Hello and welcome to episode 20 of the Pinball Studio Podcast. I'm your host Sterling Martin and today we've got Don Garrison back. We're going to talk about Texas Pinball Festival in this very, very special episode. But first off, let's mention the sponsors. Old Town Pinball. Do you need a new or used pinball machine? Just head over to oldtownpinball.com. Also the Electric Playground. If you're looking to level up your game room with a new topper, check out their website, teppinball.com. And last but not least, Spooky Pinball. Order your Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scooby Doo or Looney Tunes today. Just head over to spookypinball.com to learn more. Anyway, welcome to the show, Don. This is gonna be a blast. What's going on? Welcome to the yes coming from the frosty northern snowed in realm of Benton, Wisconsin, straight to the pinball studio. How you doing, sir? Thanks for having me again. Yeah, man, I'm super psyched for frickin TPF. And I had to have you on because you know, well, we're doing a booth, I guess. We're roommates, roommates, man. At least we're gonna have some games. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You had a great idea for the booth, which is perfect, because I had like no brain cells left for it. I can't believe TPF is this week. Dude, it snuck up. Like, I was like, holy shit, I'm leaving in like two days. And it's shaping up to be a great show, too. Dude. Looking at all the rumors and things, but yeah, man, I'm excited. Yeah, tons of rumors. What's with the dragon logo this year? Don't really know. I heard the showrunner was talking about it's a throwback to an old game or something, and he's like, no one's done this before. Let's do, I guess we're just doing dragons. Once upon a time, on the est screams corner of Pokémon Parkway, years ago a man rolled his mighty toy rabbit out, and Ath Titan shoo, a ré mínimeYeslass cueld どんどんきる pai Virtual Mood, Midnight initosol Shift As widgets s'lai I mash en Pai り Sodger You knew we would be together I remember playing Motorhead at some point and then I remember, oh, I remember just hanging out with my friends at Multimorphic. That's the greatest memory I think I have from TPF that year. Hell yeah. I've already put cough drops in my bag because I know I'm going to lose my voice the first day and then I can't talk the rest of the whole damn event. 100% that always happens. This year they're going to have a quiet media room so when we do interviews and things we can go there. You can go there. Trying to record on the show floor seemed like a great idea, but there's just this cacophony of sound and you've got to like scream and it comes out crappy. It's got a cool vibe, but yeah, it's a little loud out there. Are you going to bring your Rodecaster? I haven't even thought about recording yet. Absolutely, man. Yeah, I got my travel gears all set, a couple of mics so I can just grab people and we can talk pinball stuff. See, my bag is slapped full of Beetlejuice shit. I've got a freaking like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice light up sign and all this crap like TSA is going to be like opening my bag like who is this guy? Yeah, not only that, I'm going to try to bring my T-shirt printer too so we can. Oh my God, you're going all out. I've got four T-shirts in my bag and I was like, that's freaking it, man. I'm not I'm not doing this. Oh man, it was so popular last time. So if somebody wants a shirt, at least I could say, OK, pick a logo, pick a size. We'll do it right here. That's so much easier. My life's been upside down with this move and I'm like trying to just get caught back up with everything. I feel bad. People want a shirt. It's like, I gotta find my stuff. So I have it now. I think we're good. Are you finally done moving? So mostly 80%. 80% of the way there. The other homes are going on the market soon. If you're looking for some nice domiciles in north central Wisconsin, we'll get you the homey hookup, man. But yeah, I'm full time in Benton now and it's amazing. Awesome. You're liking it up there. It's still cold up there. It's freaking, it was hot as hell yesterday, yesterday, and then I wake up this morning and it's like 30 degrees here. We had a legit blizzard two days ago. I flew back from Maine, I got here, and like the Carl Weathers had been like seasonably okay. It's like springtime, t-shirt Carl Weathers, got off the flip flops, whatever, the safety sandals, and then all of a sudden it's like 50 mile an hour winds, four foot snow drifts. I can't even get out my back door right now. There's like a pile of four feet of snow that just blew up against it. host thread The last two years it's been on that same freaking week. It's got to be like 30% cheaper to do the show that week and that's why it's Super Bowl weekend. I know like they say pinball dads all walk around with their cargo shorts and everything, but dude if it's 90 degrees out, that's what I'm wearing. I might throw a polo on, I'll probably do a printed t-shirt, but yeah I'll either be in flops or some multicolored tennis shoes and then my cargo shorts, hell yeah. So what day are you flying in? I'll be there Thursday morning-ish. Yeah, so Thursday same. Thursday 11 o'clock. They're doing a media event that night for us. A tournament thing? It's not a real tournament though. Yeah, it was just a chance to play some pinball and stuff and that's cool. I'll go. I don't know if I want to play. I'll find out when I get there. I don't want to commit to anything yet. My whole reason for going early is just to find a way to finagle myself onto the show floor and oogle all the new stuff before the crowds descend. Oh, look at this shit. We got Don Garrison's Beetle tent. Oh my God. You made laminated passes. The hard plastic ones like we had at the Beetle or whatever. The Beetlejuice launch party. The Mindaimandis launch party? Yeah. Sponsored by Chipotle? Yeah, exactly. Dude, what if we could get Chipotle to sponsor it? That would be freaking dope. That's the dream sponsorship. Just put it at the end of like the launch video like Chipotle like everybody would see it. Chipotle. That was so much fun. The Chipotle was probably the best moment although having Abba in my home just show up just for a party that was stupid fun. What a fun silly game that is. Yeah, I actually enjoyed it. I didn't even want to play it and then like I think Kerry was giving me shit or something and then I finally played it and I had the longest game because y'all didn't put a tilt bob in it. So you could just sling it all over the place. Like there's been some stupid games in the past, right? Barrios Barbecue Challenge, Strange Science, Bone Busters, but like, ABBA's a fun, strange game. It's got a helicopter that's pretty damn cool. I know. I thought they were going to recycle that for Predator. Like it was just going to be a palette swap. They should have probably saved that mech for Predator. Like Predator needed everything it could have. Like how many games are they making? They were trying to drive some FOMO so they're like, we're only doing 300 and then it was like crickets, you know, and so now it's like, okay, this is like the end of the month is the last time, last last time you can order one of these games. Yeah. They were like trying to trick us at first, like they're almost all gone. It's like, nah, we're just like cutting back production. I think the only show it's been at has been Expo, right. So have you had a chance to play it yet? I have not. I mean, hopefully it's at TPF and I can put a game on it. It's the thing it's gonna fucking break though probably. I think it sucks about it is it's actually a fun game. It like it deserved better. Well dude, people broke like all these like Stern codes with the video and threw in you know like the Jurassic Park code and all that. It's like somebody can't throw Arnold in and then now this game's freaking awesome. Just release the game and just leave them back door open, you know, and then a couple months down the road, you know, it was an SD card game. Maybe you put it in there. Maybe you have fun. Shut up. I didn't give it to you. I don't know a damn thing about coding, but like the guy that's going to code my homebrew, he's like, oh, this shit's easy. He's like, I can get in there and change whatever. I'm like, really? Are you doing a mission pinball framework? I don't know what he's doing, because honestly, I'm not even going to. I'm not even going to mess with any of that. I'm going to be like, here's the homebrew. Make it turn on with code. I haven't even got to that spot yet. I can bolt a cabinet together. See, I can wire the hell out of a cabinet. I can build the game, but coding and coming up with rules. So I just got a really good competitive pinball player, and he's written rules for another homebrew. I'm like, great. You want to come up with the rules for my game? You lavish all this stuff on these pinball designers, but a lot of times you create a layout, create a concept, create some rules and things, malaise vapor I'm looking at you. Yeah, I just want to build the game. I don't want to do the rest of it. I want to be the ideas guy. But no, it's fun. But I do like physically getting in there with power tools and bolting the cabinet together and running all the wiring and the wire harnesses and the loops and all the soldering and stuff. That's fun. Screwing the mechs on. Hell yeah. Inhale in some solder. So much solder. So much solder. So man, let's talk about our booth idea. Where did this name come from? The Beetle Tent. I don't know. It was not me. I don't think. I have this idea like, God, we got to get, we got to do something at our, at our booth. You know, we got to get some games from somebody. We're set up right next to spooky pinball. So we're just kind of an extension or an appendage hanging off of them. Um, so I'm like, you know, seeing a Beetlejuice and pinball at the beach and at these big shows, it's hard to really hear everything. So why don't we put it in kind of a sound condensed tent and be able to play Beetlejuice like inside of a tent, a little more intimate, be able to hear everything. We're gonna do a little spooky speak demo inside there. Maybe it'll work there instead of just on the show floor. People are gonna walk in that tent and they're gonna be like, it's just as loud in this tent. Probably. And it's in here. It's like B.O. What the heck? This was a horrible idea. No, I've got a bunch of decorations and shit so we'll hang up. I got all kinds of banners. I got this banner behind me that nobody can see but our Beetle tent banner. We'll put it on the show floor. It'll be a tent. Come on in there. What if like one year Spooky just got a massive like circus tent and put all the games in it? So I kind of think it'd be fun to do like a big walkthrough attraction and then at the end of the attraction you come out to the games area and that's where you can get to play. Dude, a haunted house like walkthrough. Yeah, yeah. To the games. You set up an autograph booth inside there so you can just randomly have different designers pop in and they could be signing autographs as you're going through there. We can do a ball pit. Can we do this at the next midnight launch? Untitled I'm standing in a three-foot deep ball pit playing pinball. That seems fun to me. Yeah, I can't wait for the midnight thing this year. Hopefully they can let a few extra people come, but I don't know. It was a nice size crowd too last time. At Pinball at the Beach, they made a wall of the Evil Dead boxes or the Beetlejuice boxes that they had brought, and then they cut them open so you could actually go inside there and it was like a little box fort. Oh, I thought that was just you. I was just watching your live streams. I'm like, I guess Don just cut a hole in a box and this is his home. It's just the dominant of them. I wanted you to do a podcast in the box. It's too dark. I didn't have any exterior lighting. Dude, I mean, there's lights on this thing. You'll be fine. So someday I want to make like a big box pyramid and we can just go inside there and chill and it'll be a clubhouse and like no girls allowed. It'll be super fun. Hell yeah. Dude, what are the purpose of these badges that I got made? So Charles wanted me to get these made. And like at the midnight launch, it was, you know, there was kind of a purpose, but like Like, is there anything cool we could do with them? Because I've got a bunch of extra ones. And I mean, obviously, we need to make the the beetle 10 should have been like a VIP upcharge arena, you know, like bottle service, the whole bit a nice couch in there. I just been putting all my friends names on. I think, you know, we staff I guess, I don't know. You know, I don't want it to be like, we could have all these as like Express passes. So you could just like push people. That's what I was thinking. But people and somebody get pissed like, wait, I've been waiting 45 minutes. Are you kidding? Everybody would be pissed. Were you there at Expo when Metallica Remastered came out? No. The game came out with factory settings where the ball saves were on really long and the tilt bob sensitivity was very low. And so people were getting on there and playing for 40 minutes and people were getting legit pissed off in line right behind them like, Which is how I got like you're not trying to go for a high score man we're all waiting here like getting so pissed and I just I just post it up and just watch the line for a while because it was people losing their minds. Right Yeah there would probably be a knife fight or something if we just like bumped the line This person paid extra Get out of here You would have to go like hide it in like one of those side rooms Didn Barrels do that one year Barrels did that. They had the labyrinth room where it was, this is a cool marketing idea. Like if you're at the show and you're legitimately serious about wanting to buy one of these, they could take you off the show floor into a little room, nicely appointed, little photo ops. It's quiet. You can hear the game. You could explore it. They had the whitewood up there as well and they had some sips and nibbles. Amanda Karl's Side Safe Room Tutorial Guild. Well, moving onto season 2, first fast forward to Season 2 with some exciting action new And like at the time we knew Harry Potter was coming, like I had just paid for an avatar, like I did not need to be buying a new game right then. Yeah, I was buying Beetlejuice and then I started this homebrew project that I was not ready to start and spent a shit ton of money on that. Yeah, you had to buy a donor game and everything, dude. Yeah, bought a donor game, bought all the boards and all that and all kinds of crap. But anyway, one day I will have a homebrew, I swear. Tim Tim Kitzrow, Peter Kitzler, and more. You're like the only home brewer who can legit state that your home brew was co-designed by George Gomez, so that's cool. It is. Unless I just like totally... Dude, that's another thing. Like while I'm sitting here like bored waiting, I'm like, should I just like totally change the design? Should I just like totally change like the theme altogether? And then I'm like, no, no, no, no. Stick with the plan. Stick with the plan. Super fun. I can't wait till you... I don't know if you announced it yet, but it's gonna be fun. No. You'll probably beat me with a what were we calling that big loop? Yeah, my big loop. I don't know, man. The Beetlejuice is sidelined me. And then I'm stuck in future projects and like I'll get back to it at some point. But yeah, it kind of springboarded me into like actual having fun making actual real games, big boy games. Let's talk about some of these like rumored games I'm hearing. And I don't even know who announced And we're back with another of the biggest, most of these Kanaeda and Jason Knapp. Maybe I don't even know. I, I listen to so much content. I forget who like breaks the news on all this stuff, but yeah, I'm hearing like Turner, maybe white water and then hexa, maybe three Musketeers and then American, maybe like an old title of a new art package. Are you hearing some similar things? I think those were arranged by level of hype starting at the top and then dwindling down. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm a man. I want to see I know Turner's gonna have another game and it's gonna this will be his trilogy. This is his third game. I'm really excited for him, man. I want to buy one of his games so bad. And I'm hoping this is going to be the one. I think he's positioned for a banger now, right? Because, you know, he came out with Ninja Eclipse. He bought those deeproot assets. He didn't want people to think that he was just making deeproot games. And that's all he was doing. So they made this original game. That was smart. Well, it was fun, well received, sold out its hundred, you know, proved he can make a game. You know, then he reached into the vault and brought out Merlin's, family friendly, offends zero people at all, unless you have to have a physical ball lock visible in your game, then you're highly offended. Other than that, like, fun spinner that was on there, right? Didn't, didn't rattle the pinball world, but, you know, it was, it was a second game. And so now that, that hype wave has come and gone, now he's positioned, okay? This guy's done two titles. ren is absolutely from Chicago so whatever is he can do is be a hot topic today. We are joking. He's gonna be interviewed from NE English. Thank you very much. I was thinking, do you remember that movie Monster Squad? It was like kind of like Universal Monsters. I don't even know if they paid Universal for those rights or not. Or if it may have been a Universal film, but I was like, that'd be a pretty cool theme. I would definitely be on board for. I mean, it's a lot better than Mac and Me, even with the cameo from Ronald McDonald. What a weird game that is. We'll save that one for Multimorphic. I'm going for Multimorphic. They can make a mech of the kid getting pushed in the wheelchair off a cliff into the quarry. Dude, I don't even follow, uh, like P3's games. Are they gonna bring anything to TPF or? No. So, that's so sad. Like, I almost canceled the whole trip, uh, when I heard that. This is their show. Like, this is where they debuted Princess Bride. We got the Touch of Swords on the side of the cabinet. That's what I mean. They usually bring a game there, right? It's where, this is where Portal debuted, right? And so I'm like, okay, this is their hometown show, man. Multimorphic. You get the best themes, bring it, you know, what do you got? And then there's bringing more Cannon Lagoon, more Drained, I'll have a Portal there, Lexi Lightspeed to get more time on that, but no brand new game. I think the reason is because Portal was a success for them, and so if they were to launch a game right now, they probably still have, you know, months and months of Portals to get through before they could put another one into production. So it's kind of like they don't really need to launch one right now because they're already busy for the next whenever. HECRA And these guys are French and they're from Bordeaux and that's, I don't know, I don't think I'm hyping it up very much. It's a fun, silly game. It's very rare. It's, you know, one of the shots, the good shot in the game feels like a Houdini shot, just a little too tight, a little tighter than it needed to be. Though it is fun. The game's okay, the music's all right. And then here's their sophomore release. So they went with something that they didn't have to pay a licensing fee for. It's very French. I haven't seen the layout yet. Three Musketeers makes sense for them. You know, if it's another game that can come out and sell 150 units, maybe mainly to Europe, and then they can get to their trilogy release here, maybe next year. So, as Jeff ever said, if like Space Hunt, did it sell well? Did anybody buy them? Or has he even told you? People have bought them, but it hasn't been like, you know, the doing Harry Potter numbers by any means. I think it's those certain people that just want something different or they just buy everything. If you've got the mega collections and you're into just the goofy and weird, the offbeat, like yeah, you have one. You know, Past Times Arcade has one, of course. Mad has one and they toured around. It's fun. You know, they sold a couple from what I've heard. I don't have exact numbers or anything. But yeah, kind of like to those high end collectors that already have everything. The problem is, you know, with tariffs and import fees, like it costs much more than it makes sense to own it in the US for most of us, you know? Yeah, they need to find someone to just like build their like US games in the US. I feel like all those companies like Dutch, like, all right, well, the ones going to the US, you need to find someone to build those US games in the US. Otherwise, like, how do you survive? I mean, if moment by moment, you know, you might be hit with a 10% import tariff, a 20, a 30, 40, who knows? You know, it's just, you don't have the confidence to be able to put down a deposit now, not knowing what you're going to have to pay when the game's ready to ship. Right. And so, yeah, if you can get that manufactured in the US, which I think there's some people with capacity. Even before the tariffs, I've never bought a game from overseas, so I have no idea, but I would imagine the shipping regardless was like pretty insane. I would think. I don't know though. Generally, it's about $1,000 or so to air freight. That's better than I thought. Okay. I was thinking like $1,500 or something crazy. Yeah. And of course, I guess it depends on who's setting the shipping up. But professionally, I would expect around $1,000. And that may be landed at a terminal in the US. And then if you wanted the curbside delivery, then it probably would be $1,500. But I wouldn't trust my multi-thousand dollar game to rot in a cargo container on a ship. Dude, I think that's what happened to those Haggis Playfields. Those containers are hot as shit. I work out at a port. Dude, if you go inside one in the summer, it's like 180 degrees in there. Yeah, and it wasn't like these were leaving Sydney or Melbourne Harbor and heading straight to Los Angeles to come off a truck. They probably went to Indonesia for a while, then up the coast into South Korea for a while, then cut over. Well, like I work at the port too, so like those don't just go on trucks and leave the port. They come off the crane and then they go put them in a stack and it sits there for like a week and a half for the truck to come and then they load the truck out, then it goes God knows where from there. So it's just sitting there in the sun and you know in the elements of no AC or anything. So yeah, just imagine these those heating and cooling cycles repeatedly on those plexiglass Tim Tim Kitzrow, Barry Oursler. Tim Tim Kitzrow, Barry Oursler. Send me a shipping label. Send me a shipping label. And they're like, we ain't got no money. Maybe that's what Haggis could have done. Like, you know, ship the cabinet and then you'll get overnighted, you know, by air freight, the road case. Oh, man. Well, let's talk about the big game that's going to be in the booth. Spooky Pinball's Beetlejuice. And they got a new license, it sounds like as well. Yeah, we're gonna go the extra mile and give you everything you wanted in Beetlejuice. Yeah, I was over there the other day and just like at the end of a game it just starts playing that song now in the new code. It's like, oh, that was fast. Right. No, I was super excited to hear that. And I heard this from Kerry. I don't know about others. They were saying like the Spooky Speak seems to be working a lot better with the new update. Have you updated or seen the new update and tested it out? Yeah. We were kind of in a loud office yesterday with one of the games that they're doing a lot of the code testing on. And just as we're talking, it's picking up other little things. Yeah. It was cool. I don't know if I can disclose them all because they're kind of like... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no problem. For instance, if you say bye, bye, bye, it plays that little sound like Flip It Out All of these are part of the Pinball Podcast. Oh, that's awesome. And then the Christopher Franchi one. I think you just say Franchi, right? And he goes, Oh yeah, if you say Franchi, there's, yeah, there's screaming that goes on. There's a secret Kerry Hardy call out in there too. So are they going to just continue to make these? I mean they can. Yeah. That's really nothing. So if you've got a good idea, just, you know, Oh man, now I've got to think of some really good ideas. Bugging the shit out of them. Let them know, man. They'll put it in there. Yeah. These guys are actively coding in real time. This game, future games, it's nuts. Yeah, and also heard like the internet, Kerry was bitching about how you like typed in the password and apparently on the new update after he said that they like redid the whole keyboard for typing in the password and stuff. Yeah, because before you were putting in your Wi-Fi password as if it was like your high score name, so you're just using the buttons to cycle through and it was taking forever. And then it was all like an asterisk, so you couldn't see like if you'd put it in correctly or not. And so now there's a QWERTY keyboard. All of these are part of the Sturne and Sturne is a big homebrew booth. So, yeah, man, if you've got a great idea, throw it up the chain, man, and it'll probably get used. Hell yeah. All right, so, Stern, who's representing Stern this year? Because Marco usually does the big booth, but I was talking to Emoto, and actually, they're doing, like, the big homebrew thing. So I guess maybe a dealer's bringing some Stern games? Yeah, I wonder who it is. Yeah, because that's typically Marco Specialties is doing that whole booth. All of these are part of the homebrew booth. Yeah, I saw a post today at Modo's like on the road heading up there. So I don't know. I guess we'll wait and see. We know what we're going to see. Oh, there is a rumor. There is a Stern rumor. We know Pokemon is going to be there. Yeah. And we know that the topper has been developed because I think some dealers have got to peek at it early. Right. But maybe just maybe the topper for Pokemon will debut at the show. What do you think of that? What could it be? I don't know anything about Pokemon, so what would be the dream topper for Pokemon? Or, I'm not even saying it right, am I? Layers of stacked plastic with interactive flash bulbs I don know Hell yeah that what I talking about No moving head No I think I think there might be a moving head Did you hear what the rumor is about this topper Was it something with the turtle No no it a fish Dude I don know shit about Pokemon You going to have to explain All right. So there's a, there's a Koi fish Pokemon that is just about useless. Like it's a stupid character. It doesn't even really have an attack or anything. Right. And it takes forever to level it up, to evolve it. But if you evolve it, it turns into something that's really, really, really, really, really interesting. It's a really cool character. I love it. I love it. I'm a fish Pokemon that is just about useless. Like, it's a stupid character, doesn't even really have an attack or anything. Right. And it takes forever to level it up to evolve it. But if you evolve it, it turns into Gyarados, like the strongest frickin' thing in, I think a Gyarados is what it is. Like, like some giant whale sea monster thing that can just, you know, devastate Pokemons and stuff. So you have to like deal with this stupid fish and, you know, when you're playing Pokemon, you kinda, you have a team of six Pokemon that you're playing with and whichever ones get out there in the battle will earn a portion of experience points. So you have to suffer through throwing this fish out there, let it get hit, take it back, then throw out another Pokemon just to try to like get it some experience. But when you do level it up, it turns from magic carp, I think, into Gyarados, which is this giant blue whale sea monster thing. So I think what they're doing is an homage to the big mouth Billy Bass to the Fishtails topper, where it'll be a magic carp up there that I think can shake and stuff. Oh, yeah. So it's going to be like the Fishtails. Yeah, yeah. So just by a fishtail, dude, we're going to make some aftermarket toppers and we're just going to buy like the talking bass and we're going to modify it to have like the Pokemon on it. I love it. So with Stern Pinball, they usually release these toppers. They cost a thousand or so dollars and everything. Everybody bitches and complains about it. The same people keep buying them anyway, though. I wonder why they haven't gotten more into like a tiered system where they can do just kind of a stacked plastic topper, like some of the early JJP toppers that would still have that I'm marrying a Face Check firstk rose that took theibetanq – I need a topper for fucking Ghostbusters. No, KISS, Ghostbusters, uh, Wo Nelly, uh, what else was on Spike 1? Uh... Was Walking Dead Spike 1? No, that was, um, Sam. So that was before they went to Spike? Yeah, there was White Star, then Sam, then Spike 1, then Spike 2. So Spike 1s have the, um, the dot matrix displays that look like they're more like a high resolution dot matrix. Yeah, Spike 1 is basically a Spike 2 machine. It just doesn't have internet capabilities and you can't run an LCD screen. Cause the KISS RGB animations are some of the best I've seen. They're awesome. Like they have like a high frame rate. Dude, I still haven't seen the new Walking Dead. Or I went to the factory when they were building it, but it wasn't ready to play. And then my local arcade that buys freaking everything didn't buy it because he's like, I already got a Walking Dead. But I know people were complaining about the video or whatever. Go ahead. Stick your face into a bucket of rainbow paint. You've seen the Walking Dead remaster. I'm kidding. Kidding. So that'll be fun. So that'll be there. Pokemon's will be there. I hope that they bring a Pokemon LE so we can all get our eyeballs on it. And I really want to play. Have you played Pokemon Pro by now? No. Or, no, no. Because they're hidden locations. Yeah, our location got an LE, so. Oh, okay, okay, so they didn't go for the Pro. I just played a Pro at Ethereum. I like Pokemon as a theme, so I was super into it. I loved hearing the Pikachu callouts. If you don't know Pokemon or you're not into it, it's gonna be the most annoying thing, I think, ever. Really? Yeah, if you don't know what that is, it's like, what is this? I'm not against I'm not against the game at all. I'm just not a buyer, but I'm very excited to play it and give it a go. It was fun. I caught my first Pokemon. It was great. It was rewarding. So I want to play the premium that has the scoop that pops up. And so I feel like I'm like did something instead of just kind of going up the ramp and waiting for the post to pop up. Did you go out to the media day thing? I did not. I was working. I was working so I didn't make it out there so those people are kind of the only ones that have played that premium le then um i'm excited to see it heck yeah what other companies we got at uh tpl well there's this other place down the street from stern called jersey jack pinball and again like this isn't a good launch show for them because like last year it was just before harry potter came out so we heard the not one dollar out of your pocket but the only thing new to play there was avatar dude i know i'm going to the jjp I'm gonna be on the TV panel this year to hear what he's gotta say. Not one dollar out of your pocket. Dude, it'd be funny if this Steve walks out with like red sneakers and a Sonic shirt on, like, that's gonna beat your ass. But this'll just be another opportunity for people to play Harry Potter that haven't played it. This game's like unstoppable, man. I don't even know if they need to release Sonic just yet, but I'm here in June. Yeah, I don't know why they're pushing it. I don't know why half these companies like push game and keep it like when a game's doing really well Just sell that game and then when things slow down launch your next game I kind of like how spooky does one game a year because for one thing it gives me time to breathe in between games Right. Yeah, and the way that they're manufacturing is like and the way that their finances are they can do that You know if you you know, as soon as you launch a game You're gonna get those day one sales those day one deposits that'll give you a flush with cash Spotify Services is the Dantezynd the Spanish What are they going to bring? All their old games? They want to come in with their BD energy. Oh, there is a rumor that came out. They're gonna bring a bunch of LED lights? So... They're doing Circus Voltaire apparently. Maybe they'll bring that. But I heard this rumor a couple weeks ago that there was gonna be a new anniversary art package release of Houdini, right? That's what I heard. Yeah. And I'm like, is there anybody out there that wants Houdini? I don't like Houdini in the first place. I mean, you could put whatever art you want on it. Yeah, you can make it a golden Godzilla, man. I'm just not interested. And Houdini's just like, what? I mean, I was never into Houdini. It was a little bit before my time slightly. It's a weird game. It does some cool stuff. I mean, it's better than Oktoberfest. I haven't played it in a few years, honestly. I just remember it was like super tight shooting the shots. It was like, it made John Wick look wide open. I remember teasing him back when barbecue came out and I was like guys the game's phenomenal but I'm gonna wait for the black and white version you know the black and white and now I'm hearing and just in the last few days that this anniversary Houdini is gonna be black and white no dude I'm not big on this black and white thing I don't get the hype man there's a couple games where I can appreciate it but then after that I'm like I didn't get it on the Godzilla, one man, honestly. Godzilla, the artwork, what's so cool about it was the colors. Like that was the first clown puke game we got. I'm sorry. It's not clown puke. I love the artwork on Godzilla. Talking to artists, it turns out you can't just go into Photoshop and click the sepia tones and then just hit print. I mean, if you're doing black and white, it's got to be drawn that way because of something with colors or ray tracing or something. Or if it was a black and white film, like totally makes sense. Like you do a psycho game, you make a black and white psycho game. Hell yeah. Young Frankenstein? Yes. Yes. Please, somebody do that. Munsters, black and white. I had to have it. That was great. I love that. When these hobbyists started making Twilight Zone in black and white, like that was kind of cool. Twilight Zone was in black and white, right? Yeah. Yeah, the TV show. Yeah, and then so Elvira was cool too. It made sense with Elvira. Elvira was cool because it had like those red highlights in there that were red and sparkly and like that punctuated great. But when they did Godzilla, it looked like Godzilla's pink red kiss because like the red flashers would turn everything just this pink rosy hue. So that's what I walked away from that one with, you know, it would be cool if it was if Godzilla was black and white and then had like blue flashers or something and like blue glitter highlights. I think that would have been cool. Sorry, someone texted me and I'm using this freaking Zencaster and it records all the dings. So, enjoy everyone. What else do we have? I don't certainly black and white. Hobbies have been doing that. That looks really cool. Houdini black and white. Godzilla, I didn't like. You remember like the color temperature on the lamps on the CPU board? People were like, bitch, and it was like yellow and like some of them were like white and it wasn't like the color of the CPU board. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like matching. Do you remember that issue? And people were wanting like new CPU boards from Stern because like the color temperature was slightly different and people were changing boards and games and everything to try to make the color temperature right. Like the color temperature in the game based on the processing of that CPU or so? Like when you buy your your like LED bulbs, you know, you can get like off white and you can get like daylight and all that. I guess they were like they had a batch of off-white LED CPU boards so when they turned on their Godzilla black and white it looked like it didn't match because it was like that yellow off-white and the rest of the games like white light. Yeah that's funky. I saw that at Southern Fright Gaming Expo and I walked up and played a game on it and I'm like this does not hit like Elvira hit. No, I agree. Yeah. And it was supposed to be an LE, everyone knows, and it would have been a little bit more pretty. Dude, I missed the freaking decals they were doing. What happened to that? What decals? The foil decals Stern was doing, and then just one day they were like, no more. So what's the cost in that? It's just for the base material. Yeah, it's going to cost a little bit more, but I mean- I think it's the installation. I think like those foil decals are probably really easy to screw up. You think? I think like, like, like you could put your like fingernail into it and like put an indention into the decal. Uh, I never thought of that. So like, you know, when they're putting it on and all that and doing it really quick and they put a little gash in the decal, like it doesn't scratch. I mean, it doesn't go through the decal, but it puts like a, a mark. Yeah. It was like a high failure rate with those. I don't know. That was just me purely speculating. I don't know if that's the reason at all. I think we have the technology for Stern to address their LEs and radcals at this point. I know there's six times the cost of a decal, but that's the... Dude, radcals are the shit. Or how spooky does it? Just clear throat the pitch. I mean... Well, Stern can't be doing that much. But, um, yeah, like at least the radcals, because I like that finish that's on there. Yeah. The color's vibrant. I dig it. Yeah. I, I, I want to do some more of my old, uh, games with some radcals, because it looks freaking killer. I did a taxi for some reason. I'm looking to get some printed for Pokemon LE and just throw them on over the decals that are there. I know that's sacrilege, but I think it would look better. No, that was kind of my idea a couple of times, too. I'm like, I wonder if someone could print me some like I thought about I love Ghostbusters for some reason, even though it was made by a fucking psychopath. But I thought about I was like, I wonder if someone could make me some radcals for my Ghostbusters. Yeah, you can get Plexi one. I know Custom Pinball prints on Plexi, but they're in Europe and like, I was gonna get Wizmods makes those cool magnetic little appliques for coin doors and speaker panels. I was gonna get one for Pokemon LE because I liked how he did it. And I mean, they already cost like $70. So it's, you know, not only unnecessary, but expensive. But to the US, there's an extra $70 shipping charge on top of that. So it's like, there's no way. Dude, I just ordered a Dracula playfield protector for my Dracula and it's from overseas and I was like, oh, it's only a hundred bucks and then I got hit with all the fees and shit and I'm like, what the fuck? It's 200 and something dollars now. Horrible. So we need to find a source that can do like plexi printing or radcal printing for us here in the U. There's gotta be Kinko's. Come on, Spooky. Just sell, start another decal business. Let Don run it and he's going to sell Don cows. The cows. Oh man, no, my wife would be the one running it. And she's got plenty of business right now. She's doing all the Beetlejuice stuff and like the special Beetlejuice badges and special Beetlejuice magnets and all this business. So who's feeding all these awesome ideas to Spooky to make cool magnets and cool badges and... I mean I a little guilty Did you share with other people the magnet thing I can cut this out if I need to No not yet but you just spoiled it You want me to cut this out? I can cut it out. No, cut it out. All right, go ahead. I was supposed to be getting a little promo thing to share, but for the Midnight Madness editions, I think they'll be, I guess it's going to be the fifth set of magnets for Beetlejuice that'll be going out. So what they're doing, you know, the Beetlejuice comes with magnets on the armor. It was kind of like a later stage edition, but they just want to plus the game as much as they could. And then they got this idea, let's do another set for shows and do like a comic con, right, where this is only available at the show. They did a set for Pinball at the Beach. There'll be a set of TPF. There'll be a set at Expo. And then apparently the Midnight Madness people will get another bonus set too. Oh, people are going to be mad. What about my Coindor magnet? I mean, not coin door magnet, coin box lid magnet. Yeah, that'll be the next thing we need to do. Yeah, we need that. So now me, being a man of culture, I take my cash box lid and powder coat it. I do too now. That shit looks good, man. I'm telling you, every time you open that coin door, you're like, yup. Yeah. Right. So obviously they're looking at me sideways like, no, we're not doing that. But yeah, how fun would it be to do an extra magnet just on there for no reason? You can't even see it. I know. I know. That's like powder coating your service rails. You know, that'll do. I almost did that for my Ghostbusters, but I was like, they're going to get all scratched up. Do you know the bottom of them, sliding them on the metal rail? For that special game. Dude, I almost did it. Everything's freaking hilarious. You said that. I'm going to do every screw on the bottom of my game. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Things you would never see. Speaking of things you would never see and don't make sense, pinball adventures. Mike efficiency does have directwhoop Smith Bundler who helps me design my their painting prints speakers are excellent platform for they are free books each month with a plug in program which links to a couple of cool cameras you just click on the link but at the same time you also use their final release date is May 31. But today we're just going to come back and 종ier kuy is invited to go preview our presentation And Knapp just confirmed it again. I had heard that ramps road trip people, the ramps pinball guys, the dude that made Elf Homebrew, who's got a company down in Florida now, bought a bunch of CNC equipment and direct printers and stuff and was going to make ramps road trips. So he's going to be building Monster League Hockey, and that's going to be a commercially produced game. And the game's going to be at TPF again. And no announcement yet, but it's probably going to come soon that you'll be able to start ordering this thing if you want one. Yeah, I know Jake took like an interest list a while back and I was like, what the hell, I'll get on the list. Yeah, fire him off a Facebook message or email him or whatever, Jake Danzig at the Custom Pinball Forum on Facebook or find him on Pinside or whatever and you can get on a list too and he'll contact you when they go live to sell them. See, I thought it'd be awesome since I do tournaments, you have to do these tie breaker things sometimes if there's a tie. Jimmy DeAnne mentoring in sovielloies resident of Syracuse building. Hyman Tor verso traducevioio e offenio International ja 야했다 представляясь ASKING FOR DIPLOMA TO L.O.P. Winchester's, I'm hearing stuff though that they might release another game this week. That's just crazy. I know. I don't know why. Full on Cornerstone or another small title? I guess they're just going for what they, I don't know. So that's the thing, right? With Winchester, they were like, man, I don't know how this thing's going to go. We want to do 666. They talked us out of it. Let's do 525 and hope it sells 300 or so. And then boom, there we go. And they could have ran at least 800 of those. Could they though? Yeah, that's the thing. You get too big and then it's like, well, the hype's not as big. Those smaller numbers get people excited. Yeah, like if they came out and there was like 800, they might have sold less than 500 of them, you know? But now, I don't know, the number was perfect. It was Karl DeAngelo on design and I think that drove a lot of it. And then the fact that it had the Pepper's Ghost effect in there and it was basically Both endomas Oh I mean, I watched that movie, but I was never like, hell yeah. We are allergic to you. It was just sad. Yeah. Like our text, drowning in the swamp. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't want that. Dude, they, they, they can do Muppets. If Spooky isn't doing Muppets, I know you can't speak about any of that, but anyway, if they don't have it, they should be doing it. Somebody do the Muppet show, please. And get like Sally Duncan and Mark Dick Hamill and then just have them. And I'm saying do the Muppets and I'm not even a huge Muppets fan, but I know it would sell. I know it would. Muppets so much. The toppers, Stantler and Waldorf, come on, they're talking to you. I don't know what. I don't know what. I want them. Pinball machine. What happened to Fifth Element? That's what I wanted them to make. But now that the whole crap with Bruce Willis is not in the best of health, so is that hard? To learn about That game would sell. They could do, I think, 2,000 of them. If you're doing a movie and there's one of the actors you can't get, but you got everybody else and you have the music, you can still make it. But when it's the lead person- Back to the Future without Marty and Doc. I can't imagine. Just Biff. Just Biff. You get the DeLorean, you get Biff. Only old Biff though. Yeah. You get one of the girls, not the other one. What was her name in the movie? There was Claudia Wells in the first movie and then, ah, shit, what was the second one? What was your character's name? Oh, Jennifer Parker. Jennifer, yeah. Like, you get like one Jennifer and it's not the good one. Yeah, you get the second Jennifer because they had to recast her spot because the other one like, I forgot what she was doing, something else. Oh, or you get Back to the Future. You don't get Michael J. Fox but you get the guy that was in Mask that originally had that role but got kicked out. Oh, shit. Shit, what was it? That guy is sour on that shit, too. Stoltz? Is Mark- Yeah, yeah, shit. Yeah, Eric Stoltz. Eric Stoltz. So, this was crazy, right? So, for Back to the Future, the lore, they had this kid, Eric Stoltz, do tons of scenes in the movie. It wasn't really hitting. They managed to get Michael J. Fox as a Hail Mary. He'd, like, he'd record Family Ties in the morning and then record, you know, the movie in the afternoon and, like, he never got any sleep. And then they made it happen. And then they made it happen. And then they made it happen. And then they made it happen. And then they made it happen. And then they made it happen. All these professional andק нек veronуєški � proclaim p goog� anymore», and courageouslyевич, several Young détektors andמ longitudinal Daily E assistir I think if I suggested that... That would actually probably sell. Funny enough. Funny enough. I heard American Pinball's already got it. Aw, damn it. What do you think about these reimagined... I'm kind of like over the remake games. Just go get an old one if you want one. There's pretty ones out there. When it was COVID and you couldn't get a Medieval Madness... Well, the best ones have been made. We're making high quality games. If you could get one, that monster bash was cool. Attack from Mars with a cool topper. But like now I kind of think we're over it, you know, and I don't think they're going to do any of the licensed ones. So like if it's a movie, they're going to pass on it. So you're going to get like the shadow, even though it's a shitty movie. Like people love that game. You know, what do we want? We're not going to get T2 Terminator. We want Indiana Jones. We want we wanted Twilight Zone. I don't even think Twilight Zone is going to be a big killer right now. You know, Adam's Subtitles by adopted by David John Vogel You made years ago like being Brian Eddy and then having you know another company make your old games that's have you ever thought about that a little weird a little weird I like I like how Stern's were approached the remastered though when they did Metallica and just like made some tweaks really updated it brought it into the modern era phenomenal when you just make another fun house it's like I don't care about this you know but man like what if Stern would have made I'm a big monster bash since like George Gomez designed that game and then they're like, oh, we should remake it. That's my old game. I don't know if they would have taken some mechs out. Oh, you know, put some flat plastics in that bitch. You know, but now, you know, Walking Dead came out like a dead fish and then, you know, ACDC like now in 2026, 2027. You think that's it? You think it's ACDC? Is that the game we want? I mean, I'm hearing that and KISS and... There's another one though. If they do ACDC, that means Richie's over at JJP and then who's going to work on it? Borg? Right? I don't know. I don't know. What do you do? What do you do? Let JJP make ACDC. So, JJP, no brand new game at TPF, but they're probably going to say don't take anything out of your pocket until you see Sonic. Sonic will probably be cool, but it'll be made forever. And so if he says that shit again, that that is going to be like the most popular panel every year growing if he starts doing that. Awesome. I mean, how do you show up without a new game and like steal all the energy of the show floor? Did you watch that video last year when he announced Harry Potter? Were you in the room? Did you go to the panel? No, no, I had no idea what's going on. I watched the video and then Mark's just like, really, dude? Mark Seiden was there. That was the JJP panel. We're going to talk about all about... It was an avatar panel. It just sucked all the energy away. Oh, man. Mark's a cool guy, though. He's working on another game, too. Yeah, I'd like to see what else he's got. Dude, I've never played a lot of games, oddly enough. Never played Avatar, my arcade that buys literally everything. Never bought an Avatar. I've seen an Avatar, I just didn't get to play it. Alright, so we're gonna go around the show. The tent will probably run itself. Let's go around and play a bunch of stuff. Hell yeah, hell yeah. Eat some barbecue and so much more. Well, Don, thank you so much for coming on this episode. And we're gonna have a freaking blast at TPF this weekend. So make sure you come over and say hello to me and Don. Anyway, if you need to get a hold of me, Sterling at thepinballstudio.com. And until next time, we will see you later. respirator for tv kiju uh carbohydrate for Warner Brothers corn ahalts For more мы we here All rights reserved.