companies But there's other activity that's going on there as well. And like that, okay, dear listener, is probably what's actually happening there. Okay, and all that is very hard to explain, especially when you use your production facility and you've maybe leased out space or whatever they've done with other side projects, side product lines, other things that aren't announced or can't be announced or are through completely independent parties. It's hard to write a press release about that to address all of this stuff. What they have told me is that the company's doing fine. The pinball line is a brand of which we know their products, But there's also kind of an umbrella amusement device company that's there as well. And then, of course, Ametron is over the whole thing, right? So it's not just one thing. It's not just one line where if that line's just sitting there and nothing's really happening, nothing's really happening. So that's the official word that I can give to you. Officially, my eyes, I saw a 40-foot trailer sitting in the bay getting loaded up with cargo heading out. I saw people milling around the factory. The factory floor, from what I saw from the loading dock looking into it, which went back as far as the parts cage, looked like there was a lot of activity going on. And those rows and rows of games that I saw last time I was there that were in boxes with shipping labels are now not there. So those were the Houdinis, the Hot Wheels, the GTFs that were going out to distributors and such. So there you go. Now, I know we've heard from specific distributors, especially ones that have podcasts and things, and we've gotten their perspective. And I can see how from that perspective, without seeing the entire context, it leaves you scratching your head sometimes. The other real thing that they told me, though, was that if anybody does have any questions, you can reach out directly to these guys and ask them. And, you know, for me, I texted Ron and I said, hey, I'm in the area. Can I swing by? And they said, yeah, how's this afternoon? So I was able to go back down there Monday, sit with the guys for a while, get some first impressions on some future products coming out from American Pinball that I'm very enthusiastic about. And then I also cannot comment specifically on yet. But my impressions are that things are looking up from GTF and BBQ for sure. For sure. Full stop. And I don't think it's going to be all that long until everybody else can get in on it too. But yeah, after spending some time there yesterday, I'm excited for where this company is going. And I can't wait to play more of their stuff. And I like the trajectory it seems like they're about to launch themselves on. So if that helps, if that helps. I know, you know, when you look at the news blog sites that drop information, when you look at the YouTube stuff, it's like, what's really going on? um you know it's easy to lose yourself in this narrative of like what is this madcap bunch of crazies doing you know where's where are they making the decisions that they're making you know surely this isn't you know meant for longevity um but peppered in with the rest of the context there of what appears to be contract builds other distribution deals and other uses of their huge production facility and you know they are filling a niche i think is the way to put that um aimtron themselves, you know, I mean, anybody's been to the factory, you've seen the churning out printed circuit boards like with reckless abandon. I mean, there's so much that's going out there. You know, American Pinball now uses those boards. They also make boards for maybe not other pinball companies anymore, but they're making them for all sorts of other telecommunications companies and things. So things are happening there. They've definitely filled that niche. You know, they're not Stern Pinball. They're not Spooky Pinball. They're not Turner Pinball. And thank god they're not haggis pinball nobody is haggis pinball anymore um so there i hope that helps to kind of shine some light on what's really going on and give you a flavor on what to expect um you know when they can uh roll the dice on a new product that comes out you know when we see it so hopefully hopefully march i'm hoping this is me speculating i haven't heard anything official but the next big show coming out is in march and i think two years ago that's when gtf released And I believe that's when people got their first hands on barbecue. So I think we're kind of right back there again. So yeah, everything seems to be going in a forwardly direction when it comes to the fine folks there at American Pinball. And I enjoyed my time that I had down there. And I hope they'll invite me down again. All right. Switching gears completely. Let's go over to the monster, Le Monstre, Stern Pinball. Because I was over there and I picked up Metallica Premium. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. After being stuck on the side of an interstate and thinking I was mixing my window, warehouse manager was able to open the roll-up door for me so I could at least go, once I got back into my truck, and pick up this Metallica Premium. Brought it home over the weekend. I did the live unboxing on YouTube. That was phenomenal. Thanks to everybody that has entertained and watched that. It's still up there if you'd like to see that. I plan on doing more fun YouTube content. This is a contract build for myself, for Don's Custom Pinball, right? uh the one-up lounge out in bellingham washington was so impressed with my build of jaws and i'm guessing my rosy personality as well that they've gone ahead and made a second order this time for a metallica premium we're doing this one up just like jaws full powder coat top to bottom uh we'll load it in with uh whatever modifications come out of the lab here shooter rods apron cards whatever anything we can think to put in there uh we'll dress it up with a nice topper maybe change the translate to something that fits the the mood a bit better and then we'll get it on out there with a shaker with a knocker with a full treatment out to the one-up lounge in bellingham washington go check this place out classic gaming good bar food and uh drinks uh really cool people like some of the best i've hung out with it's in the pacific northwest brick building and replete with pinball machines and weekly tournaments and all the other things that go along with that so it's definitely a vibe that they got going on over there and i can't wait to see what the guys are doing next i have another new venue that going to be opening it awesome so one lounge bellingham washington check it out metallica premium will won be able to tell looking at it because it ain going to look like a premium It going to look like an LE It's going to look like a $19,000 machine when I'm finished with it. It will be probably early February that it will be out there on site. In the meantime, I get to play the damn thing. And I have been playing the ever-loving hell out of it. So really excited when X-Men launched. I had heard the rumors that Metallica, I don't know, we didn't even have a name for it, just like the redo of Metallica. We thought it would be on Spike 3 or something. We knew it would have an LCD screen at least. And having played the classic Metallica, it plays well. I've had some really good games on it. I played the Elliot Wizards World there in Indiana. So I was like, okay, I get the spinners, you know, the inline drop targets are fun. I appreciate the game for what it is, you know, but the audio was never up to snuff. It just had the DMD panel there. The snake vomited the ball for the countdown screen for the match. I never really dug that. I was never really a fan of this kind of Rat Fink, Hot Roddy, Dirty Donnie art style. It just kind of made everybody look like a Funko Pop. This game addressed all of that stuff, and we talked about that before. The lines at Expo were nuts. Now it was a brand new game. There was only two of them, so of course there was going to be lines. But Insider connected in there, the full new art package. the new the redone graphics on the lcd screen like this game is functioning unlike every cylinder give me fuel give me fire give me all the multi balls that you can um so it's like for me this this is like a completely new game now it shoots so much better than any of the ones that i played on location and that may be because you know those games were older you know plus or minus how maintenance is or whatever um you know i kind of think that they redesigned this game and treated it as a new game from the ground up. And that seems to be the best way to approach something like this. And based on John Borg's interview with Loser Kids, that's kind of how he approached it as well, like as if this was a new cornerstone 18-month build process, right? You know, let's take, okay, we have a layout, right? You know, orbit, inline targets, you know, this mechanism that comes up and down. But let's design them, you know, almost from scratch, de novo, right? Now that we have new upgraded CAD software, we can adjust the ball guides by millimeters and make everything just function amazingly. Out of the box, I was having not really an issue, just an adjustment thing. With the ball guides coming out of the orbits where the ball would race around the orbit and then just grab the top of the sling and then bounce over. And I really like it when those fast orbits come right back to the flippers. So just a little bit of adjustments of the ball guides on each side of that orbit, and they are slinging straight down to the flippers. So if you get one of these at home and you're having a problem where it's just nicking the top of a sling or something, go ahead and adjust that wire for, or the ball guide. Ultimately, all I had to do was, you know, put some adjustable wrenches at the end of that and just give it just ever so much of a little tweak and it just brings that ball right around the corner of the sling perfectly, man. It's just fun. Every time you can just sail a ball through that orbit. um rocking out to master of puppets is always the right decision um i'm just i'm loving this game just just so much just so much so i mean if you've got room in the budget go ahead and get you one now with x-men i was really excited about it i knew metallica was coming out but i was like i'll just let that one be released i'll go play it on location whatever i'm sure it's fun but like i don't need to have it and like i would totally reverse those roles now if i knew this game was as phenomenal as it is so i'm gonna play it i'm gonna try to play it 500 times between now and February until I have to send it out. I just got the cab custom armor back from the powder coater today. That'll be getting installed on there. Shaker motors in there. The knockers in there. The new trans light is in there. I made a light up shooter rod for the game. Like I'm just in Metallica mode, man, man, this is a, this is a contender for game of the year. And it's not even like, like technically a new game, but it absolutely feels like it. Um, go play one of these, man. Go, go find one on location. Even the premium art is fantastic. Premium Ellie Ellie's are sold out, you know, bless the people that got those and those with the 19 grand that want to go pick one up from them. But, uh, yeah, dude, the game, the game's phenomenal and I'm just loving it. I just want to gush on it there for a little bit. Speaking of some cool ass people, when I left American pinball yesterday, I went over to Benton, Wisconsin, which a little bit out of the way on the way home. But I mean, come on. Um, I had ordered some parts, uh, from the guys and I figured, you know, if I'm, if I'm already like in for a penny, I should be in for a pound. Uh, so I went ahead and just texted the guys and fortunately they were able to swing by the factory after hours to meet me and let me pick up some parts. And not only God, look, I just say that the spooky pinball guys are like the coolest dudes on the planet, coolest dudes on the planet. Uh, they came by and they, they came out of their warm homes and went down to the factory after hours on a Monday, opened it up for me, got me my parts and they wouldn't even take my money. not only what they didn't even take my money and they gave me pizza now that makes you like like champion of the world in my eyes if you feed me like me and you were cool for life let alone if you make it easy for me to get parts and things so um i'm gonna go send them like the best gift basket of whatever i can find man just just awesome guys i was so impressed with them that even if their next game was absolute dog water i think i would still get it just just off of how cool they were to me. Now, fortunately, their game is not dog water because in addition to hooking me up with some parts, giving me some great guidance, letting me live stream, and feeding me pizza, they fired up their brand new game for me and we played some four-player matches going through Evil Dead, their production model that they have at the shop for testing. So this game currently has about 3,000 plays on it. They've just been hammering it. And mechanisms are all holding up. I know that reliability from Spooky Games has been their main point of contention from operators, particularly back in the Rick and Morty Halloween days. But I can say that they're taking everything they're learning and putting it into the products. The hand, man, I thought the hand would be a problem. The hand has been through 3,000 games now and is slinging up and down so whisper quiet, so smooth. I think they really did the engineering right with that device to run as it does. And, and, and, and it's, it working even better than the first time that I played it Um the call outs and everything sounds so much better Um the mechanisms of the game the ones that actually interact with the ball that you really would notice if they were having problems are not built on servos, which is helpful. You know, they switch to the all metal servos. But you know, over time, a servo motor, it's it's designed to fail and be replaced, right? Like these are things that you use to control, you know, RC planes and things. And so when they fail in the ailerons, you just put another one in there they're they're fairly inexpensive um so it seems to be that the servos are only in more decorative elements the only gameplay one i can find on the entire game is in that diverter for the double barrel uh launch uh deal everything else is on a coil and you know when the game is in its insanity mode and the entire cabin is laughing at you and you know the bash heads are popping up and down and the flap is is hurling insults and laughing at you you know everything seems to be functioning you know just on coils and and working just fine and dare I say engaging to play right I was still having a lot of fun with that damn sling flipper and the freaking shotgun man when you have to hit it with one ball and hit both shells at the same time like tell me that's not the hardest shot in pinball and then if you're not trying to do it you can do it all the time it's so fun but like looking at this game again now that it's out on the line it's out in the open and we're not crowded in the office. You know, this game is just singing, man. And I was able to really take in the topper from every angle now. You know, before when I had played the game for the first time, it was tucked in a tiny office. It was still under lock and key, you know, shielded away from prying eyes. It was hard. You couldn't walk around the machine. Like now I was able to walk around the whole thing. There's a live stream that's up on Facebook. The sides and the back of the topper are metal. The thing is super robust. You know, it's quite impressive. it's quite impressive in person i think people are going to flip their lips when they get to uh pinball at the beach in february and then tpf is going to be like like the big thing like for these evil deads in a star cluster it's going to be nuts man uh thanks everybody for jumping into that live stream that we had yesterday i was having pizza we're playing evil dead i walked around the whole factory i can confirm that there are four evil dead machines currently on the production line. There are four Evil Dead populated playfields over in the testing rigs, getting their QC testing. Those will be mated together into the cabinet and it's going to move its way down the line. In addition, Scooby Doo's are on the line, TCM's are on the line, Looney Tunes is on the line. There was a Halloween down at the end. I don't even know where the hell that came from. That game's been sold out forever. I don't know what's going on with that one. That's five games, plus that Halloween, that are all actively in production on the line. Was it five? Scooby Doo, Evil Dead, TCM, Looney Tunes. Okay, Halloween will be that fifth one. But still, it was impressive walking the whole line. I did it all on live stream, so you can go check that out. People are really excited to get their Evil Deads. Over 650 have been sold. On Thursday at 7 p.m. Central Time, Bugs Scream and Stream, gosh, what a name, will be doing the first gameplay live stream of the game. So check that out. I did manage to capture a little bit of gameplay in my live stream as well. but he's going to have the full rundown of the rules and everything. And I think that's really going to solidify in everybody's minds. Like if you're on the fence on this game, you're going to know where you fall on it. So, and you know, it's another horror theme, which again would be kind of a hard sell, but damn it. If the game's not super damn fun and I can't wait to play it some more. I got to play it again last night. It was super fun. I wanted to stay there all night and play this damn thing. So between Metallica, between evil dead, between what's on the immediate horizon with some of our other friends. It's a good time to be in pinball. There's a lot of cool options going on. A lot of people have some really cool ingenuity and projects that are in this industry, and I can't wait to just be part of the ride here. 2025, friends, is shaping up to be something phenomenal. And I don't even think this year's even over yet because it is heavily rumored that we're going to get another game reveal from Stern for Cornerstone before the month is even out. What? What? Please tell me that this new game is like a spiritual successor to Medieval Madness. Please, please tell me that. Please tell me there's some kind of cool castle mech. Please tell me that I can pick my class of character that I want to play. I can level up that character within that realm. I can go on quests. Like, that's what I want. Make it awesome. And I guess make it back here when it's time to talk about it. Anything else? I think that's about it. I'm about to go drop a game off. I got my first custom game is going out to a customer in Pennsylvania, and then I got some more on the line after that. Up for sale in the District on Arcade is a made-over X-Men LE that'll be going for our best offer. I got the John Wick LE for our best offer, and I got a Ultra VP 5.0 that'll be letting go. I'm valuing that at around $4,500, to be honest. loaded with every game including there's a form of Evil Dead on there not the spooky one but there is an Evil Dead machine there's a Big Bang Bar in there go play Fathom there, go play Centaur there, go play Fishtails there and go play some of the other virtual only games on a full size wide body machine with full haptic feedbacks and everything the graphics are so high resolution it looks like you're looking at an actual play field, I love it it even does 3D and it even has a main cabinet in it as well so you can play video games and stuff. I gush about the UltraVP. I think it's the best virtual machine available. They're up to the 7.0, I think it is now. This is a 5.0 machine, so it doesn't have the speaker grill lighted inserts, and it doesn't have that fan that blows at crotch level. But other than that, all the games are in there, and it even comes with two hard drives. So if you've seen one, or you want to come check it out, let me know what you think in the comments below. But I got to make up some room because Avatar's coming, Evil Dead's coming, and then who knows what's coming else in the future. And when I do know about it, you'll hear about it here first, at Don's Pinball Adventure Podcast. Be sure to email donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. Check me out the YouTube channel, also Don's Pinball Podcast, also the Facebook page, also the Discord. All kinds of content is always going out there. I'm doing some how-to videos now. I did a live stream on T-Molding Installation. If you want to plus up your machine and get a little tips on how easy that upgrade is to do, go check that out on the YouTube channel. More as I know it, man. Take care of yourself. Later.