Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside podcast. I am your host, Retro Ralph, and today is a very exciting day. This is September 4th, 2024, and Stern just announced their latest cornerstone game, the Uncanny X-Men. And I'm going to give you my reaction to it right now. It just happened about a couple hours ago. So I had work, you know, work got in the way and all that stuff. You know, have to be an adult and do all that. You know, make money so we can buy all this stuff. But, man, all I got to say is this is, if you really think about it, this is Jack Danger's third game, if you count the home edition of Jurassic Park, because he did that. so but damn man when i saw the trailer i i was like oh shit i actually messaged my it was funny i was messaging my distributor at the same time that he's he's a he's a total like my distributor game room goodies awesome guy aaron over there he's a nerd for all this stuff too so imagine like owning a company that you get to distribute all this stuff but you're also a super nerd and collector yourself. So he's just like, we were just both like, holy shit. I mean, this looks amazing. The one thing that's crazy, right? We're going to look at it here in a minute. But the one thing that's great, and I'm sorry, if you're listening, listening only on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or on the YouTube podcast side, not the video side, I'm sorry, you're not going to see it, but I'll do my best to describe what you're seeing. But what I would do is encourage you to, you know, you can listen to it audio only and then go over to Retro Ralph Live and you get to see it. You get to see me. I'm not feeling good this week. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. I'm not feeling great, but I'm going to power through this because I'm excited. The excitement of all this is bringing me back up. It's bringing back. I don't know how you couldn't be excited. You know, what's funny is, is like I'm newer. I always say this so stupid, but anyways, I'm going to say it again. I hate, I hate saying it because it is dumb, but I am newer to the hobby in the sense that I haven't been doing this for 10 years, right? I haven't been doing this for 10, 20, 30 years like some of you. But the one thing I hear a lot and I see a lot on forums is there's no innovation. There's nothing new. Wash, rinse, repeat, blah, blah. Really? Well, now you're not getting wash, rinse, repeat. This is very innovative in my opinion. There's innovation going on. There's some funky shots in here. Yeah. So shut your mouth at this point. I mean, I don't know what else to say. Just look at the thing. The thing is awesome. So let's just go into it. Let's go right to the trailer. I'm going to sort of pause it and mute it along the way because I think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The volume is way too high. Okay. We're going to have no volume to it. But all right. So let me rewind it. It's already going too far. What the hell is going on? I'm losing control of the show. Okay. So right now you're visually looking at it. This is the LE, but the LE and premium features outside of some of the aesthetic things are going to be pretty much the same. So I'd imagine most of the time the home buyer, like me, is mostly interested in the premium or even the limited edition. The pros tend to be the ones that people put out on location, although people buy them for the home too. I've had several pros myself. But from first glance, this is the LE. The armor around it looks amazing. It's got like a purple powder coat. And also you'll notice it has the expression lighting. So the expression lighting is something that they've been putting on a lot of the LE games now as just a stock feature. So it's basically lighting that goes along with the game. I would have liked to see the expression lighting on the actual inside of the cabinet too, but they didn't do that on this one. John Youssi there's art blades. But the cool thing about the expression lighting is they do sell this as an accessory now. So you don't, you're not just, it's not just for the LE buyer, someone with a pro or a premium can also upgrade theirs with the expression lighting. The only thing that they haven't done to date is they haven't included, um, you can see in the speaker grill, there's like an X, right? That X won't be there when they sell the accessory, the accessory, when I, at least, at least to date, maybe they'll change that. But there's lots of mod people in the mod community that, that build those kinds of things. I just bought one for my jaws. So yeah, so that's something that don't feel like you'd be left out on the expression lighting thing, which is cool because it does things that go along with the gameplay. It kind of makes it another element to it, right? You know, a company that's really good at this is Roth Rills. Roth Rills makes arcade games. They do a ton of the expression lighting. I mean, they don't call it that, but they do a ton of lighting like that where things are happening in the game and lights are going off and stuff like that. So anyways, let's press on here. So that's just a visual of what it looks like. It looks beautiful. looks like they still did the that shimmery I don't know I call it foiled artwork I'm not really sure which would you call that but it looks like that's that's also here it seems to be a standard thing so anyways when you when John Youssi the initial view of the play field it has a bunch of these like crossover shots which are really cool John Youssi there um you can really see it but on the left hand side is the danger room so there a lot of things that and in there there like some really cool stuff there a mini flipper a ramp a spinner so there's lots of neat things going on there uh which which i was like pretty excited to see that um the flippers are a little bit offset though so the flippers are not going to be like when you stand up to a pinball machine typically the flippers are sort of in the middle the flippers are sort of like set to the right a little bit which that's something i don't think there's ever been a pinball machine that at least in modern times it has done this where the flippers are sort of shifted over i say modern times meaning like the last 10 years i don't think so i again i don't have all the historicals i don't know a ton about the history of every machine ever made but this was something that i haven't seen and then on the left hand side is the danger room so in order to make room for that danger room it looks like they shifted stuff over a little bit And then in this picture, you can see there's this Cerebro sort of a ball lock on the left. I think it holds the ball there magnetically or something. I can't really fully tell that, but that seems kind of cool. Then what's really neat is as you start kind of looking through here, there's a, I think this is, what is this area up here? I wrote it down because I was like, it's too many. Oh, that's the Beast Lab. so in the beast lab there's this captive lock on the end that jack is calling he had a unique name for it he called it something different i don't remember what he called it it had a name though captive ball variety target i don't know what that means so i think it must do other stuff like i think you can hit it from below and it'll like that whole mechanism the front moves somehow but that is the ball lock so that's cool so that's in the beast lab that's the ball lock area that looks really neat there's just a lot going on here this is like everyone always says all these games are bare but they're definitely this game is not bare this game is very very cool there's a lot of lot going on okay so then you can kind of like hook that shot around uh the sentinel head is a big deal so everyone was kind of speculating that the sentinel head ate the ball it doesn't look like it eats the ball what well it doesn't eat the ball but what it does do is um his chin breaks and then there's a target inside that can send the ball back. So imagine you're kind of having this fight with him. He can shoot the ball back at you, which is really cool. But then what blew me away when I was watching, I was like, shut the hell up, is the freaking sentinel hand on the right-hand side can break the wire form and send your ball going all sorts of different places. So that's so freaking cool. We'll get back to that in a second because it's later on in the trailer. I'm just picking apart the trailer. Then right in front of the Sentinel head is Magneto. So he's got like a magnet. I think these are cool. I've seen these in several games. I know that they've used magnets in pinball for a ton of time now. But what I like about it, it's good and bad. So you don't always know where it's going to go. So it kind of adds a level of variability that I think is fun. So yeah, it'll lock it and then kind of move it around and do fun stuff with it. And then where it ends up, you don't know. So I just think that's cool because it's never usually the same, right? Or it can be different and kind of send the ball into a whole bunch of places you didn't know it was going to go. So to me, it kind of like levels out the playing field a little bit, which I think is really cool. So we'll kind of move forward from there. Now, this is where John Youssi the Sentinel hand breaking the wire form. Like, that is cool as hell. Like, I love this. This is badass. I don't even know like has this ever been done I mean I know on on uh on Godzilla the bridge right the bridge and Godzilla can can destroy and so the ball path changes but has anyone ever done this with like a wire form that breaks I don't know they probably have I think that's freaking cool though you know something we haven't seen in in like a modern stern I don't think and then uh the sentinel finger can shoot the ball back at you I'm guessing that's when it's broken since you can't go up that path it'll shoot it back to you or something it's kind of interesting i'm not sure exactly oh yeah oh yeah i don't know where that goes but that looks kind of cool then there's all these like funky i don't really fully understand what's going on here but there's like this area you can shoot and the ball kind of goes through i'm not sure where it's even going there and it shoots out this bottom section so i don't even know what's going on there it's going to take a while longer to like analyze all this and see more longer term gameplay but that shot that feeds the ball back over to this danger room is really neat this looks like it's really tight quarters you know the one thing that i was kind of thinking of as i'm watching this is like this isn't going to be a beginner pinball machine i don't think i think and i felt that way with foo fighters some may disagree with me i felt like foo fighters i really had to like get better at like i didn't instantly like it and i don't actually love foo fighters i know a lot of people really really love that game but it took me a while to feel comfortable with it and i think this is gonna be one of those things too like i don't know my my instant reaction is not that you're gonna walk up to this and like having your an amazing game in the beginning like you really have to study and learn these shots so there's definitely a lot of that going on so i guess it'll be to be determined but i feel like i can um sorry guys i have a little bit of a cold going on i can go and put someone on godzilla and they can have a really fun first game i don't know if this is to be that kind of game or not but but i guess we find out as it put out on location and stuff so yeah i mean i don know the cerebro thing i don really get it holds the ball somewhere down there i don really fully understand what going on with that yet but um i do like that that danger room thing looks really cool with the spinner in there and that that like little ramp also kind of reminds me of what he did with that tight shot on foo fighters that little ramp on the left hand side to start the um the mode so that's really cool i it's just there's so much going on here the artwork looks great so the artwork's zombie yeti i know people have been talking about i've heard chatter about zombie yeti fatigue his artwork's freaking incredible looking i don't i don't have fatigue but i think his stuff is great i mean obviously you wouldn't want him to do the artwork on every single pinball machine but i think um he does such a great job when it comes to comic book type things themes and just the color and his detail it looks awesome there's also a um I don't know if he's going to show it here in this trailer. You can kind of see it in the back here. I'm going to try to skip ahead or fast forward, rewind a little bit. Sorry. You can see Wolverine's kind of, there's a Wolverine sculpted figure in the back. And then behind Wolverine is, I think, shoot, who's behind Wolverine? There's someone behind Wolverine. The character behind Wolverine, I can't see in the picture. You can't see him right now. But there's someone behind Wolverine. I can't remember who it is. but um that one is a that one is a plastic but wolverine is like a sculpted figure so there's also been a lot of like oh you know starman's using too much plastics and they're not you know they're kind of cheaping out on things but that figure looks really cool so between the figure and the gigantic sentinel head some of the all these these complexities and some of these shots i mean it's a very beautiful looking machine so i don't know to me this is gonna be I think this is going to be one people are going to really freaking enjoy. I see this as being a hit, man. I don't know. I'm flipping out over it. I had a couple other notes that I made. I was kind of typing it as I was watching. I put that the layout, I think, is funky and different, and it's finally innovative. So if you felt like pinball's been stale for a while, this shit isn't stale. This is really cool. And I think that's kind of like Jack Danger's calling card, right? He's a player himself, and I think people would be disappointed knowing him if he released a game that didn't have something that you haven't seen before or really pushing the envelope. Now, at the same time, him pushing the envelope could make it difficult for the beginner or a novice player. I don't know. Is that a good thing or bad thing? I'm not really sure. I do think there is, they do, it's a fine line you have to walk because I think if you want to bring new people in, the games have to be appealing so that someone can have a fun first game, but also then expand their skill set. And now all of a sudden the game is just that much more interesting to them. I mean, I'll share a quick story with you about Jaws. So I finally started really understanding the Jaws rule set a bit better. And now I understand the concept of closing beaches. And I posted my best score ever. and there's something really satisfying. And this is the thing that maybe someone that doesn't, maybe someone that doesn't play a lot of pinball or is just getting into it might not understand. And I didn't get this at first either. My first feeling when I got back into this or into it more in my adult life was like, oh, I'm just kind of hacking around and if I hit certain targets, cool. But, or wow, that ramp, that's so fun. But I didn't really fully understand how deep the code set can get. can get it's really the code can get really deep and as you get deeper into it and you start like actually progressing through a game when you understand the code it's so much fun and very satisfying i got so stoked when i started consistently closing the beaches that's that's so cool that's the beauty of it is if you don't care about that stuff then every game is going to seem the same right you're just be like oh cool it's just like different things on the play field but it's it's a really a lot of it has to do with like how did the software developer that wrote the code think about the theme and the code integration to that theme and does it make sense like are there things that you're progressing toward like stranger things right like stranger things the demogorgon plays such a big role in it and then as you you know as you kind of continue on there's more demogorgons and you have the bomb and you have to be be kind of um strategic as to when i might want to use that so like do i want to use it in the first one sure i could get the I could kill the first Demogorgon really fast, but maybe that puts me at more at risk if I'm on like the third one and I got to fight multiples, maybe I want to use it then. So there's just lots of cool stuff that like the life preserver in Jaws, right? So if I've drained my ball down that left out lane, like I have to be thinking, oh crap, that light's lit, Ed Boon, and hit the action button. There's just, man, there's just, it's just such exciting. People have asked me recently, like what, why have you pivoted? And pivot isn't even a fair assessment, but they're like, why are you playing less arcade games? And I'm just like, cause I got, there's so much excitement surrounding pinball. I've been playing all these arcade games. I played them in my youth. And then I started getting back into arcade gaming around 1999. So it's like, I've been playing the games over and over and over. So to be in a hobby where there's just like something exciting all the time going on, really. I mean, it's funny because people are like oh man like there such a lull right now It like a lull It been like a couple of months like a lull Like they just released they just released the black and white 70th Godzilla. They just released John Wick. They just released Jaws. Like what lull are you talking about? There's exciting stuff going on all the time. And Jersey Jack's about to drop Avatar. I want to be excited about Avatar. I really do, but I don't, I'm not like a huge fan of the movie. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to be excited or not. I want to be, but I mean, I'm excited that it's something new. It could be really cool. Jersey Jack makes beautiful games. I'd love to own my first Jersey Jack, um, or have one that I'm really excited about. Elton John, I just, I really do like the game. It was fun to play, but for me, just to own that one wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. Cause I'm not like this huge Elton John fan, right? It's kind of like how I felt with, uh, actually I really do like Foo Fighters, but I don't know. There's just something about Foo Fighters for me that just wasn't a one I wanted to keep in the collection. So, but this, this looks fire guys. I mean, I don't know what to say. This looks amazing. And I think all the people that are just usually on the Stern hate train are going to be not on the hate train. They're going to be like, holy crap, because it's innovative. You can't, there's new stuff going on. There's stuff you haven't seen before going on in a modern game. and I think they might have taken a little bit of the feedback and they could have easily made Wolverine a plastic and they didn't. They made it a sculpt. So maybe you'll see Stern kind of take some of that constructive feedback because, you know, John Wick is pretty plastics heavy. I love that game, by the way. I bought the LE. Call me stupid, whatever. I really enjoy it. I'm not selling it, so I'm not losing any money in my opinion or if I ever decide to sell it, and I love that game. There's much more code to be developed for that game that's the thing if you get in on one of these sterns or i feel like stern's the one that's the most proficient about updating their code though i don't know it seems like jersey jack i've heard people complaining about about guns and roses for a really long time and they just got a code update not that long ago and that game came out years and years ago stern does a really good job of continuing to update their code and improve it i mean we just got the jaws revenge thing i didn't like it at first because i didn't understand it and then i started playing it And I was like, oh, this is super freaking cool. Like you take the shot, you align your shark and you freaking bash the action button and eat the person. It's freaking amazing. It's actually really cool. At first, I wasn't that excited. But man, like that's innovation right there. Doing cool and unique stuff to continue to add value to the machine that you bought. And unless Stern stops doing that, that's freaking awesome. Like that adds value. That's continued value that you get. I don't know. I'm super hyped right now. I don't care. I don't know what to say. I'm that excited. This whole X-Men thing. I kind of was expecting this to be like a, they're going to release it in me, but that's not how I am. I'm like, let's go. I'm like messaging people like, dude, did John Youssi that? A couple of my buddies really love X-Men. So I'm like, dude, check this out. My only thing is, I think it might be a bit complex to play and pick up and play at first, but that's kind of cool too. In my opinion, once you start learning something new, it's, it's very satisfying when you could start to consistently hit a shot that you can't when you first get it. So that's just like, that is also adds to replay value, right? If you go up to a game and you're just destroying it, the second you play it, I mean, there are probably several players that are just that good, but for most, most of us that are, you know, average at best at pinball, it's fun to be able to feel like you can progress through it well guys that's all i got i'm like i hope i didn't miss anything i'm so excited but i gotta get back to work i'm doing this between work yeah i mean i gotta get back to work so i mean for those of you that used to listen to me i mean i used to i used to live stream and then leave my kid at soccer practice and stuff like oh dude i gotta go like we're in the middle of a live stream my kid's in soccer i gotta pick him up i'd be late i'd be a little late okay he's okay he's a kid he's fine no he's he's older now. It's fine now. He's, he's totally good. No, nothing ever happened. You know, I mean, I'm pretty sure he turned out to be a pretty good kid. So there you go. He got left a couple times at practice. No big deal. All right, guys. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for your support of the flip side. I hope you enjoyed my initial thoughts on X-Men, the uncanny X-Men, Jack Danger. You did it again. It looks frigging amazing. I wish you nothing but success on this one, brother. And yeah, are you going to get X-Men? Are you excited to play X-Men? Are you going to Pinball Expo? Because you know it's going to be all over Pinball Expo. Pinball Expo is going to be all about the X-Men. All right, guys. Everyone have a great rest of the week, rest of the day, and we'll see you on the flip side. See you guys. let's let the music linger for a bit longer it's too good it's too good thanks everybody you