All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed with syrup and honey Almost a laugh with his family And a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 635 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, I'm very excited to be talking about... that's right i kind of thought dune was done and then just today dune from barrels of fun made it to number two on the pin side list so we're going to talk about why how where what what's happening to dune we're also going to be talking about that's right i am going to be very careful when i'm talking about this uh maybe just to protect myself and others are going to be talking about let's assume i did all of this today in the video game minecraft does that work legally i'm not sure does it help that i'm in canada perhaps but i had a little conversation with Ryan McQuaid ryan uh is of course the designer formerly of american pinball who created cuphead the now world renowned cuphead because not just carrie hardy and don of don's pinball podcast who are the two main content creators I have heard gush about how awesome Cuphead is, and it's probably, they keep hedging a little, it's probably American Pinball's best pinball machine. Well, I got to talk to Ryan McQuaid. Now, this is not related to that, okay? A separate person, now I talked to Ryan about, he finally wrote back to multiple questions I had sent him. he was not at this point ready to come on and do an audio interview so at any point Ryan when you're ready Ryan to talk about this please just remember who's trying to help break the story can I say that okay I'm not a journalist but you know what in this one particular moment let's just pretend for a second this isn't a blog and I'm actually trying to make sure a couple different things happen by talking to Ryan number one not just Ryan and his entire team and every single solitary person who worked on Cuphead at American Pinball get their flowers, get their due, right? As Ryan had told me in not so many words, and I did promise him I wouldn't screenshot anything and I would just talk verbatim. I wouldn't be quoting him. So there's no quotes to be had today. Ryan was saying all this in Minecraft, of course. But what I think something important that he expressed to me multiple times is that everybody who was working on Cuphead loved Cuphead. It didn't matter if it was the play testers, the coders. It didn't. And this is just me. Every person I've talked to that has seen it has said it's gorgeous. And guess what? And these did not come from Ryan. This is 100% not from Ryan. This is from another source. Thank you to that source for doing it. I really appreciate it. But they, after hearing my last podcast, said they had to send me pictures They, in fact, had video of David Fix apparently playing Cuphead, but they weren't comfortable sending me the video, so they just sent me the screenshots. Wow, did you guys hear that? That was me picking up my giant jaw off the ground because, without a doubt, listen, am I going to sit here and blow smoke up your kazoo and make it make that loud, annoying sound a kazoo makes and tell you that Cuphead's better than anything that's ever coming up from Stern or Jersey Jack or even CGC? Of course not. What I will say is that without a doubt, after seeing it, it looked like the coolest, most interesting, best shooting pinball machine to ever come out from American Pinball in Minecraft. So I did see pictures of it. It 100% was not from anyone who worked at American Pinball, So I don't want anyone there to think that they're getting in trouble because it's not someone who's worked there or even ever formally worked there or worked with them in any way, shape or form. In fact, however, you know, it sounds so journalistic. I have a source. Anyways, the point is, thank you to the source and thank you to Ryan McQuaid. The other big thing I got to talk about really, really, really quickly is Star Wars comes out tomorrow. I'm so excited for it. I just got back from a really nice eighth wedding anniversary trip with my wife, of course, Drop Target Danielle. Oh, and thank you to the listener who sent that very nice email, which I responded to and got back to me and said how much they appreciated and enjoyed when she came on the show. So don't worry, guys. I was working on my Patreon today. It's coming soon. I would say within the next week or less, but I've decided I think I'm going to save my WTF monthly, what happened last month, to every other month be with Drop Target Danielle. I think she's willing to do every couple months, maybe not every month, and every other month I'll bring on a guest host or a co-host or something like that. Okay, she gave me the good eyebrows. I wasn't sure at first she glanced over from reading her book and gave me the medium eyebrows, but I later got the good eyebrows. Once every couple of months is okay to co-host. Maybe ask your co-host next time before you say they're going to be on Patreon. But I know that there is some of you that would really like to hear my stern rant. And I listen, I have forced myself to listen the first few minutes. I still need to finish doing that in case there's something so egregious that needs to be deleted in some way, shape or form. I might have to send that over to Glenn the Skateboarder because my editing skills are lacking. Hey, I can throw a clip at the start, a clip at the end. I really don't know how to edit the middle. I'm sure I could figure it out. I could ask chat to do it for me or something. But no, no, no. We're trying to go AI-free on this podcast. Come on. I asked chat questions having to do with JJP, and that got me into a lot of hot water. Hot water. Check in and see. I got a temperature. Anyways, we just came back from Lunenburg, which please, wherever you are, unless you're driving a car or you're in the shower, okay? If you're doing those two things, don't do it. But if you're taking a deuce, even an Upper Decker-styled one, okay, wherever you are listening to me, rate me out. Take a look at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, okay? L-U-N-E, freaking figure it out, Berg, Nova Scotia, or just say it to Google. And then click the Images button. It is the most picturesque fishing village, town, quaint, whatever I've ever been to in my life. Now, I haven't been to that many places, but I mean I've been to Holland. Holland, France, got you by the underpants. No, I've been to Europe a couple times. To be fair, I've been to Europe once, but a couple different places in Europe. And then I've been to British Columbia. I've been to the East Coast, the West Coast. I've been to Vegas. I guess Vegas probably may or may not have better. But the point is, take a look at this place. I had a wonderful recharging trip there. It was great. Tried all the craft beer. We played rock and roll bingo and had a great time. Somehow, someway, my wife knew more songs than me, which I didn't think was possible, especially since there were so many 80s, 90s, and early aughts, if you will, 2000 songs. But it was great. We just had a full recharge, three days without the dogs, three days without the kids, three days without chores and chickens and eight acres and gardens and homesteading and podcasting. Speaking of podcasting, literally an hour, an hour. And I'm not going to bury the lead. I'm going to get right into the discussion I had with Ryan in a second. But an hour after I hit the upload button right before my wife and I left to go on our trip, I finally heard back from Ryan McQuaid. Now, to be fair to him, I did say to him, I think earlier that morning, hey dude I'm recording today if you're if you if you can give me any comment whatsoever because I had been uh I won't say harassing I'll say gently nudging him because it's a pinball podcast but I had been saying like dude I'm trying I really want to help you like like what info can you give me if any and I wanted to make sure that whatever I did during this podcast a didn't prevent cuphead from ever coming out in fact I want whatever I say on this podcast in the last edit of a cuphead to allow it to come out not only is it one of my oldest son's favorite video games of all time probably in the top five if not top ten. I love the aesthetic old Mickey Mouse kind of like style of the, hey, put him up there, boss. Hey, what you going to do? Hee hee, it's me, Goofy. No, wait, that's Mickey. How does Goofy sound? Oh, hey there, Mickey. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. He sounds like a goof kind of. Wait, are you not supposed to say that now? Don't cancel me. Okay, speaking of canceling, I do have an apology. I made a comment. We'll talk about Retro Ralph on the last podcast, and I was meaning it in business terms, okay? It was meant to be in business terms. If you don't know what I'm talking about, great. Let's forget about it. Okay, let's move on here. All right, next I want to give a quick shout out to Jamie, Kale, and Retro Ralph over there doing the round table. I will say this, a couple things. Number one, that's a very square table in front of you guys. Come on, come on. You're over there at the Batcave. The electric bat, sorry. I always confuse the different bat arcades, but you're over there. You don't have at least one blanket. Oh, wait. No, you don't. Oh, see? I was jumping to the next part. You don't have at least one circular table you could have thrown there because you're the round table, fellas. Also, if you're sitting in a round table, we wouldn't have poor Jamie so upset about, Jamie, you just got to do an extra leg day, bro. Jamie was, you know, they joked about body dysmorphia. I hope that's not serious, Jamie. But, excuse me, but Jamie was wearing a blanket the whole time. So I was making jokes about, you know, is that a blanket or a Snuggie? Are you copying Travis? So I was kind of making jokes the whole time. I thought it was very funny. I think he just said he didn't like the way his legs looked. But I think the honest truth is Jamie likes to have his legs crossed a lot. And when you're wearing, I wear short shorts, and you cross your legs, sometimes a pinball or two might slip out the sloop, and then you get a little boopy-doop. And, you know, this cannot be good when you're live streaming to lots of people. So guys, first of all, Retro Ralph, you're in video creation. Come on, this looks like some type of video angle I would have done here in, you know, Orbital Albert's living room on the homestead. Come on, I'm a farmer. What do you expect? But no, the quality looked incredible and you all sounded great. But I would go a little bit higher with the video angle because we could see straight on to like all the legs, right? So there was lots of leg jokes But I will say this to me personally I thought all your legs were very handsome okay They weren Keith Ellwyn level calves That man got calves that could bust down a door okay That man could get hit by a Mack truck, and the Mack truck would be damaged if it hit his calves. You know what I mean? Now, him and Eric Meunier are right up there. Ellwyn's probably a little better. Eric's a little more defined. Hard to say. Do you want bigger? Do you want more definition? I don't know. You go either direction. I could go either. All right. That just sounded bad. OK, let's get into Ryan McQuaid's interview. I feel bad. I shouldn't be joking around during this is such a serious thing. OK, I had to joke around a little, guys. Come on. It's supposed to be entertaining and fun. But this is the most important part of this whole show. So Ryan McQuaid and I do have some notes here, guys. Don't make fun of me for showing out. You can't see some not doing video, but I will. I know it's like the Patreon. You're like, oh, the video is coming. I already have a couple. Go over there and check out Living with Albert. Take away the G. Come on. You guys all see me comment on it. Go take a look. It's nothing special. It's about as special as the podcast you're listening to. Rate. Meow. But Ryan, he let us know that he was laid off in December. I think that everybody knows that. Since then, though, and I did suspect this and we had saw little hints of this, but I wasn't too sure. since then he assured me that he's done absolutely everything within his power to remain part of the cuphead project now i'm closing my notes here for a second i'm going to go in a little micro rant okay of course he is this man and i can look at a pinball machine and within a short period of time sometimes the artwork's incredible like gtf gtf but but But the actual shots and the layout and the gameplay and the mechs are like, do you know what I mean? Whereas I looked at Cuphead and went, wow, the artwork is outstanding. I don't know if the artwork, I'm not going to say it's Christopher Branchy level, but it's beautiful artwork. It's gorgeous artwork. I love it. It's very theme appropriate. It looks great. But there was at least, and I can't give you too many details, but there was at least two, if not three mechs in there that were 10 times more interesting. than anything you're going to see in Alice in Wonderland. Either of them, the small one, the micro one, the baby one, the mini one, the other one that people are laughing and making fun of. I told everybody, why were people going nuts for Alice? It's like a 300-year-old, I got slayed about this before, but it's like a 300-year-old children's fairy tale. I am totally down with Muffets and Tuffets, but you start talking about mushrooms and going down holes, and that's more me in college, not a 45-year-old man. I'm sorry. and then when you take these this this school-aged girl and you try to over sexualize her then it becomes even less attractive and i'm like whoa what's that so to me personally alice was any of the all the alices are a no-go now would i play it if i was at an arcade uh just to say i did and shats all over it probably but am i ever going to be like getting in line to purchase one absolutely not now let me go back to what what i was saying with ryan it by far is the best shooter because up until this day, Houdini is by far my favorite American pinball machine, only because I kind of like that kind of, I don't know what you call it, old-timey kind of art that they used on it. I've always been a big fan of Houdini. I still to this day love magicians, and I'm a big fan of David Blaine. I've even asked, or attempted to research and figure out how I could start to do that direction of type of style challenges. and of course he is the master. I probably couldn't even do one-tenth of his challenges, but I'm working on it. I'm working on it. We're getting there. Hey, I'm going into, I'm finishing a five-day fast tomorrow morning at 11.11 when I will be having the most beautiful lemon and strawberry yogurt you've ever had in your life or I've ever had because if you go five days straight water fasting, you get really hungry. You get really, really, really hungry And that's, you know, that's what happened to me. But let's get back to Ryan here for a second. So Ryan, let me know that since then he has done everything within his power to remain part of the Cuphead team. including including attending multiple unpaid meetings and then he you know he didn't go into too much detail after that uh but i will say this i'm assuming he probably was still being emailed with the team he was probably still trying to help to work on everything he could do by not being physically there until and this might be news uh i you know i thought i heard rumblings of this from someone else, but I'd like to think it's news. So I'm going to say it's news. In June, Ryan was rehired or went back to American Pinball. Okay. But during this time, he was never given a formal contract and he just had like a verbal contract the whole time. And when they came back to him, I guess like a month later, they still didn't have a contract for him. So this would been going into July, just a month and a day ago. Here we are, September 1st, right? So Ryan, when presented with the contract, without me going into too many details, of course, this is all happening at Minecraft, there were several clauses in there that just basically, apparently, and this part I'm imposing my own opinion on here for a second, And I would assume at this point it sounds to me like upper management just didn't want to deal with not necessarily Ryan because it seems like Ryan is super rad to work with, especially if he's doing all that stuff for free. Right. Like. Like, I love a lot of stuff, but like I wouldn't even do this pinball podcast like 600 episodes completely for free, which is why I'm starting the patron. Please make sure you support me when I do that in the next week or two. All right. But Ryan worked his butt off even when he went back and did everything within his power that he couldn't do when he wasn't there working hard. And still at this point, again, I'm inferring my own opinion. It seems to me like upper management had their head up their butt a little bit. And I can say that because I'm a poor man's pinball tribe butthole myself. So if anyone can know a butthole when they see one, I can in Minecraft. But every single developer and play tester that played it basically praised it. And that's outside of every content creator I've heard that's gone to play it and see it. And then on top of that, all the other people now I've talked to who have seen it have agreed, wow, that would be a banger. In fact, on the roundtable, Enzo himself usually doesn't have a lot of hot takes. okay uh enzo over there uh he was uh saying you know exclusively and i don't know if he might i didn't confirm with him okay hashtag trying to do better at journalism but he explicitly said he thought it would have been a banger the term might have been uh slamming or something like that i don't know the exact term so i can't exactly quote enzo but enzo also said a quote I gotta call him out on he said Kong is not fun what give me a break come on and then he was bragging about how fun D&D is and I'm like wait wait wait wait are you just I don't know if he's trolling me or joking because I'm just gonna say this straight up and I don't want to offend anyone at any pinball companies but to me personally I played Kong and at the very low end it's an 8 out a 10 as a shooter probably a 9 if not a 10 the code is not a 9 or a 10 yet but wow like just as a shooter maybe you wanted like the king kong the movie and stuff like that fine i don't i i don't have any you know the only king kong i love is the king kong comics i own which all look a lot like the game if anything you know so but let me let's put a little bow on this i said it would be a quick show today. So Ryan McQuaid, he said not just the developers and playtesters alike were praising the game, but also he himself loved how it turned out and was proud of it. And I would have to imagine this is probably the most, this is, I would have to imagine again, I'm going to close my little book here in a second and not read any more of my notes from Ryan, but I would have to infer this has probably been a blessing and a curse for Ryan it's probably been the best thing he's ever done in his life and not just Ryan I mean Ryan and his whole team and everyone worked on it yes this was his baby but I'm sure there are coders and sound guys and animation people and engineers what about Sophia no one ever talks about Sophia she probably as far as I know she's the only engineer over there so she was probably working on this night and day so shout out to Sophia like we want to bring her back or get her working again or get her working on Cuphead or doing more cool stuff like this because there are so many other pinball companies out there who are not making stuff as cool as Cuphead. And when y'all who are listening to this, many of you may have seen it by now, don't send me a message for the pictures. I'm not giving it to anybody. I would never do that. I have been multiple times, have been sent pictures of pinball machines that haven't came out and I will not look at them. Don't send me the pictures. Don't send it to my email. Don't send it to my Facebook. Don't text me. Don't landline me and whatever you do, don't send me a fax about it. Because I mean, it's very hard to digitize those pictures anyways. But I like to be surprised. My favorite part about Christmas is not waking up and getting some bull crap from Amazon or Walmart or something. My favorite part is being surprised by the cards my family and friends made or the thoughtfulness of the gift or the experience we're going to go get to give with said gift. Wait, do they say said in the United States? Maybe they say said. zedwick z i think they say z all right let me see if i missed anything here yep so ryan basically said he has absolutely no no insider information outside of that so shout out ryan thank you for responding to me um i'm sure it was tricky for you to think like geez now i i think if anyone from american pinball ever listened to this if anything they would be happy that I'm praising the game because it seems to me at this point, okay, maybe not the upper management, the one comment. I'm sorry. I'll take it back. I take it back. But because that was a little rude and a little unkind. And I'm trying to stay, I want to, I'm trying to attempt to be fun, funny, entertaining, and give you a little tidbit of info from time to time. Okay. And my tidbit for you is that Ryan wants us to succeed. And I can tell you as someone who's been in business a long time. Very, very long time. I can tell you that if the owner of the company if the designer of the pinball machine if the engineer who created the product is still behind it even if the management or the company isn it can rise up from the ashes like a Phoenix and still become a super awesome product 90% of the work in this thing is done. Even if I'm wrong, it's 85% done. It's like 99% designed. I don't know how far it's coded. I don't. But most of the work is done. So for a company like CGC, okay wait they make machines too slowly for a company like spooky wait they only use christopher franchi for artwork now franchi can you cupheadify can you franchise this cuphead i don't know um that might be too hard see because the art's already done but i i just hope a company picks it up because everybody out there i don't care who you are maybe you love arnold schwarzenegger okay and maybe you absolutely loved uh that movie i can't even remember it the predator maybe you Loved that movie. I went back and watched it on Netflix. It wasn't half bad. It wasn't half bad. It wasn't half good, but it wasn't half bad. Okay? Special effects are met map now, but if you ever thought that Predator should have the light of day, wait till you see Cuphead. Cuphead would be much like Harry Potter and even Toy Story 4, who most pinball, hardcore pinball nerds don't love. It would do great in arcades. the age range that love that pin is all the way from as low as like 10 or love that the the show the the movie the the the game i think it started as a game and then expanded to those or vice versa but mostly it's known as a video game at this point i think that there would be a very wide demographic who would love it i think that you could sell out very quickly and i'm not trying to be rude to spooky or anything and definitely francie's art is incredible and there's really cool mechs and everything else in evil dead but i think just from a theme perspective if you were to add if you were to like ask you know 10 000 people under the age of 50 not even under the age of like 60 but like under the age of 50 and i get many people playing pinball and buying pinball machines are between the ages of 35 and 55 but i think you'd get a good chunk of that whose children loved the game and because it was much like a mario style game a lot of dads like me went back and played and loved the game and then you've got people who are between like 20 right now and 35 who just picked up the game and played it when they were younger and they have nostalgia for it as well so i think cuphead is a great theme i know the artwork is good i can tell the shots are great the mechs look incredible i'd love to see some more video even though i don't want that person who sent it to me to get in trouble so anyways if you're listening any other pinball company i don't know if stern i mean stern probably has like their next nine pins lined up It doesn't it just doesn't look like a Jersey Jack machine. So I don't think it'd be a good fit there. But for the love of God, if one of those European companies could somehow get it or if somehow some way American Pinball could get their shots together. I don't know if that's possible. I don't know. I don't know. And I'm not even going to tell you guys to go there and buy those American Pinball machines because it sounds like, honestly, it sounds like from me talking to Ryan and just from the impression I've got, upper management is sort of abandoning American Pinball. and it looks like they have by calling their new company orbit arcade and one of one other tidbit ryan gave me okay was that he said um upper management making a decision as was reported in app arcade to not continue the american pinball brand he says he for the most part from what he can tell i don't know if he's deducing this in minecraft or not but he said that basically he just thinks that they weren't paying attention and they lost the uh they lost you know how they lost the name of company american pinball now their orbit whatever so yeah and then they got that cute little mascot and i did hear i i i hear you zach i see you over there mr many okay don't be flipping out when i say this zach but you don't be calling anybody else in pinball orby i heard that i i caught that because he used to call you know for those who don't know mr flipping out himself was the gentleman who originally named me orby from orbital albert which one sounds better come on obviously orby rolls right off the tongue or both tall blah blah is no it's like paul blart mall cop it's like no it doesn't it doesn't roll it doesn't roll it flips out anyways zach come on am i no longer orby are you trying to say that the name of orby means so freaking little in pinball podcasting now that even the american pinball little like he reminds me of the little hand you know the hand and hamburger helper anyways it's me and i helped all right i forgive you zach i'm just kidding kind of but please somebody somewhere somehow help a man out if for the love of god if cuphead cannot be made anyway anyhow someone needs to grab Ryan McQuaid or at least consider it because this dude put three long hard years of blood sweat and tears and broken cups of water all right that was that was even bad for a dad joke but i was trying to think of other things that cuphead would put into it, of course. Sunflower seeds, doesn't he spit those out at him? I don't know. Shake and bake. Shake and bake, and I helped. There you go. Thank you. Not hamburger helper. Okay, drop target, Danielle. She was a little slow on the go there, but you have not had caloric intake for four days. Thank you. I'm not going to lie. It does look like Draco Franchi might need a little water and outside. You're going to have to put it down to book for a minute. Say hi to everybody while you walk by at least hello everybody there you go um anyways i really hope that a pinball company considers picking up ryan mcquader at least interview the guy you know what i mean because he just put so much hard work into this and it really like it bugs me at night like i wake up in the morning going this dude imagine like Keith Elwin put like three or four years into making iron maiden and like the day before it david fix broke it and broke his heart. Isn't it ironic his name is David Fix and he broke everybody's heart? No, I'm not going to put all the blame on David Fix. I wouldn't do that, not even in Minecraft. I will say this. It appears as if maybe David Fix wasn't really the right fit for the particular job. However, even from speaking with Ryan, among other people, it sounds like the management above David Fix might have been not really into the fun of pinball very much and just not great to work with on that level and not understanding the American dream that is American pinball. So my heart doesn't like, you know, I'm not crying inside over the fact that American pinball no longer exists. I'm sorry, guys. And I'm never going to tell anyone to go buy those pins, no matter how deeply they're discounted, because I believe unless you're way better working on pins than me, you don't want to own one of those suckers because the chances of, you know, there's, I would say we're in the 90, if I had to guess in Minecraft, 90% chance that American Pinball doesn't exist a year from right meow. And today is September 1st. So I guess we'll see. Anyways, please, if you can't get Ryan and Cuphead and Sophia and the whole team, which would be like, that would be like incredible. That might be hard to swing. At the very, very, very least, could you do everything within your power to at least scoop up Ryan? or someone interview the guy because, I don't know, it feels very like it doesn't feel fair. I guess I'll just say it that way. It doesn't feel fair. I'm not going to go on a rant like when I didn't feel fair that I didn't get invited to Stern after doing 500 episodes. At 500 episodes, Stern, you still can't invite me. Oh, wait. But at 600 episodes, I did start getting invited. That's right. Thank you, Zach Sharp and the entire team at Stern. You know what? I haven't had the heart to write back Zach and tell him I can't go yet. I'm sure he doesn't listen, but I probably am not going to be able to go. It is like nine days. Who knows if, if one of my pop one, I have like, I have like three Pokemon cards right now, which are worth quite a bit of money that are pop ones, which means there's only a population count of one, which means there is no higher card on earth graded higher. And in fact, there is no card graded that high and Pokemon. if I can get the approximated numbers that have been told and estimated to me for three said cards that are very hard to move by the way very tricky very few people on the earth are going to want these specific cards but if I can move all three of these before the 10th who knows maybe I could go maybe Zach Sharp listens and he goes alright Orby as long as you promise no upper deckers whatsoever and I'll say wait what about the porta potty outside at Expo even then no I'm just kidding never I would never do that it was a joke for those of you who didn't know. But I'm losing my voice. I have talked way too much. We've got to talk about Dune. And I'm going to try to be quick about this because I did go a little bit longer than I wanted. Dune is number two right now. Now, every single new pinball machine, as we start to see more and more and more of them roll out there, slowly rise up the ranks. But why is that? Why do they rise up the ranks so much before they eventually even out? it's because the first machines typically end up going to people's houses and when they get them to their houses they play them and of course they love them because they're in the honeymoon phase even people playing it on location they're in the honeymoon phase so almost every pin you see in the top 10 actually every elowen ever gets up to number one within you know the first six to nine months after it comes out many pins that are not even in the top 20 anymore have got to like the top three okay so i'm not discounting the fact that dune got to number two of course all the other pins on the pin side top 10 are pretty incredible i tend to think um did i say midnight madness i tend to think medieval madness many midnight madness exists in ghostbusters and a couple other pins and it's really cool i've only actually had it happen four or five times it's super fun. Don't know if you guys know about this. Maybe my decade almost of covering pinball content will help me with this, but there is something really cool called Midnight Madness when like a whole bunch of balls come out. I think Munsters has it. I think Ghostbusters has it. There's a couple other games. I think Dwight Games have it. So shout out to Dwight. There you go. Dwight doesn't get enough shout outs. So shout out, mofo. All right. Dune. Okay. So I've always said Dune is beautiful. I've always said it has unique interesting shots. It has at least get up to pucker up buttercup. It's got one beautiful mech there in the middle. Kind of looks like the Circus Voltaire thing but a little more risque a little more rated R right It beautiful and the ball paths are just different it just does feel different labyrinth never felt different enough for me to get ecstatic about and i never loved the labyrinth art enough and i was always really really pissed off that jennifer connelly and i used to joke my old girlfriend apparently well not girlfriend but girl i asked out apparently according to chat after we argued many times less than a one percent chance it was jennifer connelly the person i talked to may have been jennifer connelly but that was not the same person that i had asked out on the date many years before that who knows or they could have just been lying to me and i had a couple too many uh space cakes a couple too many of the old mrs orby brownies you know what i'm saying a little bit of the old hamburger helper and i helped no that's shake and bake. Okay. Dune is good, but is it great? Maybe. Is it number two great? Not for long. Definitely not for long. Again, I would stake my lack of reputation on it. That three to four months from now, it's probably a top fiver. If a year from now, it's even top 10, I would be shocked. I'd be really shocked if it was number one ever or for longer than a couple of weeks, because inevitably what happens is more and more people play it. And again, the code is getting better and better and better. So maybe I'm arguing against myself here slightly. That happens all the time, folks. Don't worry about it. But I really do believe prettiest apron I've ever seen, okay? Dune has the prettiest apron I've ever seen. Of course, other than on Mrs. Orby when she's making said special brownies because then chefs kiss. If the kids aren't home, she's sometimes just wearing the apron. No, I'm just kidding. She wouldn't do that. No, I'm just kidding. No, she wouldn't do that. I've tried. She's like, no. But too far, too far. There you go. See, she knows the line. Don't go by it. No, I don't. I don't know it. And that's why I have to be a homesteader. You can dress me up, but you can't. No, wait. You can dress me up, but you can't take me out. All right. I love Dune, and I can't wait to get to try to play it. And it's kind of sad I haven't got to play it yet. if you live on the east coast of canada out sorry if you live in the maritimes you live in newfoundland i'm not taking a 24 hour or a 20 hour drive or a 24 hour ferry to come see you to play dune but if you live on the east coast of canada and not you but you know someone who has it please let me know i'd love to come over there i will give the person a six pack of beer a bottle of wine um a cup bring a couple happy meals over for you and the kids if you don't drink I'll bring you over some Diet Pepsi if you're the Jamie type, right? Oh, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. That's the Orbi type. If you're the Diet Coke, if you're the Jamie type, go over there and watch the JBS show, guys, with the roundtable. It is a hoot. I will say this. I get lost in the sauce a lot. But I asked just one question today to Cale. Cale kept going on and on and on about how much he doesn't like Dune, which is totally fair because it sounds like Cale and Rach over there at the electric back. were sent a bit of a dud. It does sound like that. But there can be duds in everything. Maybe it was made on a Friday afternoon. You know, maybe they had too much space cake that day. Who knows? But maybe it was just super duper early in the run and it was a dud. But Cale said, without a doubt, if it was poor location, they had less problems with GTF. He would choose GTF. And that was my simple question I asked them. And if you go and you timestamp, when I asked them that question, they went off topic about 11 time 11 12 times and they eventually came around to the conclusion that kale would not get dune he picked gtf now to be fair gtf looks way prettier over there sitting in the corner arguably arguably sorry francie arguably like depending on what you're looking for right i mean if you're a huge dune fan obviously you're going to think dune looks better because they nailed that they nailed the color they nailed the artwork they named nailed the theme integration it sounds like the callouts are starting to come out i can't understand any of the callouts because they're all in dunish and i've been taking duolingo for quite a while to try to learn uh dunish and i'm not even at a level one yet you know like i okay let me try it's was that close i think it was i think it was very close i think that means um don't release game until code's done if you want to create FOMO, right? So I think Barrels of Fun is not having a barrel of fun because they released it way too early with little to no, little to no callouts, like almost no callouts. All of the video they had said, you know, not approved yet. The code was very, very, very early. Shout out though to Dirty Pool over there. He is doing the God's work, doing the hard work because the sound and how the sound works and the sound effects and how they mix with the music, that's all I hear when I play a game. That's what I love so much about Jerry Thompson. It's seamless. It's beautiful. It's chef's kiss, right? It's the best you could get. Dirty Pool is cleaning it up and making that even better. So I do actually believe David David Van Es and the whole team over there at Barrels of Fun, I think they do have their head on straight. and this isn't a Marty jab but I don't think they're Damien's you know what I mean I don't think David David Van Es is the next Damien I just don't I definitely know he's not the next Robert Mueller okay and yeah Barrels of Fun is going to make a couple mistakes but they have owed up to all their mistakes very similar to Spooky and if you think about Spooky's first few games were any of Spooky's say that five times fast were any of Spooky's first five pins nearly as good as Dune? I don't think so. I don't. I don't. And that's not even including like dominoes and all those little ones they did. So I think that Dune will have its day. Dune's not done yet. I don't think it's done. I don't think it's cooked like a Christmas turkey. Not even the National Lampoon's Christmas turkey. Because that one was done like dinner. All right. I've ranted and raved a little bit too long. I do want to talk about Star Wars quickly. I am a massive Star Wars fan. I am a massive Star Wars fan of everything that happened until about the year 2000, okay? So, yes, theme is everything. If the new Star Wars theme, what is it called? Fall of the Empire. If the new Star Wars theme is the OG, the three OGs, I'm in like Lint. Or is it in like Flint? I don't know. Flint makes fires and Lint's in your belly button. I think it's Lent. I'm in like Lent. It doesn't sound right. I'm in like Flint. But if you're in Flint, Michigan, you can't be drinking the water. So, oh, boy. All right. I'm getting too tired. I need calories. I've been living off coffee and diet seven up and electrolyte drinks for four days. Man cannot live on liquid alone. I will say this. You save a lot of time, not just from meal prep, but there's no time in the bathroom. I mean, you're only peeing for multiple days straight. It's European. It's pretty great. Shout out to everybody. I'm sorry it's kind of been a long time since I did it. I partied a little bit too hard on my wedding anniversary and had tinnitus or tinnitus, which basically sounds like this all the time. See, that was annoying. and I can look at my monitor and see I only did that for two seconds. I heard that for like 72 hours, okay, like since I got back last week. So that's why you didn't get a show earlier. Also, I don't like to do shows too often. Also, my last show was about Cuphead and what could be done and what companies could buy it. Go back and listen to that sucker. That guy's not quite at 400. I like episodes to get 400. I mean, I'd prefer 420, as you know. But come on, 400 is good, right? Anyways, hopefully you enjoyed my rant, my rave, my ramblings. I try very hard not to swear on the show or talk too much about sex, drugs, and rock and roll because I know that I do have some fans anyways that do like to listen to this. And you know what? I think it's much, much, much harder to be funny when you're being PG. Think about it. To me, Jerry Seinfeld and perhaps Larry David arguably are the two funniest men on planet Earth. Why is there no comedy pins? We need comedy and pinball. you're gonna give me cuphead you can't give me seinfeld you're gonna give me gtf and you can't give me curb your enthusiasm come on pants tent wizard mode let's go no i'm just kidding that'd probably be the worst episode for it but anyways there's a little baby rant for y'all a little taste a little flavor i ranted it up i ranted and raved no kids are home thankfully and uh luna tuna elo and agar is up comfortably sleeping in the bed mr draco franchi has gone for a quick walk with Drop Target Danielle. Well, thank you so much for listening, everybody. Hopefully you had a good time. You got a little bit of information. You got filled in a bit about what's going on and where Ryan was really sitting there. Hopefully, Ryan, I did justice to it. It's hard for me to like do verbatim, but without like, you know, not quoting. That stuff is challenging for me, but I got her done. I think I did a decent job doing it. So anyways, Ryan, I hope that this helps. I hope at least one person listening to this will somehow, someway reach out to someone's HR department or reach out to their, you know, who knows? Maybe David David Van Es is listening. Maybe Dune isn't done yet. I'm just saying Dune could be honestly right now. It is possible that Dune is less done than Cuphead. Wrap your head around that. So if somehow David David Van Es and the whole team over there at Barrels of Fun had decided, hey, we need to put out a pin because we need to keep the line running. Like if he had a DeLorean with Doc and Marty and went back six months, if somehow those timelines could have crossed and somehow Barrels – that would have been a perfect fit. If Barrels of Fun could have got Cuphead and released Cuphead because it seems like Cuphead was way, way, way more done. even back in December it looks like when Ryan stopped working there Cuphead was way way way more done nine months ago than even Dune is now like by far so they could have let Dune cook in the oven for about an extra six or seven months and just done a small run of I don't think Cuphead might have sold more than 250 to 350 probably less of American Pinball made it but with the confidence of knowing you have a rad company like Barrels of Fun behind you they could have actually sold a whole bunch and that and and they probably could have picked up Ryan because as far as I know There's not a heck of a lot of designers over there at Barrels of Fun. If there is, I don't know their names or who they are. Is it just David David Van Es, the owner? I don't know. If so, cheers to you. Labyrinth was decent, better than Mid, I'd say. And Dune is pretty freaking good. Not number two on Pinside good. Not that good, baby. Until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Your cuphead runneth over.