Coming up at the Wild Dog Arcade, George, Jack, and Tanio give us an in-depth presentation of Stern Pokemon. What surprises will we get? What options do these machines have? Find out next. So we'll just start talking while we wait for... Yeah, we'll start talking and he'll show up. Yeah. Well, yeah, thanks for coming, everybody. Pokemon Pinball. As you can see, like, if you were here earlier for the talk with Seth and George, Pokemon is something that is relatable to many, many age demographics. And obviously we wanted this game to be approachable because of how diverse that group of people are. There is also, like, in the works some plans for this on a larger scale that Pokemon has ideas for that also lends itself to needing this to be approachable to a lot of different players. So from a beginner standpoint, all of it's right here, big recognizable toys. The code base that we chose for this up front is sort of like, we wanted something that was easy to relate to people. So think of like your medieval madness or your attack from Mars, where it's like hit that shot a bunch of times and something will happen. But we can add a ton of complexity to that idea. But yeah, I'll let Tanya do a little deep dive on here. Sure thing. Let's, Andrew and Josh, come on up here, too. Yeah, sure. Andrew and Josh, also software engineers over here. Where should I stand? Yeah, so we've got a lot of stuff in this game. So, as Jack was saying, there's sort of a core, easy-to-understand rule set, which is toys, which is the Meowth Balloon, the battle arena up at the top. There's the battle targets. You complete the battle targets. The Meowth Balloon will come down onto the play field, and you'll smash him, and then you can hit the center shot to start the multiball. By the way, the toys were all sculpted by us, so they're not off-the-shelf toys. They're not toys purchased from the Pokemon Company. We create them specifically for the game, and every detail, the deco, the sculpt, everything, had to go to the Pokemon Company for approval. So, yeah, unique to the game. Yeah, and, like, down to, like, you know, needing the colors had to be just right. Every, like, outline detail had to go up a chain of command, come back down, and that back and forth until we nailed what's happening here. And, like, Meowth specifically, you know, when you play a pinball machine, you need a big bad. And, you know, what better than Team Rocket if you're familiar with Pokemon? They're always messing with you. and to have Meowth and that balloon that really correlates to their presence coming down to get in the way. And you'll hear Meowth shouting at you a lot in this game. But, yeah, sorry, please continue. What he said, but more stuff. Yeah, so Meowth is the only Pokemon that talks. So we got him, and we have a lot of clips of him from the show, but he's directed at you. So in the game, you are the trainer, and it's your journey through the world of Pokemon to discover Pokemon and to kind of train your Pokemon and to make your way up to becoming a Pokemon master. There's lots of clips from the TV shows from seasons 10 through 25. You'll notice a lot of the content is focused on Generation 1, the Kanto region. but we have Pokemon in the game from all the generations. At launch, we have 182 that you can discover and catch. And more are coming. Yep, and more are coming. And you'll also notice, like, this is, you'll see, like, this sort of land mass that we have here. This game is region agnostic, so, like, it's not a preexisting place that exists in that world. We got the opportunity to make our own location that you can travel to, And that also comes with a really, like, awesome thing that they afforded us is we couldn't use a preexisting Pokedex. So they let us design our own Pokedex for our own region, which contains our own four biomes here. So, yeah, like, with everything that was meticulously looked over, they did afford us some really cool freedoms on some of the stuff. Yeah, exactly. So in the regions that we have, there's a forest region, the lake, mountains, and the desert. And each one of those different types of Pokemon will spawn. You start out in the forest, and then your goals in those regions are to discover, catch, train, and battle Pokemon. The way you discover Pokemon is you just hit switches on the play field, and as the progress bar fills up, Pokemon will spawn. And once they do, you have a certain amount of time to first scan them with your Pokédex. So this captive ball, Newton ball mech right here is your Pokédex. So you go there to scan the Pokémon. When you hit the ball, then you'll see the scan, and it'll tell you what Pokémon that you've discovered. So that's the discover mechanic. And then the next thing you want to do is catch. So once you scan them, you'll have this catch sequence where you'll be chasing purple shots around the play field. and once you've hit enough of those, then the Pokeball will light up and it's time to catch the Pokemon. So you have a certain amount of time to shoot this shot here. It's a pretty cool mech because on the Premium and LE, this mech, there's sort of a hidden sub-lander here. So the ball, once you hit that shot, it'll disappear. The Pokeball is lit up and on the Premium and LE, it animates. And so that's the catch mechanic and then you'll see, like, you caught this Pokemon. The ball disappears, goes underground. It fires out of that buck across the play field to get it back in play. That's one of the things that's missing on the Pro. But it's on the Premium and the Elite. Yeah, so on the Pro, the Pokeball will light up. It doesn't do the animation, but it does, when you shoot the shot, it goes and will catch the ball on the ramp. It still has all the same game. So it's got the up post here to stop the ball instead of going to the underground. Yeah. Once you've done that, then the next step will light up a battle here at the town scoop. And so you can go and start a Pokemon battle, which is a pretty cool sequence, which I'll let Andrew talk through a little bit. Yeah, so that first battle, being in the forest, it's a lot of grass and bug types. You're fighting those. But you start with Bulbasaur, who's grass and poison. So if you're familiar with the Pokemon world, you know that's not exactly a great matchup. But if you shoot a couple shots, the town scoop will relight to let you switch Pokemon. And so you can switch to Squirtle or Pikachu, but you want to switch to Charmander, because he can just light up the forest, tear through that battle, and get you straight to the end. And then the same thing you know it a simplified version of like the Pokemon type system but we just flash the arrows quick at you to let you know when you got a strong attack ready But Pokemon fans and experts will find it intuitive hopefully And pinball fans will have the lights and hopefully some LCD stuff down the road to help guide you through those tough-to-navigate battles. So yeah, you can use the Pokemon to your advantage. Yeah, so in that regard, and I'm going to steal your thunder here for the last thing, is, yeah, this game, there's a lot happening in here that's going to help you understand pinball, like from audio call-outs and stuff, because we know this is going to be hitting all sorts of demographics, especially people that don't normally play pinball, so this thing's going to help you along the way to tell you, especially through the voice of the Pokedex. But for the pinball players, you're going to learn a lot from this, but also you're going to have to learn a lot about Pokemon to understand what that rock-paper-scissors battle is, too. So you're all going to be Pokemon pros in no time if you aren't already. You'll even learn the correct pronunciation of each Pokemon. Yeah. The Pokemon company went to the audio session, sat in with the audio session to make sure that everything was pronounced correctly. As a matter of fact, in the promotional video that you guys saw. Oh, yeah. We're saying Pokemon wrong. They called both Jack and I out before saying Pokemon wrong. I didn't say it correctly. What's interesting is that the guys making the video, Zach had us say Pokemon like ten times in different ways because he knew, okay, this is going to be a thing. We're going to get it wrong, yeah. So they had the correct way, and they will edit it into the audio. And you'll never know the difference. But that was one of the things that came back in the critique from the Pokemon company. Yeah, that's hard to beat out of your head when you say something in a certain way for 30 years to have to say it correctly. So you're saying Pokemon is not correct. Pokemon is not correct. It's mental gymnastics to try to get it. I don't know. It sounded like I said it right. Right, exactly. Yeah, I used to say Pokemon. No, that's wrong. I know now. You guys didn't say Pokemon. Or men, the plural, Pokemon. That's not right either. You know, I think we said in the general session, all of the art is Pokemon company art. We didn't draw anything. We essentially composited their stuff. And that really is about fidelity, right? It's about they are very, very, very, very particular to make sure that everything is just perfect the way they've designed it. So everything, line weights, colors, relative scales of characters, went under tremendous scrutiny. So it is, and from our perspective, it's legitimacy. So it's OK. A lot of work went into marrying the necessary design of a pinball play field with the Pokemon world. There's information we have to convey. There's things you guys expect a pinball machine to have. One of our challenges was to do that within the context of legitimacy of the images. A couple of things you'll notice. The armor on this LE is mock-up armor, so the art on the side is a decal. The real ones are printed on like you've seen us do on armor before. So the high quality prints, they'll look great. Right now, we didn't get all those approvals in time, and so they're decals. The game in New York is decals. This game is decals. Let's see. Oh, notice the, Andrew did this wonderful job with the Pokemon, or I'm sorry, with the Pokeball. Speaker lights. Oh, that's great. The Pokeball lights on the speaker display panel. And of course, the lights in this game, the colors of the lights in this game are very consistent with what you're doing and what you're in. So you will see the expression lights and the speaker lights and the play field lights. see at times you'll see coordinated color. Andrew, you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, if you do get the Expression Light package, you're going to see when you're in the forest, everything's lit up green. When you're in the lake area, everything's lit up blue. So it kind of helps you along your journey. During the catch sequence, I want to communicate that urgency so you have the Expression Lights running up along just to kind of keep that momentum and that velocity that you've got while you're trying to catch up with and then eventually capture this Pokemon. on. And yeah, there'll be more to come, but I think we've laid a really good foundation together on where we're going. You guys, so we talked early on, right? Had to make the game super approachable. Like I tried really hard to make all the shots easy and makeable and, you know, there's a lot of work that went into combinations. This game is just chock full of possible combination shots. And then of course with that, a couple of combination systems. You want to talk about Yeah, not just one, but two combo systems. Whoa! That's right, two combo systems. Two? Two, yeah. So the first one is the Pokeball combo system. You'll see on each one of the major shots, there's a Pokeball combo light. So you shoot one shot, the next one is lit. You can chain together a two-way combo, a three-way combo, a four-way combo. Each one of those will build up how many Pokeballs you're collecting, and then you can cash that in at the Pokedex, which is the center toy here, and you smash that to get even more Pokeballs that build towards your bonus. Eventually, it's going to build towards a cool mode. And then, in addition to that... I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, you'll see up here on the LE, we've featured Eevee and Eevee's evolutions. So here, there's Eevee up here, and then there's eight different evolutions. Each one of those has a secret combo. So when you hit those secret combos, you earn those and we're going to eventually make it so that once you do a certain number of Eevee combos, then you'll unlock Eevee to add to your team. You'll see Eevee's right down there, prominent on the play field. That's coming in the future. It's not a secret if you tell them, Tommy. We're also really fortunate to have a couple of tournament grade players on the team that are deep into the Pokemon world. So they, Andrew and Josh, and so they're going to guarantee that there is depth in the game for more advanced players. So while I focused on a lot of making the play field very approachable those guys are going to make sure that there lots of interesting stuff in the game Thank you Yeah I jumped on the project pretty late because I was on Star Wars but Josh and Tanya laid a really good foundation for me to just jump in and help tie up the last few loose ends. Yeah, I think it was important for this game. There shouldn't be any kind of barrier to entry. Everyone should be able to enjoy this game, especially with a license as family-friendly and universal as Pokemon. So I think anyone of all skill levels should be able to enjoy this game. Totally. Yeah, like all the shots, as we were talking about, like you hit a shot a couple of times, and then that third shot should light the mode. That's where you'll see a lot of the content from the animated series that pertains to each one of those specific Pokemon. And as far as the biomes are concerned, you'll see we have, like, there's a rival, and then there's, like, the four objectives for that biome. and think sort of like in the vein of like Godzilla where like you're in a city and you get your objectives and then you finish what you can and then you move on. That's sort of like the general idea of like moving around the biomes here as well. And each biome will have, as you mentioned, specific Pokemon that live in like the desert or, you know, the mountains and such. And that affords us a way to take all the Pokemon we have currently and sort of spread them around so you'll only experience them when, you know, you should experience them. but in the future when we do get more Pokemon or some of the ones we have now we have interesting ways that we can spawn them and I don't know, okay I'm not sure what I'm allowed to talk about but Tonya do you want to talk about the battle system? Can you go back to a biome after you leave or is it like done? You will be able to currently we have a linear system Well, you start in the forest, and then you go to lake, mountain, and desert. But you'll see there's a travel light here that will let you go back and forth. You can choose to go back and get more Pokemon. Like a de-mist type or something. Yeah, yeah. But that stuff is still evolving, but that's part of the structural. I don't think we told these people about battles. We did. We did? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But more so in the battles. Yeah, we started with battles. But, I mean, the battles are cool, and the short end of it is, like, if you want to get to a battle, you need to hit a bunch of pop-upers and switches. You spawn a Pokemon. You hit the Pokedex. You catch the Pokemon by hitting shots, and then you want to go to the Pokeball to catch them, and then it's lit here, and then you go to the battle. It's sort of, I mean, it's not easy, but it's a lot of fun once it's there. You have your Pokemon, your team, one of your team members. It starts with Bulbasaur, but you can, like Andrew said, and you can switch your team members that you're fighting. And then the forest rival has different bug types and stuff. Each region has a different rival. So there's the lake region, the mountain, and the desert. And if you can beat all four of those, there's a mini-wizard Pokemon arena battle. Then there's also, if you complete the four story modes, there's a story mode mini-wizard that's Pikachu versus Lucario, which is a pretty cool scene from the show, where there's a pretty epic battle. And then in the future, there's going to be a Tier 2 of story modes. And then there's a second wizard mode for stories, which is Pikachu versus Lucario. Oh, Charizard. First one that we have in the game is Pikachu versus Charizard, and then Lucario will come in the future. You said Lucario. Oh, okay. It's all good. Right, so there's two of them. Just fight Lucario twice. And then you fight Lucario a third time. Yeah. We've done this presentation like six times in three days. What they said. Yeah. And then there's going to be several more Meowth multiballs and then a Meowth wizard. And then that all leads up to Pokemon Master, which is the ultimate wizard mode, where you'll be fighting against Giovanni and against Mewtwo, who's this really dangerous Pokemon. Bio-engineered dangerous Pokemon. Yeah, he's right here. If you can make it there, good luck to you. I think we've got a voice line from Giovanni talking about his greatest creation. Speaking of his greatest creation, the mechanical engineers haven't gotten a lot of press, and they've created a really interesting sensing mechanism for Meowth, which is very simple but super effective and super reliable. And like I said, those guys don't get enough credit. it. We look at this amazing stuff and we go, wow, it just kind of happens. It doesn't just kind of happen. There's a whole bunch of guys that worked really hard to do this. Thomas and Mason Dooley, Thomas Malcom and Mason Dooley did a tremendous job. Those guys aren't in the room where I point them out, but they did an amazing job in working with Jack and myself to execute on the play field. We're going to do a big making of in Texas at TPF. Tanya, Jack and myself will be there for sure. We're going to take you through all of Jack's original White Woods and some of his experimentation stuff. We'll transition over to my CAD, my more finished had. And we'll talk about the game in depth. Tanyo has been the heart and soul tying everything together, right? He had the big vision of progression through the game and he's driven it through his team and through the whole team. So I'm really proud of this. This is, you know, it's come out great. Thank you. I am too. And yeah, the team, as you said, Josh and Andrew and Mitch and then our big team of AV people and sound. And Pokemon Company themselves have actually, they spend hours and hours and hours going over the stuff and sitting through the voiceover sessions. It's been an incredible journey. Yeah, the submission video that we had, which we submitted in combination with the GDD, the game design document, just to watch the videos over an hour. And it doesn't contain everything. And they frame by frame. They frame by frame everything. The game design document is like a bazillion pages. And that's the stuff nobody ever sees. But it's real. Yeah, it's been quite a project. and excited. It was great yesterday. The Pokemon company, two of the reps were here and they've been seeing every single bit of this game through the microscope of just this piece of art and that thing and this thing and this video this audio clip So yesterday was the day they first played it They first saw it all together Yeah and just to see them their reaction was amazing They were happy They felt joy I was like, we got it. Yeah, and I was trying to clear with George, I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say, but Pokemon has very, very large plans for this pinball machine and pinball in general. Yeah, you guys know this is the 30th anniversary year, right? If you look at your Instagram, you know, it's like just type Pokemon, and you'll be bombarded every day with events and things that are happening relative to this. And, of course, wherever the pinball machine can be, the pinball machine will be. So, yeah, they've been a great partner. it's been hard for us to live up to their standards and really that's been our challenge we want to make this amazing pinball machine but it has to fit it has to basically be at a certain bar and they've got a pretty high bar but it looks like a Pokemon game yeah it does you guys I think unless you've got questions we can get you to play so So, fourth grade, Pokemon came out, changed the entire school, and then, you know, into that world. I have a few questions regarding the Insider Connect. Yeah. One, like D&D, is there going to be an opportunity to, like, save your progression and continue to the end? At this point, no. Okay. But at this point, that's not designed in. Okay. I mean, a lot of the IC stuff is going to be collection. Sure. And I'm glad that you guys are doing the Pokédex. That was a huge thing. And then are you going to allow people in Insider Connect? I'm not sure if this is going to be really hard to do or not, but to be able to trade Pokémon with each other. I don't think so. No. I don't think so. You just have to be good at pinball. Just go get it. It's when we tether two machines like an old video game. Oh, man. It's going to be a serial table. It's going to be a fast break. One question that I do have. You said that the region within the table is unique and exclusive to the table. Is it canonical? No. No, it's not. So the idea of having exclusive regional Pokemon that would be unveiled. We are not allowed to create canon. Got it. Okay. Yeah, our region is sort of an area that can be in any of the regions. Okay. Yeah. Ambiguous. Does it have a name? Yeah. That was just a follow-up. What's the name of the region? The Sterns region? Whatever you want to call it. It's called Pokemon. Pokemon Pinball Area. Actually, the official name is Pokemon by Stern Pinball. There you go. And the reason for that is that obviously a long time ago there was Pokemon Pinball. And so we don't want any, you know, we have to sort of stay clear of that. And so you'll see all of the documentation and everything says Pokemon by Stern Pinball. You've only played it once, but is there any video modes? Not right now. No. No. So, question about the voice. You said you did sessions. Now, I do know that Meowth's voice actor, passed away last summer. Is that something you had to work around, or is that just, did you find a way to, you know, whatever? All the voice of Meowth is from the TV show. Yeah. All the voice of Giovanni is a voice actor. And as well as the narrator in the Pokédex. The narrator is a voice actor who was on the show for about 10 years and the voice of Giovanni was the voice of Giovanni in the movies and the show. The announcer as well we got. Right and the announcer also was done work on the show and some of the video games. So one of the very early discussions with Pokemon Company was the notion of how do we what is the voice of the game? So there was a lot of back and forth from a design perspective We talked about different options. And so the narrator voice was a big discussion early on. And so we've settled on what you'll see here, and I think it works. Absolutely. Yeah, and you'll see that this is your story. You're a trainer, and you're entering the world of Pokemon as a Pokemon trainer. And eventually, if you play good enough and long enough, you'll become a Pokemon master. But yeah, it's all about you collecting. And the trainer is talking about you. The narrator is talking about you. The announcer is talking about you and your Pokemon in your battle. The Pokedex is giving you instructions as you play the game, both telling you about Pokemon, but also telling you what to shoot, what's lit. And then, is there anybody else? And then Meowth is taunting you. And Giovanni, he's kind of mostly taunting Meowth, like, why didn't you do something? But it'll lead up to an epic Giovanni battle. Okay. Anyone else? Co-op? Is there a co-op option? Eventually. We'll have it. Yeah, we'll have it. You will? Yeah. That's awesome. It's not a high priority right now because, you know, we've got so much to do. Finish the game. There's a lot of content to put in this. Also, if you have a favorite episode from Pokemon, like a moment, freaking let these guys know because we're combing through that stuff when we're filling out the storylines and such. We obviously know where we want to take it, but if there's some fan favorite stuff you're thinking of, we'd love to hear it. Yeah, we're focusing mostly on seasons 10 through 25. The earlier stuff they had us avoid because it's stuff that's no longer canon. The stuff that happened in season 1 and 2 that they don't do anymore. It goes against their rules now. And they also made a jump to higher definition around season 10. Also, I think that their concern is that the machine is not stuck in a place in time. So they're evolving their story, and they want the machine to stay as evergreen as possible. So I think that's the reason that they locked out certain things and said, don't focus on this, focus on this. Yeah, this isn't Ash's journey. this is your journey your journey that's a good line