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BDYETP 76: The New Pinball Machine Extravaganza

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 46m·analyzed·Mar 12, 2023
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TL;DR

Pinbrew Fest 3 announced; American Pinball's Galactic Tank Force draws skepticism over niche appeal.

Summary

Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball discuss Pinbrew Fest 3 (April 13-15 in Ohio), a major pinball and craft beer event featuring 100+ machines and multiple tournaments, then dive into five new pinball machine releases starting with American Pinball's Galactic Tank Force—a Dennis Nordman-designed game with unusual physical modifications (tank treads, folding head) that generates mixed reactions about market viability and design priorities.

Key Claims

  • Pinbrew Fest 3 will feature approximately 100 pinball machines with expected attendance of 50-60 tournament entries

    high confidence · John (Pinbrew organizer) stated 'We're looking right around 100 machines' and 'top 16, top 24, again, depending on how many people enter. But...we'll expect about 50 to 60 tournament entries.'

  • Galactic Tank Force is American Pinball's third teaser video and designed by Dennis Nordman

    high confidence · Kevin stated 'This is their third teaser video, presumably their last. And it's a new game designed by Dennis Nordman.'

  • Galactic Tank Force features physical tank treads attached to machine sides with LED strips and a folding head mechanism

    high confidence · Nick described 'tank wheels on the side of it between the legs' and Kevin clarified 'tank treads attached to the sides that have a ring of LED strips around the edge of the tank tread...the head is folded down. It's got a little flap that covers the rest of the glass.'

  • Galactic Tank Force is expected to be a super LE model priced at approximately $16,000 or higher with limited production (estimated dozen units)

    medium confidence · Kevin stated 'this is going to be like a super LE sort of model...you got to think this is going to be like $16,000 or something like that at a minimum' with estimated sales of 'maybe a dozen of these.'

  • Pinbrew Fest will feature all Ballarama machines made in history and six Ohio breweries pouring craft beer at $5 per 12oz pour

    high confidence · John stated 'we will have, this is going to be an exclusive, we're going to have all of the Ballarama pinball machines that have been made' and 'Six breweries will be pouring craft beer featuring a variety of styles throughout the event with 12-ounce pours, just $5 each.'

Notable Quotes

  • “This is the epitome of there is no adult in the room to say no to this.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~17:30 — Critique of Galactic Tank Force's design choices and lack of business oversight on development investment

  • “This is what happens when you have the creatives running company, right? And not like a business person or marketing person who's just like, you know, that's cool and all, but does this really make sense?”

    Kevin Manning @ ~23:15 — Broader critique of American Pinball's business strategy and competitive positioning against licensed themes

  • “If I'm not the target market, somebody who's obsessed with pinball and I don't live and die by themes, then who is?”

    Nick Lane @ ~34:00 — Questions the viability of ultra-niche unlicensed theme targeting retrofuturism enthusiasts

  • “featuring literally a humongous amount of assets that's your selling point”

    Kevin Manning @ ~20:30 — Critique of American Pinball's marketing emphasis on vague technical features rather than gameplay or theme appeal

  • “time has proven it over and over that unlicensed themes, like everybody says they want them, but nobody buys them”

    Kevin Manning @ ~25:00 — Industry observation about market failure pattern for original themes versus licensed IP

  • “VIP tickets are on sale through the end of March as long as supplies last”

    John (Pinbrew organizer) @ ~10:00 — Time-limited call to action for premium event access

  • “The Foo Fighters got it. Well, Scooby-Doo, then Foo Fighters, then Final Resistance, then Godfather. And now finally, we've got a teaser for Pulp Fiction”

    Kevin Manning @ ~26:00 — Observation of market saturation with major licensed releases overwhelming Galactic Tank Force launch timing

Entities

Buffalo PinballorganizationPinbrew Fest 3eventJohnpersonKevin ManningpersonNick LanepersonGalactic Tank ForceproductAmerican PinballcompanyDennis Nordmanperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball launching an unlicensed niche theme (retrofuturism/tank) simultaneously with major Stern licensed releases (Foo Fighters, Godfather, Scooby-Doo, Pulp Fiction), creating poor competitive positioning

    high · Kevin: 'This is not the answer to that. This is going to make some – there's some people who absolutely love this, and that's fine. But I'm just talking from a business competitive perspective. It's a bizarre move.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Nick indicates potential purchase interest in game this year but Galactic Tank Force does not tempt him; more openness to playing/testing but not to buying—contrasts with strong confidence in Dennis Nordman's design fundamentals

    medium · Nick: 'I will buy a game this year most likely. But I'm not even remotely tempted for this game...this is the first uh American pinball game that i'm like okay maybe...i'm gonna have to play this game and...we'll see if it checks all the marks'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Playfield layout features unconventional configuration with pop bumper cluster in center and posts/switches below flipper area (potentially up posts between flippers) without clear gameplay integration

    medium · Nick: 'There's another Nordman game...It doesn't have that configuration, but underneath the flippers, there's switches, which I don't think I've ever seen that before.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Critique of creative-led (rather than business-led) decision-making at American Pinball resulting in feature-rich but commercially questionable design choices prioritizing uniqueness over proven market demand

    high · Kevin: 'This is what happens when you have the creatives running company, right? And not like a business person or marketing person who's just like, you know, that's cool and all, but does this really make sense?'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.319

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got five, that's right, five new pinball machines that have been revealed that we'll discuss. We're also going to talk about Pinbrew, all that and more coming right up. Double Super Jackpot!
0:30
I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super chatbot in my life. That's right. And now, the Hall & Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Whoop-boom-shakalaka! Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the most jam-packed episode of Brady Even Pinball in history. I'm Kevin. That's Nick. What's going on, everybody?
1:06
Good morning. Good morning. Hope you guys got a huge cup of coffee, Red Bull, cocaine. I don't know, because we've got a lot to talk about, and you're going to want to stay awake for this. So let's dive in. So here's the deal. What do we got? We've got John from Pinbrew, and we're going to talk about Pinbrew.
1:31
Before we welcome John, let me just say I'm really, really excited. I was telling John earlier that I've not been to a show since pre-pandemic. This is in like three, three-and-a-half hours from Buffalo. Kevin, Manny, and I are both going.
1:45
We're still trying to see if we can get Jay locked down to do an autograph session there. It's kind of up in the air. So maybe if you guys give him some encouragement, he'll come out and do that. But, all right, John, what's going on? Good to have you on the show. Why don't I set it up with the official, like, we'll do, like, the official ad, and then we'll bring John in to talk, give us the details, all right? All right. All right, here's the pitch. Ohio Pin Brew Fest is the world's largest pinball and craft beer event returning to Girard, Ohio, April 13th through the 15th. The family-friendly event will feature pinball machines and arcade games of all eras set to free play all three days, including the newest releases from Stern, Jersey Jack, Chicago Gaming, and more. Six breweries will be pouring craft beer featuring a variety of styles throughout the event with 12-ounce pours, just $5 each. There's an IFPA main and women's tournaments that will be held at Pinbrew, along with free-to-enter juniors tournament. Limited VIP tickets are on sale now. The $100 VIP package includes an hour early all three days, Thursday through Saturday, a Pinbrew t-shirt, Pinbrew poster, exclusive Pinbrew pint glass, which means all of your $5 pours will be 16 ounces, and an exclusive two-hour preview of the largest public pinball location, over 400 pinball machines just two and a half miles from the show. VIP ticket tickets are going fast. Buy your tickets. Visit pinbrewfest.com. Once again, Pinbrew 3 coming April 15th through the 17th in Girard, Ohio. Tickets and more information at pinbrewfest.com. All right. I think we did it. John, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. Really excited to be here. How did Kevin do with his ad read? It sounded great. I just want to make sure that those dates are correct. It is Thursday through Saturday.
Rob Burke
person
Keith Campanelliperson
Carrie Hoskinsperson
Stern Pinballcompany
Foo Fightersproduct
Godfatherproduct
Scooby-Dooproduct
Pulp Fictionproduct
Final Resistanceproduct
PIN Stadiumcompany
Flipping Out Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Multimorphiccompany
Whitewaterproduct
Wheel of Fortuneproduct
Party Zone / Party Monstersproduct
Bond 60thproduct
  • ?

    event_signal: Pinbrew Fest 3 positioned as major pinball community gathering featuring 100+ machines, multiple tournaments, and opportunity to play all new Stern releases in one location

    high · John: 'We're looking right around 100 machines...six different craft breweries...IFPA main and women's tournaments...free-to-enter juniors tournament'

  • $

    market_signal: Crowded launch window with multiple major licensed releases overwhelming market capacity; poor timing for niche unlicensed game launch

    high · Kevin: 'you've got Foo Fighters got it. Well, Scooby-Doo, then Foo Fighters, then Final Resistance, then Godfather. And now finally...we've got a teaser for Pulp Fiction...why would you try to launch when everybody else is...There's only so much money in the market right now for pinball machines'

  • $

    market_signal: American Pinball's three teaser videos criticized for poor marketing strategy: unknown actor lineup, vague asset descriptions, and cryptic imagery failing to build hype for niche unlicensed theme

    high · Kevin: 'The first teaser trailer announced the game, and they're featuring, and they list a bunch of names of people. I have no idea who they are...95% of the people out there, even in the nerd world that we live in, probably don't know who these people are. So that was weird.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dennis Nordman confirmed as designer of Galactic Tank Force, bringing established pedigree for smooth-shooting games but no track record with this specific physical customization approach

    high · Kevin: 'it's a new game designed by Dennis Nordman'; Nick: 'Dennis Norman knows how to make a good shooting game. There's no doubt in my mind.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Galactic Tank Force's unusual physical tank tread modifications and folding mechanism criticized as excessive R&D investment with minimal market appeal—estimated to sell only 10-12 units at $16k+ price point

    high · Kevin: 'there's going to, they're going to sell maybe of the, so from my understanding, this is going to be like a super LE sort of model...maybe a dozen of these' and 'how many people are going to be happy how much is this going to move the needle on sales'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Expected Pinbrew Fest game lineup includes Pulp Fiction (Stern), Foo Fighters, Godfather, Scooby-Doo, Final Resistance, and potential American Pinball games plus new Stern P3 module demo

    medium · John: 'We're going to have the Foo Fighters, Godfather, you know, look at a Scooby-Doo...the new P3 module will be there as well. The new American Pinball release is going to be there'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Historical pattern observed: unlicensed themes consistently underperform despite community claims of demand; time-proven market preference for licensed IP over original themes

    high · Kevin: 'time has proven it over and over that unlicensed themes, like everybody says they want them, but nobody buys them. Like very few people buy them.'

    • 3:25
    And I'm excited to have all three days of jam-packed pinball. That's awesome. So we've got beer. We've got pinball. You guys are going to have all the new games there, right? We're expecting to have all the new games, including Pulp Fiction. We're expecting to have, I can't guarantee that, but every other game, obviously. Godfather, Foo Fighters, you're going to talk all about them. But what better time to have a show than when you have all these great new releases and opportunity to play all these games again in one place. So, yeah, it's a perfect time to come out to a show and excited and honored that this will be your first show post-pandemic. Yeah, we're going to be running like some vans out from Buffalo. We've had friends go previous years. They came back and said good things about it. So I'm guessing it only gets better every year. I'm excited for the tournaments. You've got a number of tournaments going on all three days, right? We do. And the main tournament, the IFPA tournament, is group match play. It's kind of session play. There's seven or eight qualifying sessions where you'll play four games, Swiss pairings, 7-5-3-1 scoring. So you're going to play a total of four games. Obviously 28 would be the highest session you can have. You're going to take your two best sessions. So if you do really well in two sessions, you'll qualify that way. But if you don't do well, you can always replay later in the day. We do have an IFPA. It's going to be a women's knockout tournament and then a free-to-enter juniors tournament. So there's going to be tournament action for competitive players, but also a lot of casual play, obviously a lot of beer. There's a lot for everyone. We've got food trucks coming out as well. Awesome. And how many pinball machines are you expecting to be at the event? We're looking right around 100 machines. Again, we're still working on getting more in. We'd love to have people bring some pinball machines there. I'd love to have the Big Buck Hunter, the world-famous Big Buck Hunter in from Buffalo.
    5:05
    John, that thing is like that's going to be in a glass case. Yeah, it's got to be preserved for generations. Well, the other nice thing is that if we're not getting your Big Buck Hunter, we will have, this is going to be an exclusive, we're going to have all of the Ballarama pinball machines that have been made. Oh. In history. You're going to be at Indian. So that's very exciting stuff. So you're going to have like a box of pop bumpers maybe? Yes, yes. Okay. I can't wait. Yes. That would be a great place to have Jay doing that autograph session. It's next to all the Ballarama. I think that makes sense. Yes. I had someone ask me in regards to the tournament, do they need to come out? Do they have to be there Thursday, or can they come out Friday? Okay. Yeah, what I would say, again, you have more opportunities to qualify by being there all three days, but you can absolutely get there on Friday, play a couple sessions, gauge where you are in the standings, and then decide whether or not you want to play more sessions on Saturday morning or not, or how early you want to get there Friday. You've got to put together two good sessions to qualify. It's typically top 16 will qualify. We'll expect about 50 to 60 tournament entries, so top 16, top 24, again, depending on how many people enter. But you absolutely do not have to be there Thursday. But there's an advantage, you know, more sessions. It doesn't hurt you, you know, to play as many sessions as possible, but you absolutely do not have to be there on Thursday. Okay, I'm jumping around a little bit, but you mentioned, you know, people can bring games there. If they wanted to bring a game, how does that work? How do they reach out to you? They can go to our website, pinbrewfest.com, and register a game. That'll give them a pass for all three days, and there's more benefits the more games you go to. But there's contact information and some of the benefits in bringing a game. We'd love to have more games, but we are going to have a large, large selection of games that we'll be bringing.
    6:53
    Rob Burke, who has one of the largest collections in the world, is going to be bringing games. Obviously, Keith Campanelli, a founder of Pin Brew, is going to have a lot of games. Marvin as well. We've just got a lot of machines there, so that's the biggest selling point. But what really makes Pin Brew different is that six different craft breweries, all of which who have pinball machines in their location, will be coming out with two different beers each, including one seltzer. So we're going to have 12 different styles of beer available to everyone, but still a family-friendly event. That's awesome. Are these all Ohio breweries? Yes, all Ohio breweries. They will be. All right. That sounds good to me. Kevin, you got any questions? Yeah, we had a question in chat related to bringing a game. are sales allowed if you bring a game?
    7:37
    Sales are allowed, but they must stay on the floor for a certain number of hours slash days. Again, all that information can be found on the website. But, yes, you absolutely can bring a game that is for sale, but it must stay there through a certain day and time. Yeah, so you can't scam your way into a free ticket by selling your game in the parking lot. So don't get any fancy ideas. These guys know your schemes. Yeah.
    7:58
    It's also a great deal, again, even a VIP ticket or the three-day pass. We're looking at $60 or $100 for three great days of pinball. And the pricing, to me, craft beer for 12-ounce pour, $5 at a show, I mean, it's a great deal all the way around and a lot of hours to play all these new games in one spot. So to me, that's the biggest selling point, especially if you're in the area. Maybe you couldn't go to the Texas show. Here's the next best thing, in my opinion. John, I just want to clarify something so you don't get in trouble with this. I know you said if you bring a game, you get free admittance and stuff. What if the game is teed off? Does that still count? There are some negotiating that can be done depending on that game, but we might allow it. The nice thing is we have all the best machines, so we were asking people to bring some of the other machines, we'll call them. I don't want to get too much hate mail. Gottliebs are also accepted.
    8:50
    I'm trying to protect the integrity of your show. I appreciate it. It's almost going to be a contest. Who can bring the least desirable game? If somebody brings a Thunderbird, it's going right in the dumpster. I'm sorry.
    9:03
    Last year we had a couple homebrew games, and I'd love to turn this into a homebrew show as well in the future, but the variety is just really there. So there's something for everyone. There are going to be EMs there, like I said, from all eras. There's definitely something for everyone to play. We're not taking all the great games into the tournament. There will be great games for anybody to play casual, but the tournament also features well-maintained games. Just a very well-rounded show. And anybody who's gone there, please tell your friends the quality of the show and how much fun you had. Different food trucks every day. Really a lot going on there. Awesome. It looks like on the website that there's a hotel nearby. I don't know if it's sold out yet, but there's a deal for a block of rooms. So you guys make it really easy to plan logistically for this. Absolutely. And especially when you've got a craft beer show there, it's important to have the hotel right there next door or across the street. So we've made those plans as well. Yeah. But all that information, there are still hotel rooms with the discounted rate available on our website, yes. Yeah. I'm going to get absolutely wasted. All right, so looking forward to it. John, any closing thoughts?
    10:08
    I'm excited again, excited to hear the rest of your podcast and talk about all of these great games that are coming because they're going to be at Pin Brew Fest. I mean, we're going to have the Foo Fighters, Godfather, you know, look at a Scooby-Doo, look at the new P3 module will be there as well. The new American Pinball release is going to be there, and you're going to talk all about it coming up. But it's a great time to come out to a show. We're going to have a lot of new games, and it'll be awesome to see Nick and Kevin at the show for the first time in years. So come and bring them at Pin Brew. There you go. You said all the great games. Will Scooby-Doo also be there? We're expecting. Are you trying to trap me into saying that?
    10:45
    You're trying to lock me into saying that. You should probably end on that high note. We did good. I know you're doing Nick, and I don't like it. I see it.
    10:53
    We will have a lot of the games there. Cactus Canyon, we had Funhouse 2.0. I'm trying to go through all these weird games. We also have a Best in Show award last year, Cuber's Quest. If you haven't played that, really cool game to play at show. So there's a lot of really cool show games where it might not be the best game in the world or I'm not going to buy that game, but, ooh, that game's here. I want to play that. Here's my chance to play Cuber's Quest. Or, you know, these games you just don't see anywhere but a show. It would be fun if somebody brought a Big Buck Hunter Reloaded Arcade and I'll have a showdown with them. I'd love to do that. So somebody bring that, please. That would be great. All right. John, thank you so much. I'm pumped, man. We're just a little over a month away for that, so can't wait. Yep, VIP tickets are on sale through the end of March as long as supplies last, so highly recommend pinbrewfest.com. Thank you. All right. Kevin, let's go. Let's dive into this. All right. Let's thank the rest of our partners. Yeah, let's do that. All right. Do the honors. Yeah, so we got our premier partner, PIN Stadium. Pinstadium Lighting Kit, controlled by iOS Android app. Light up your pinball machines. You can see it from space when you put those bad boys on there. So many games are coming out that are just dark these days, which is ironic considering that they have more LEDs than ever before. But Pinstadium solves it. I think Godzilla in particular is a dark game. It's kind of surprising. It's got great art and everything, but you can hardly see it. You can use coupon code BUFFALO to save 10%, and they've got the new Pinsidio Neo Adams. Check them out. Lower profile, slimmer fit. Looks great. All right. Quick shout-out to all of our other partners, Comet Pinball, for your LED needs. Flipping Out Pinball, if you're going to buy a pinball machine, whether it's any of these new ones we're talking about, I can't stress enough the best customer service in the industry that's Flipping Out Pinball. They do fantastic work. PinballEDU, go to pinballraffle.org for a chance to win a pinball machine every month and support charity. Titan Pinball for silicone rings.
    12:52
    Pinballs, which are the actual balls on the machines. There's another stop on that. Toolkit. I bought some of their nut drivers. Nut drivers, those are great. Such a great one-stop shop. That's Titan Pinball. Multimorphic.com. We've got some Multimorphic news coming up. Kevin will probably talk about. Check that out. They've got a new game.
    13:13
    Pinslide.com. What can I say? It's hopping these days with all the new releases. So much fighting going on there. It's a beautiful thing. It really is. I don't even know how people have this kind of time. I swear to God, I want to make like a chat GPT quintessential pinsider.
    13:35
    I'm just going to send that bot in there just to start more shit and just respond back and forth. So a Levy bot. Yeah, a Levy bot. All right. Just feed them all Levy's posts and then have Levy bot. And then Levy can go on vacation or something. And then, like, the bot can just do the work for him. God bless you, Levy. All right. He doesn't listen to this podcast, though, but he talks about baby games. All right. Jersey Jack Pinball. Jerseyjackpinball.com. Makers of the most beautiful pinball machines on the planet. Let's go. Let's go, Kev. All right.
    14:04
    So I was trying to figure out. We have five pinball machines to talk about. And I couldn't figure out who to kick it off with. But I got some exclusive Galactic Tank Force info and photos coming for you. So let's kick it off with Galactic Tank Force. This is the latest pinball machine from American Pinball. They have been teasing the literal hell out of this. This is their third teaser video, presumably their last. And it's a new game designed by Dennis Nordman. And they dropped this one yesterday. And it is like, so Nick, describe that for the listeners who haven't seen what this looks like. What are we looking at? I'm still trying to figure that out, Kevin.
    14:52
    Okay, so if you haven't seen this and you're listening to this on the audio, wow, wow. How does one describe what we're looking at? I guess it is a pinball machine, but it looks like a toy tank that they've put, like, tank wheels on the side of it between the legs, and they've got the head down. They've got a little turret. It's really puzzling, okay? Like, I just struggle to understand why they're doing this. Clearly, there's going to be some percentage of people that love this and want this, okay? But I think it's such a small, I think it's a lot of effort for such a small group of people that they're going to appease with this, that it is kind of mind boggling.
    15:35
    Yeah, so to clarify, if you're listening, it's a pinball machine. It has plywood, quote unquote, tank treads attached to the sides that have a ring of LED strips around the edge of the tank tread. Think of like a Raw Thrills arcade game. Like your big buck hunter has got that on there.
    15:59
    And then the head is folded down. It's got a little flap that covers the rest of the glass. And on the back of the back box, there's a turret with a pop bumper at the end that lights up. So we've talked before about when pinball companies do things or create things that nobody asks for. Well, here we go. This is the epitome of there is no adult in the room to say no to this. 100% this is like there's a group of people in the room wouldn't it be cool if we did this and everyone's like yeah yeah yeah there's not one dissenting voice and saying hey hey is this worth our time is it worth the build of materials is it worth the money like how many people are going to be happy how much is this going to move the needle on sales we need to get to like all the weird teasers that they've been putting out for this there's a lot think of like all the research and development and like machining and everything the extra art they had to make for this back box back thing and how many of these are they going to sell like 10 what's your charitable interpretation best case that this is for and where this wins what's what what would you say kevin this is for like the deadest normans of the world like there's like this this core little group of people who love this retrofuturism which i think retrofuturism is really cool but they're in that age group where they grew up with toys like this and things like that and they have expendable income and there's going to, they're going to sell maybe of the, so from my understanding, this is going to be like a super LE sort of model that comes like this. And they're going to sell like maybe a dozen of these, you know, depending on the pricing, of course, but you got to think this is going to be like $16,000 or something like that at a minimum. Right. And like, what's the point if it only, if you only see that when it's folded down like what what is the point i don't i don't get what the point is i wish i was a fly on the wall for these discussions because it's not just the uh building materials and the lack of sales it's it's as you said kevin it's the amount of time that went into producing this finding contractors somebody to to do this to get the art to design it like it's just so fucking unnecessary it's unbelievable yeah it is rare but it's a sergeant to his point in chat. He says, the point is that it's rare and you'll know what you have when you sell it. Sure, but also, you know,
    18:22
    the Bond 60th is also rare and those are, the price is just dropping through the floor on those. So if it's rare and nobody wants it, it's still worthless, right? It's like, if this is some weird thing in your game room you have to make special room for because it doesn't fit against the wall right or you want to fold it down and be able to look at it and, you know, so it's going to take up a special space in your game room. You know, I think this is a very limited market for an unlicensed theme for this sort of machine that only a few people are going to want. Yeah. You know, time has proven it over and over that unlicensed themes, like everybody says they want them, but nobody buys them. Like very few people buy them. You know, we, you know, look over the past 10 years of all the people say, oh, finally, unlicensed themes have been coming out. Just people don't pay any attention to them. This is what happens when you have the creatives running company, right? And not like a business person or marketing person who's just like, you know, that's cool and all, but does this really make sense? Especially in the market and what our competitors are doing. I mean, we're going to get our ass handed to us with Foo Fighters and Godfather and Scooby-Doo and then Pulp Fiction. Like, this is not the answer to that. This is going to make some – there's some people who absolutely love this, and that's fine. And I'm glad those people got something. But I'm just talking from a business competitive perspective. It's a bizarre move that I really struggle to see how this works. Yeah, and to the timing of it all, we've had Foo Fighters got it. Well, Scooby-Doo, then Foo Fighters, then Final Resistance, then Godfather. And now finally, well, we've got a teaser for Pulp Fiction coming up. and it's like why is everybody rushing to put all these machines out right now you're just getting buried everybody's either already spent their money on other uh pre-orders or machines why not just you know put the i mean i guess like if you've got everything uh geared up you just have to go but it just seems like a bad marketing decision to to put all there's only so much money in the market right now for pinball machines why would you try to launch when everybody else is Well, let's talk about the marketing for this. And there's been no less than three teaser trailers for this game. Each are head-scratching to begin with. The amount of time that was put into it. The first teaser trailer announced the game, and they're featuring, and they list a bunch of names of people. I have no idea who they are. Again, 95% of the people out there, even in the nerd world that we live in, probably don't know who these people are. So that was weird. um then what was he's a trailer too kevin it was that weird guy with the helmet let's show the uh the names here this is this is my favorite uh so american pinball uh yeah here we go fun for the entire family featuring literally a humongous wait this is my favorite like featuring literally a humongous amount of assets that's your selling point that's like the thing you put on your marketing materials like so we have assets i don't even know what that means right what does that mean and for an unlicensed theme is like who cares like you're making all this up it's not like saying i it's it's the godfather and we have the whole we're gonna put the whole movie in there right like you're making all this up so we don't know what a huge amount of assets are no i think they're serious i think they're legit i think i think so too i was trying to be uh i was trying to play the devil's advocate okay well it's not gonna work we we know who's running the company over here all right continuing on starring carrie hoskins who i i this is the one person i actually knew because uh i'm a like i was way into mortal kombat growing up and this is the person who played uh sonia blade in mortal kombat again who moving on next right okay all All right, ready? And Jeff Hoover. Everybody knows Jeff Hoover. I think there's a goddamn owl in my house because all I see is say, who?
    22:35
    And with Mitchell Pollitt. Oh, shit, they got Mitchell Pollitt? I'm just joking. I have no idea who the fuck that is.
    22:49
    And introducing Clementine Morfitt. okay we're introducing them so we're not supposed to know who that is i guess and uh who else we got coming soon a silhouettes of of characters okay great so that was not hyped chat who's not hyped by this i'm hyped let's put this in context so this released maybe two weeks ago this was when uh you know scooby-doo is in is in full swing i think foo fighters was announced around or about then and then this comes out so they obviously had to spend money on this they They scripted it, they wrote it, blah, blah, blah. And then it's just hard not to just be like, are you kidding me?
    23:29
    I struggle to understand the impact that they think that that's going to make. So here's teaser number two. You've got like a tank pilot guy with an ice cream air freshener hanging around. And it's just like wobbling back and forth. And you can hear some of the...
    23:52
    very dramatic it may have score a bit which you know jjp doesn't have score so we'll talk more about that alright so again teaser 2 like just more of a head scratcher like i'm not getting any more hyped i'm more confused you're seeing like one frame of animation just moved around so you got to see a little bit of the art i guess and then you got to see the tank full of down but I've got pictures of the game. You want to see the game? I want to see the game. You told me that it looks good. It does actually look pretty cool, so here we go. So these made their way to me this morning. It looks like it's on a wheelchair. It does.
    24:37
    It's a pinball wheelchair. It's one of the coolest wheelchairs I've ever seen, though. I mean, if I had to go into a wheelchair, I'd want it to look kind of like that, to be honest. Yeah, so this is the super premium collector's edition with the tank treads and everything. It's got lights on the sides where you can see pin stadium-esque lighting.
    25:00
    I do have a couple more photos here. This is a full cabinet picture. It looks like they're using a more traditional cabinet head. Am I mistaken? It looks good. I like it. Yeah, I like it too. It's got a screen like a stern. It's placed like the stern in the LCD screen with some cool art around the screen on top of the speakers.
    25:23
    This is actually, here's a closer up version, look at the play field. So what we're looking at is, so it's got a lot of wire forms. It reminds me of like Whitewater-ish with the big flowy Dennis Norman ramps, but they're wire forms instead of plastic ramps.
    25:41
    It looks like there might be, it's kind of hard to tell in this photo because it's like in attract mode, so there's a lot of purple light on it at this moment. But there's a spaceship in the middle with a target bank in front of it. There's a cluster of pop-humpers behind that. You've got a large ramp to the left of center that looks like it loops around, and it can go a couple different ways. Again, it's kind of hard to tell exactly what's going on.
    26:08
    There's an orbit with a spinner on the left that feeds back to lanes at the top, it looks like. There might be like a vertical up kicker maybe on the right where it kicks it into that wire form because it kind of goes up and over. So I would guess that's what's going on. But the concept is it like a very campy kind of Dr Dude Party Zone Party Monsters kind of game It shoots very smooth allegedly with clean art that bright But again these pictures are during a track mode So you're seeing like the, sorry, I jumped away from the photos. Would you get that information? You're seeing like the crazy like rainbow colors during a track mode.
    26:52
    Looks like there might be like a gun in the back left. Again, it's hard to tell. but the concept is you're battling bad tank guys that get progressively harder throughout the game so there you go, that's your first look at some playfield pictures of Galactic Tank Force Nick, what do you think?
    27:13
    It's really hard to say much for this really see it with the lighting I think the tank wheelchair thing looks really weird the playfield from what I can tell I don't really like a bank of things right in the middle like that. Look, it's Dennis Norman. I mean, Dennis Norman knows how to make a good shooting game. There's no doubt in my mind. That's like the one thing that it's like, oh, okay, maybe this can shoot great and be fun.
    27:41
    I don't know. It looks like kind of from what I can make out of the play field, it doesn't look like it's anything super interesting to me.
    27:49
    This is not something I'm in the market for a game. I will buy a game this year most likely. But I'm not even remotely tempted for this game. And again, maybe the thing is like, well, Nick, you're not the target market for it. But then if I'm not the target market, somebody who's obsessed with pinball and I don't live and die by themes, then who is? Right? What I just noticed was, look at this outline.
    28:12
    Underneath the flipper area, there's like two posts and like two switches. It kind of reminds me of Wheel of Fortune a little bit. There's another Nordman game. Yeah. It doesn't have that configuration, but underneath the flippers, there's switches, which I don't think I've ever seen that before. And I don't know if that's an up post in the middle between the flippers.
    28:33
    I don't know. I'm pretty intrigued by this game. Like, I could see you selling something and grabbing one of these. The thing that is the huge question mark is the rules, right? Like, we don't know who's coding this. Is the game going to be fun? Is the sound going to be good? Because there's, like, crazy dubstep in those videos. like is the animations on uh legends of val were terrible are they going to be good on this so there's a lot of a lot of question marks still but i like the art i like the concept i like the style um i like dennis nordman games so this you know who knows what it's going to be priced either so um there's still a lot of question marks but i am i'm intrigued it is this is the first uh american pinball game that i'm like okay maybe uh valhalla was i was also interested in until i played it and then i'm like no so i'm gonna have to play this game and uh we'll see we'll see if it checks all the all the marks that grab one awesome listen all right so with all that said vomine naysaying and doubting which i i'm still on that train i hope i hope i'm proven wrong right i'm hoping this game crushes it and is the most amazing thing ever and uh yeah it's a huge win for american pinball that's that's that's my hope again i think that they're making a huge mistake not doing licensed themes.
    29:47
    And it's to their detriment, no matter how good the game is, people buy games, buy licenses, and I don't know how you compete with Foo Fighters and Godfather and Spooky, because that's what's going to draw people in. It's definitely themes and license more than anything these days, and especially where we are with collectors.
    30:03
    But I hope it is a fun game, because I do want to see more pinball and more pinball companies. So, yeah. Yeah, it's always hard to tell from these leaked photos, but what I've seen looks cool and we'll see more soon. I think they're saying like Saturday, next Saturday for all the full reveal. So I guess we'll find out soon enough and we'll see more. I imagine you're going to be able to play this at TPF and at Pin Brew. So looking forward to getting my hands on it. All right. So that is Galactic Tank Force. All right. That's only one of four more pinball machines we have to talk about. So let's keep it moving. And let's, I kind of did them in reverse chronological order. So we're going to move to the second most recent one that was announced was Pulp Fiction. So this is interesting for a number of reasons. The theme is really cool. Again, theme is something that grabs you right away. You're like, oh, I love this movie. Got to see what's going on with Pulp Fiction. So the other thing that's cool is that this is play mechanics getting into pinball. So this is Play Mechanics of like Big Buck Hunter, you know, all the Raw Thrills games. They're kind of like interconnected companies from my understanding. So traditional like arcade manufacturer making the jump, getting into pinball with this Pulp Fiction theme. So Play Mechanics and Chicago Gaming Company. So it sounds like Chicago Gaming is probably going to build them. Maybe Play Mechanics Development at Chicago Gaming is building it. I'm speculating there, but this is going to be a Mark Ritchie design. So Mark Ritchie, you know, Steve Ritchie's brother designed a number of pinball machines over the years, including most recently, I guess, would be Indiana Jones, Williams, Indiana Jones, which is a pretty highly regarded layout.
    31:50
    He also did Kingpin for Capcom, which didn't get released in a number of games like Firepower 2. And, you know, I don't I don't have his full list that and Fish Tales is another one he's well known for. so some good designs under his belt and yeah so the coming soon the teaser is just like not much to the teaser this is just basically announcing the title Mark Ritchie design Pulp Fiction coming soon play mechanics etc etc so yeah what do you think about Pulp Fiction I do have we have the one crappy leaked photo of that, so I can show that while you talk about it.
    32:35
    Yeah, I hope that's not the real game, because it doesn't look good from the leaked photo. Is this supposed to be just a single-level game, like a more basic game? Like a street-level game, if you will, or is it actually of ramps and everything else? I don't see any return ramps by the flippers. Yeah, that's been the speculation, is that it would be a single-level layout for like $10,000. yeah if that's a leaked photo i mean it looks pretty terrible the art and everything on it to be honest um it's really hard to make it out though i mean it's really hard to judge it without seeing it in person that's why this is it's a dangerous game let alone even just looking at professional photos let alone looking at leaked ones yeah it uh it reminds me of lethal weapon the the art you know it's got the big gun and the pistol in the middle and there's a scoop on the far left looks like there's a royale with cheese sculpt over the scoop uh kind of an orbit on the left another lane i mean this is if if you're listening this is like a 3dpi photo it's terrible there's some pop bumpers in the back you know it's orange and blues and and reds are the like overall theme you got samuel l and uh mr mr uh what's his name on the right mr dianetics on the slingshots.
    33:58
    John Travolta. That's about all you can make out. When I first saw it, and I have not played this game in a really long time, just the color scheme and the art, it looked like mousing around, which is not a compliment. No, you're right. It does. I saw that on that tournament stream yesterday.
    34:20
    It's crazy. I said that And I've not seen Mouse and Around for a long time. I just pulled up the image as you were talking. I'm like, holy shit, I was on it. Like, it does look like Mouse and Around color and vibe. It's really weird. It's not a good color scheme.
    34:36
    Mouse and his beautiful FU, says NuoVad. It's all kinds, my friend. It's a great look for Mouse and Around. It's not a great look for a Pulp Fiction game. Yeah. I don't like yeah that's the last way that I thought this game was gonna look um we'll see yeah but yeah so that's all we got on Pulp Fiction theme is cool a lot left to be determined so um there you go that's it that's Pulp we can move on from that alright next uh JJP's Godfather Revealed um so they what's there to say about Godfather so there's two editions limited and the collector's edition just like with Toy Story pricing is $12,000 for the LE, $15,000 for the CE just like with Toy Story as well this is a new design from Eric Minier, he's previously designed Pirates of the Caribbean and Guns and Roses and once again he's partnered up with Kiefer as the main coder the uh cabinet art hang on we get the full let me give full credit to the team here uh cabinet art is by franchi i know they got the list of who's who in here somewhere all right never mind i can't find it all right we we love you all jp to win on on the uh animations and jesper something jesper something did like most of the play just kind of everybody kind of worked on it to an extent yeah there was a team on the playfield and the art package all together JP Duane even did some of the playfield too so good collaborative effort this is the Godfather 50th anniversary edition the animations kind of remind me the back glass style reminds me of Woz a little bit with the different quadrants up in the back yeah no David Thiel on sound we've got the same company that did Toy Story 4 I forget what their name was but yeah so to be determined on the sound I listened I watched like a little bit of Carl's stream I've got one coming and it should land on Wednesday so I didn't want to spoil it but I liked what I saw of the layout the animations and lighting and everything looks really cool I like the sculpts and the toys on the game with the machine gun dude in the back and you got the godfather on the left orbit kind of thing It's got an upper flipper on the upper left that shoots across. Looks like a really fast-flowing layout.
    37:19
    Single pop bumper in the lower right, which has kind of drawn some comparisons to Godzilla. But, again, this is apparently just a coincidence because this was in development before Godzilla was even seen. So it's like with GNR, how you had Avengers, or Affinity Quest and GNR both come out with the spinning thing. And then Keith brought it back for a Bond 60th as well. So what do you think about your first impressions of a Godfather? I got a lot of thoughts. Are you ready for them? Ready for a hot take? I'm ready for a hot take. All right. So here's the deal. I am going to buy either Godfather or Foo Fighters in the next few months, I believe, unless something crazy happens in my life. And I'm really, I got to wait until I pay taxes and see what I have, and I really can't. It's hard for me to get a machine until my garage becomes available, so I got to wait until May and I can move my car out. But, you know, guys, you guys don't need to know the back story. Here's the deal. I watch both Foo Fighters stream and I watch Godfather. When I, I love music pins, all right? And, like, Foo Fighters is like, okay, I'm not a Foo Fighter fan, but I'd be, like, happy to have a Foo Fighter game. I saw the stream, and I didn't get super excited for Foo Fighters, but I'm like, that looks good. We'll talk about that. Then I watched yesterday morning. I was like, I'm going to take a look at Carl's stream of Godfather. Now, prior to that, I saw the pictures of them. I'm like, it looks okay. I watched Carl's stream for like an hour straight, and I probably watched Foo Fighters for 10 minutes and then just moved on. and I got excited for Godfather to the point where I'm like, I might cancel my order for Foo Fighters and get Godfather, which will be my first J.J.P. game since Pirates in 2018. All right, so here's my assessment of that.
    39:13
    First of all, I like the art on this. I mean, the whole package of this game looks fantastic. I really, really prefer this art style to Foo Fighters. And again, I won't get too much into Foo Fighters now, but I think the game is very visually appealing. I don't buy games because of art, but certainly it's worth talking about. I think just the presentation, and as always with J.J.P. Games, looks phenomenal. I was just really engaged and glued to J.P. DeWin's LCD. Maybe this is one of his best on there, potentially. So that all looks good. The layout looks solid. I heard that there's a lot of diverters, so what I was reading about it, people who have played it, I guess the ball, when you shoot it, you don't always know where it's going to come out of because there's so many diverters in it. People were also saying that the game looks kind of empty. I mean, it's kind of really scaled down. There's really kind of no toy to speak of. I know there's the gangster thing that moves back and forth, so some people were complaining about that, considering that JGP games kind of used to really be packed with stuff. That doesn't really throw me off too much. It gives me some Pirates vibes and layout in some ways, too. I see pirates in here a little bit. I see some pirate shots going on. Lighting look good.
    40:34
    Here's the good and bad rules. I like Kiefer's rule sets where there's multiple ways to approach it. Especially in the home, you can play the game in different ways, which I like that. What scared the hell out of me is the first game that I saw Carl played, he was in two multi-balls within 20 seconds. Martha was watching with me. She's like, oh, no, when she saw that, she was like, I'm out. And, yeah, I see this discussion going on, and everyone kind of says, like, I don't understand why Kiefer goes so heavy on the multi-balls because it doesn't seem to be generally light. And that's the thing that gives me pause. Like, I don't know if you saw that part of Carl's stream, Kevin. Like, it was literally like a plunge, start multi-ball, and then he hit two shots and stacked another multiball on it. And that just seemed really weird to me. Now, granted, Carl's good, but if you can do that at the start of a game, to me, multiball is something to be earned and it's a reward, right? You get that dopamine hit because you pulled something off and you reward it with multiball. But when you're thrown multiballs so often, I don't know, it kind of takes it away from me. Now, I don't mind having another game where it's multiball heavy. Pirates is kind of multiball heavy. I love pirates. So that gives me pause. But listen, overall, I didn't even talk about the sound. Yeah, the sound's not. I miss David Thiel. Let me just say that. Yeah. I didn't think the sound was terrible, right? But I shouldn't even be entertaining the thought that the sound is terrible. Like there's the, somebody referred to it as like a twinkle toe sound or something. It's like that Wizard of Oz, like diddly-lee. You know, like it does that, like diddly-lee, a lot. I don't understand that. I don't understand that sound effect that they keep on using. I think other people would describe that as a slot machine sound. Yeah, it does have that, unfortunately.
    42:29
    The game is kind of... I'm not a Godfather fan. I shouldn't say this. I've never seen the movie, right? So I come to this neutral, which is probably for the best. The voiceover and callouts are kind of cartoonish, over-the-top sounding. But also, I mean, Sopranos does that around. Sopranos, the game, is kind of cartoonish take on the show. So it seems in line with that.
    42:53
    Yeah, man, I miss David Thiel. I worry about the multi-ball heavy. I worry about that, you know, I've got a Pirates that the code's not finished and there was a code balancing issue still unfinished in, what is it, Guns N' Roses. And yet, I was just hooked watching this game in a way that I can't totally explain it, even with those concerns. So I'm heavily leaning towards this game. I can't wait to play yours, Kevin. That will help me decide. I mean, I can't pull the trigger today anyway, so it's probably for the best. But that surprised me. Watching that surprised me, and I'm way more drawn towards that game now than Foo Fighters. Yeah, like this area of the game is just so interesting to me. There's like that, like, so first off, for like this multiball off the plunge, I think that's like a super secret skill shot kind of thing. So I don't think that's something you're going to get very frequently, at least the non-Karls of us. It's kind of cool that it's there, but, yeah, it might be, you know, might make things a little multi-ball crazy if it's easy to get. I doubt it.
    44:00
    But, yeah, like this area that, like, what's going on here? Like there's this single pot bumper. It's got three stand-up targets next to it, and then there's like a target behind it that looks like you can hit it off of the pop bumper, which is pretty cool. And then there's a shot to the left of it. I don't know. It just looks like a real interesting layout.
    44:20
    And it's not, like you said, there's a lot further back shots, which I think makes this for a very fast playing game that returned to the right ramp, to the right ramp return. and it kicks up to that little target for a score multiplier.
    44:40
    Man, and I like that it's got the first two Eric Menier games have really steep ramps, and it doesn't seem like it has that. This seems like it has faster, more flowier ramps. There was a comment in the chat earlier, I think, from Arcade Hunters, who said the flippers feel great, they're snappy. I did feel like the flippers were improved on Toy Story. I didn't think it was like some drastic improvement, but they did feel a little snappier on Toy Story. And maybe they're even a little better on this.
    45:11
    Yeah, I saw that a lot. I'm pretty stoked, man. Like I was not like like like Godfather was again, I was like you like I didn't know much about Godfather, but I started watching him a month or two ago because, you know, this was the heavily rumored title that this was going to be. So I was like, all right, let me let me learn about the Godfather. And there are cool movies. And I did question, you know, I was kind of with some of these other folks who were like, how is that going to be a good theme for pinball? But I think they took a good approach. And, you know, I thought about it. Like, they've made video games out of the Godfather. So I'm like, there's got to be a great way to present this in pinball. And you're like, you're building your, you're working your way through the mafia right here. Kind of like on Sopranos, too. You're working your way up the levels. You're building your family, battling with other families and things like that. So I think it's really, really well done. And it's a great take on it. It kind of reminded me of Pirates in that it's not like you're not playing the movie. You're in this world. And it's like a game built around that theme, but not necessarily shot for shot and going through the movie, if that makes sense.
    46:16
    Yeah, another thing is a concern of the game was the ball going straight down the middle on one of the shots. Carl raised that concern. Other people have raised that concern. I don't know what's going on with that issue. It would be interesting. But, you know, I pinged Carl yesterday. I was like, awesome stream. I think you might have taken money from Foo Fighters and moved it over to Godfather. And he's like, game's great. You enjoyed it. He's getting both, which is, you know, that's – if you could do it, that's probably the way to go, right? Like, you don't have to agonize over this stuff.
    46:45
    Yeah, exactly. If you can do it, just buy – it's the Nick Lane approach. Just buy both. I'm excited with the stronger flippers, though. Everyone's been saying that who's played it. They said it's even stronger over flippers. Well, great. The game seemed really fast. It doesn't seem like a baby game.
    47:01
    I think strong flippers, that's what I love about Sterns, is the strength of the flippers. And Jersey Jacks never felt like that. It didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy the game, but I love that it sounds like they've addressed that. So we'll see. Yeah. I mean, different manufacturers have always had different flipper feel, and this is no different. But, yeah, I think if you listen to your customers and that's what they want and you're able to execute on it, that's always a good thing, right? Yeah, what's the deal? Are we going to stream it on Wednesday? You don't know yet? No, because, well, first, there's no guarantees that the shipping company is actually going to get it to me on Wednesday. And also, I have to tear down my whole streaming rig and get it all packed up because I leave for Texas on Thursday. So, it's a Thursday morning. So, not going to happen. It'll be once I get back from Texas. So, probably the next week sometime. All right. I can't.
    47:50
    So, I'm almost irrationally excited for this game. It's nice to feel excited for a game, and I don't truly understand it, but JJP games can really be magical when they come together and they work right.
    48:05
    Yeah, this looks like a great one. I can't wait to play it. All right, that is The Godfather. Did we say pricing? Pricing is 12K LE, 15K CE, 5,000 LEs and 1,000 CEs. Oh, the other thing on this game, well, JJP in general, but I threw it in here.
    48:25
    This just got announced yesterday. Is that yesterday? Yeah, that's yesterday. March 11th. They basically no more Scorbit in New Jersey Jacket Fanball Machines. So Scorbit put up this big FAQ about what's happening.
    48:39
    I guess on the stream Friday that they did on Flippin' Out, one of the guys on the stream mentioned that Scorbit was not in the game anymore and that they were going to be dropping scorebit altogether company-wide you know and there's a big Q&A here that you know kind of spells everything out in public I'll leave that to you for you to read it at scorebit.io I'm not going to read it all because there's a lot to it but yeah I don't see this as a huge loss honestly like I mean we've talked about scorebit before and we've said like I don't really see it. Like, Scorbit, I like the concept of having all the connected pinball machines on one platform.
    49:30
    But I've never liked the interface on Scorbit. I never felt like the achievements were, like, thoughtfully executed as just, like, do this one thing a thousand times. Like, okay, great. Like, if you're going to do achievements, like, make it something interesting or different for me to accomplish. Do this one thing in this weird way. to score this certain thing, you know, that, oh, let me go try that. Right.
    49:58
    The UI was never good. I don't know. It's just kind of a mess all around. So I'm not surprised that JJP said screw it.
    50:09
    Are they going to be rolling their own? Maybe. Or maybe they just decided, you know, their time and effort was best spent doing something else and connected. they weren't seeing enough of a return on the investment with, with connected pinball, particularly with score bit. So we'll see. We'll see.
    50:28
    What do you think about the loss of score? But I know you're going to be mourning it. Who cares? I mean, I didn't like score, but it's, I mean, Stern came in and did a better job, which is like, really Stern was able to, to one up you on that. I don't know. I'm not going to miss it. I would never, I would never use it in a JGP game where I actually love, and I always log in with Stern Insider Connected.
    50:52
    Yeah, I don't really log into either one. So if both of them went away, it wouldn't be any detriment to my enjoyment of pinball. I would still enjoy pinball completely equally without any connectivity as it stands today.
    51:08
    All right, so rip Scorbit. Do you think Scorbit can survive this? Do you think this is the death knell for Scorbit? It doesn't really matter. you know i don't i mean yeah i think i think stern's crushing it with their thing you probably would use it too kevin if there was a like a monthly tournament you probably would log in and try to get a score right uh on stern's inside maybe maybe half the time i just even forget to do to log in when i play godzilla i was like i should have done score bit or should have done insider connected i did finally get the it would they need an app i did finally get the uh the pass to load in my wallet so that helps and then i was like oh yeah you can get your like wallet stuff on your Apple Watch. I was like, oh, cool. Maybe I could just pull up my insider-connected thing on my watch. But it's like this dinky little thing. You can't even see it. It's like it doesn't even display right. I was like, Stern, you're so close. It would have been so cool to just if you're listening, somebody from Stern, fix the thing so you can show it on your Apple Watch. I could just double-tap and scan it. It would be so easy. Make it easy for people to do this.
    52:10
    All right. That's it for J.J.P. and Godfather. The next one, in reverse chronological order was Final Resistance from Multimorphic. This is the new game from the latest design by Scott Denise. He was developed by an entire team there, but Scott was the lead. He's the creative director. Scott composed and created the music and sounds. Bowen Cairns created the rule set. T.J. Weaver was the mechanical engineer. Rory Cernuta designed the video graphics and animation.
    52:39
    Jonathan Bergeron, a.k.a. Johnny Crap, who everybody and pinball best knows for his work on Jurassic Park from Stern. He was the artwork designer and Michael Ocean did the software. So pretty strong team here for and I love the look of this game. I think the art is even better than Jurassic Park Jurassic Park was always cool but I like the style I think the execution here is even better than what Johnny Crabb was able to do on the Jurassic Park games So if you haven yet if you listening to the podcast or watching on YouTube or whatever go back It's the previous podcast episode. I did a payphone-to-payphone interview with Scott D'Amesi, so we talked a lot about the details of this game and some of his thought process behind the concept. one of the more interesting things that he did on this was he made persistent inserts on the playfield so he's he described to me like he wanted to make a game that would pull in some of the folks who haven't really connected with the p3 people who enjoy traditional pinball but for whatever reason haven't uh made the jump to to really dig into the p3 so even from attract mode there's going to be like the inserts on the playfield so you know what to do they're always there they light up um you can see in the video the teaser video that um they look like real inserts so they look like plastic inserts with like the the kind of like reflective elements of them but then they do cool stuff on the screen around them so there's animations and things that happen on the play field around it um when i first saw this i was like yes this is exactly what i wanted i think as a p3 owner when we heard scott tenisi was working with multimorphic we all hoped that he was going to do a play field module and this is the the kind of like cyberpunk it's got the scott denisey music like we all love uh from you know from tna and rick and morty um it's got this so talking a little bit about the shots um so you got a far left orbit there's a traditional left ramp uh to the right of that there's a spinner with a counter on it which is pretty cool it's got like the led display like scott uses likes to use on his games They count things down this time. It's counting spins.
    54:54
    There's a scoop to the right of that. And then there's a stand-up Denise-y lock kind of shot. So think of TNA with the ball lock that goes behind the stand-up target or the drop target. And then to the right of that, there's this massive spaceship with a shield that goes up and down. You can attack the ship, and then it reveals more shots. The ship itself has a cannon that can stage three balls and fire them out at you instantly. It looks pretty insane. And then there's a right orbit shot that apparently can serve as a Yagov-style kicker. Think of F-14's Tomcat or what else? The Groot shot on the Guardians of the Galaxy or the war machine kicker on Iron Man. It can either do that or it can be a straight shot. The most famous one is the Ram on Big Buck Hunter. oh sorry that's everybody knows that one yeah yeah the big bug ram everybody we should just call it that um uh and there's like an up kicker there returns the ball to the right warrior form this game just looks insane and i saw this i was like super stoked for this um again i'm gonna i'm gonna be streaming this uh if you're listening if you're watching live or listening the soon after this comes out uh friday march 17th uh 8 eastern 7 central i'll be down in in texas to stream this with scott and the team uh really looking forward to this um i know nick you said you felt like this is matt this platform was a good matchup for scott denise's uh designs what do you think of it now that you've seen it yeah i i think it's it's a good matchup between scott and the p3 that makes sense i think of all the p3 games this would be the one that i'd be you know most excited to play um i don't i don't have the same like inclination towards P3 that you do, I respect it's a cool platform, but I'm really glad you have it. I look forward to playing it. I'm looking forward to the stream. I'm sure it's going to have a banging soundtrack. I'm sure it's going to be fun.
    56:56
    It's pretty awesome. I also think that, Kevin, you need to... Whenever the next game is revealed, you need to be the person playing the pinball machine. You need to be the model in there. I'm really disappointed that you are. Oh, like this guy? Whoever this guy is? No offense to that guy. It's great, but I think Kevin Manning above all pinball you're like the P3 guy I'm the guy you have been champing the P3 all these years, you're OG you're Kevin Mania, fucking Buffalo Pinball I think you should be in the next video let's make it happen, talk to Jerry I think we got Steven Silver in chat he puts all these videos together I'll just fly down to Texas and we'll put this together real quick I like that idea here I'll turn it up so you can hear a little bit I might be most excited about this game I don't know like Godfather it's hard to say because there's so many good games coming out but every time I watch that teaser video I just get hyped for this game it'll be great to I don't know when they're going to start shipping these but I don't think I'm going to have it in time for League Night unfortunately it'd be great to be able to drop that on everybody I will have Godfather in time though this might be the best showcase of the P3 like the theme and Scott so this might be the best thing on it I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being the best thing on it
    58:35
    this is actually exciting modern music, not like the random dubstep nonsense on the Galactic Tank Force video. That's hilarious.
    58:45
    I was making fun of that yesterday. I think I was showing Martha the video, and we were just kind of mock dancing to it.
    58:52
    That's how mature we are. I mean, you gotta do a little dance to the music. BorgDog says I should just grab one when I'm in Texas. I think it'll fit on carry-on, right? I can just stash it in my backpack.
    59:06
    Real quick. I'm just gonna take this one with me. Nobody will mind. It's cool. It's all good. All right, so final resistance. Again, tune in Friday, March 17th here at twitch.tv slash buffalo pinball. If you don't catch it live, it'll be on the YouTube channel after that. You can see me and the team down there, and Scott's going to be there. So get to hang out with Scott, and we're going to go get hamburgers, and it's going to be a good time. So final resistance for the P3. Again, we didn't give the prices on that. That is, again, it shows the value of the platform. If you already got the P3, it's only $3,400 to get the whole new game. If you need the whole machine with Final Resistance, it's $11,700. But then, again, in the future when you buy more modules, they're a lot less. That's the long-term value of the P3. Are you going to casino? All right, Final Resistance. We're not done yet, ladies and gentlemen.
    59:59
    We got Foo Fighters. It seems like an eternity ago that they announced Foo Fighters, but here it is. Stern announced Foo Fighters. It's a $7,000 pro, a $9,700 premium, and a 13K LE. They're doing 1,000 of the LEs.
    60:17
    It's got that sweet, sweet art by Zombie Yeti. Cool theme in the Foo Fighters. Yeah, the layout looks pretty interesting and unique.
    60:31
    The layout reminds me a lot of a Keith Elwin game. Did you get that kind of vibe from it? Can you hear me?
    60:41
    Yeah. What are your thoughts on this game? Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you now. Oh, okay. I wanted to know, are you going to Casino El Camino for burgers? Oh, yeah. Definitely going to Casino El Camino. Okay. Now I can move on with the show. Okay. That's the best place to go. Okay. They represent Buffalo. Yeah, they do. Okay, so what was the question?
    61:03
    Did you get, like, Keith Elwynn vibes from this game? Correct. What were your overall first impressions of Foo Fighters? Definitely Keith Elwynn vibes. I do not like the art at all. Oh, no. It is very busy.
    61:18
    I think that's why. Like, look, Zombie Yeti is an awesome artist. I like the... I don't know how to say this because I don't know how to critique art. it's way i mean like look great artist his art functionally doesn't work in a pinball machine to me it is just like um i can't even i just see a mess of colors on there because there's just too much on there compare that to godfather where godfather has some things that are are highly detailed but also has kind of more space in terms of that so it breaks it up a little bit like everything from the back glass where i i can't even make out what the game is on there on the back glass like the food fighters is just gets like lost the title of it to the cabinet it's just it's just way too fucking much like it does it is functionally it stresses me out looking at it i i gotta be in the minority there because everybody seems to love the art but it it doesn't work on a pinball machine like look at look at the back glass you can't even see that It's Foo Fighters. It's just a mess of colors.
    62:28
    Yeah, so if you've seen a Zombie Yeti game, you kind of know, like, this definitely looks like a Zombie Yeti game. And he does go over the top with, like, color and art. And I think for cabinets, like, I think that's cool. I do agree that less can be more on a play field. Like, you want art that kind of directs you towards the shots and the things you need to be shooting. and I think Deadpool kind of he went the most overboard with art. This is just Deadpool-esque. It reminds me so much. I get Deadpool vibes and, you know, that game left my collection.
    63:05
    Deadpool vibes a lot on it. I don't know. I mean, look, the art at the end of the day doesn't keep me away from a good game, which is too bad because I think Zombie Yeti is a fantastic artist. he's like he's at like a 13 out of 10 in terms of business he's he's just i wish he dialed it back more i think his art would look even better if he had some space and if you open things up and you can appreciate it like it's just very it's distracting to me and like nothing it's hard to really appreciate or focus on anything when there's just so much crammed in there it's like a fucking where's waldo thing i i don't know that's me look at i'm probably gonna piss a lot of people off and I think a lot of people just I I think they like to have pretty games and and you can argue this is super pretty I just like the it needs to be functional too the art needs to not take away from the shots and everything else right it's screaming and I think it's distracting from the game and to the point where I've seen this game a lot I've seen the stream I've seen the pictures I have trouble even just identifying the shots in this game when I look at because the art is such a distraction.
    64:17
    All right, how many people... Beyond the art, we got Nick's take on the art. I actually like the art. I think, you know, I'm a Zombie Yeti fan, so I think the art is one of the high points of this game. I do see your point, though, that it is a lot. It's a lot to take in. If you have a hard time, like, seeing through all of that noise visually when you're playing, I could see it being a challenge for sure. But I like the look and feel of it. I think the concept... I don't really get the concept there. So I guess like a Foo Fighter was like somebody who battled UFOs. That's where their name came from. So I like that it's not just a jukebox game. There's like a mission and you're battling aliens is apparently the go-to thing this month with new pinball machines. Because that's a common theme. So I like that. I like some of the layout elements are cool. I don't know if the upper play field will be cool. It's always hard to tell until you try it. It reminds me of Wizard of Oz a little bit. It looks fun. It looks like Aerosmith a little bit to me. Yeah, a little bit like that, too. There's a main alien dude that you battle on the play field, which is neat. The little captive ball turnaround thing. Everybody's losing their minds over this post in the out lane that puts the ball back into play. which is just it's just like a different kickback kind of thing but that's what was funny is like i saw a post in pinball enthusiasts like oh is this legal in tournaments it's like how is this any different from either a virtual kickback or a regular kickback it's a there's actually some skill involved here so you gotta hold the flipper up to to pop it back in so it's gonna be legal in tournaments everybody it's fine it's also not uh a death save because you're not you're not kicking it back into play the the machine is doing it so it's it's not a death save it's gonna be fine um but yeah i think you know some some of the layout looks cool i didn't watch the the stream i know you watched some of it um can you even see the shots in that picture kevin i mean it's just like it's just too much man nick can't find the shots i heard it was a pretty friendly game like people didn't seem to be draining a lot it wasn't really brutal did you get that impression of it too uh no i actually well the part of the stream i watched i was getting a little frustrated because um until raymond got up people weren't playing too long and also looks like the um i think the code is like at 0.8 something so uh it was really hard for me to get an impression of the game i guess i know you go to cities and stuff it looks pretty straightforward but i i didn't see anything that made me fall in love with the rules i think it's really early and i thought that this game was supposed to come out in the fall, and Venom was, you know, Venom, I thought, was supposed to come out last fall, so that keeps on getting pushed back, it seems, which would make sense if this is only at 0.8, so it is early, but I love music games. I love the fact that there's, you know, 15 songs in there. I love the kind of cartoon-style animations that had, like, a lot of kind of humor and fun with it, so it looks like it's a fun game. It looks like it's a fun game. um you know i'm fairly i'm fairly excited for some of those some of who fighters top hits so here's the songs in the game everlong times like these break out learn to fly i'll stick around this is a call walk holding poison on my life the pretender something from nothing monkey wrench run my hero and best of you so um you know i'm not like i never choose to listen to the foo fighters but i know almost all of these songs because they're just like unavoidable for the most part. So if you've been around music for the past 20 years, you've heard most of these songs. So I think from that side, it's a good pick. They have a lot of songs folks are going to recognize.
    68:08
    And yeah, we'll see. Did I see we're getting one of these for a location nearby? That's correct. We're going to be getting one for Masuda Chow. So whenever they start shipping, we should have one.
    68:25
    that's the thing that kind of surprised me is like, so Stern is usually known as the company that like announces games and then they're out and shift. But this time JJP announced and they were like, like the next day they were already on location. And that's how Carl was able to go down and stream it so fast. They didn't mess around. They had these games ready to go off the line. Starting. We're still kind of waiting to see these games hit location. So it's just like the kind of the inverse of what has historically happened from these two companies. Yeah, I mean, Stern is pretty much on track. They'll show the reveal, and then a couple weeks later it comes out. But, yeah, I was impressed with Jersey Jack doing the reveal of the game, and then a day later people have them and they're playing them. So they definitely learned their lesson from the past. So, listen, like I said, I'm going to get either Godfather or Foo Fighter, and I have some time to decide and play them both. somebody that made the best game win and maybe one day i own both who knows uh but one of them i shall own hopefully in the next few months yeah so of those games obviously i'm grabbing godfather that's on the way final resistance and you know maybe uh maybe a galactic tank for us but there's a lot of questions that need to be answered on that one uh to see if i want to sell a game to make room for something like that one thing for certain kevin none of us are getting a Scooby-poo.
    69:51
    Scooby-doo. You know, we had a whole, like, we were, like, keeping tabs on all the Scooby-doo woes that were going on. And I didn't do a very good job of documenting them. But I don't know if you want to touch on any of them. My favorite one was the shooter mech that they re-screwed in, like, six times to get it right. And then the person took it off because it wasn't working right and found all the extra holes in the bottom of the play field. What did you think when you saw that? I thought that that's spooky That's spooky quality man Why would you buy these games I have a couple favorites My favorite was the first game on location Somebody drove two hours to play it And when they got there They took a picture and the game was down It said out of order on it That sounds about right That sounds exactly right Broken out of the box Not working My second runner up to that is the classic problem that was in Halloween, where Carl, during his stream, was playing two players. Carl went, and Carl was player two. Player one had under a million, okay? Carl went, Carl drained. Then when player one stepped up, suddenly their score magically went to seven million because it awarded Carl's bonus to player one's score. Like, what the fuck? This is a joke. There's the mechanical problems. There's software problems. There's the annoying looping music, which the loop on that is shorter than Big Buck Hunter pinball loop.
    71:22
    And the reports are the game's too easy and not fun. So, you know, typical spooky, which we say this all the time. We just start rolling. I go into the thread, and I don't, trust me, I don't post there or anything. I just look at the slow-motion train wreck, and you can see all the people getting upset about their game not working right out of the box and the frustration. So they don't change, guys. They don't. This is a company that doesn't give a shit. They don't change. We even talked about the soldering job. You can talk about that one, Kevin. Oh, my God, I remember that.
    71:52
    I wish I had a picture of that. It was on the – you talk about it. I'll see if I can find the photo.
    71:58
    Yeah, so all I remember is, like, the soldering looked like I soldered the game. Okay, like, that is my quality. If you said, Nick, go to town, like, I could solder, but, you know, nobody would hire me. Nobody would ship a pinball machine out that way. They allegedly have quality control, and yet that's what happens. That's what happens. Yeah, I like pictures of that right by the sticker that says inspected by bug or whatever. I was like, did you really? Did you really?
    72:27
    I don't think you did. I don't think so. It was the switches in the coin door. Yeah, they were just like barely connected with solder. It was pretty bad. Yeah, Chrome Candy Pinball, which is Ben Crane, who we love and adore, says, you know, Some of you say it's the same every time. They sell most of the games before they show anything, and people always fall for it. Yeah, they do. I think less people are falling for it. I mean, each release they burn more customers.
    72:55
    So, you know, you're now competing against all these other games coming out. You can't – they're insane that they think they can keep this up. They're insane because that doesn't lead to longevity as a business. and they would have got away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling kids i think we're the meddling kids in this in this instance so just not letting them get away with it affectionately referred to it as scooby poo not my most creative thing but it's uh you know yeah you know it didn't stop at the dongs on the playfield everybody i can't find the coin door picture so you're gonna have to look it up yourselves at home sorry sorry sorry everybody all right so those are your scooby woes one other update from the last uh oh did i did i have it here i don't think i oh it's here i can pull it up one sec we were talking cheetah ramps last month and uh we got great feedback on the cheetah ramp segment i gotta say uh so much to the point that people started uh sending us more cheetah ramps which this one really took the cake this was uh on rick and morty somebody decided for some reason to put a ramp where the jerry target is and basically just change the entire game so it basically lets you cheat to get a shot up to the the garage oh my god they had to drill into the play field to make that monstrosity looks terrible by the way i don't know it looks like it's just like these posts and stuff so maybe not but but even still this is like you are really cheating. You're cheating. Let's watch some of the video for the folks at home.
    74:37
    Get out of here, cheaters. Cheaters. Let's see if he hits it here. Oh, look at that. He can't even hit it. Can we just... God damn it. What the hell is that shit?
    74:53
    He didn't even hit it in that video. He didn't even hit it. Can't even cheat properly. Oh, there it goes. Oh no, that was the orbit.
    75:03
    What is this nonsense? Yeah, I don't understand. Dude, Kevin, just stop. I can't deal with this shit. It's so bad. Anyways, don't do this to your game. Everybody, you're cheating. You could do what you want with your games, but you're absolutely cheating, and no respect for that.
    75:23
    Oh, Ben says it's cool. No, Ben, you're wrong. Wrong. Get the fuck out of here, Ben. You went from being like... You went from up here to down here really quick, Ben. Get out of here with this cheating crap.
    75:37
    Yeah. Damn it. That breaks my heart. Maybe if Spooky had assembled those games properly, people wouldn't have to do these things to be able to shoot the shots that they needed to do. You know what I mean? Spooky, you're really doing it. We love you. When do we get to come on and stream your games? This is going to be great. All right. I think that's all the new gamers. Oh, no. We didn't talk about these piles of trash. for some reason Homepin is resuming production of Spinal Tap so that's a thing if you want this thing for almost $10,000 you can get one of these terrible machines don't do that this game is dead in the water even if you're the world's biggest Spinal Tap fan just don't buy this and the other one is Queen we finally saw some gameplay of Queen which yeah it's a pinball machine the plunge plunges into a post for some reason that was my favorite part of watching the gameplay you know you launch the ball and it goes right into a post that does nothing but they're starting to come to the US Cointaker has some the most interesting part about this game I was talking with David Thiel and he did the sound on this so I'll play it just to hear the David Thiel music at some point I think they said they're going to have one of these at Pinbrew so maybe we'll get to check it out there so um i just think queen and and uh the uh spinal tap game people have already forgotten about these games uh oh yeah great great band great uh music designer sound designer on this game and uh unfortunate timing and unfortunate manufacturer because i don't have much confidence in the the build of a pinball brothers game either based on what we've seen from alien so So there you go. Those are all your pinball game updates. There you go. Any thoughts on any one of those, Nick? Yeah, it breaks my heart that David Thiel's talent is going into a game like Queen that most people have no interest in. The game's probably not that good.
    77:40
    God, I really wish he was over at Stern or Jersey Jack. Jersey Jack needs him way more than Stern because Stern's doing a great job with their music and sound, no matter who's on it. But love David Thiel. He is a fucking legend, dude. And, God, I want to get him off these kind of, like, second-tier games.
    77:59
    Yeah. We need him working with the big boys, that's for sure. All right, you want to do some game room updates?
    78:06
    Yeah, let's do it. All right, so my game room update is my Mata Hari is almost complete. So it's been my project over the past couple months. If you remember, I bought it at an auction. My buddy Matt helped me get it up and doing something because when I turned it on, it basically did nothing because the MPU board was totally fried from acid damage and things like that. So we got some new boards in there. I had to repin basically every connector on the game. But now it is like 90% done. I think there's a few pins that I didn't quite get right. So I've got to track down where there, I have a list of things that I'm going to be like, Matt, this thing is not working. Which pin do I need to fix? And he's going to look at the schematics and say this one. I'm going to go in there and replace it. And then it's going to work because we've done that like twice already.
    78:59
    And then, yeah, so I ended up putting two new boards in there. MPU and the solenoid driver board are new. The light board in it was still good, thankfully. So I was able to salvage that one. And then we will have a bro show on Mata Hari, and it will be legendary. Not quite as legendary as Hollywood Heat was, but it'll be good.
    79:21
    What else? I haven't done much. I mean, I got two new games on the way, so that's pending game room updates with Final Resistance and Godfather. So some things happening, things coming around. So Nick what been going on in your game room Yeah can you find the Stumbler mod the sign for Godzilla and show that I start talking about the other things I did a game room tour for 2023 that was posted maybe two weeks ago. You can find it on our YouTube channel. I like to do these every couple years, and there's been a lot of changes in my game room. I hope you guys enjoy. I spent a lot more time. I kind of went with Kevin's approach where I think he did a really good job in the last one he did and really talked about the game. So that was my approach this time. So yeah, that's there to inspire, to satisfy any curiosities in terms of what my game room is like. Somebody asked me what the size of my game room is. I don't know. I've got to measure it. Unfortunately, I don't know offhand. So there's that.
    80:20
    Not a game room update per se, but our business, we delivered a pinball machine to a new location, which is Town Ballroom in Buffalo, New York. Town Ballroom is the best venue in Buffalo to watch live music. I love the way the venue's set up. I love the variety and quality of music acts that come in there. So Kev and I will have to go to a show sometime. I don't think Snarky Puppy's going to work out, Kev, but we'll have to go down there. And Monsters is there now. Maybe more to come. We'll see. It really depends on how the game does, but super happy to have one there. So thanks, Donnie, for that. Donnie's in chat. And Donnie hooked me up with something really cool, Kevin. You haven't seen it yet. Oh. It's a Tour poster from 2012 From None other than and it's signed None other than Collective Soul So that's going to go up in there You must have been glowing when he gave you that dude Made my fucking day Day who am I kidding Made my month So that's cool that was fun Yeah and what else I think that's it for Game Room I don't know if you found the You found the mod or not Oh yeah I did I can show it So this is an awesome mod Shout out to A lot of people saw this I posted on our social media It's in the gamer video This pic doesn't do it justice but I absolutely love this mod For Godzilla from Stumbler So cool And just the lighting effects on that Tokyo sign on the scooter He's also got that That UFO as well So wanted to give a shout out Stumbler hooked me up with that mod. Very kind of him. Love it. Looks great. I'm really happy to have it. All right. I think that's it. We got some Q&A, right, Kev? We do. So we've had some questions. We can do more questions in chat, but there's two that I got in advance that we'll do. One from Sarjanski1978 in Discord. He says, is releasing five games in the span of one month good or bad for the hobby? What do you think?
    82:22
    You go first, Kev. um yeah so i was thinking about this um i think it's i mean i think it's great that we have all these new pinball machines coming out it obviously shows there is demand in the market there's a lot of competition it's not like the 2000s when you had stern releasing one semi-janky game every year uh i love that there's creativity you've got you got um people like uh dennis norman putting you can tell this is like his passion project he loves this stuff he's able to kind of do what he wants to do and put it out there, original theme putting them all out at the same time I think is a terrible idea they're all fighting for it, there's only so many people in this hobby locations tend to buy sterns maybe some JJPs if they're really eclectic maybe they'll buy a CGC or an American Pinball game but I think it is good for the secondary market. Speaking of Ben, we were hanging out last night. I went out there to play pinball with those guys and we were talking about it. If you want to buy a used game, buy a used game now because everybody's selling stuff to try to get these new games. It does help drive the price down a little bit on the secondary market, which is good. I think eventually people are just going to run out of room and run out of money to buy these new games.
    83:46
    Everybody fighting for it all at the same time I think it's bad. There's no reason they need to all be like bunched in to try to get it out for TPF or, or expo or something like that. Just release your game when you're ready, give yourself some breathing room to, to get some, your own hype. Cause you know, we've talked about it over the course of, you know, five years we've been doing this podcast, five more than that. Um, there's only so much pinball news every year. If you release your game in a month where no other month, no other pinball machine is, is announced, we're going to give you like a huge chunk of time on this podcast. and think about that through all the other podcasts and all the other streams and all the other websites. You're going to get so much more attention if you're not bunched in with all this other news. So that's my take on it.
    84:30
    Yeah, I think it's good for the consumer. I think, first of all, it's an amazing time in pinball that we've got five machines coming out right now, and maybe there's some more coming out. Well, we know Stern's going to release another one in the fall, so what an amazing time for pinball. I think it's good for the consumer. I love the fact that as I'm going to purchase a machine, I can look at all five games and then make a decision, maybe the best one win and get into my collection. When you stagger it out and you're like, oh, this game's Godfather comes out now, but I won't be able to see what maybe Foo Fighters looks like until three or four months, I really wish I can compare the two and decide that's a detriment to the consumer. So it's great for the consumer. I think it's bad for these companies, especially ones with American Pinball. I wouldn't want to be American Pinball trying to compete with the Godfather and Foo Fighters and even Scooby-Doo based on the theme. I think that's tough. These other companies, these second-tier companies, this is where they're going to get hurt the most, trying to go toe-to-toe with Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball. So overall, really good. Overall, the pinball is really healthy, really good for us consumers. definitely going to be challenging for the second tier pinball manufacturers.
    85:48
    All right. We got a question from Jay Fairbrother in chat who popped in after he saw my Instagram post today. He says, is that picture on the VP Instagram really what Galactic Tank Force looks like?
    85:59
    Yes. Yes, Jay. That's what it looks like. They're not messing around. This is what it looks like. It looks like a tank. We don't know why. We don't know who didn't tell him no. but yes they put all that time and effort into making the pinball machine look like a tank when it's folded down which is almost never yep let's get some questions from chat so I know Jericho 555 Jericho says Nick what's the next game to go in the game room for a pin what's your next pin going to be well we talked a little bit about that right yeah so it was going to be Foo Fighters then I saw and watched Carl's Godfather stream and now I'm conflicted. I'm leaning towards Godfather a little bit. See, Godfather is way more challenging to get in my basement. I think I'm going to have to take the head off. It's more heavy. So it's a pain in the ass.
    86:50
    But, I don't know. Time will tell. It's going to be one of the two. We've got some good feedback in chat for your game room tours. Everybody check that out on YouTube if you haven't yet.
    87:04
    Will the final Resistance speaker system be as good as TNA, that's a question for Scott, but I can speak to that. I think that the sound system in the P3 is really good. It's the one machine. When people ask that question of Scott, I feel like they're talking about the base capability of a pinball machine, and the base in the stock P3 is really good, so much so that I had to put anti-rattle glass on my game once Scott's music got into the Rocks game. It shakes. It's the only game in my game room that I have not attached a subwoofer to, Although I might once I get final resistance just to put it over the top. It's got a really good bass. I think the back box speakers could probably use an upgrade so you get more of the highs. And maybe I'll ask Scott what I should put in there.
    87:51
    I've got the original first gen P3. Maybe the new machine might have different speakers in it. I'm not sure.
    87:59
    But I did also. Oh, that was one other thing I did this month, game room update wise, is I put new speakers in my Godzilla. I got the kicker speakers off of Amazon that everybody likes.
    88:08
    And yeah, like you said, it was a dramatic increase in the audio fidelity versus the garbage speakers that Stern puts in their games.
    88:17
    The one thing I really noticed was like after you finish a ball and the fire is on the screen, you can hear the fire crackling really nicely. It's really good. For sure. So it's worth mentioning again. if you've got a Stern alright with the Spike 2 system take out those $5 piece of shit speakers and at the minimum get the kickers they're called kickers you can find them there's a nice thread on Pinsight about DIY and throw those in there's like $70 the best upgrade you're going to do because there's literally sounds in that game that those speakers are not reproducing and when you put those kickers in you're going to instantly be amazed and Kevin did you turn off the filter settings or whatever they have on there. Yeah, you've got to just turn it off. Don't have it doing whatever filtration it's doing, and your game's going to sound instantly better.
    89:11
    Yeah, I had already turned that off because when I bought the – I got the Boom Boom speaker for the cabinet from Pinball Life, and as part of the install process, they tell you to turn that off. But I had that discussion with you, and I was like, oh, let me make sure that's off. And then I turned it on to hear the difference, and it sounds like trash when it's on. I don't know what they're doing. Yeah, definitely turn that off. And even with the – it's weird, too, Kev, because I was going to say, well, maybe with the Stern stock speakers as a tweeter, maybe that's why they have to use it. But even with the stock speakers from Stern, it sounds better if it turned off. So, yeah, I don't know. Just turn it off. That's my recommendation to everybody, no matter if you have stock or upgraded.
    89:50
    Arcade Hunters wants to say, which speaker kit do you think I should get in preparation of my Foo Fighters Premium? I mean, if you want a plug-and-play kit, the pinwoofer is a good way to go. If you want to DIY it, there's kicker speakers on Amazon. I don't have the box with me. But if you, Arcade Hunter, send me a PM, and I can send you a link to, hit me up on Twitter, and I can send you a link to the Amazon posting if you want to DIY. And then I just did the Boom Boom 3000 from Pinball Life in the cabinet so it doesn't rattle and sound like trash. but if you want an overall speaker OVA with an amp and everything, I like the pinwoofer kits are nice. Yeah, I second that. If I do get Foo Fighters, I will 100% get the pinwoofer kit.
    90:40
    See, music pins, pinwoofer kit all the way. Let's say I had Bond which I would never buy that game. That game is just a dumpster fire right now. I would probably put the kickers in. I wouldn't go the full you know, pin woofer, $400 kit, et cetera. But for music pins, a hundred percent, my rush sounds amazing with, uh, the pin woofer kit.
    91:03
    Yeah, absolutely. Um, let's see. Nolan Bozo zone. Is there a point to upgrading speakers in older WPC games like getaway? So I actually, I did that on my Adams. I put, uh, better speakers in it. I think they're, they're either pioneers or Ken Woods or something like that. And there's, there's almost no difference. There's the audio fidelity in those 90s games is so low that it's not even worth it. I wouldn't even bother. If I had to do it again, I would not bother on a game unless the speaker is, like, wrecked because these games are old. So if the speaker is, like, ripped or torn or just, like, worn out, then, yeah, it's worth it. But if you have good working speakers in your game, I don't think it's worth it for the 90s games.
    91:44
    So Scott's talking about the 10 weeks. Of course, Scott says it's worth it. So listen to Scott. Don't listen to me. He knows a lot more about sound than I do. He's talking about the Kenwoods. Stern does put Kenwoods in the LEs.
    91:58
    You don't have to listen to us or Scott before anybody makes a decision on that. If you want to go down the DIY route and not like a plug-and-play, not a Flipper Fidelity, not a Pinwoofer, there's a really good thread. It's like DIY sound or something on Pinside, and people have tested things out. They've really put everything head-to-head between Kenwoods, Kickers, JBLs, like really, really good thread.
    92:29
    I think the Kenwoods that come stock in the Stern LEs generally aren't regarded as very good. Maybe there's some other Kenwoods that sound better that would be a good match. Obviously, there's different tiers of speakers. But definitely, my recommendation is, look, check out that thread. I think it'll be very... Sneak attack for Topper Talk. I just realized I never loaded the new Topper Talk, so we're going to have to load that up real quick.
    92:55
    All right, why don't you answer some questions, and I'll get that set up. See if we have any more. Bad Girls or Miami Vice was a question. Bad Girls is better than Hollywood Heat, for sure.
    93:07
    But the sound in both games... Gottlieb sound of that era from like mid to late 80s when they had those photo back glasses. My God, did they crush the sound. They fucking crushed it. It was like whoever's doing it was like the Scott Denise of the 80s.
    93:27
    They are really good, like the Gottlieb music. Dude, I love it. Yeah, so good. Somebody asked about changing the ohms when you change the speakers. I didn't find the need to change any of the ohms even though the speakers are 4 ohms I just kept it at 8 and believe me I've played around with it a lot it doesn't seem to it doesn't seem necessary to change it I'll put it that way I couldn't find a good reason to change it and I had a conversation with Pinwoofer around it too and I think even the DIY thread I couldn't find a compelling reason Scott's saying change it to 4-ohm, so he's got a reason. Scott, I haven't been to that thread for a while, probably for eight months, so I would love to see you get engaged in that thread and see your perspective, especially in the 4-ohm. I'll be looking for that. It sounds like you're going to head over there at some point.
    94:28
    Top three students, if I had to choose right now, go. What are my top three? I mean, I still love Led Zeppelin. I'm weird. I love Rush.
    94:41
    And probably Godzilla. Mando falls in there somewhere, too. I love Mando. I don't know. I would probably go, well, the two I own, Tron and Godzilla.
    94:53
    And, oh, man, what would the third be? Walking Dead, maybe? I don't know. It's so hard. There's so many. You should have bought my Walking Dead, Kev, if you like it that much. I don't necessarily want one, but I love it.
    95:04
    Exactly. I don't miss it. Like, that's not a knock on it, but, like, I don't miss it. I don't know. I have my time.
    95:11
    Exactly. It's all good. Should I just call Kevin's payphone really quick? Yeah, call me up, and we'll have a chat, a post-stream chat. How about that, Scott? Yeah, somebody brought up Big Buck Hunter. Big Buck Hunter has a special place in my heart, which everyone knows that. People are tired of hearing me say that, I'm sure.
    95:29
    Maybe the most underrated Stern, though, in existence would be my vote. Awesome. All right. Kevin, you got anything else? We're good? Yeah, let's go to... Topper Talk is loaded up. Before we do that, why don't we give you a shout out. If you have not yet, and this came up the other day, if you're looking for Buffalo Pinball shirts, swag, we've got stickers, mugs, and shirts up there right now.
    95:54
    Streamlabs.com slash Buffalo Pinball slash merch will get you there. You can get the Skull shirt or the Brody Even Pinball shirt. same you get a buffalo pinball logo mug you've got a bro mug you've got stickers as well so i do have the mug here i can show you i've got i've got to pinhead's mug i can't remember if i showed this off last month but they're really sweet they do a good job um and next time i see to pinhead in person he's going to get this one because he won the the trivia contest on the the anniversary bro show so you can drink your coffee in style with a buffalo pinball mug uh again buffalo pinball or uh stream labs.com slash buffalo pinball slash merch for that um get yourself a fresh new buffalo pinball shirt before tpf or pin brew and you can be representing when you go um you can follow us on all the social media channels if you haven't yet we're on twitter instagram youtube for archives of old shows facebook group if you want to chat with us and discord we can have conversations about Jay Fairbrother in real time on Discord. Email us, talkpinball at gmail.com. If you've got questions, feedback, if you just want to tell Nick Lane that he's very handsome, you can do it there.
    97:13
    If you want to support the channel, if you love what we do and you want to give back a little bit, subscribe to us on Twitch. If you've got Amazon Prime, you get a Twitch sub at no extra charge. You can drop that for us every month. Bits, tips, all that is appreciated. PayPal, buffalopinball at gmail.com if you want to send a little cash that way. Always appreciated. And drop a review.
    97:34
    I haven't checked if we got any good reviews lately. Jeff, can you tell people what not to do? You sent me a thing a few days ago, somebody trying to join our Facebook group. Can we have this?
    97:48
    It's not just about pinball. It's about learning and growing as a person and life lessons. And, look, we're all trying to be better people. And I think maybe this could be a teachable moment for some people. Yeah, so if you want to become a member of our community, especially our Facebook community, don't make the first comment something along the lines of, I'm going to find a quote. Yeah, I sent it to you in a message on Facebook. It was something along the lines of, Why haven't you talked about all these new games that have come out? you're talking about you did an interview on the payphone and you streamed Hollywood Heat and that's it. Where's the latest show?
    98:37
    It was just like you're going to come in and critique us? I'm not going to let you in. That guy did not make it into the Buffalo Pinball group. I'm sorry. Here's the exact quote. This guy wants to join our Facebook group. He comes out just being a total dick. Did you not see the new release from Stern? Your channel hasn't mentioned it. JGP also a new release. You didn't write that out. Hmm. Let's stream Hollywood Heat and Multimorphic. No punctuation. Big surprise. Okay, Jason Anderson, you can go fuck yourself and not come in. Let me explain how this works. Do you understand that we do a thing called the Bro Show? Okay? When we did Hollywood Heat, we didn't have access to Godfather. Do you know why? Because it's not out yet, bruh. Okay, so we can't stream a game that doesn't exist. Foo Fighters? You want us to stream Foo Fighters? can't stream a game that is not out to purchase yet and doesn't exist for us to play. So, Kevin and I this is going to blow your fucking mind. We're not time travelers and we can't go and get a game from the future or stream in the future. We just cannot do that. So I'm sorry we're not living up to your standards but thanks for trying to join. Bye-bye. We also have full-time careers.
    99:48
    We don't spend our days talking about pinball. So, we don't always when a new game comes out, we kind of package it all together and we present this all to you at once in our Birdie Even Talks Pinball, our podcast. If you follow the channel, you know this is how we do it.
    100:07
    We decided let's wait, let's put it all together, give you a nice package, give us all your impressions all together all at once in the monthly podcast that we do. And we did it. Here we are again.
    100:18
    We hope you enjoy the show. You will not be commenting on our Facebook page. Sorry. Hit like. subscribe and consider subscribing to Twitch.
    100:27
    Yeah, it helps, man. Our subscribers are down for some reason, so let's get that boosted. I'm flying to Texas to stream for y'all. I think we've been bringing the heat, Kevin. I think we've been doing some of our best work, too. In the last, I don't know, six months, we've done less bro shows, but we've done better bro shows. And I think we've kind of realized that, look, we've been really busy. So rather than not feel compelled to do like a brochure every week, let's make sure we do one when me and you are always there and the bros are there as well. Right. And just be really intentional and have the best show we can.
    101:06
    So hopefully that's hopefully you guys are noticing that I'm seeing comments like not trying to prompt for praise or comments. I've definitely been seeing it. So I know we're on the right track and I really appreciate all the support that we do get from you guys. So thank you. Yes. And tuna is back to the stream for the first time last night in like two years. So you get tuna back. What more do you people want? You know?
    101:28
    All right. Before you go anywhere though, the, the thing everybody tuned in for Topper talk with Goran episode 18 coming right at you. He's going to be talking about, I think that Godfather Topper let's find out together on Topper talk. Thanks. And we will see you next time. Lots more streams coming up. Don't forget Friday. I'll be down in Texas streaming Final Resistance with Scott Dinesi and the Multimorphic Crew. Bye!
    102:16
    now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Gorin. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Gorin, the part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Today we're going to talk about the brand new topper that comes with Jersey Jack Pinball's Godfather Collector's Edition pinball machine. So let's head into the office and talk about that now. Okay, so here we are in the office, So let's dive right into the topper. So on the screen, I have a photo of the collector's edition of The Godfather by Jersey Jack Pinball. The collector's edition retails for $15,000 and is limited to 1,000 units. The only other edition of the game is limited edition. That costs $12,000 and is limited to 5,000 units. Now, the topper, as far as we know, is exclusive to the collector's edition and will not be offered for sale separately. So at first glance, it seems that the topper is cohesive with the collector's edition art package. The barrels on the side of the topper really allow for one cohesive flowing piece of art. To the top, it looks like one cabinet to an extent. Let's zoom in more so we can get a further breakdown of what this topper is. So we have two mobsters hiding behind barrels. We got a classic car straight out of The Godfather, sculpted onto the topper, and a cityscape silhouette in the background.
    103:47
    It's really nice looking, all these custom sculpts and custom lighting. It's very interesting to look at. It's not mirroring something that we already see on the machine, and you can truly tell was designed custom for this artwork.
    104:02
    Now, the topper is interactive with the game from a lighting standpoint, but also a mechanical standpoint. The mobsters during different gameplay events will move as if they're shooting their guns. And the cool thing is the topper has not only one, but two knockers that can, I believe, fire 10 times per second to simulate gunfire, which is a really cool concept. Because, yes, with the Guns N' Roses collector's edition topper by Jersey Jack Thimble, that had a sound bar built in. So, yes, there was sound coming from the topper, but there's an intentional mechanical sound coming from the topper that builds onto the overall gameplay experience and environment, which is really neat. There's a very brief video of the topper from the release trailer that we can see right here. It's very short. so we could see the overall movement there of the mobsters as well as that knocker really quickly firing um as well as something that i think is really cool that's already programmed into the game is with that gunfire you also strobing as well um i think it's from what i've seen very well integrated into the game um you know you're getting a few other cosmetic pieces on the collector's edition besides just the topper so um i feel that for a three thousand dollar price difference i'm looking at you know the two thousand dollars add-on toppers that we're getting now from stern um i think that out of all the other collector's editions this is a very compelling um add-on or or jump between the le and the ce i'm looking forward to seeing this topper in person and playing the game overall. I'm very excited for it. So that's what I got to say about this topper. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Topper Talk with Goran. Tune into the next podcast for another episode. And as always, get out there, buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk.