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DPP #145 "Leaks"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·35m 59s·analyzed·Sep 2, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

JJP Avatar leak analysis and X-Men Stern cornerstone teaser breakdown.

Summary

Don discusses leaked/teased images of Jersey Jack Pinball's Avatar machine, analyzing its professional quality and speculating whether the release is a coordinated marketing stunt ahead of Stern's X-Men cornerstone release. He covers the leaked distributor memo claiming a September 3rd reveal, examines playfield art concerns, and pivots to detailed breakdown of X-Men's Sentinel mechanic and game design possibilities based on teaser footage.

Key Claims

  • Avatar flipper images were professional quality photos released in a coordinated pattern by multiple media outlets (Naps Arcade, Kaneda, Kineticist) suggesting guerrilla marketing rather than typical accidental leak

    high confidence · Don analyzed the release pattern of images over multiple days and noted professional photo quality inconsistent with accidental leak

  • A confidential distributor memo for Avatar was released claiming a September 3rd reveal (one day before X-Men launch)

    medium confidence · Don reports memo circulated globally on Reddit/Pinside, picked up by Naps Arcade and Kaneda, then pulled down; unclear if authentic

  • X-Men features a hinged Sentinel mouth mechanic, possible dual-level wire forms with V-lock gates, and a Beast-themed flail/magnetic system

    medium confidence · Don and Ryan from Phantom Tilt analyzed 3-second teaser video frame-by-frame; speculation on exact mechanical function pending release

  • Stern has a long-term Disney contract guaranteeing one Marvel/Star Wars release per year

    low confidence · Don states 'somewhere I had heard this' without attribution; unverified claim

  • Avatar playfield art in leaked photos shows bright, daytime underwater/anemone aesthetic that conflicts with expected bioluminescent night jungle theme

    high confidence · Don describes specific visual discrepancy in one playfield photo compared to earlier cabinet corner and flipper area art direction

  • Venom LE secondary market pricing fell from $8,000 MSRP to $12,999 asking price (vendor error: likely meant $7,200 or lower)

    medium confidence · Don mentions St. Louis seller listing; contextual clue suggests significant discount, though he may have misstated original MSRP

  • X-Men teaser video includes Marvel movie-style intro with Stern logo and robotic Sentinel voice

    high confidence · Don watched teaser video and described specific production elements

Notable Quotes

  • “Isn't this crazy that in this moment that we have a new cornerstone release from Stern, which should be one of the biggest pillars of the year... And who should come through to steal all of that thunder? But the blue lizards from Avatar or whatever those creatures are from Jersey Jack Pinball.”

    Don @ ~02:00 — Frames the Avatar leak as strategic timing to overshadow Stern's X-Men release and capture collector spending

  • “This wasn't a typical leak that you see where somebody peeked out of the curtain and took a picture real quick with their flip phone, their burner that they got at the TJ Maxx. No. This was a professional quality photo and it was only one of them.”

    Don @ ~05:00 — Establishes skepticism about leak authenticity based on photo quality and controlled release pattern

  • “If this was a leak, these are professional photos. This has to be from the media kit or a professional photo shoot and if somebody had access to one of these... If someone's going to get these, they're going to come out, right? Canada would put them behind a paywall or something. We would have seen them all by now.”

    Don @ ~06:00 — Logic for why coordinated releases suggest intentional marketing versus accidental leak

  • “So they want to get out there and tease, hey, we got this thing coming, and just sucked all the energy out of the room. So, like, well done for that, what I think is an actual guerrilla marketing stunt.”

    Don @ ~12:00 — Concludes the Avatar leak/tease is likely intentional JJP strategy to counteract X-Men hype

  • “I looked at it, I couldn't tell if this was like a half-smoked cigar or maybe like a hot dog that tumbled off the grill and hit the pine dirt or something. That's what it looked like... this looks like it's the shaft, the end shaft of an arrow where you would notch your arrow into your bow, which is the weapon of the avatarians.”

    Don @ ~20:00 — Playful but detailed visual analysis of shooter rod design as Avatar thematic callback

  • “When you're playing Toy Story 4, it looks like you're at night at the carnival. The lights are going on. You know, everything looks cool... Godfather, and it's like you walked into a delicatessen at noon, and it's like the lights are really bright and everything, and it's a little bit jarring.”

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyAvatargameX-MengameStern PinballcompanyDonpersonNaps ArcadecompanyKaneda

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Collector community interest in X-Men design exceeds immediate enthusiasm; speculation about deeper character roster integration beyond classic seven X-Men

    medium · Don advocates for multiverse approach: 'there's hundreds of X-Men characters... I would like to see more of them featured, instead of just being like background characters' and leveling system suggestions

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Avatar playfield art aesthetic shows bright daytime underwater/anemone theme conflicting with expected bioluminescent night jungle aesthetic; community reception concerned it resembles Lisa Frank style

    high · Don: 'I don't love the art that I'm seeing there... it's kind of like had that vibe of very soft edges... Lisa Frank thing hit me' and identifies mismatch with flipper/cabinet art direction

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Pinball aesthetic design principle: dark night-themed environments enhance lighting and immersion versus bright daytime themes; cited across multiple successful games (Toy Story 4, Guns N' Roses, Stranger Things, Wizard of Oz)

    high · Don articulates: 'They all seem to take place at night... everything looks cool... Godfather... it's like you walked into a delicatessen at noon... jarring' and links theme darkness to player enjoyment

  • ?

    event_signal: Stern X-Men cornerstone release scheduled September 4th with official teaser video and Marvel-style production; reveal follows Avatar controversy by one day

    high · Don: 'we have about 48 hours until we know for sure' and references teaser video with 'Marvel-esque movie intro, but it was with the Stern logo'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.108

0:00
If you thought a Labor Day was going to go by without a new episode from your buddy Don, especially about everything that's going on right now, you were a rusty hot dog.
0:11
It's Don's Pinball Podcast, episode number 144, coming to you from Labor Day. We got a lot of action that's been going on, particularly last night. Press releases, are they real? Does it matter? All of that, and plus some speculation. I'm going to break down some pinball images. Let's do this.
0:30
Hot Dogs Sorry about the adult harmonization going on, everybody. Let's fire up the grill. Grab your favorite frosty beverage. We're going to go hang out in the backyard. The chips are open. Karen, can you bring out the cupcakes? The kids want the cupcakes. All right, nobody drop your marshmallow. You're going to step on it. It's going to stick to the bottom of your flip-flop, and you're going to track that thing all throughout the house. I was at work last night, minding my own business, perusing pinball, when what should happen, but like a controversial now press release from Jersey Jack, or was it? Do we even know? It's currently circling the globe. Let's talk about that. Isn't this crazy that in this moment that we have a new cornerstone release from Stern, which should be one of the biggest pillars of the year, you know, happens three times a year, and here we are again, you know, the biggest mover of pinball machines, the biggest manufacturer of pinball machines, the biggest license getter, the gobbler up, right? The big corporate entity that we would be fighting against if this were some like, you know, plucky Disney film or whatever. But that should be everything that we are all talking about right now. It should be nothing but like this Stern release. Let's cover it. Let's get in front of it. Let's get behind it. Everybody, if you don't have a game to release, get out of the way. You know, like that's what should be going on. And who should come through to steal all of that thunder? But the blue lizards from Avatar or whatever those creatures are from Jersey Jack Pinball. So earlier in the holiday weekend, we got a picture of some flippers of Avatar, basically confirming that this game's coming from Jersey Jack. This wasn't AI-generated, and we know now that this is probably, most likely, 100% real. But it had that cool Dayglo flipper ring rubbers on the flippers, which had the Jersey Jack logo on them. It had the avatar-ish-looking Pandora blue bioluminescent down, between the flipper area. You all saw the picture.

Don @ ~25:00 — Establishes design philosophy that dark night-themed environments enhance pinball aesthetics versus bright daytime settings

  • “I was like running through, like my first thought was like weird mural. My second thought was like, was this designed by Lisa Frank? Joe Cherovino came through with, is this an Echo the Dolphin pin?”

    Don @ ~28:00 — Expresses concern about Avatar underwater playfield art aesthetic not matching expected bioluminescent theme

  • “The Sentinel, which looks like a sculpt. It looks like it's painted. uh rises up from the play field has a mouth that may actually be hinged i don't know if that means there's going to be an i am groot moment where balls can just like fly out of the guy's mouth i don't know if we lock balls in there and he goes back underneath”

    Don @ ~37:00 — Speculates on X-Men Sentinel mechanic possibilities based on teaser video frame analysis

  • “So this thing may hinge and come down. It looks like it would line up with that wire form that's right there. So is this a ball that flips down and acts like a diverter to lock and hold balls back? Is the post magnetized and this can grab your ball and pick it up from the wire form?”

    Don @ ~48:00 — Detailed mechanical speculation on X-Men Beast lab flail/hinge system based on visual analysis with Ryan from Phantom Tilt

  • “Venom LE has a beautiful-looking cabinet, has mirrored art blades, has all the accessories that a LE comes with, has a mirrored back glass, and has the premium play field, which is the only one you should be playing. So for $8,000, that's cheaper than a premium, and you get all the extra things that come with the LE. That's a steal, man.”

    Don @ ~55:00 — Market commentary on Venom LE secondary market pricing as exceptional value proposition

    • person
    Kineticistperson
    Ryanperson
    Kerry Hardyperson
    Joe Cherovinoperson
    Mark Seidenperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    Venomgame
    Jeffperson
    Lisa Frankperson
    Godfathergame
    Toy Story 4game
    Guns N' Rosesgame
    Stranger Thingsgame

    leak_detection: Confidential distributor memo for Avatar released claiming September 3rd reveal and flying banshee mechanic; circulated on Reddit/Pinside; picked up by major media outlets then retracted

    medium · Don: 'a memo got released, a confidential memo for distributor Eyes Only... It's everywhere right now. It's reached Europe this morning. It's in Australia now... Kaneda's released it and then retracted it. Nap Arcade posted an article and pulled it back.'

  • ?

    leak_detection: Professional-quality flipper and playfield images of unreleased Avatar machine released in coordinated pattern across multiple media outlets (Naps Arcade, Kaneda, Kineticist) over consecutive days

    high · Don documents sequential release: 'one image one day, one image another day... one from one pinball media person and then it was two from another pinball media person and then a third one from another pinball person'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Stern reported to have long-term Disney contract guaranteeing annual Marvel/Star Wars licensed release per year

    low · Don states: 'somewhere I had heard that they had a long term contract with Disney and the Disney licenses that they essentially guaranteed them to have one release from that pantheon of licensed House of Disney every year' without attribution

  • $

    market_signal: Venom LE secondary market pricing showing significant discount from MSRP, available at $7,200-8,000 range despite $8,000+ original pricing

    medium · Don reports St. Louis seller pricing and contextual market comment on Venom LE availability cheaper than Premium tier with full LE features

  • ?

    community_signal: Jack Danger elevated to comparable status of Elwyn as Stern designer following success of Foo Fighters and Jurassic Park; now leading X-Men major release

    high · Don: 'He's like the second coming of Elwynn as far as Stern's concerned' in context of X-Men cornerstone assignment

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men features complex Sentinel mechanic with hinged mouth, Beast lab flail/hinge system, dual-level wire forms with V-lock gates identified from teaser frame analysis

    medium · Don and Ryan frame-by-frame analysis: 'The Sentinel, which looks like a sculpt... rises up from the play field has a mouth that may actually be hinged... molecular charging level... Beast's lab' with wire form speculation

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Avatar flying banshee mechanic claimed in leaked distributor memo; comparison speculated as variation of Wizard of Oz flying monkey or Circus Voltaire Ringmaster hatch system

    medium · Don: 'it mentions this – well, there's two things at the end. The first is that there's a flying banshee mechanism... could be as simple as the monkey that flew up on the backboard or the billboard of Wizard of Oz'

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball executing coordinated tease campaign to capture collector spending momentum ahead of Stern X-Men release on September 4th

    high · Don: 'So they want to get out there and tease, hey, we got this thing coming, and just sucked all the energy out of the room. So, like, well done for that, what I think is an actual guerrilla marketing stunt' and notes timing advantage

    • 2:52
    Supposedly, this was a leak from an anonymous source. The thing is, this wasn't a typical leak that you see where somebody peeked out of the curtain and took a picture real quick with their flip phone, their burner that they got at the TJ Maxx. No. This was a professional quality photo and it was only one of them. Then it was released by I think Nap Arcade had the first one. Then a day later, Kaneda had a follow-up one. Then a day later, or maybe a day and a half later, Kineticist released one. And this is looking like a coordinated release at this point. Now, I was very speculative and not very trustworthy when I saw this first image of a leak with air quotes around it because of the professional quality of it. And here's why, right? You know, this is a nice little guerrilla marketing thing that Jersey Jack is doing. Fine. They haven't come out officially and said anything about it, at least up until that point. but the thing that really sealed it was the quality of the photo and the fact that it was one from one pinball media person and then it was two from another pinball media person and then a third one from another pinball person. Okay, if this was a leak, these are professional photos. This has to be from the media kit or a professional photo shoot and if somebody had access to one of these, whether it's the guy printing up the brochures or running the media or populating the website or maybe the website accidentally went live a little bit earlier than it should. Some shrewd internet sleuth happened on there and captured him. If that had happened, we would have had more than just one image one day, one image another day. If someone's going to get these, they're going to come out, right? Canada would put them behind a paywall or something. We would have seen them all by now. But I think this was a cool little marketing push. Maybe JJP wasn't quite ready to release this game yet, but they saw that Stern had come out and finally dropped their teaser at the last day of the month of Marvel, and they're like, We've got to do something. Because right now, they're targeting people that want to buy a pinball machine. These are people that have money in their pinball coffers, whether it's been accumulating over time or they're just blessed, whatever.
    4:55
    So they want to capture those people. And the enthusiasm is going to come at launch, man. You want to go for that pocket of money. So all of a sudden, there's a brand-new shiny that's getting released on the 4th, which is Wednesday, two days hence from the recording of this, which is on Labor Day. Um, you know, so of course, Stern's going to grab a big share of that. Having a brand new game out with a popular license from Jack Danger. We loved Foo Fighters. We love the Jurassic Park Home Edition, right? He's like the second coming of Elwynn as far as Stern's concerned. So here we go. Perfect. Let's go. So what can JJP do in, in advance of their looming release? Then maybe say, well, hang on, maybe you want to hold onto those ducats for a little bit more because we do have something cool coming as well. I think X-Men is a heck of a better license than Avatar is. Avatar is a fun spectacle. I'm sure it'll look good. I don't think it's a theme anybody was really asking for, but it is leaps and bounds better than Godfather and a better theme than Elton John. And now if you can take that awesome Elton John gameplay and put it into a cabinet with the cool avatar, you know, LEDs and everything, and the build quality and the little extra little doodads that Godfather had, I think you've got a chance at a sale success here, J.J.P., so well done. So, you know, so they want to get out there and tease, hey, we got this thing coming, and just sucked all the energy out of the room. So, like, well done for that, what I think is an actual guerrilla marketing stunt. I haven't received my official photo to release yet, but I'd be happy to do that if somebody would send me one. I've been communicating to the contact that I have at JJP, who's been absolutely radio silent. So something is going on. Something's definitely going on, because last night a memo got released, a confidential memo for distributor Eyes Only, doing a write-up about this forthcoming Avatar pinball machine from Jersey Jack, essentially what this thing was doing. And it's everywhere right now. It's reached Europe this morning. It's in Australia now.
    6:47
    People have commented one way or another. Canada's released it and then retracted it. Nap Arcade posted an article and pulled it back. Cats eating dogs. What's going on, man? What's going on? So this thing essentially just kind of goes through a lot of the bullet points you would expect to see from a release like this, life-changing LED RGB implementation. And then at the end, it mentions this – well, there's two things at the end. The first is that there's a flying banshee mechanism, as vague as it is. It could be as simple as the monkey that flew up on the backboard or the billboard of Wizard of Oz that was then subsequently released. Or it could be like a banshee on a stick, like a bond on a wand. I knew there was that big trench in the play field because that had been rumored, so maybe it was a lever arm that cantilevered up or something or some such, right? So that made it plausible. And then at the end, it said that the reveal to distributors and maybe the world would be on the third. of September, which is one day before Stern's official release of X-Men. So that all lined up. It was information we wanted to believe, and so consume it. We did this thing. I think it started over on Reddit, and then it went over into Pinside where it blew up, and then, you know, Kaneda was posting things about it as he does, you know, with false rumors that get sent to him. And then it was official. It was like NAP reported on it, and then it's like it's everywhere. It's everywhere. Now it seems like maybe a little too quick, you know. Again, I haven't heard anything back from anybody at JJP, except for Mark Seiden a little bit on Facebook, which is kind of interesting.
    8:16
    But apparently NAP had heard something and just went ahead and took that down. I haven't seen Kineticist run with it. So who knows at this point what's going on. But as I check everything this morning, the French pages that I follow on Facebook, Bienvenue, it means amuse, they're posting it out there, and there's speculation, is it real, is it not? It's hitting Australia now. So it's out. It's out. So whether this is real, whether it's not, I think the important thing is it's believable. It would seem to be in their best interest to get this game out ahead of Stern's release because there's those people with some treasure in their chest, and they want to get the new shiny and they all going to get X and there a chance that they could get more Avatar sales if they can then pivot and get this thing out So let say this is real We going to see the game on the 3rd Fantastic Probably the best idea Let's say it wasn't real, and this was surreptitiously generated by some kind of, you know, sentient AI somewhere or some, you know, troll-a-low guy.
    9:16
    What if JJP pivots? Now that this thing is out there, people are kind of hyped about it. there is an expectation now that this game is going to have a flying Banshee mech and come out on the third. So if they come out and officially say, you know what, this wasn't real, it's going to disappoint people at this point, rightly or wrongly. You know, nothing they did wrong, but there will be that disappointment like, oh, I thought we were going to see this. Oh, well, eyes are going to shift back over to X-Men. But what if they were a week away from making this thing anyway? Just get it out, man. Do overtime tonight. Get this thing out tomorrow and then grab some extra ducats and get some better sales ahead of the Stern release. I think even if this is real, even if this is not real, it should manifest into reality in this timeline we are on, and we should get some Avatar. What are your thoughts? Let me know. Okay, so the pictures that we got. The flipper pictures were cool. A little bit questionable about that Pandora tree art between the flippers. I mean, I turned my head a little sideways. I got a little bit of a Georgia O'Keeffe vibe is what I'm going to say about that. Go check it out. Kerry Hardy picked up on this immediately, so champion to you, sir. Go check out his Patreon if you want to see the semi-crude mock-up that came out of that. It's just chef's kiss.
    10:28
    But, you know, the second photo that we got showed – what was that second photo? Second photo, second photo. Oh, how could I forget this one? This was the corner of the cabinet down by the shooter rod, which thank you for not doing a launch button, showing off that powder coat. Is it a powder coat or is it a vinyl coat? It's got those blue tiger stripes that the Smurf people have. And then it's got a shooter rod that when I first looked at it, I couldn't tell if this was like a half-smoked cigar or maybe like a hot dog that tumbled off the grill and hit the pine dirt or something. That's what it looked like. Looking at it closer again, this looks like it's the shaft, the end shaft of an arrow where you would notch your arrow into your bow, which is the weapon of the avatarians. So that makes sense now. It's just kind of a weird angle. But obviously another professional photo. We see some shots of the apron, get a sense of the art style. And so up until now, it seemed like they were going with this bioluminescent UV glow. I love it. And then the Kineticis photo comes out, showing a coffin lock with three balls underneath the play field, similar to what Avengers Infinity Quest Premium was doing, similar to the coffin lock on Metallica. So we're locking balls underneath there. This looks like what that trough was for. There's a clear plastic screwed down on there. And the first thing that I thought is, oh, this would be, okay, if Jersey Jack Pinball, if you hired me and I worked for you, this is the kind of gold that you would get in exchange for your money. What I would do, it's just a joke, but I would take an alternative plastic and I'd print some weapons on there from the Avatar universe. I would include that in the coin box and not even mention anything about it. Just let people find it. As a nod to the controversy that John Wick had. Of course, John Wick was released and there was no firearms anywhere depicted on the cabinet or the play field, including in the weapons crate from the movie. But in the coin box or in the goodie bag, there's an alternative plastic that does show weapons that you can screw and put in there. I think it was a last-minute change to put in there. I don't think it was always planned on being included. I think it was a way they could address the controversy. And well done, like fantastic solution. Get us an extra free plastic. I installed mine. Love it. but how funny would it be if there was an alternative plastic with weapons on it in the coin box, and you could just kind of find it and be like, oh, you guys, you guys. Hilarious, hilarious. All right, that's a free one. You can go ahead and have that. I got more, man, if you want to hire me. I got weird, questionable content for days.
    12:51
    You know, but the one thing, though, that tripped us all up last night when we were discussing this new picture from Kineticist was the art on the play field. Up to this point, everything looked Avatar, bioluminescent, forest, I'm in it. You know, I want to be in the jungle. Think of the best pinball machines, like the best pinball themes that you have fun playing. They all seem to take place at night. Let's stick with Jersey Jack. When you're playing Toy Story 4, it looks like you're at night at the carnival. The lights are going on. You know, everything looks cool. When you're playing Guns N' Roses with the spectacular light show, you're inside the arena. It's dark. It's a dark environment that you're playing around in. Everything's mysterious. You know, Stranger Things, you're playing and it's like kind of late afternoon. And then you go in the upside down. Everything's dark again. The dark themes seem to really work. Wizard of Oz, it's like there's a storm out, right? Everything's really kind of dark and dusky. It highlights all the lights and everything. You go to Godfather, and it's like you walked into a delicatessen at noon, and it's like the lights are really bright and everything, and it's a little bit jarring. It's like when you wake up the next morning after the party and take a look around the stragglers that are still there, and you're like, whoa, God. That's what it feels like being in that environment. It's like I don't have social anxiety disorder to a high degree, but it's kind of like I just don't want to be in this place anymore. So with Avatar, I was thinking this has to be a game that takes place at night in the jungle by a luminescence. It's got to be going on or at least have a day-night cycle or something. So I was hype off of the images that we saw between the flippers, the images that we saw at the corner of the cabinet, even with the hot dog shooter rod. But when I saw the next photo, which looks to be somewhere in the middle third of the play field, it's a lot more bright and sunshiny, right? There's some kind of like underwater submersible vehicle with a cartoon harpoon coming on. There's like an anemone or something over on the right side of the cabinet there. And my first instinct was like, am I looking at a mural in a dentist office on the wall? Because it's kind of like had that vibe of very soft edges. They have almost like pastels. It didn't match with what was going on on the apron. Now, I'm not going to judge it too harshly because I haven't seen the full art package. Jersey Jack themselves did release an official image with a blurred out cabinet in the background with a palm frond or something in that foreground area that was in focus. so we could see like a mass of color. Essentially they're saying officially, yes, we do have a game coming out.
    15:07
    But looking at this, I was like running through, like my first thought was like weird mural. My second thought was like, was this designed by Lisa Frank? Joe Cherovino came through with, is this an Echo the Dolphin pin? Like what the heck, man, is going on with this? I don't love the art that I'm seeing there. I've seen other people comment as well, the Lisa Frank thing hit me. Like, just who, now, it's been rumored that there's an artist, somebody found them online, they do these kind of surrealistic kind of nature unicorn kind of crap, not crap, but themed entertainment images or whatever. And so maybe that's the direction they're going. I got to see the whole art package, because what's being conveyed in these little snippets isn't giving me, like, the full intention behind what the vision was that the artist went through. You know, somebody had to point out that that was a sea anemone creature on the right side of the photo. I thought it was a barista with dreadlocks. I don't know. I got a little microscopic, myopic view of the play field. So this is what I'm going on with. So release the details tomorrow. Just let everybody know what's going on. What does the hot dog look like, you know, turned 90 degrees? So we can see that it's actually an arrow. It's probably a really cool sculpt, but I can't really tell from the photos that I've seen so far. All right. So all of that's coming out. Is this press release real? Is it not? If it's real, fine. If it's not, let's make it real. It just makes sense. and let's make this the Labor Day weekend of pinball releases, and then we can choose what we want to get. And if I'm going to pick up a $15,000 Avatar machine that's blasting color everywhere, I want to see the dang thing because if I go in on an X-Men premium, my treasure chest, talking is hard, my pinball account will be depleted for the next few months, and there's no way that I can then pivot to it. So it only makes sense. Let's make it happen. We'll have to wait and see what happens. Let's go to X-Men now. Remember that game? Remember that game that was teased back on Friday that we've all forgotten about with all this Avatar business going on? Well, coming back to it, we've gotten one image, a little bit of a video, so a little bit of emotion, from the teaser release, and that's what we have to go on. That and the little cartoon intro that happened. So I did a little teaser reaction video for fun. It's up on the YouTube channel, Don's Pinball Podcast. Go check that out. Several hundred of you already have. Fantastic. I'm going to do some more of those. But what we saw first, they played this kind of like Marvel-esque movie intro, but it was with the Stern logo. Love that. Love what you did. Whoever you paid to do that, money well spent. I like it. What I did see was a lot of just the classics, the same seven X-Men characters that everybody knows. The most popular ones, right? But I would like to see a game that delves deeper into, like there's hundreds of X-Men characters, and they have like weird abilities and stuff. I would like to see more of them featured, instead of just being like background characters. Let's bring some of those interesting ones out. We don have to rehash the 2009 or 2008 X release with just Wolverine and Storm and Rogue and Magneto though we love them and Cyclops But you know let bring something else Now we don know what timeline this game taking place in I know there's an 811 tie-in to one of the universes or something where the Sentinels have taken over and the X-Men are killed. I love that idea because if, you know, Wolverine's supposedly lost for dead, Cyclops is dead, all the main ones have been killed, we're going to get new characters in there, And then maybe Wolverine can show up as an unlockable character at some point and just be fantastic. Like, he is in the game. Or there could be modes where the X-Men cross over from a different timeline to help out the creatures in this timeline. I think that would be fun. A different take on the characters. Kind of a multiverse approach to it. Especially if there's a leveling system. Log in with Insider Connected. As you play, your level goes up. As you beat through the game, you're able to come back and unlock other characters, which unlock different abilities and different call-outs and different lighting packages and different modes. I love all of that. That's the direction Stern is going. So hopefully that is what we see. Now, Ryan over at Phantom Tilt did a great breakdown of this image. I see him, like, stewing over this photo or still video grab from the teaser video and, like, scrolling in and trying to chifer everything. He did a much better job than I did. Let's start with the Sentinel, right, because that was the focus of the video part of it. The Sentinel, which looks like a sculpt. It looks like it's painted. uh rises up from the play field has a mouth that may actually be hinged i don't know if that means there's going to be an i am groot moment where balls can just like fly out of the guy's mouth i don't know if we lock balls in there and he goes back underneath i don't know if he's strictly just a bash toy um i don't know if it's just a bond rocket and this thing's gonna wobble we didn't see it hit by a ball so it could be you know fairly firm there or he could weeble wobble like the bond rocket um which probably my favorite part of the game that in the uh the left orbit shot to the ramp, the choice, I love that part. Everything else, meh, I can take it or leave it, but those things are awesome.
    19:51
    What we didn't see was what this Sentinel looks like when he's fully locked down. So speculation was going, of course, first to Circus Voltaire and the Ringmaster. Right, the Ringmaster has a flat plate on top, so he firmly interlocks with the playfield, so balls can roll over there. There's a magnet on top of him that can grab that ball, and then we all see him, you know, come up. We can bash him, he comes up even more, we go into his lair and his pants, and then he kills and he falls down. So, like, that's what we were comparing it to, but the top of the Sentinel head being domed doesn't look like it would work in that manner. So the only thing that this thing could fully recess into the play field without affecting things is if there's some kind of hatch cover that slides on over like a missile launching silo. I don't know how you would pull that off in pinball necessarily because, you know, any kind of hatch that you'd move would leave, you know, small ridges or something, would cause air balls, it would have to be flush, it would be difficult to do. I suppose if it was long and placed in the back and as the hatch slid back, there was still a firmness in the area behind the sentinel, and then it could slide back in. So, okay, so hatch still could work, but most likely this thing is going to sink down almost all the way into the play field but stand up there and be a bash toy where you can bash him in the forehead, you know, or shoot around behind him, maybe bash him from the back, and then he'll rise up there. So we'll wait and see. I'm not sure exactly where this is in the play field. It looks like a back third kind of toy system, especially with the wire forms that are curving around on either side. Now, at first, you know, given the focus depth of the camera that was used to film this, the foreground is blurred right out. So I couldn't tell if these were wire forms that were just coming out and ending, similar to kind of how Final Resistance does, where it just launches balls at you out of that mechanism. You know, but it looks like there's out of focus 90 degree turns. So there are some wire forms that break to the left and the right. The one that's on the right, from the viewer's perspective, has what Ryan was calling a V-lock. It looks like there's a little hinge pin or something. It's in a V-shape that would maybe function as a one-way gate. He's thinking he's seeing some dual-level rampage there. We'll have to wait and see what the actual game comes out as. We have about 48 hours until we know for sure. But, yeah, something interesting is going on there where it doesn't strictly look like a straightforward wire form. That I can say for sure. On the left side, there's this interesting little mechanistic tower thing, right? And so what it appears to be is a stand-up target on the bottom, and then as the metal assembly goes up, it looks to be a hinge point, and then there is a ball. If you look, you can see the bottom third of what could be a Newton ball screwed in there on the top of a little metal cylinder. So what this looks like to me is almost like a flail system, right, like from Black Knight Sword of Rage where there was a solid pinball on an assembly that swung around. So this thing may hinge and come down. It looks like it would line up with that wire form that's right there. So is this a ball that flips down and acts like a diverter to lock and hold balls back? Is the post magnetized and this can grab your ball and pick it up from the wire form or take a ball from behind it and throw it down in the wire form or do something? Something mechanistically interesting is there. He was able to decipher the words that are on a sticker below the shaft.
    23:02
    Shaft. and it looks like it says molecular charging level or something like that. So something science-y based. And then this guy picked this up. You can only see like a tenth of the top of the letters on the play field, but it does spell out in capital letters, Beast, right? One of the big blue hairy X-Men character. So this is like Beast's lab or whatever. This guy's brilliant and also super strong, just like me.
    23:25
    But something will happen there where you can essentially bash a stand-up target, activate something. There's a mechanism that swings, whether it throws a ball, whether it's magnetic, whether it acts as a diverter or just blocks a ball. We'll have to wait and see what that does. Maybe it flips down a ball, fly out of it. Maybe it's a fast lock system. But all of that is what we were able to tell just off this, you know, with three seconds of video of a static Sentinel rising up. Also, I did like the call-outs that we got from it, too. Cool robotic voice for the Sentinel. I'm digging it. Looks like it's out of the comic book. So we got a comic book Marvel game. people have been commenting like this Marvel again, what is this we had Avengers Infinity Quest, we've had Deadpool we've had Venom just recently recently, it was like two releases ago and here's Marvel again supposedly, I don't know where I heard this but somewhere I had heard that they had a long term contract with Disney and the Disney licenses that they essentially guaranteed them to have one release from that pantheon of licensed House of Disney every year whether it be a Marvel, whether it be a Star Wars or I don't know. Is Disney still on Touchstone? Can we get a Touchstone Films game or something? So this will be that release. These things, I guess they sell pretty well. I know Venom sold well because they're available fairly cheap on the secondary market. Some mad lad in St. Louis listed a Venom limited edition, right? $12,999 MSRP when this thing was released for $8,000 even, man. Come on. That's the deal of the week. I was tempted to go down and get this thing. Venom LE has a beautiful-looking cabinet, has mirrored art blades, has all the accessories that a LE comes with, has a mirrored back glass, and has the premium play field, which is the only one you should be playing. So for $8,000, that's cheaper than a premium, and you get all the extra things that come with the LE. That's a steal, man. I like the Venom gameplay. I'm tempted, but, you know, I think I can use that same budget and put it towards potentially an X-Men premium or maybe even an Avatar if we see something soon. So I'm not jumping on this, which is why I'm talking about it, because if I was jumping on it, I'd already be in the car halfway to St. Louis to pick this thing up. And I still might. If it's still out there, dude, if this guy would take seven cash right now, I think I would go down and get that. A Venom LE, man. I like Venom. All right. Add the spinner to the left orbit like I did. It wasn't plugged into anything, although now my technical abilities have improved and leveled up. I probably could manufacture something, but that game needed to have a spinner in it. Other than that, I kind of dig the Venom gameplay, and people that know, they agreed too. All right. So what do we got? We talked about the twin wire forms, the V-gate, whether it's the upper decker ramp or not, the molecular bonding strength, the beast target, the sentinel. Do we bash it? Does it Groot Balls back at us? I'll tell you what when this video came out I did go over and I texted my buddy Jeff at MadPinball.com from MadPinball Ohio's biggest distributor of games to the eastern region and I said why don't you just pencil me in for one, why don't you just pencil me in I'm not obligated to go on this thing but if this release comes and I want it dang it, I'm JG Wentworth about it, right, if I want a game and I've got the money, I want it now It's my game, and I want it now. Call me Veruca all you want, but I don't want to be in a situation where this game's revealed. Turns out it awesome and then when I go to call around to find it I in the second batch you know and I got to wait until December to get this game Nobody wants to wait until December to get a game that going to be built in October Man I want to pick it up at Expo I want my game So I emailed Jeff over there at Mad Pinball. We've got a great relationship. Ships nationwide. Hell of a guy. Some people say he even looks like me. So easy on the eyes, too. But, yeah, go email him. Get penciled in for something. Get penciled in for Avatar. Get penciled in for X-Men. And then let's see what the release has. And then if you want to jump on it, you already got a space in line, man. No fast pass necessary. No genie plus here. Just a great service that he offers. That's why I stick with him, man. We get games in. We have a good time. We speculate back and forth. When I talk about trade-ins, he gives me a trade-in value, and then he gives me advice. Like maybe sell your game locally. I think you'd get out a little bit ahead, and then it tends to work out. Speaking of which, I'm looking over at this big Lebowski. I love the game. I've played the game. I've had it. There's new releases coming out. I need to make up some room. So if anybody wants a deal on a Lebowski, it's got a doobie mod. It's got a laserific topper. I even maybe might have an electric pinball topper tucked away somewhere still in the box. So you can still get on that. They sold out right away. They sold out in two days. Maybe make it happen. If you've been dreaming of Lebowski, now might be your time to spend some time with the dude. Email me, DonSpinballPodcast at gmail.com. We're always working deals here at District Don. What else is coming up next month? now that this is September, October will bring Chicago's Pinball Expo, where it now looks like we're going to see Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, we're going to see X-Men, we're going to see Avatar, we're not going to see Cuphead, and Barrels of Fun, I don't think they'll have something this soon, and Spooky probably won't be ready yet. Those will probably be March releases. But we're going to have three bangers there. It's going to be awesome. 40th anniversary of Expo coming up. Tickets are like $195 if you pre-order for a three-day pass, or you can buy, I think, single-day admissions are $100. So it's starting on Tuesday, kind of. They're going to be doing five days of tours, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, there'll be tours. Saturday, there'll be the Pinball Olympics. Watch for those tickets. It's probably going to go on sale soon, like after the holiday. I went last year. It was an exciting event that I will never forget. I don't know if I have it in me to go back again because it was completely exhausting with how amazing it was. But, yeah, definitely go check that out. If you've never been to Pinball Olympics, $100, get there. I can't even explain it's it's so it was so incredibly amazing um go check that out but all those are all the great events that are happening um at October's Expo plus the seminars and things so the tours the pinball tours um this year they're starting on Tuesday there'll be a tour of the CGC factory and then they'll take you over to Gallop and Ghost Arcade I don't think there's anything else going on with the show on Tuesday so you know for you early arrivers you know you You got something to do, or at least you had something to do because it is now sold out. So forget that tour. Forget CGC on Tuesday. It's sold out. It's done, gone. You can't do it. Wednesday, there's an American Pinball tour, and then they take you over to Logan Arcade. Kind of cool. Weird because I don't think there's any American Pinball games at Logan Arcade, but maybe they give you some coins and things and you go have a good time. I'm sure that'll be fun. That's $95, though. A bit steep. I don't know. Maybe they're covering the bus fee or something. So if you want to go tour American Pinball, those tickets are still available. They're $95, and they include something at Logan Arcade. So you need to go ahead and I don't know if you can buy that ticket without buying the registration. You might have to do it all at once. But those aren't sold out yet. So if you're in town on Wednesday and you want to go check out the land, the home of Galactic Tank Force and Legends of Valhalla and see if there's any more Houdini's sitting around, that's where you can go to do that. The Wednesday tour with Jersey Jack, no, Thursday. Thursday with Jersey Jack Pinball. They're doing a free tour. Go see JJP for free, or at least you could have. All of those tickets are gone. Probably everybody that registers, if it was a free tour, went ahead and just picked one up anyway. So maybe more will be available day of. It may be a situation that if you're in town on Thursday, maybe you show up to the bus stop and ask whoever's coordinating things and say, man, any way I can get in there? I'm sure there will be some no-shows, and the tickets were free, so maybe they may let you ferry in there. It's something that I would do if I was there. Now, I don't know if I'm going to be on site that early on Thursday to catch the noon tour, but it wouldn't hurt if you are in the area, you are interested in going, to maybe just hang around the bus there and see if you can get yourself in or see if they're even actually checking tickets, to be honest. So that's the Jersey Jack tour officially. It has been sold out. Friday, there's the tour of Stern. I've been through Stern twice now recently, once at Expo last year, and then I was fortunate enough to get invited to the media tour for John Wick. and so if you haven't toured their new factory it's amazing, it's recommended man, it's like Willy Wonka's house it's got everything you could need you could feel the energy in there, like all the new things are being created, right in one of the rooms on the show floor there, I don't know if during the official tour, since it's probably going to be heavily attended if they'll be able to take you back through some of the areas that we got to do on the separate tour but you'll see where they're at, at least and then they had a great little Stern pop-up shop there at the end, you got to see the break room and the wall of microwaves It's a huge cavernous facility, and it's just fun to see. And this year, they'll probably have all of the three lines up and moving, and you can see what a machine this place is. And maybe keep your eyes peeled for some Aerosmith translates or something sitting around, because we did see those stickers. Probably just back stock, but we'll see what the Spike system will bring us in the future. They're bringing back Spike 2 machines and then a new Spike 3 machine around the corner. This is going to be fun. Are we going to see Metallica at Expo? if they're doing a spike 3 metallica and they're working on it now and it's going to be coming out in december you know they have to have a working model ready even if it's just behind velvet ropes just playing videos in attract mode i think it would be cool for them to bring this have it there and show it and be like yes it's coming it'll probably be november december but here's our spike 3 cabinet and do like a big release you know otherwise this game's going to come out in December, January, and then there's not really another place to show it until we get to Texas Pinball Festival in March. So, hey, maybe pencil that in.
    33:12
    But, yeah, so if you want to go on the tours, there's exactly two available right now through official means, although there's probably still ways to finagle your way in there. If you are interested, also going on at Expo will be Media Mixer number two. We had some great entertaining drama surrounding the first one, so we need to be able to top that again. I've heard a little bit from Colin about the planning of this, and they are looking at ways to kind of expand the entry into it so it's not just a hall full of sweaty podcasters and Instagram people and hopefully models, but also general public and fans can be able to come by there. How fun would it be and how self-serving for my ego would it be to have a lineup autograph table and we could all sign your crap? I know that podcasters that I listen to that I'm fans of, I would be down for that to go and meet the guys that do these things and see what their faces look like. It's so weird because when it's mainly an audio form that you interact with, you kind of form this image in your head of what this person probably looks like, right? And then when you meet them for the first time, you're like, oh, who's this person, right? Because you've never actually really seen them. And then you hear the voice come out, and you're like, ah, you're the guy. You're the guy. You're the guy that voices SpongeBob? And it's always a little jarring because it's never going to match what your preconception of that person's face. Did you guys notice, as a little side, the same thing happened after COVID? Right. We had two years of lockdowns and everybody's wearing masks in the office and everything. And there had to be some new hires that came in. So there are people that you only interacted with with a face mask on. So in your head, you kind of drew in what you think the shape of the rest of their face looks like. And then when we got out of pandemic mode and the mask came off, it was like, who's this grotesque caricature, man? You know, you're not James. What is this, man? You're I didn't know you had that funky mustache under there. I tell you, when I wore a mask for months, I was growing all kinds of weird mustaches. I had a Van Dyke at one point. I was rocking the soul patch. Not that you could tell. And so I was just having fun with it. We did mutton chops for a while. It was wild. I couldn't wait to get it. There were some aspects of it that were kind of fun in the middle of the mayhem and injury. Industry? Injury? Oh, gosh. Let's not go back there. All right, guys.
    35:22
    Pinball. We got two new releases coming up. Avatar for sure. X-Men for sure. We're going to know a whole lot more information in about 48 hours. So let's get hyped for that. If you want to feel froggy, go ahead and jump and send me an email at johnspinballpodcast.gmail.com. Head over to the Facebook page where we are raging and doing cool stuff all the time. I did a big Saturday live stream that we simulcast on Facebook. It's also on the YouTube channel at Don's Pinball Podcast where I was also streaming some John Wick LE. Watch me have a couple of good ball ones and then throw the game away. It was a good time. It was fun. Thanks for hanging out, everybody. Get back at me. More to come as we know it. Later.