And just like that, we're back. What's going on, everybody? Don's Pinball Podcast is coming at you for episode number 134. Because we got a brand new game released from Stern, we knew it was coming. And yet, here it is. Let's talk about it. More fun than you can shake a contract at with John Wick. Some labyrinth opportunities and more. オッケー、みなさん、こんにちは。 ようこそで、ドンズピンボールパッキャストです。 ボクの名前はドンです。よろしくお願いします。 今日はとても面白い、とても今日は。 今日は新しいのピンボールゲームは、 Namae no Gojira Kuro to Shiro desu. Omoshiro desu ne? Ii desu ne? Ehei, janai ka. Ganbatte. Yeah, what's up, everybody? Don Garrison is here. And yes, I do have a facility with Japanese, though. Fluency has, to date, escaped me. Can you believe it? We had that brand new game dropped on us. I just wanted to cover everything for you. Everybody get together. Warm hugs and drugs. Well, let's skip the drugs. All right, let's pull back, rewind, pull slack, and roll back. so i was just standing at the post office mailing off a package to a customer out in canada who's been buying some elvira parts from me and then boom on my phone just like everybody discord's blowing up facebook's blowing up nap arcade is with it and then i'm sitting here watching a trailer george gomez while i'm standing in line at the post office go through this amazingly looking sparkly foil clad iron this thing looks like it's the freaking bismarck from the or the ironclad ships from the uh the american civil war the merrimack and the bismarck or whatever they were called anyway thing is shiny and this is the le version that we were gonna get before they made that promise not to do it to us again so what are you guys thinking brand new godzilla premium all right so it's confirmed a lot of rumors right uh we know that this anniversary edition for godzilla was coming it was going to be revealed at comic-con it's just one year ago we had venom in the same situation. So not unheard of for Stern Pinball to show up to San Diego's Comic-Con at the end of July and show off their brand new game. Super cool. Now, I wonder if we'll also see this game now at the Southern Fry Gaming Expo because weren't there a couple of Venoms there last year? I'll tell you what, it's going to be at the Southern Fry Gaming Expo in Atlanta, Georgia at the end of this month. And that's your homie, Don. How you doing? I can't wait to go there for my first time down there in Hotlanta. So I've had some time because it is the post office, which is just an excruciating experience. So I was able to flip through all the pictures there and photos. And so what we got, okay, was the same zombie yeti artwork in a gray scale. It does look pretty cool. It's got red accents. I thought they would have went with blue this time. Monsters kind of has this little green thing going on. The Elvira blood red kiss has the red sparkly. But it is bold with that red Godzilla. I like that they're doing a back glass, actually, on this version and not a Translight, if I'm reading that correctly. The rest of the cabinet, pretty standard for a premium. You get that angled lollipop-style rail on the side, but it's still in that wrinkle powder coat. But the most striking thing about this, besides the fact that Godzilla is just the greatest pinball machine of the modern era, and it's resplendent in black and white, but it also comes with that nice, the foil graphics on the side. I love these, man. I wish they carried these through all the trim levels. I mean, I know there's going to be a little extra expense when you're buying that media stock to do the foil printing, but gosh, it just makes the game shine and look amazing. And watching the studio lights glance across down the nice silver foily effects that they did for Mechagodzilla there, yeah, man, I mean, it looks awesome. And can I dig on the fact that they're using the Gojira script in Katakana on the side and on the back glass? I love it. I love it, man. So I think what we got here now is the definitive version of Godzilla Premium. Not only that, and I love this, but they're coming out with all the accessories, grayscale and black and white as well. Thank you very much. That's awesome. So the Godzilla topper will be available in the grayscale. That weird egg shooter rod thing also, but then art blades to complete. So I think if you get one of these, you could do a lot worse than putting on some art blades are they going to be foil too wouldn't that be just like like the best um all right so I'm very excited this morning um also I've been up all night also I got to break out my Japanese on my podcast so that was fun uh so if you'll excuse me for being a little scattered I haven't slept in like 36 hours and I'm about to board a plane more about that coming up all right so back to the Godzilla game am I buying this 100% no at least for right now I'm I'm overburdened um I need lighten up my collection but man does this look like a cool version so i do appreciate the fact that they're doing uh this premium version it's the 97.99 so out the door there you go however i think they're still going to build up towards that le cost they were probably originally trying to go for once you add in the topper and hopefully some speaker lights the art blades if they're foil art blades i gotta think these are probably going to be 200 art blades maybe they'll come out with a set of armor. What kind of powder coat would you put on this? Would you go for the silver metallic and just have the whole thing silver? How about a nice black gloss? I think it'd really set this off. Or if you're bold, go ahead and match that red T molding with some nice red cherry coat on the side. I don't know what I'm going to do with it because I'm not going to get one, at least for right now. We'll see what happens. But I got to say, building up a black and white lineup with Munsters Premium, with a Vyra Blood Red Kiss, this would kind of be pretty cool. They have that third one in there Oh man And wouldn you know it I just sold my dang Godzilla premium so here the thing uh this was going to be in all likelihood a limited edition until they got that blowback from the uh jurassic park 30th anniversary anniversary edition le that came out uh right on the heels of the blood red kiss which was like another le like so i'll put jurassic park aside because you know i don't know that that was any better than the original le but the blood red kiss let me gush on that for a minute so here was a situation right you had this limited number of 40th anniversary elvira house of horrors looked amazing had the foil cabinet dart um had the sparkle powder coat purple um on the armor had the like the drippy armor on the side the art blades and everything looked great and it was sold to distributors for like basically guys no msrp get what you can get things selling for twenty thousand twenty two thousand twenty five thousand high to COVID, boom. It looked completely amazing. I was mesmerized when I saw the flipping out. I brought one to Pinball Expo and I got to play the dang thing. So fast forward a little bit, we get another game in the exact same trim package with brand new art in black and white with the shiny red crystals all over it for Expo last year. And it was only for $12,999. So like the going LE price so then you know imagine yourself uh elvira 40th anniversary owner with his twenty thousand dollar game and all of a sudden there's one that looks arguably as good maybe a little better for only 12 999 how are you gonna feel about that enraged sir that's probably how you're gonna feel and so that's probably uh where some of the blowback came from otherwise for those original owners of the jurassic park le you know they see this 30th anniversary edition come out it's got new art it's got doo-doo brown powder coated armor on it not a fan not a fan of it um but they're like what the heck man i thought you know it's totally just devalued all our le's that we had so stern took that back and was like okay okay we'll make a deal with you guys we won't run any more le's after the initial allotment has been run your audition numbers are safe so my john wick i'm sitting here there's not going to be more than a thousand of these made if there were even a produced anyway um but that is what it is so what they did say is they would do anniversary editions of games and that brings us back to godzilla black and white 70th anniversary premium edition uh they grayscaled out the uh image assets on the back on the uh the lcd screen i like that they give you the option to toggle that back and forth everybody gets a code update how can you be mad at that so here's how they get to that le level though you know this game's a premium so it's not coming with a shaker motor you have got to have a shaker motor in your godzilla you got to feel him stomping around man that interaction of all the games in my lineup and every the game that i've had here i think some of the best integration of shaker motor has been with godzilla i mean you can't compete with that um topper's gonna be a thousand bucks again you know you're gonna want the shooter rod you're gonna want the r blades for sure um i throw a knocker in mind so you're still at you know 12 000 anyway once you put all the stuff in there fine just go go whole hog and throw in some invisiglass and there you go build your own le right um how do they come up with speaker lights like the expression speaker lights wouldn't that be amazing if they did that what if this what if this black and white godzilla had expression lights in it oh man that would have been just over the top i don't know if all that color would have worked with the black and white but digress digress here's where the real money is going to come from. Everybody that owns a Godzilla has modded it to some degree. And I don't think there's a game out there that exists now with better support from the modding community. Davey Stumbler himself, Lior, I mean, they made some incredible mods for Godzilla. I didn't hold back. I loaded mine out and had a blast doing that. And there's still more coming. People are still making mods for Godzilla, like good quality ones, like interactive buildings. They light up, interact with the gameplay. It's super fun. I saw DiddyMods already has his Nagle Oil building in black and white coming out. You're going to need to get the Tesla towers again, man. So here's the thing, right? You buy this game, it needs a shaker, needs some glass, needs some heart blades, whatever. You want to put the topper on there because you want to be complete. And then you're still going to have the same barren play field. You're going to have to re-purchase all of these black and white mods to go back in there. What a money sink of a thing this is to truly trick it out and i've been down that road already with godzilla and i just don't know if i'm ready to embark on it again but man if you were looking for the definitive version of godzilla this is it man it's so shiny so cool man tell me what you think um i'm excited that it's out i want to go see one in person i want to go and play it and then i want to sit back and watch what happens with the market with this thing uh so mr george Gomez, solid dude, met him in real life, cool guy. He mentioned that this game will be in production for as long as there is interest, which kind of tells me this game's going to be in production for the next five years at least, because come on, how could there not be perennial interest for the best game of the modern era, Godzilla, at least until Elwin makes King Kong. So that's where we're at with that. I think this looks cool. Jason Knapp's got it covered front ways, back ways, sideways in any of the ways you can think of. So yeah, bring on some Gojira. I think we're going to see some more action of it. Hopefully a stream at Comic-Con. And maybe one of these things can make its way on over to Southern Fried Gaming Expo and let me get my greasy nacho caked fingers all over it. I can't wait, man. I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. All right, moving along. John Wick Contracts. Man, so I love this idea. I love Insider Connected. This is going to be a stern heavy episode. but man um i like what they're doing the next level the next iteration of insider connected has come with these short-term push notification contracts that launched with john wick we saw the first one of these come out and what this is is a way to get yourself a special event badge by not just logging in on a certain day but by completing some sort of task so far there's been exactly two of these the first one was limited to only 2 000 of which there's still over a thousand available I get it that this was the test one But we last night we got the first iteration of what is truly like these time limited or at least limited in quantity contracts So I heading off to work I get there for my night shift that I worked clear through the night and then I look on my phone. Gosh dang it, I was just playing John Wick an hour ago. Now all of a sudden there's a quest that I totally could have gotten. There's only 200 of them. By the time I look at it, there's only 170 available. 30 people have already claimed this dang thing and it's like, man, I'm going to miss out on this because of stinking work, man. Fortunately, when I got home this morning, there were still 80 or so available. And I played John Wick for about two hours straight before I was able to get to the Excommunicado multiball. Not only that, that's fairly straightforward. You hit the three stand-up targets, the two on the left ramp, the one on the right ramp. You do each of those three times and then just shoot up into the little red circle club and it starts it. So that's super fun. I now know how that's qualified. But you needed to score 10 million points exclusively in that mode. And I'm thinking, dude, it's a multiball, man. It's John Wick. I put up, you know, I clear 40 million points generally on a fairly mediocre game now. So, like, I got this, right? Two hours I played this game. I must have played it 30 times. And I was getting super frustrated. The best scores I was getting were like 8.5 million in that mode. A lot of them were only like two or three. And I'm like throwing my hands up, getting super frustrated, about to jump out of the hobby. And then I focused down a little bit, learned where the jackpots are. And then boom, 12 and a half million. I got the badge. I am satiated. I'm so excited now that I was able to do this. It would have been awful if all of these contracts ran out and I have the game in my dang game room and I played on it for two to three hours. And if I still couldn't get it, I would have been feeling so defeated, man. So I'm glad I stuck it out. But gosh, that was stressful. And it's only made me want to get the next contract going. So the idea behind this system is that you'll have the Stern Insider Connected app on your phone. you'll get that push notification when these things are randomly released and then there's going to be like some time pressure on you and what this is supposed to do is to drive you down to your local arcade um and go put some money in a wick uh and then probably you'll go play a deadpool probably you'll play bond a little bit maybe that rick and morty that's over in the corner because it makes you chuckle and like that's just to get more people into the arcade and i can tell you this strategy works man i was not going to come home after working a 12-hour night shift and just put two hours on John Wick. I was going to go take a nap. I was going to go put something on a 3D printer, go watch some YouTube and fall asleep. But no, no, no, no, we didn't do that. We played John Wick for two and a half hours when we didn't need to, chasing a meaningless badge that I'm super incredibly proud about now. And I posted it around Facebook. I was also texting my friends and being a Facebook post. Hey, is anybody else trying for this? What am I missing? How do I do this? I tried to stack it with a mode to see if That would make it easier to get. So right there, without even knowing it, I was interacting with people on Facebook, talking about the game, all because of this free little quest that came as a push notification at the beginning of my night shift last night. So, Stern, I kind of think it's working. I kind of think it's working. Can I also say that in the midst of one of those 30 games, when I started it, I got the whole John Wick dialogue. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back. Like the whole thing, like a couple lines of dialogue with the game. That's what I wanted with this man. I just wanted to hear me some John Wick. I wanted to go and avenge the puppy. I wanted to hit the shots, play with the green plastics, and dang it if I didn't have a fun John Wick morning. So that's how my morning went. This is how my day is going. We go right into Gojira, and I'm about to dive into some Italian pasta and go finally take a nap as soon as we're done recording here. But I got an offer for everybody. Before Godzilla was released, I went ahead and listed my labyrinth for sale. I've got a labyrinth from Barrels of Fun. Super fun game. It was the bell of Expo this year, and it's consistently selling. We just got another sales update. I know about a week or so ago, they had come out publicly saying that they have about 750 sales of labyrinth so far. Build wise, they were somewhere around 200, between two and 300 as far as the numbers of the games that are going out. I've had game 82 here for a few months now enjoying the heck out of it. I got the topper on there. The new code is kicking. I still haven't got to that peach mode, but I'm having fun with my labyrinth, but it's time to make some difficult decisions. Oh, let me get back to this real quick. Sorry, I haven't been asleep at all yet. So Barrels of Fun just put out that sales have now eclipsed 850 or so. And so they just want to say like, hey, this thing's going good. They said they were going to make no more than 1100, which when I was talking to them, It sounds like what they meant was they were planning on getting out a solid 1,000. And the build edition was up to 11, just because there's probably some that are going to be rejected, have faults, bugs, just the random gremlins that come with this. If everything went perfect, there'll be 1,100 of these things in boxes given out to customers. Otherwise, there'll be at least 1,000. So it sounds like they've got about another 150 left. Now, for me, it's time for difficult decisions because I am not only out of room, I'm like over out of room. I'm about to start putting games upstairs in different bedrooms. I want to put one in the kitchen by the dining table so when I'm cooking, I can go over there and play some games. It's going to get crazy, and I'm trying to stop myself from getting there. And so as I look around at this baller lineup of top-shelf games, I've got to turn and burn on some of them. I just sold Godzilla. That was difficult, but it had to be done. Difficult decisions need to be made. And so my Cherry Labyrinth with 122 plays with a topper, nipper, shooter, rod, extra back glass, Rocket City pinball start button. I'll throw in some pinball feet. I'll throw in a Don's Pinball Podcast t-shirt. They are listed on Pinside. This one's on Pinside right now. And I've been watching the market, and I've noticed that these have been selling marked pending sale at $11.50 with all the accessories. Now, they're $10.60 for MSRP plus tax plus shipping. And then you're going to want the topper. That's $1,000. you're going to want the alternate back glass it a couple hundred the nipper rod take it leave it it not necessary but it does complete the look You know so fully tricked out you at plus tax plus shipping I do on mine that new basically out of the box, and I'll pallet it and ship it anywhere. Come and pick it up. I'll even deliver locally. I'll even white glove it if you're within 200 miles. Let's do that. If you tell me you hear about it on the podcast, I'll knock $100 off the price. Now it's $11,500 or best offer. I'm a reasonable folk here. You know, I play games, I enjoy them. And then I, in some cases, I trick them out. But Labyrinth comes pretty stacked and loaded already. So here's the thing. If you want a Labyrinth and you're sitting out there, you're on the fence, you're thinking about it, you're about to jump in. If you go ahead and purchase that and you're number 851, it may be six months, it may be 12 months until your game is ready for you. you can go get it today enjoy it and then send it on to somebody else sooner than that skip the line go right now i probably said 11.5 obo because i'm seeing them sell at that price on pin side i am reasonable though i'm open to offers come on let's make a deal um i saw one that just got marked pending that was 12.5 so um i'm trying to come in you know i like to come in just below that kelly blue book so let me know it's freshly posted and i've already got a bunch of messages i got to go through. So if you want for now, go ahead and get you in on some of that. I want to say that the last episode where I started doing this giveaway thing, I had people just email me the word whirlwind. I think it was whirlwind. Just so you had to listen all the way through the podcast to get to the giveaway. And boom, about what about an hour later, the first person emailed me, hey, did I make it? Did I win? Yes, sir, you did. And I've got your mad pinball t shirt already in the mail off to you and I even packed in some extra goodies there. So that was fun. The other thing I was asking for was feedback. Like, I don't know that anybody is doing recorded podcasts like this and doing giveaways at the same time. And the only way I could think of doing that was to put out some sort of code word and have people just email and whoever gets there first gets it. And so was that fun is my question to everybody listening. Is this something that I should continue, I'm getting a lot of stuff that I can give away. I got little tchotchkes and keychains. People send me things when I buy mods from people. A lot of times they'll include an extra one. So I got a lot of stuff that I'm just not going to use and I'm going to get completely overburdened with. And I would like to pass the cool stuff on to you guys. So let me know if you think that's something that's fun. Should I do it in the podcast format? Should we come up with like a Facebook giveaway? Should we do it on the Discord? Keep it behind the Patreon? Do it on the live stream like what works for everybody i want to know i've got a discord and people are adding people are getting added to that every week and we're having some robust discussions and sometimes i show back up and i haven't even been there all day and like whole conversations have taken place so we've got a cool platform to just hang out that's not facebook it's over on the discord um i'll post a link up on the uh the show notes actually if you look at the last show on the show notes that's posted there on spotify there is a link to the discord so you go in there and Let's have some fun. The Patreon people know where to find me there. Otherwise, we have great discussions on the Facebook page. Was there anything else I wanted to get to? Oh, just one thing. How about public appearances? I'm super psyched for this, man. I've been up all night. I've been up all day. I'm about to drive to Minneapolis. Maybe I'll swing by Lit tonight. But tomorrow, I'm flying out to Seattle, Washington, and then on up to Bellingham to the 1UP Lounge to unbox, as long as everything works and, God willing, in the creek don't rise. we're going to be unboxing my Jaws premium that I built and I sold to the one-up lounge in Bellingham, Washington. Um, and I can't wait. It's my first time going out there to that location. And if everything works out great, then on Thursday in the evening, I think there's going to be a tournament. I will be there. And so will my awesome Jaws premium resplendent in a Jaws chicken bucket, which I still got, I got a new crop of those. Um, I completely sold out of all the ones that I had built. And so I just got a new crop of 20 more of them. So get them while they're hot, man. If you want a bucket of chicken for your jaws, if you want it for your rear view mirror, if you want it for your medicine cabinet, I don't need you do whatever you want to do with this thing, man. I don't need to know, you know, what's in your dark twisted mind, but it is a 3d printed bucket of chicken. Go hang earrings, nose ring, do whatever you want with it. Wear around your neck like you're in run DMC or something, or like your flavor flay walking around with a chicken bucket. Completely up to you. They're $25 delivered in the US. Add an extra five bucks for Canada because it probably cost me an extra 10 bucks to ship to Canada. And I'm not going to make you shoulder all that maple burden. I'm just happy to get chicken across the border. All right. So that's kicking off. So the schedule is as such. Wednesday is tomorrow. I'm flying out. And then I believe Thursday is the day that we're unboxing this thing. Friday, I'm somewhere between Washington and Portland, Oregon, because Saturday I'm going to be at next level and pretty much going to be there all day. And from everything I've heard and everything I've seen, this place is completely amazing. And I'm just going to be lost in there, hanging out, playing pinball. I heard there's food trucks around. So if you're in the PDX region, swing on by. I'll be there all day Saturday at next level, as long as everything works out. Otherwise follow the Facebook page because I'll post updates of where I'm at. And it's just a cycle for me between like the Facebook and the YouTube and going to Discord and trying to coordinate everything. I'm sure some of it gets lost, but if nothing else, if you want to know something or you want to reach out, Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com is a great way to do that. All right, I think the pasta is just about done. I'm going to crawl myself upstairs. Arigato gozaimasu. Minna-san, konnichiwa. Have a good day. Be cool to each other. Man, hit me with that outro music. I didn't even get to the new Looney Tunes code. There's two new cartoons in there. Dude, now I've got to go play Looney Tunes for two hours and getting Cartoon Land. Which one's better? I don't know, man. I've got them both, so I don't have to decide. Quit asking me. Get a Looney Tunes. Get a TCM. Get them both. Whatever you want. You want a labyrinth? Let me know. Later.