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Episode 182 - Where Are You?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 41m·analyzed·Dec 12, 2022
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Analysis

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TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers analyzes Spooky's Scooby-Doo reveal with concerns about wide body choice and playfield design.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss Spooky Pinball's newly revealed Scooby-Doo Where Are You pinball machine, analyzing the playfield layout, design choices, and feature set. They express concerns about the wide body decision, obfuscated playfield elements, double outlanes, and apron ball lock aesthetics, while acknowledging positive aspects like the colorful design and custom sculpts. The conversation includes details on pricing tiers (1,969 unit limit), voice actors, and design team.

Key Claims

  • Spooky Pinball limited Scooby-Doo production to 1,969 units across all three tiers

    high confidence · Dennis states explicitly: 'they've announced a limit this limit is 1969 units' and explains the production model allows any blend of the three editions totaling 1,969.

  • Scooby-Doo is Spooky's first wide body game

    high confidence · Dennis: 'The game is a wide body, which I believe is a first for spooky.'

  • Spooky designers justified wide body by taking a standard playfield and adding sides rather than designing from scratch

    medium confidence · Dennis paraphrases from Bug/Spooky Luke interview: 'they just took one of their standard body play fields dropped it in to you know essentially dropped it into a wide body cab and then added on to the sides'

  • The game features double outlanes on the left side

    high confidence · Tony directly observes and states: 'double outline double out lanes on the left wow most people do not like double outlanes'

  • Voice cast includes Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Kate Micucci, and Gray Griffin

    high confidence · Dennis lists confirmed voice actors from the official specs

Notable Quotes

  • “They're being cute with it.”

    Tony @ N/A — Reference to Spooky's pattern of using thematic numbers (1,969 = Scooby-Doo debut year) for production limits; Dennis has expressed displeasure with this marketing strategy

  • “I'm worried about a lot of the choices in this game, not necessarily due to the choices themselves, so much as due to Spooky's quality control issues.”

    Tony @ N/A — Expresses broader concern about Spooky's manufacturing reliability beyond just design philosophy

  • “I don't personally like to play most wide bodies very much... even people like pat lawler who have made some fairly popular wide bodies like Twilight Zone in particular, who have since commentated saying that it's not a healthy practice to use wide bodies, that it doesn't help the design process.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Cites industry authority (Pat Lawler) critiquing wide bodies as design approach

  • “The problem of what to do with the space is solved whether or not it's enjoyable you know remains to be [seen]”

    Dennis @ N/A — Summarizes design compromise concerns about double outlanes as solution to wide body layout problem

  • “I think it wasn't necessarily the best of design choices... I also worry, like with the crossbow on Walking Dead. Anything that's up in that area, I always worry about having issues with it breaking and stuff. And like I said before, stuff breaking on a spooky game is the rule.”

    Tony @ N/A — Critiques apron ball lock aesthetic and expresses durability concerns specific to Spooky's manufacturing history

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyScooby-Doo Where Are You PinballgameBug (Corwin Emery)personSpooky LukepersonLuke PeterspersonDJ (Spooky)personMatt FrankpersonJeff ZornowpersonBrad DukepersonBill Rude

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky increasing production limits: Scooby-Doo at 1,969 units represents increase from approximately 1,750 for Halloween and Ultraman (~200 unit increase)

    high · Dennis: 'when we think about because what was the halloween plus ultraman that was about 1750... they've gone up here again about another 200 ish'

  • ?

    community_signal: Scooby-Doo topper features five playable characters with unique abilities, allowing up to five-player gameplay with character selection mechanic similar to 'choose your house' system

    medium · Dennis: 'five player gameplay because each of the people with the little scooby crew is playable and is supposed to from i heard in an interview uh bring their own unique abilities so like a choose your house sort of thing'

  • ?

    product_concern: Playfield obfuscation concerns: drop targets below habit trails are hard to see; inserts covered by toys and upper playfield; double outlet visible only as practical rather than aesthetic choice

    high · Dennis: 'I find it weird that the the drop targets on the left are pretty much invisible below the habit trails'; Tony: 'I don't personally like uh obfuscated playfields it's one of my biggest critiques about popeye'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Wide body design compromises standard playfield geometry, forcing ball play into added width zone and resulting in lower playfield issues (double outlanes) that indicate design constraint rather than deliberate choice

    high · Dennis: 'you've compromised the standard geometry already to make it a wide body which means you will suffer the consequences of going wide body'; Tony: 'once you get lower and lower, how do you access that width?'

  • ?

Topics

Wide body playfield design philosophy and trade-offsprimarySpooky Pinball's production limits and numbering strategyprimaryPlayfield layout obfuscation and shot visibility concernsprimaryDouble outlanes design decision and player receptionprimarySpooky Pinball quality control and durability issuessecondaryPricing tiers and deposit structuresecondaryVoice acting cast and talent involvementsecondaryPinball show reveals and reveal strategymentioned

Sentiment

mixed(0.35)— Hosts acknowledge positive design elements (colorful layout, custom sculpts, voice cast) but express significant concerns about wide body decision, playfield obfuscation, double outlanes, apron ball lock aesthetics, and Spooky's manufacturing reliability. Cautious optimism tempered by design philosophy reservations.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.305

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 11th. This is episode 182. I am Tony. I'm Dennis.
0:26
We've been so busy. We have. what's been going on um life it feeds on life don't you know yes i do now know i guess actually what i should do is open with the patreon thanking our patreon members remember you can always join the patreon at eclectic gamers podcast at oh yeah wait no that's not right you can join you can join it at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers i got a little too cute with saying it like the email address. Anyway, we have had a number of people join us since the last episode. We thank you all so very much. In fact, we are recording on new audio equipment thanks to the support and the power of Patreon. So actually, I had someone comment on our EGP Facebook when I showed a picture of this. We're using the Zoom PodTrack P4, which I think has been out for a couple of years now, but I didn't know anything about Zoom other than the totally separate company that does web conferencing software. And I had someone, several people say they love Zoom products, that they work really, really well. I had someone else actually say they were really excited to actually see someone that did Patreon that actually demonstrably bought something that was related to helping the show. And as they put it, not just using it for date night. Well, I mean, everybody, we've talked about it often enough, we've done most of our work through a virtual mixing board and that has had limitations. We've had issues in the past with audio dropouts. We've had times where we've had to make fairly decent edits or even some re-records to deal with it. And the sound issue is something we've always tried to have a pretty decent sound with. And hopefully this will just make things better. That's my hope. And we're using dynamic mics now. I actually have two more, excuse me, we're using, yeah, I also have two more condenser mics that are XLR that I got. So because this can support for people, which we have, actually, I think we've gone as high as five people in person one time. We did that one time. I thought we had six. Did we? There was the one EG E3 EGP. Nope, it was five. It was five. Where I remember having five around the table. So, this can support four mics, which, again, when we looked at a lot of mixing boards,
person
Frank Welkerperson
Matthew Lillardperson
Kate Micucciperson
Gray Griffinperson
Zach Minneyperson
Pat Lawlerperson
Dennisperson
Tonyperson
Cincinnati Showevent
Alice Cooper Nightmare Castlegame
Nap Arcadecompany
Back Alley Creationscompany
Walking Dead (Premium LE)game

design_philosophy: Spooky Pinball's wide body approach: standard playfield with added sides rather than from-scratch wide body design to maintain speed

medium · Dennis paraphrases Bug/Spooky Luke: 'they just took one of their standard body play fields dropped it in to you know essentially dropped it into a wide body cab and then added on to the sides'

  • ?

    event_signal: Scooby-Doo theme teaser revealed at Cincinnati pinball show before full gameplay reveal, representing pinball company show reveal activity after period of reduced show announcements

    high · Dennis: 'They actually did the teaser reveal where it didn't really show anything about the pinball, just revealed what the theme was. They actually did that teaser at Cincinnati... a pinball company actually did some level of reveal at a show because it's been quite a while since we've seen that'

  • ?

    community_signal: Zach Minney (Flippin' Out Pinball podcast host) interviewed Bug and Spooky Luke about Scooby-Doo design philosophy, specifically wide body approach

    medium · Dennis: 'I actually listened to an interview over on the other podcast that I co-host... where Zach Minney interviewed Bug and Spooky Luke about this game. And he asked about the wide body aspect.'

  • ?

    announcement: Spooky Pinball officially reveals Scooby-Doo Where Are You pinball machine with full specs, pricing, and production limit of 1,969 units

    high · Dennis: 'But Spooky Pinball has finally revealed Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo Pinball.' Game sales opened December 9, 2022 with three pricing tiers ($7,769 SE, $8,769 Bloodsuckers, $9,769 Collectors)

  • ?

    product_strategy: Scooby-Doo features three pricing tiers with feature matrix distribution across Standard Edition, Bloodsuckers Edition, and Collectors Edition with $1,000-$2,000 deposit requirements

    high · Dennis details: 'three price tiers. They have their standard edition... $7,769 pin... $1,000 non-refundable... The Bloodsuckers Edition... $8,769 with a $1,500 deposit... Collectors Edition is $9,769 requiring a $2,000 deposit.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Apron ball lock design aesthetic criticized as questionable; durability risk concern based on Spooky's historical manufacturing issues and precedent of premium LE components breaking

    high · Tony: 'I don't think it is very pretty... stuff breaking on a spooky game is the rule. So anything extra could be a concern.'; Reference to Walking Dead crossbow durability issues on Premium LE

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community perception shift: designers taking wide body design seriously with intentional layout philosophy rather than afterthought, but community skepticism about execution effectiveness

    medium · Dennis discussion of designer rationale for wide body approach; Tony's counter-analysis showing geometry compromises indicate execution issues despite intentional design philosophy

    • 2:43
    it's, you gotta go really big, usually, to get, because most of the boards are, like, designed for DJs, and they only maybe want two mic inputs, and they're mostly using other things to do the wiki wiki wow right so anyway the extra stuff yeah and so this was a lot more approachable and small yes it's like the i'd say it's a bit bigger than a smartphone much thicker but like lengthwise it's not quite pocket size but smaller than a tablet yeah so i would you know what i would say it's just a hair smaller than like a kendall there you go okay Yeah, but much thicker. Yeah, oh yeah. Because we've got to get those XLRs in there. Yeah. So anyway, so thank you very much. We do appreciate it, and we hope that the sound quality rewards you. I've tested the equipment before, but I haven't gone through and done a full edit. I went and I did do some compression and dynamic adjustments and stuff to see how the multi-tracks work. Right. Because that's another thing that the virtual mixing board would not do for us. we had the struggle that we had was for those that are curious about the sausage making is even with all the audio we had to balance it as much as possible through the mixing board because it all came out as one track which in theory because we're looking at meters just like i can see meters now and i can hear you now i mean i had the visual meters and we would do like a little record snippet just see how we sounded but of course the problem was with the virtual mixing board is there was latency if you put headphones to it. So we couldn't listen to ourselves like we are right now. So if, for example, and I'm the only one who could see it because it's on my computer. So if Tony moves away from the mic, he doesn't know he's away from the mic anymore in a way that he, like right now, we're using headphones because there's no latency. And he can hear that he can hear himself. Right, I can now hear the difference between this and the difference between this. Right. Which is quite a noticeable difference. Right, and so then you're like, oh yeah, no, I've gone too far away. So I either need to lean forward or I need to move the microphone closer because these are and these are very, you know, they need to be about six inches is the is the size distance that they recommend for dynamic mics for this sort of stuff. But it's when you're monitoring, it's easy to all of a sudden forget that. Oh, wait, I'm moving around. Right. Because I do like on a Zoom call. I move around all the time. Don't think about it. Right. Well, that's the thing. I mean, it's like I am a I'm a hand talker. Uh, same way when I'm doing like public speaking, uh, I like to move. I like to walk around and, and, and talk with my hands and stuff. That's just how I am. And even when I'm recording, I tend to move around. I'll look with different directions. I'll look at different things, my head bobs and stuff. And it's always, so there's always some stuff. We'll see how it goes. I'm very excited. Yes, I'm helpful. So anyway, so that's why we, that's what we've done with the support that we've had thus far. And as I noted, I needed to thank all of the, all of the new patrons like we like to do. so at the high support tier that's the ten dollar a month tier that we offer uh mike has joined the patreon and then one of our patreon subscribers rodney upgraded from the intermediate tier to the high tier well thank you very much thank you for that we have three new intermediate tier individuals ari chris and rick and we actually had someone do a custom pledge i didn't even know that was possible i didn't either i had to go and look because i was confused because i i saw and his name is is aven i hope i pronounced it right i think he's he's from a scandinavian country so uh that's at least the money came from a scandinavian country i think it was norwegian so i think it's pronounced aven uh feel free to write in if i am incorrect but yeah if you actually go to subscribe and you see the tiers you can actually scroll down and there's a custom pledge option and so i had to check to make sure that custom pledge people because they don't fall into a tier like do they get the stuff like can they read the patreon they can as long as i put it as long as i don't assign it to a specific tier all patron all patrons can read it so and that's how we have done everything everything we share uh and i've had a lot of posts about uh like two with a lot of comments i should say about scooby-doo recently on the patreon so which by the way tony hasn't read those because the way it's all set up there's only the one administrative account so you'd have to sign in as the egp account which i can get you that information so you can do it. Because it's tied to the EGP. Yeah, because I was going to, either that or my other thought was I might just go, are you going to be a supporter? I'm going to become a patron of myself. I'll have to thank you. I will self-pay myself. To talk to yourself. To talk to myself. Well, it'll give me access, and that way we can keep things separate between which one of us is the one talking. Yeah, I thought about just going in so I could put things in under my name because I'm signing everything. So I'm trying, I don't every comment, but I sign like all the posts so they know, oh yeah, Dennis wrote this. They don't want to blame someone. But they forget sometimes. So no, I just need to do that. I just haven't set up an account with them yet. So that's what I've been doing with my time was working on all of this. But what have you been playing? Anything? I've been playing games. Well, actually, like normal, most of my stuff has been work related. We've been dealing with a lot of projects lately. so that's what most of my time has actually been geared towards but i have re-entered the dark times let's go with that i re-entered the dark times um i downloaded the last weekend world of tanks and have begun playing again i've not played world of tanks in like six years and I did not realize how long ago I originally signed up for World of Tanks. So when I signed back in, I received a bunch of stuff that had gathered up on my account over the years that I hadn't logged in, which included a bunch of gifts that are based around how long you've played. So I got all these gifts, all these extra tanks, all this extra special stuff. And then I also got a bunch of special things I could put on my account, like emblems and stuff, because I fell into the class of player known as a beta tester, because I beta tested World of Tanks back in 2011. Oh, wow. So that was kind of a surprise to me. So I've been getting back into that. I have successfully gotten to the point where I've had people yell at me and tell me that I need to learn how to play, and I don't know how to play. And then I'm a terrible person, and then when the match ends, I had ten times their damage caused because I'm the one who doesn't know how to play. Wow. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't muted the – I'm pretty sure the guy probably let me know that he slept with my mother at some point. So did all the old Overwatch 1 players transition over to World of Tanks? No, no, I think it's just the people that have always traditionally been there. Oh, has it always been a toxic place? It's not been – there's always been a few people. In all honesty, it's nowhere near as toxic as Overwatch ever was. Even back when I played before, it wasn't near as toxic as Overwatch got. You were far more likely to see people telling you, you know, good luck, have fun, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, than you would to have the people calling out bad stuff. They're definitely the minority Of the group overall I've also been playing some Warhammer 40k Battle Sector that I picked up During the Last big Steam sale It's like a XCOM-ish Warhammer game So It's been a lot of fun I like that style game It doesn't feel to be quite as RNG hates you as XCOM is traditionally, but it's been fun.
    10:37
    If you like 40k and you like XCOM style games. Cool. Alright. Well, I've still been working on Far Cry 6 and doing some I've taken Fall Guys out of rotation. They've started their third season. Now, I did not buy the pass this time because I was having too many dailies. I was feeling obligated. Like, Overwatch has daily, which you usually can get done within three quick play matches so that one's not too bad but with fall guys fall guys could add another hour because they got to the point uh where they were not giving everyone the same dailies so if i wanted to do it as a as a group everyone would have different dailies and it'd be like okay so we're gonna work on everyone's dailies how many of them are solo how many of them anyway didn't really matter i got my adorable little xenomorph skin so it's fine you got what you were after you got yours you're done i got that one like near the very start and then i went and got the stupid like dj kitty cat outfit which i don't like why not because it's too it's just too adorable like i want him to look like dorky you don't like cuteness dennis i don't apparently not not for make you make your dress up that's for sure so you know what's not sad the pinball section Are you sure about that? Well, we're going to get into that. Okay. Always exciting. Very exciting. Always gives us something interesting to talk about and to nitpick. And I'm going to have some photos. I'm looking at some photos over with Nap Arcade of some close-ups of the play field. So you want to navigate there on your tablet so that you can see them as well. You may want to because I did not drop any images into our internal show notes. Excuse me. But Spooky Pinball has finally revealed Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo Pinball. I think it's technically called Scooby-Doo Where Are You Pinball. But I think we're just going to call it Scooby. So now this was sort of interesting.
    12:33
    This is kind of one of those, and it's not, I don't think, particularly surprising, but one of those worst kept secrets in pinball. Like all of the worst kept secrets. Exactly. It was really no worse than any other one. We all knew that they have had Scooby for a long time. That was all the reports. Scooby was what was coming next. Now, they actually, Spooky, did the teaser reveal where it didn't really show anything about the pinball, just revealed what the theme was. They actually did that teaser at Cincinnati, which was interesting for two reasons. One, just that a pinball company actually did some level of reveal at a show because it's been quite a while since we've seen that. And I know that comes up for discussion a lot with pinball enthusiasts because some of them really feel like shows should be where games are revealed. And others probably are the ones that are more business sensitive or like, well, there's no real like financial reason to launch at a show anymore. So, you know, most of like Stern doesn't really do that anymore. um i jjp i think kind of did that in in what was it wonka in terms of like their the gameplay reveal was at a show but anyway so that the other aspect though the second thing is pincinatti is not all that large of a show like in the world of shows it's not an expo or tpf it's a i've heard it's a very good show i've heard the report that might be one we consider going to i will say it's got the best name Cincinnati is so good I don't want to overly praise their cleverness because I like to think it kind of wrote itself it did but oh it's so good it just rolls off the tongue it's just oh and you know it's just perfect oh you should go to Cincinnati dude where is it I wonder if they just give you the look like never mind go to York where is it so the teaser came out there then in very quick fashion the game was fully revealed I actually have links in the show notes to several items so listeners can go ahead and follow along I have a link to the teaser trailer I have a link to the gameplay video that they kind of put out. And then I have a... I shouldn't say the teaser. I have the one where it shows... No, I guess it was the teaser. It shows the specs and stuff on it. And then also the link to Nap Arcade will be included as well, ultimately.
    15:13
    And in our internal notes, Tony, it's not showing up, but I wrote it on my desktop. I probably just didn't sign in, so don't worry. Don't worry, listeners. You're talking about all these things, and I'm like... I'm checking right now, too. I didn't write them on this. Sometimes my I do most of my editing on my other computer, but sometimes my Microsoft account doesn't log in, probably because I have my work one and my personal one that I sign in on. So I need to just sync it, and then we'll be fine. But regardless, it will get in there, folks. Don't you worry. But I'm going to leave this in so that they know how much we care and how sausagey the sausages are.
    15:47
    Okay. So game sales opened up on Friday. That was December 9th, 2022, for those listening in the future. and spooky indicated yet again like pretty much all of their pins really everything aside from tna really uh they've announced a limit this limit is 1969 units yep they they uh they've upped the number again so when we think about because what was the halloween plus ultraman that was about 1750 i think wasn't it 500 ultraman and 1250 halloweens i think it was around that so all right they've gone up here again about another 200 ish didn't go all the way to 2000 but They're being cute with it. Exactly. They're being cute, and we know how I feel about that. Yes. You don't like cute things. Yes. So anyway, three price tiers. They have their standard edition. For those that aren't familiar, the way their numbers work is they set their limit. So the 1,969, that can be a blend of any of these pen types. They will just go until they sell 1,969. $7,969. It doesn't matter if they're 1,900 SEs or if it's like 500 SEs. It can be anything. It's part of the mix of the count. So the standard edition is a $7,769 pin. It requires a $1,000 non-refundable, non-transferable to other games deposit.
    17:09
    I should note, you are allowed to sell your spot. They did clarify that. You can sell your spot to someone else, but they wanted to make clear, if you decide you want another spooky game, You can't transfer from Scooby to grab a... You need to sell your spot and buy a new spot. Okay. The Bloodsuckers Edition, this is the middle tier. That's $8,769 with a $1,500 deposit. And then the Collectors Edition is $9,769 requiring a $2,000 deposit.
    17:39
    They do have feature matrixes out, which if we want to, we can go over. and I was going to discuss a little bit about the strategy because I think it's consistent with the strategy they've done before running through what the game has it's got an upper play field something that we know Spooky has been relying on a lot lately it's got apron ball locks with questionable aesthetic design it's got upper flipper diverter so the left flipper on the upper play field consists of like it looks like a bookcase and it functions I guess as a diverter and as a flipper five ball mystery machine lock 16 custom injection molded sculpts from i believe back alley creations topper it allows five player gameplay because each of the people with the little scooby crew is playable and is supposed to from i heard in an interview uh bring their own unique abilities so like a choose your house sort of thing and let's see lots of known scooby voice actors, I'd say. Frank Welker is probably the most famous one, just in terms of the sort of breadth of library he has as a voice actor on so many different properties, including Scooby-Doo. Matthew Lillard, who played Shaggy in the live action. Kate, and I'm not sure if this is how we say her last name, but I think it's Makuchi. And then Gray Griffin. So those were the voice actors I saw confirmed. The art, three different people are working on various aspects of the art. So Matt Frank, Jeff Zornow, and Brad Duke. I know at least two of those have done other spooky properties before. We've got animations are by Bill Rude. The design of the game itself is Spooky Luke and Corwin Emery, or he's commonly known as Bug. Software is done by Spooky DJ, but the rules are by Luke Peters. And the game is a wide body, which I believe is a first for spooky. so okay that's the the quick basics i have some imagery loaded up and i think everything is now properly synced oh we can go ahead and have a conversation i don't know where we want to start maybe let's start with the with the play field if you if you have it loaded tony so you can see it i don't know if you have or haven't but i'm not syncing for some reason but i've got it called up elsewhere okay so i mean when i when i look at the play field my initial reaction is this looks like a lot safer of a layout than halloween and ultraman ran with which i think is a smart move yes no it it is uh i find it interesting that it really feels like they're pushing the villains. They seem to be very prominent in the artwork on the play field and the topper and such. Yeah.
    20:34
    I see a lot of inserts to track things. The way that it looks to me is I'm going to I hate to speculate on the rules without really seeing much play yet. I did watch a little bit of video. They put out a short video with gameplay, as I had noted. And so, you know, I bet I don't have a feel for the rules yet. I'm kind of wondering if this is going to be like a woodchopper approach where it's kind of like you make three shots and it gets you something. I see a lot of icons that look to me like maybe they're designed like that with, you know, multiple lights on the shots, which is something we've seen other games run. I mean, that's kind of like how Metallica, I feel, is, is you kind of, you know, chop a particular shot or attack from Mars. You know, you maybe do a shot three times and that gets you a step towards total annihilation, for example. So there are things like that. I – very colorful, of course. You know, they've, like, colored the habit trails. So you've got, like, blue, green, orange going on. So I'm assuming those all are corresponding to a particular character or something along those lines. So that could be pretty clever. uh when i see this and i'm not unique in this uh i've had several people either mention on various discords i'm on or message me saying that they look at this and it feels to them like a modified alice cooper nightmare castle in terms of how it's configured you know they're not wrong so i mean i see a number of uh the lower section i think we could relatively fairly describe as fanish in terms of its configuration. There's really nothing in the middle. It's wide open sorts of stuff. There are a lot of obfuscated shots once you get towards the back because they're either covered up by toys or they're covered up by the upper play field. It did look to me, based off of watching the shots actually being made in that brief gameplay video, that there are a lot of horseshoe shots that just sort of whip around and then come right back. I'm not sure how it's going to play uh looking at it like i i think this is going to play probably faster than halloween i i hesitate though because they went wide body on it right and normally that'd be slower right your typical expectation i find it weird that the the drop targets on the left are pretty much invisible below the habit trails they're there but i worry that they're going to be very hard to see in gameplay i agree in fact uh there are other ones that are there are inserts all the way on the far left like at the double out lane throw which okay i mean i don't again this is a you know this is a gameplay play critique of course but really a double outline double out lanes on the left wow most people do not like double outlanes um but anyway there are inserts there they're also covered up um uh there's one on the right as well that's covered up uh i mean maybe it because it's like over the outlanes that's less important perhaps i'm wondering if there's an insert though further up on the far left above the outlanes where it looks like there's something that says yikes is that an insert it's the same color as the inserts but yeah no there's some of the stuff that i think is a little obfuscated i don't personally like uh obfuscated playfields it's one of my biggest critiques about popeye i mean now to be fair popeye is a terrible game that deserves to be criticized even barry osler criticizes popeye but um here's something that you may not have noticed before tony but it's an interesting thing to look at are you looking at the full playfield shot yeah i am okay are you looking at the they have an action button now i uh i think that might be a first for spooky you see the action button i do all right is it centered it looks like it's off to the right so you see i'm sure the action button it appears centered on the lock bar but that's not centered with the apron right because of the shooting drop yes because of how they've chosen to uh i mean you could still have the trough off there and then have moved the text over to be aligned with the with the button if you had wanted to though right i mean the apron still runs the same length i'm just assuming this is a side effect of the wide body approach now here's one of the things i want to talk a little bit about the wide body decision what what do you think about going wide by do you think this is a good i don't think it was a good choice by them okay because one of the things i've heard from i don't remember i read it i guess uh from someone is there there was a discussion on a discord about that and it was okay well what was one of the biggest complaints a lot of people had about Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle The main thing was the rules are fun game shots are way too tight So we kind of doing an ACNC layout Why not go wide and that opens up those shots. Plus, I haven't gone and done a cross-comparison. I'm not sure there are as many shots on this one either, so they might have actually reduced the number of and added width to make them easier to complete.
    25:52
    But you think it's a mistake. You, Designer Tony, think it's a mistake. That's going to be your new name, Designer Tony.
    26:01
    Here with Designer Tony, we enjoy the finer things in life. But, no, I do. I think that slowing the game down as much as going to wide body is could be a mistake, especially with, how do I want to put it?
    26:24
    I'm worried about a lot of the choices in this game, not necessarily due to the choices themselves, so much as due to Spooky's quality control issues. issues and that that's something we can we can touch on uh one of the things i guess long-time listeners are well familiar with my stance on wide bodies that i generally think that you give up a lot of of superior geometry when you do it i don't personally like to play most wide bodies very much i would defer to even people like pat lawler who have made some fairly popular wide bodies like Twilight Zone in particular, who have since commentated saying that it's not a healthy practice to use wide bodies, that it doesn't help the design process. I actually listened to an interview over on the other podcast that I co-host, though I was not on this episode of the Pinball Show, where Zach Minney interviewed Bug and Spooky Luke about this game. And he asked about the wide body aspect. And one of them, I think it was Bug, but I don't remember. And I probably should have gone back and pulled the exact quote but people can always write into eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com if i'm incorrect but as my as i recall hearing it paraphrasing what they said they did is they just took one of their standard body play fields dropped it in to you know essentially dropped it into a wide body cab and then added on to the sides is how they approached designing a wide body i'm not a pinball designer tony that doesn't sound like the right way to do it that doesn't sound like the right way to do it at all so i the reason they they were explaining that is their argument and i get this argument so i want to share it was they went on to say the reason they say they did it that way is they felt the problem with wide bodies is a problem you very you mentioned right at the start when we brought it up was well they're slow and they don't want their wide body to be slow so their their logic was let's drop in a standard play field and then we'll just add on stuff to the sides and because we've started with the base of a standard it will be able to play fast because we're you know the ball is playing in the standard portion i would agree with that as uh you know that's one of the things i think that makes demolition man work so well is most of the stuff is still essentially like the shots are still sort of standard uh play field with things right the thing is i'm not entirely sure that they've achieved that here like if i look on the right i kind of see it like you see those lights uh to the right of the shooter lane like that's not playable space so they they use that part because they went wide yeah so far so good right because the the shooter lane isn't all the way on the right it's a little bit to the left correct okay but that's not the case on the far left we've got places where the ball goes on the far left in the wide body zone which means you've compromised the standard geometry already to make it a wide body which means you will suffer the consequences of going wide body it's just how it works and it might be worth it uh that you know that's going to be up to you but i mean i Some of the other stuff like the double outlane on the left to me looks like a – that's my biggest complaint with widebodies is once you get lower and lower, how do you access that width? I think designers, even really good ones, struggle mightily with what to do in the lowest sections where there's really no way to shoot it. So you end up sticking in more inlanes or something. Well, in this case, it's like, well, we've got to just drop in two outlines because we want to just have one big one because that's going to look weird. so we'll have two and we'll put two switches there problem solved but is the problem solved the problem of what to do with the space is solved whether or not it's enjoyable you know remains to be yeah we won't know that till we get a hand on it and like always we don't really like to talk about games until we've actually played them but i'm concerned a little bit about that what do you think about the apron ball lock like do you think that's fun it it that It kind of looks neat. I think it's an interesting idea. I think it's something that, done well, could be a lot of fun.
    30:53
    Is this done well? I don't know. I don't think it is very pretty. Let's put it that way. The aesthetic. The aesthetics kind of. I got to assume it was a joke, given how they're pointed at certain characters' faces and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little risque. A little, yeah. We'll go with that. I think it wasn't necessarily the best of design choices. I also worry, like with the crossbow on Walking Dead. Oh, the Premium LE. On the Premium LE Walking Dead. Anything that's up in that area, I always worry about having issues with it breaking and stuff. And like I said before, stuff breaking on a spooky game is the rule. So anything extra could be a concern. But, yeah, no, there's definitely some design choices there that are suspect.
    31:58
    The toys, the back alley creation sculpts, those all look good, as they always pretty much do to me. Last thing I think I'd touch on on the layout for the time being is the upper play field. Any thoughts on that? I don't think there needs to be an upper playfield, but I've gotten to the point where I think that about pretty much everything. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a big upper playfield fan. I will say that, I mean, at least this one is sizable. It does look like there are things to do on it. I think the bookcase flipper, actually, that's the one component I think looks ugly, but I think the concept behind it is interesting. I like the concept. Yeah, I think, and seeing it played, it looked like it was pretty functional. So, like, it looked like that was working as intended. So, I mean, that part's kind of cool. Again, it's the configuration up there. Once you are up there, it looks fairly fan-ish, but it's an upper play field with limited space. I don't know what else you're really going to be able to do. Yeah, there's not a whole lot you're going to be able to do. There's not a lot of... So, those are the main things about the layout.
    33:05
    What do you think about the pricing? I will be honest. Well, I mean, I'm always honest. But in this case, it's surprisingly honest. It's cheaper than I thought it would be. I honestly, the fact that the CE is under 10 grand is not what I was expecting with the way prices have gone with all games recently. That's a good point. So as noted, the standard edition at $77.69, just noting they didn't – someone else has made one. I should have saved it. They actually made it in a feature matrix because they just kind of listed it out, which – this is a total nitpick because it didn't affect the game. But please, I get that it's thematic, but don't do your listings in the Scooby font. It's hard to read. It's not Comic Sans, but it's close. It's hard to read. Anyway, so the standard edition features were flat black, powder coat, and Mystery Machine cabinet art. Then at $8,769 is the Bloodsucker edition. That's got Mystery Machine cabinet art, clear plastic protectors, interior graphics, knocker kit, shaker kit, interactive RGB speaker lights, target decals, powder coated to match bill acceptor ready door. Doesn't include the acceptor. RGB LED action button, metallic flake powder coat, laser cut speaker grills, flipper button protective armor, numbered Bloodsucker Edition plaque, and five metallic flake habit trails. So there's a lot more in the Bloodsucker aesthetically for an additional $1,000, right? Yeah. And then for the collector's edition, which is $1,000 more, so $9,769, custom art package, ghoulish green plastic protectors, interior graphics, knocker, shaker, interactive speaker lights, custom zombie chasing Scooby speaker grills, target decals, ghoulish green powder coat, RGB LED multilayered villain topper, the laser cut custom creeper armor, custom Scooby – I'm not going to read the rest of them. There's a lot. So I knew that the collectors was going to be under $10,000 because I had seen something about that they weren't going to take it up over that. So that part didn't surprise me. Here's what I think. I think the surprising part was the price of the standard being – I mean especially given where Stern Pros are at now. This is not that different.
    35:25
    And so that's the part that surprised me. But this is – and this is standard for how Spooky works. they've aesthetic stacked the upper model so much that I think people see the standard and think, oh, this pricing is really good. And then they feel compelled to get the CE anyway, where it's nice that it's still under $10,000. I don't know, though, if I would deem it a $10,000 or $9,700 game because it's mostly just aesthetic stuff. Like you're not getting new mechs. Right. I think that the majority of pinball purchasers will feel differently than that. They'll do it for the aesthetics. This is pinball. I do think, regardless of what you feel about the strategy, I do think the strategy will be effective. I'm very confident that when it is all said and done, Spooky sells more CEs than any other model. So the method works. A hundred percent. I don't know if we really need to talk too much about the deposit system. This is not different than what they've done before. I'm not a fan of it, so I don't ever participate in non-refundable deposits unless the game's ready to – because basically I just want to pay for the game and get it. Right. Which is what I did with a spooky iBot, but that was still subject to this model. They've done this for years sort of approach. Yeah, we've talked about it in the past. So I don't really see a new need to touch on it further. I had projected that this game would sell out day one. I don't believe it has. Really? I tried to check yesterday because it went on sale Friday. They apparently had website difficulties, like the website, just too much traffic. And the website kept going down. And then they got it back up and stabilized. and I saw someone ask them on their Facebook, are you sold out yet? And they said no. And then I didn't see anything new. And I think they would have announced if it was sold out. So as near as I could tell, it didn't sell out in the first day. Maybe it sold out at this point. They did expand their distributors. Like Zach with Flippin' Out Pinball is an official Spooky distributor now. I know he announced he got a higher allotment of Scoobies. He sold his pretty quick, whatever number he had, and then he got more that he was allowed to sell.
    37:53
    So, I mean, there were a lot of people that jumped right away because clearly it was crashing the website. And now buying through Spooky, I believe that will require – again, we don't have to dive into it. I think you had to be a Fang Club member if you wanted to buy at this point through them, which is their paid subscription service, which gives you kind of like right of first refusal basically sort of thing. uh so i think really the last thing to talk about is what you've tried to bring up several times and i've kept shoo shooing it off until the end of this and that is the qc the quality control and i have and maybe this is why i was wrong about the day one sellout because i have often criticized i think it's fair to say criticized pinheads for having short-term memory loss issues and they just seem to forget all these complaints they have with manufacturers. And then they go ahead and they see the new theme and they're like, got to buy, got to buy, got to buy. And that definitely still happens. It happens with every licensed theme that's out there. However, there has been a lot of discussion about the quality control issues.
    39:03
    Halloween and Ultraman, of course, we heard a lot. This has been true for every single spooky. Right. And I know there have been some spooky fanboys is what I would call them that used to go around and say, well, I've never had any problems. And that may very well be true. We know our operators in the area had a lot of problems with their spookies. I haven't had a tremendous number of problems with my TNA, but I have had to work on things more so than some other games that I have had.
    39:32
    I actually did this morning pop into the TNA 2.0 thread because I saw it was sort of bumped to the top. Most of that was discussion about problems. And I actually had someone, I think it was one, maybe it was more than one person, report that, yeah, the reports are TNA 2.0 has more QC issues than 1.0 did. Wow. And they didn't sell out of the 2.0s. Right. And I'm wondering if maybe that coupled with these prices are higher than Halloween and Ultraman. So I'm wondering if the higher prices, the QC concerns that you've raised, and whether you all listening personally love Halloween and Ultraman or don't, market reality is those games fell like stones in a pond. You have to take a huge bath on those if you want to sell them. Yeah. It's a concern. I don't know. And your mentioning of the QC is definitely what would be the biggest thing for me about adopting another spooky title in my house is I'm getting old, Tony. I don't really want to work on new games out of the box to try and make them functional. And I listened to the interview that they did with Zach to try and see, like, they – I didn't hear anything that, like, gave me confidence or made me fearful. It's just I didn't really hear anything that made me think, like, they figured it out yet. So what are your thoughts on the QC? Because you've clearly wanted to discuss it for a bit. I mean, it's at the point where I – let me be super – I think I've been super transparent, but let me be ultra super transparent. Of all the quote-unquote major manufacturers, they have the worst reputation for build quality, and it seems like they have done very little to resolve that. What are your thoughts? Not only have they done very little to resolve that, but now they're putting out a new game that, because it's a wide body, has even more stuff in it to go wrong. because that's the correct answer to dealing with your QC problems is to make something that is more likely to have even more problems to deal with. The fact that there are this many releases in and are still having, some of the problems that you hear about are just silly. games a few releases ago that were where they had just screws just wood screws into a playfield that just backed out and fell that's the kind of thing that you wouldn't expect in this day and age the sheer amount of stuff that just breaks or or goes wrong i think that for a company that is so well viewed as the boutique company, they should also have the highest quality standard as a boutique. They shouldn't have the lowest qualities.
    42:41
    They should be putting out the best machines because they are a boutique. They are putting out limited edition runs of small, special things, and the quality should be absolutely as high as possible.
    42:54
    And they're not that. And I think every time they put out a release where they don't make becoming that high-level quality their primary goal is a problem. They should be the Lamborghini or the Ferrari. They don't need to be the Hyundai. You can't put out Lamborghini and Ferrari numbers with Hyundai quality.
    43:21
    That's not what your goal should be, to be fair. I own a Hyundai. So it's actually been great. But it's an analogy. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that this sort of brings up for me is, and you really focused on boutique, but, you know, I'm not even sure how accurate it is anymore. And that could be another aspect into the purchasing. This is almost 2,000 units. This isn't the 90 – I mean, 2,000 units is a lot of pinball, and I think people are – I mean, that was one of my responses, and I wasn't the first one to make it was, do you really need to jump on Spooky Scooby-Doo if you're unsure at this point? With nearly 2,000 units being made, you're going to find these pretty easily. I mean, there aren't very many companies that put out 2,000 pins of something anymore. It's not that common. I know pinball has had a resurgence, but 2,000 is a lot of units. It really is a lot. Well, which brings the question up. Should they have remained at their old kind of levels, concentrated on moving for higher quality, but maintained at the 500 or 600 machine level? They would have had less sales, but they could have charged more if their quality control targeted it and merited it. And it would have let them remain in that level of play. is this one of those things where it's just the success of every time you put a game up no matter how many you list it sells out almost instantly just keeps driving them to make more and more and more yeah i i mean here's my and this is speculation corner total speculation i'm not alleging that this is truth this is uh we're just we're we're hypothesizing here's what my opinion is on the matter i think spooky wants to be a bigger manufacturer i think that And for good reason. They've been selling out of every game. The growth model has been working for them. They've done a lot of things really, really right, I think. They clearly have been growing their business in a relatively safe way. I don't agree, like from a consumer perspective, I don't agree with every decision that they make. But let's look at what's been working for them. They get really hot licenses. It's arguable that Spooky, especially for the amounts of games that they want to make at this point, Might be the second best at the licensing game, second to Stern. JJP seems like – I mean, especially if JJP is actually doing Godfather as their next game, which I'm getting – I'm sorry. I see your sigh eye roll, Tony. But honestly, I'm very concerned that that is – I'm getting more and more rumor reports in that that's the next one. Why? On what conceivable level would anybody think that that was the right choice for people? I don't know. And I don't want to digress too much on it, but my point is, and in the wake of Toy Story 4, again, it's like – I mean, JJP has had some really great licenses, and there are rumors about other ones like Top Gun or Maverick. I don't know which, but that would be really good ones. But for – We got what? The new Pirates of the Caribbean, Toy Story 4. No, no. You're 100% correct. So that's where I'm kind of like spooky. I mean, Rick and Morty, great license get. Scooby, great license get. Halloween is a huge – I mean, it started the whole slasher genre. It's a pretty big get. Those are not bad licenses.
    46:59
    Where I think – so you've got – they're playing the license game really well. They have an excellent method with their limited count and then ushering people into the highest iteration of it because they build the more expensive ones first, and they obviously put the most visual features. So people go CE or BSE or whatever the upper version is in question. That works really well. Plus, they're successful in getting 0% loans via their non-refundable deposit model that people play right into. So they get huge amounts of cash that they can just throw into the savings account while they're ordering stuff and earn interest on, which is a pretty good gig. I mean, maybe not quite Kickstarter good, But that's a pretty good gig. So they got all that really, really working for them. Here is where I think Spooky suffers the most. As you noted, the QC is the biggest issue, and I think it's because they're in the middle of nowhere.
    47:58
    They should not be in that town. They should be in a manufacturing hub or at least ancillary to a manufacturing hub where people can get there relatively quickly. That's why so many around the Chicago area. There's a huge labor pool that they can do. And it's a skilled labor pool where even if they haven't made a pinball machine before, they have used the equipment like that. They have used other types of things. They are not bringing people in with zero training and starting from fresh. Right. And that's – I mean this is something we've talked about with Multimorphic. Multimorphic, which is like I think in Round Rock, Texas. Right. They're not the biggest city, but they're pretty close to a major labor pool. But we've discussed and seen the number of ads that they've had because, again, you have to find someone willing to do the work, which isn't unskilled labor. They must be trained. Right. And what you're competing with at the same price point as that. So with Spooky, I think you've got an added challenge because you have to be willing to move there.
    49:03
    Right. I don't know what the nearest big town is. I looked them up on the map once, and they were mostly surrounded by other small towns that are just a bunch of pubs. So I think that's part of the thing is that where they have chosen to base has really compromised their potential labor pool.
    49:22
    And then the other – and that, I think, also affects their QC because of what's available, and they have to train them, and how often is that going on, and obviously growth and all of that having to be factored in. so there's that and then the other thing which isn't qc related but i do think it's starting to i think it's shown for a long time probably forever quite frankly aside from like the contract builds with with scott denisi and tna right which is a contract build is they don't invest in quote-unquote real designers no they're doing them in the house and and like It kind of sounds fun, like in a homebrew-y way, but when you have something that costs as much as Halloween does, and then it comes out, and the layout's not good. It's just like you – again, listeners, I understand. You might like the layout. The community writ large has spoken. It's not a good layout. Right. So whether or not you want to disagree is fine. Just be aware that the market has spoken and has said – We have talked to plenty of you who completely disagree. Sure. I've talked to even more. We know people who love Thunderbirds. There's a game for everyone, and I don't want to take that away from people, but we have to talk about reality. The price reflects what most people believe, and most people believe that game is a dog. Yes. And again, it was like a design by committee.
    50:44
    I not saying you have to go in and get Dennis Nordman I just saying that you look at it and you also look at the decisions with Halloween for example where Bowen Cairns was no longer involved And while a lot of criticism was levied at Alice Cooper's layout, they did like the rules he came up with. And they kind of started to feel like they just don't spend a lot of money on the development side. Yeah, I can see that. And again, it's like you're putting out nearly 2,000 units. You need to start showing like you're just as serious about rules and layout as your competitors. Because I might make fun of Toy Story 4's price all the live long day, but it's not a bad shooter. And the rules are good for what they – I mean it may be too easy, we want to say, but the rules are solid. Right. The rules are solid. Like it's not an unfun shooting game. I actually liked playing Toy Story 4 when I've played it on a location. I would never buy it at the price point. That's a money problem, not a this is a bad game problem. Right. And maybe Scooby has solved all this, but that's what I think it is. I think it's their location, and I think it's their decisions to in-house so much without the pool of experience there that you end up with these games that are like – you look at them at first, and you're like, wow, this is so different than everything else. And then you play it, and you're like, oh. Right, and I can see, and let's be honest, the pool of pinball designers is rapidly aging out.
    52:17
    It is good to bring new designers up, but it is very much a thing where I feel like it would not hurt to do something more akin to apprenticeships where you have a designer who is established helping to call it edit work done by new designers. Someone to act as an overseer, to help, to teach them the tricks, to explain to them why something doesn't work, what doesn't work, to kind of guide them along, to bring them to becoming their own designer. And it'll have their own feel and their own flow, but it will help prevent from making the mistakes. Because when a lot of these other designers came up, it was back when there were multiple, there was just a ton of pinball companies and they were putting out machines constantly all year long, as opposed to now. it's hard to get the experience when every time you drop a dud you run the risk of breaking the company and i definitely could see the apprentice model working the thing that i would do if you're not if you don't feel you can do that because again like who do they have who's a veteran designer at spooky for example is what we've seen jjp recently do and american pinball recently do There is a whole custom and homebrew community out there. Farm that. Yeah. That's how people like Nordman got their jobs is they designed a game and then like showed it to the companies. Right. So it was – I mean that's – Steve Ritchie's start was similar. He was working I think in assembly at Atari and then he came up with a game and he showed it to them and they built it. That still exists. It doesn't need to be that weird American dream thing, which I never even heard of what happened with that because they were supposed to do that at Expo, like the American dream where the homebrewer was going to get built by American – yeah.
    54:18
    Anyway, but they hired the – I think the Sonic Spinball guy. JJP hired a homebrew guy recently too who's at the company now. I don't remember. I'm sorry. I'm bad with names until I see the new – the games come out. It's tough to remember. But that's where they're thinking. That's where I would go. not well let's see we need a new game what do you think bob on the factory floor maybe we could have him make one because it won't cost us anything i right that's my i'm just sort of like i look like i feel like if we lift look under the hood we can see where like they're cheaping out on stuff plus another interesting thing on this is in that interview with bug and spooky luke with zach they talked about their new proprietary board set i'm and i'm a little confused at this point so They did Penhek. Then they did the P-Rock or P3 Rock to be more specific. Then I thought they did Penatar.
    55:14
    But I was a little confused if maybe Penatar hadn't yet been done and they're now launching Penatar. But they talked about their – and I totally understand the desire not to pay a third party like Multimorphic for all of those boards given how many they need and have one in-house. but if they're if spooky is the or if scooby-doo is the first spooky to use a newest version of some particular piece of electronic hardware i'm was it put through its paces or is this going to be another big qc risk on top of all of the mechanical stuff that we've been seeing because software complaints have abounded now some of that might not be hardware related like i remember a lot of like the memory leak issue that took forever to resolve on alice cooper and that was P3 Rock and other people using that board set were not having that problem. So it would suggest that it was a programming struggle with Spooky to figure out what they had done to cause a memory leak, which like video game memory leaks, you have to reboot, reset your game in order to solve it.
    56:16
    But I don't know. Anyway, congratulations to Spooky for putting out Scooby-Doo Pinball. Well, even if it does not sell out day one, I still think there's a decent likelihood that it will sell out. And regardless, I think the sales are robust. Right. They might have finally, perhaps like a lot of manufacturers, like JJP with Toy Story 4, they might have kind of found the ceiling for what if it doesn't sell out. Right. Let's say they sold 1,200 of them. Maybe they figured out, well, at this price with our reputation, this is what we can get. and then they can have the discussion like do they want to up that do they want to make changes to try and get more sales or do they want to say okay let's be a 1200 unit run company and just do that because either can be the right answer right i don't think either is wrong i don't think you need to inherit they're not got a bunch of shareholders there's no inherent need for them to be like an amoeba going around gobbling up stuff i don't think amoebas really do that I was going to say a blob, but a slime. And I was like, I don't really know what slimes do to get bigger. So anyway. They're cute. That's what they do. They're cute. Well, Tony, I just got one more pinball thing, and that is Rumor Corner.
    57:33
    Rumor Corner. Dennis Creasel's got the news before an apocade. Is that right, Tony? Yeah.
    57:52
    So, here is a rumor corner, not involving Spooky at all, but instead involving Spectre, you know, the villain organization of James Bond. Actually, it's just about James, it's not really about Spectre at all. Oh. Okay. Well, you broke my heart. Yes. I thought you were going to say they're releasing a special Spectre edition. Maybe they will. Will it have code in it? No. I don't know. No. So you and I, we've had a number of conversations with other people in the pinball hobby, and the reactions right now to James Bond are, let's say, subpar from what Stearns used to. That's very, very nice of you. I'm trying to be kind. I tried to be kind in the spooky section. I'll try to be kind in the rumor corner section. And I mean, it's so much so that I've actually heard that the sales have and that's not the rumor, but I've heard that the sales like new sales right now have fallen off a cliff on that game. And it's not particularly surprising. We still have not gotten out. At least I haven't. I haven't either. We have two on location. But I remember, you know, I heard on another podcast, I think it was the Triple Drain podcast, them discussing about how, you know, you're going, you're playing the Dr. No pro and Dr. No is supposed to be selectable. but he's not available yet. It's like there was, from the very first leaked gameplay to the official deadflip stream of it to people now playing it on location and, of course, the in-between of where people experienced it at Expo, the number one thing has always been this code set is not very far along. Here is the rumor. I have heard this is not a stern issue. I have heard that Eon Productions or whoever manages their license is taking a really long time to approve assets. And we've kind of gotten this vibe because there's a lot that we thought would be out by now that wouldn't be. And we know that the license, like George Gomez went on the Super Awesome Pinball Show. George Gomez, for those that don't know, is the designer of this game. And he did explain like it was the licensor who had them pull back from their UKI APA show reveal that they were all set to do because of the Queen's death. Like that was true. It was solely because of the Queen's death. They were ready to put those out on the floor. Now, of course, the software still wasn't there yet. What I have heard is that whoever does the review of the license assets for James Bond suffers from epilepsy and is only able to screen things in very limited doses in order to not induce a seizure.
    60:28
    So the problem isn't that Stern isn't getting the rules done. The problem is that the licensor person cannot just sit there and view all the video because there's so much flashing and everything that's happening with the pinball and going through and watching what's happening on the screen that this individual can only do it in really small doses. That is your rumor. Oh, my God.
    60:50
    I mean, I don't know. That's true. It might be best treated as fiction. We always qualify. That's just.
    60:59
    Why? Why would you? Why wouldn't you find somebody else to do that job? I can't. And that was my – again, if the rumor is true, my initial reaction is, isn't that like a liability lawsuit waiting to happen? Like you need to have someone else do it. I mean maybe the person knows their – I mean they would know their body best and know their limits. But I'm like, I think I would probably be at the point of like, no, you can't review this. Like review the still art. We got to have someone else review the video and the flashy light thing because you have a medical condition and I don't want to induce a seizure in you and possibly have some bad thing happen. So, again, don't know if it's true or not. All I need to know is are you rumortained by it? I'm concerned. I'm rumourserned by it. Rumourserned. I'm rumourserned. I understand. Well, why don't you rumor-surn us about video games, because I see there is a lot of stuff here. Yeah. Today is going to be a very special Law & Order edition of the video game segment. Boom, boom. We've got a pretty large amount of coverage today, and almost all of it is legal-related. A Canadian court has approved a class action lawsuit to go forward against Epic Games. This class action lawsuit was filed originally in 2019 by a couple families claiming that Epic Games has knowingly created Fortnite to be a very addicting game. claiming to the point that they brought in psychologists when they were designing the game to help them make the game as addictive as possible, especially to minors.
    62:53
    So, yeah. That's some serious allegations. Yeah, no, that is some very serious allegations. And one of the comments that had come up when the judges decided to go ahead with it is that while video game addiction is a thing that has been talked about and it exists, it appears to exist much larger in Fortnite players compared to a lot of other video games. Okay. According to reports that they had received. There's a lot more Fortnite players who fall into that So they are going forward With it They said it does not appear to be A frivolous or ill-founded Suit so they are allowing it to continue So That is Going to be I'll be honest if it comes out that they literally Brought in psychologists and were like Yeah we so what kind of things Would make this very addictive to like you know kids and teenagers yeah because we want to avoid those issues so just tell me what would be the most likely thing so we can avoid it it's uh that can turn out to be a pretty serious thing depending upon how how it goes in courts yeah that's uh well we'll we'll have to see but yeah they're moving forward with it and there's enough there to at least not make it look like it was completely frivolous, as you've noted. Right.
    64:29
    Okay. That one will be definitely very interesting. Yeah, it'll be interesting. Very concern-tained.
    64:37
    And now Riot is suing NetEase, claiming that their mobile game Hyperfront is just a straight-up copy of Valorant.
    64:50
    Oh, okay. They claim that Hyperfront copies substantial parts of Valorant, including maps, weapons, character designs, weapon skins, charms. Oh, so significant copies. Significant.
    65:03
    To the point where Riot had like cease and desisted NetEase at one point, and they made a few changes, but not in major enough to make Riot happy. So now Riot is suing to have the game shut down completely. and for them to receive, obviously, substantial compensation. Yeah, they need substantial. I don't know if Valorant's doing as well for Riot as they thought it would. Yeah, I don't think it is. But, like, when some of the stuff is compared, like I saw some of the comparison art between Hyperfront and Valorant, some of the characters are literally palette swapped. Or, like, there's a character in one of them that looks, has the exact same weapon type exact same poses is a palette swapped sex swapped version of that character so it was a male instead of a female but had the same poses moved the same had the same weapon had a moveset that was almost identical but where one was like like like had oh i've got like tans and greens and stuff and the other was like well yeah but i have greens over tans. That's completely different. The tans are totally different. It's just completely different. And some of the map designs are like, when you compare the maps, they're like 95 plus percent identical. So, yeah, it's... I think Riot has a very good case going forward.
    66:32
    It'll be interesting to see how that actually works out. But, yeah. In the mobile game market, that type of thing is pretty common, especially the art asset theft, though not necessarily the total game theft to the point of having the same type of game with all the stealing the maps and stuff. But it's not unusual to see mobile games out there that have art assets that are lifted from movies or anime or other video games entirely. I've seen ads for them. I've seen review videos where people have just like, okay, here's this game and here's all of these art assets that they lifted from these like 15 other games to put into this game. All these character designs or this and that. It's a pretty common thing in the more like Wild West-y independent mobile game market. Okay.
    67:31
    So, the Microsoft Activision merger. There was a report that the FTC was softening their stance. And three days later, the FTC sued Microsoft to block the merger. So that report was wrong. That report's not very right. Now, I'd heard a rumor like a month or so ago that FTC was probably going to sue them. Right. And then another rumor came out like a week ago saying that they softened their stance. And then the suit got filed like right afterwards. So the FTC is claiming that the deal would allow the company to suppress its competition They pointed out that Microsoft's acquisition of ZeniMax last year During that they had insured European regulators that they had no intention to withhold games from rival consoles And then they decided to pick games from Bethesda, Microsoft exclusives like Starfield and Redfall after saying that, oh, we're not going to stop these from being on other platforms.
    68:43
    Though I've read elsewhere that the exact wording when they talked to the regulators did not say that they were going to allow them to be on PlayStation and the like. It said those games would be available anywhere Game Pass was available, which means PC and Xbox. I actually want to think I should have thought about throwing the link in here I want to think I saw something yesterday where a report that European regulators reached out and said no, Microsoft did not lie in our arrangement which, that's a pretty big error on the FTC's part to make that claim that they did when the European regulators are not upset with how that went and that's what I was hearing, that Microsoft's response I just heard Microsoft's response was like, we didn't do anything that we didn't say we were going to do on Microsoft's response. The FTC lost my spot. There it is. The FTC says, Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals. Today, we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets. They went on to say that Activision Blizzard is one of only a very small number of top video game developers in the world that create and publish high quality video games for multiple devices before noting that the publisher's titles, which include the likes of Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft currently attract 154 million monthly active users between them But that could change if this deal was allowed to proceed With control over Activision's blockbuster franchises Microsoft would have both the means and the motive to harm competition by manipulating Activision's pricing, degrading Activision's game quality or player experience on rival consoles and gaming services, changing the terms and timing of access to Activision's content, or withholding content from competitors entirely, resulting in harm to consumers. Well, I mean, those aren't ridiculous concerns to have. They're not. The interesting thing is that shortly before this suit was filed, Microsoft had made an announcement that they had agreed to a 10-year deal to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles. Where it currently is not. Where it's currently not. And they had also offered the same deal to PlayStation. Where it currently is. Where it currently is, and PlayStation likened it to Blockbuster's view of Netflix rising.
    71:25
    So they, I don't know. I really don't know. I've seen some comments that the FTC filed this suit in the FTC's own courts instead of filing it in some of the other courts they had options to file it in. and I've seen some legal analysis, depending upon how much you want to do it, that they filed it in their own courts because, A, the FTC never loses in their own courts, and, B, that's where they tend to file stuff where they're aiming more to get concessions than necessarily to prevent stuff. I'm curious what they want then. I know they had very – like this a couple days ago, there were scheduled talks for them and Microsoft regarding what the concessions would be. Clearly, Microsoft has suggested that – and maybe that's – I don't know if they've latched on. Like 10 years of exclusivity to having Call of Duty, for example, which is like the big Activision franchise. You know, I don't know all of – I really struggle long-term. I mean, if the FTC, I guess, went – Microsoft's going to go another route. They're not going to give up on this deal at this point. And quite frankly, I struggle mightily to see how this makes a lot of sense. I can get it. If you're really against the things being gobbled up just in general, consolidation in general, I can understand why you would have concerns about this or really any acquisition. But it just doesn't make Microsoft bigger than the other consoles. So I just don't – again, I always – I hearken back to T-Mobile getting Sprint. And I'm like, if that's not too big, where the number three and number four merge together to still be the number three, then I don't know what is. And I've noticed Microsoft now, because of the FTC's action, has gotten a lot more lippy out in public. They're like, this is everything that we've done. I know Phil Spencer gave a big talk where he's like, this is Sony. This is Sony working their FTC contacts because they are upset that we're going to have all of these properties. and he's like you know yeah we'll do a 10-year deal on call of duty but you basically equated it to the minecraft thing he's like we would be so stupid so stupid to lose billions of you know potentially billions of dollars over the long term by limiting call of duty to xbox do you understand how much business call of duty is biggest on playstation right now why would we give all that up they're not all going to just go out and buy an xbox console just because you know we try and make them. They would not. We would rather make the money. Hardware sales. Yeah. We'd rather make the money. And, and it's like, and we've seen that before. And I, you know, Microsoft's had some way back in the past in particular, had some, you know, antitrust stuff that's happened under prior leadership. So I understand people being suspicious and that this, the other thing is a number of other governments like Brazil and stuff have already signed off on this deal. Right. Now, obviously that market isn't as important as the, the U S market. I think the U S and the UK, I don't know if Canada are the ones. There are three, I think, that still haven't signed off. The U.S., the U.K., and the E.U. are the big three.
    75:06
    So, yeah, I just – I'm like, I don't know what more that they – concessions they want. I thought it was – because I didn't know what exactly happened with the E.U. thing, but I thought it was pretty glaring when you had the E.U. regulators like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. what's this legal claim that they violated our agreement? We would have done something. They'd violated the agreement. They did not violate the agreement on ZeniMax. So, I mean, it's like, it feels weird to, I understand the need to do the scrutiny and I'm not critical of that, but I, at the same time, I'm like, why are you lying in your lawsuit? Then it's like, that wouldn't have been a hard thing to confirm. No, it feels like something that they were hand fed and are going through with. But it's so weird because, like you said, like the T-Mobile thing, it's not like they're suddenly going to become the number one place in the zone. They're still going to be number three. Honestly, the way a couple of the other groups have been growing lately, they might not make it all the way up to three. They might drop back down to four because there been a lot of mergers in the last six months in the video game industry So anyway we just have to wait and see Yeah it going to be interesting
    76:23
    While we're talking about Activision, Activision has decided to sue California over the state's lawsuit against Activision. They are claiming that the state deliberately unleashed a hurricane of hostile media coverage based on malicious and knowingly false assertions. In the state suit against Activision about, you know, their sexual harassment and all of that. They are suing to get access to internal documents, including details about the state's discussions with the communication workers of America Union.
    77:00
    Because they feel that the state has been working specifically with the unions to attack Activision, Blizzard. Okay.
    77:10
    I don't know that one. I don't know. That's a good lawsuit or not. How they've responded to everything else with the sexual harassment stuff, I would lean towards probably not. But that's allegedly. Allegedly. Considering all of their responses have been, well, we investigated ourselves and there was nothing wrong. So we're okay. We're fine. This is fine. This is all fine. This is fine. Eugene Naka. Not Sonic. Gotta go fast. Father Sonic. You might think this is a repeat from last episode. It is. Where we talked about insider trading. He was trading and he got arrested. He did. And then he got out on bail and all that stuff and all the goodness. Yeah, he's been arrested again. Oh, no. For insider trading. Again? Again. On a different thing. Last time he'd been arrested for insider trading of a 2.8 million yen purchase, as you might recall, from a company buying up stock in a company just before the announcement came out about them doing a mobile game for Square Enix. Right. Well, now it came out he also purchased 144.7 million yen of developer A-Team just before the announcement was made of them working on the mobile Final Fantasy VII, the first Soldier game. Now, 144 million yen, that's a lot of money. That's about a million dollars. Wow. It's just a hair over a million dollars. It's like a million fifty thousand. So, yeah, it is not small amounts of money. Wow. Sonics paid him well. Apparently. Well, now he probably got it all through trades. What am I saying? Allegedly. There is an insider trading problem. Maybe he could do inciting trade sim. That's going to be his next name Yes Insider Trading Takoon Yes You can say the best way to get out on bail Alright That was fun That was a lot of law Send that stuff to Legal Eagle on YouTube We'll give him videos for the next couple months No kidding So done with the legal stuff On to Game Awards you didn't watch this live i did i was attending it uh i did my school related thing for my daughter so that was more important than watching this live okay um i i did tune in uh to hour 437 of christopher judge's acceptance speech oh my god i was i felt so bad because he was so emotional but i was i was actually ranting at the television i'm like why won't you shut up oh voice actor that's right it was like 10 minutes actually i saw it was it was i'm gonna whine about it a little bit i'm sorry i'm sorry dude you you you you deserve the reward but totally deserve it but holy cow i the like reddit lit up on it like he went on five minutes longer than his total dialogue in the game yeah starts this accusation the award for longest acceptance speech ever goes too yeah all that sort of it was just like and he was the first major award they started like it felt like no one else got any time because of that they did the walk-off music like after 10 seconds on everyone else yeah because i didn't know they couldn't find the button or they thought we don't want to do this because it's going to look like really mean this guy so i mean he i mean he was super appreciative i was worried that al pacino was gonna who was giving him the award was going to fall over from old age oh i know al pacino looked rough yeah like like like when they started the video i'm like i'm like is that is that al pacino i know they say it's al pacino but is that actually al pacino it sounded like al pacino like al pacino almost dead version yeah anyway so yeah that was that was long yeah but that wasn't that wasn't the presentation speech highlight of the show. That was not. That was saved for the finale. Yes. Which was weird. It was so weird. Watching it live, I was like, what? Watch it. So, I'll let you set it up. Okay. For the finale, for the game of the year. The big award. The big award. The one everyone cares about. The only award anyone's actually cared about. Everyone's watching for trailers. That's the only real award anyone cares about. It went to Elden Ring.
    81:46
    But, spoilers. Yeah, when Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team went up to accept the award, there was another person with them. A special guest. Now, when I saw this, I was confused because the person looked, one, really nervous, and two, like they were 12. Right. So I thought, is he related to one of them? Maybe did they have like an internship program where they let kids like develop a texture? Yeah. Like, I'm just like, I'm trying, because he's up there with them. No one's, like, looking at him or anything. So I'm like, okay. But he really didn't look like he belonged. No, he didn't. He looked like a kid who stole someone's suit and had his sneakers on, you know. And I get it. Jeff Keighley does this, the whole, I'm going to wear the suit, but I'm going to put on my Air Jordans at the same time because I'm so hip. Right. That's not how you wear a suit, guys. Come on. Get some shoes. You can get them cheap. You put the suit on. You did. And then you go with Converse. my gosh yeah that's what you do if you're gonna wear don't wear high tops with a suit if you're gonna wear tennis shoes yeah it's got a suit it's got to be converse i'm just saying it's the only thing that works yeah thank you fashion tony designer designer tony but maybe she's born with it no it's designer tony that's how you got it oh my god it's one shade it's just it's just one shade what is it it's like black and like designer tony you only have one shade it's black why it's for highlights what sort of highlights i don't know i don't know anything about makeup designer tony highlights if he doesn't know we're dragging this story out i apologize apologize to the listeners the uh While they were doing the acceptance speech, this young – Youngin. The youngin. Yeah, youngin. The youngin. The youngin got the microphone, obviously, to say his part of the acceptance speech. And the concluding music is like blaring at this point. Yeah. Everyone else is walking off the stage. Yeah, they're turning it off. And he gets the microphone and he says, I want to thank everybody and say that I think I want to nominate this award to my reformed – Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton. Yes. And I heard pretty much all of that live when it was said. I heard the I want to thank, and then I struggled a little bit, and then I heard nominate, or I heard the award. Like, I thought, is he wanting to dedicate the award to someone? And then I heard this Reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton, and I'm thinking, but not like our Bill Clinton, right? This is like someone else's Bill Clinton. Not the Bill Clinton. This is like Bill Clinton, not Bill Clinton.
    84:37
    Anyway, but what I did see is there were guys with suits that then, like, Bill Clinton's guys or something. Like, Secret Service-looking guys came up, and I didn't see them grab him, but he was surrounded by people while he was walking off of the stage. They did it calmly, like, oh, maybe that's – and again, I'm like, is this all part of, like – does Eldon Ring, like, have an entourage? It was a pretty successful game. Maybe they just have people. I got people.
    85:06
    It wasn't like a super obvious. It was subtle. It was subtle, but you're like, those guys weren't there before, and now they've used special Dark Souls powers and got up there.
    85:19
    Well, they didn't tweet out and announce that that guy's been arrested. Why? For harassing Bill Clinton?
    85:29
    They didn't say why. Just that he had been. Okay. So there's the true last legal-ish thing. I just, oh, it was so weird. When I watched the replay, I'm just like, this is so weird. It was, and of course, there were a lot of Reddit comments on the Game of the Year about that. But what about Bill Clinton's role?
    85:50
    Now, I've not confirmed this. So again, alleged. I'd heard someone who had seen that told me that there was some stuff about people digging up stuff on this guy that he had been recently just got out of jail, known for anti-Semitic rhetoric. So I – People say stuff. I don't know. I don't know because on the – the way it sounds – because there's nothing in that statement itself that seems offensive. So it seems almost like it was for the lulz. but yeah i don't know i don't i don't know it's weird i so many people seem it's strange to me the way anymore something will happen and then like people like deep dive all this stuff and explain how it is and then it turns out to be something 100 different yeah it's weird it was weird it was just really odd but now we can talk about the important part of the game awards which is Christopher Judge. So, that man, you want to talk about this?
    86:52
    He was so dapper. His suit was just smoking. Guy looked great. Great voice. Everything was great. Wonderful. So, we need to continue talking about his 10-minute acceptance speech for another 25 minutes. It was like so long. He started by thanking his family. then he thanked the original director then he thanked the new director then he explained how the new director chose the replacement director and I just keep looking over at Al Pacino I'm like come on, I don't know, we're going to get a heat too now, I think I don't think we are it was definitely interesting Al Pacino's like I don't know why I'm here I can't even read the teleprompter it's too far away Considering before he made the announcement, Al Pacino was doing curls with the award. It's heavy. And they're always worried that he was going to get hugged to death. Yeah. Well, if you got the chance to hug Al Pacino. No, I don't blame him. Okay. Come on. All right. It's got to be really cool. I mean, of all the people who handed an award to someone, that was the coolest. Right. It's Al Pacino. He's the star of the hit pinball machine, Godfather. Al Pacino. No.
    88:12
    Okay, on to the real meat and potatoes of the Game Awards. New game announcements and trailers. There were a lot of them, and I'm only going to talk about some of them. If I miss one of the ones you want to talk about, Dennis, you let me know. Because I only grabbed a couple of them because there's just so many.
    88:29
    Vampire Survivors. I already have that game. It's on mobile now. They've got a mobile version. It's out now. That game would be perfect for mobile, honestly. So I think that's not a bad choice at all. I have not downloaded it yet but I plan to because that game is great I remember seeing that and I do have the game as well on Steam I just have not played it yet you are missing out but now you can play it on your phone no I'm going to play it on the PC it was a gift I'm going to play it I just haven't because I'm lazy because you're too busy playing Far Cry sucks ride the helicopter I like to play the helicopter and use the rockets and go Hellboy, Web of Weird. It's a roguelite action-adventure game with Hellboy. Which, that could be fun. They've done it in a very comic style, which is good.
    89:26
    So that could be a lot of fun. Like I said, I think that'll be a lot of fun. It looks interesting. I like roguelites. Yeah, I wasn't sold on that one yet. We'll see. That's probably why. There wasn't much, like, there wasn't, like, gameplay. That's the problem with it. 90% of these have no gameplay. No, it's true teasers. Yeah, they're true teasers. We did get a release date for Street Fighter VI. It's June. Tekken 8 is coming out next year. No surprise there. One of my biggest things of all of them, Hades 2 is coming out. They're putting out a sequel to Hades. That's great. Hades is an awesome game. Getting another Hades game is wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, that was probably the surprise highlight of the show for me, seeing the Hades 2 trailer. I never would have thought about there being another Hades game, honestly. And then initially I thought it wasn't clicking for me. And I was like, oh, wait a moment. Oh, this is the art style. Have they done another roguelike? And then it's like, oh, they're actually continuing in the world of Hades. Okay. Because I thought maybe they just do different gods. Like, let's do some Norse mythology or something. Right, or something. But no, it works. and the art, and that one actually showed some gameplay, and it looks cool. It did. Good cinematics and good gameplay.
    90:40
    There was an announcement trailer for Bayonetta Origins, a series on the Lost Demon. It's a prequel, a super cutesy fairytale prequel game for Bayonetta. How you do a cutesy Bayonetta with a young Bayonetta, especially coming off just how bad Bayonetta 3 has been being reviewed, it's not gone well. It sold well, I think. It sold well, but it's – Because it cracked the top ten in its first month, and its first month period was two days. Right. It sold very well because Bayonetta is a very successful franchise, but everything I've seen pretty much considers it the worst Bayonetta. Well, this is a different gameplay style. It's a completely different gameplay style. So maybe that helps it. I don't know. It's interesting. It's an interesting idea to take a character that is so powerful and then jump back to when they were a kid and when things were just starting out and making it very different, almost kind of cutesy-esque thing.
    91:37
    Suicide Squad, Kill the Justice League, had a reveal trailer showing Batman, and it appears to be Kevin Conroy's last voice acting credit.
    91:49
    It might not be his last because voice actors record stuff. Right, right. It's hard to say. But he passed away last month, and I know, like me, you've grown up with kevin conroy as the voice of batman yeah like all the animated batmans i played all the arkham games yeah voiced um yeah i mean he for a lot of us his voice is batman so i think they they handled it really like classy at the show and i thought so too not overly somber but just sort of and honestly the little story i've never played a suicide squad game but if there have been other ones i don't know but it looked neat it does i thought oh but again This was really just cinematic, so I didn't know what – I liked the story, but I don't know what the gameplay is going to be like. Right, and I have no idea because it's – But if it's like one of the Arkham games, it's been a while. Because I think the last Arkham game didn't do very well, so – Right, but the Arkham games were fun. I enjoyed the Arkham games.
    92:42
    I only played the first two. Those are the best. Asylum and the city one. Yeah, the one that was more open. Yeah, because Arkham Asylum is pretty linear. Right. Yeah, those were the two I've played some on. We got the release date for Jedi Survivor. It's March, which has been rumored for a while now, but it's now confirmed.
    93:07
    That looks good. The trailer looked really good. That game, or I'm sorry, the first game was excellent. So I'm really looking forward to that one.
    93:21
    There was a trailer for an open-world Dune MMO. I when I saw the trailer I was looking at it and I'm like this is this is this looks like Dune um then they're doing like the whole thing about the sleeper and I'm like okay Dune okay and then they they go through and I see this stuff and I'm like because Dune like the Dune was one of the earliest I think it was the earliest like RTS game ever and then I was actually getting kind of excited then I saw it was a open world MMO and I was like never mind That's exactly where I was on this. I was like, really? This could... No. I don't want to play any more MMOs. I'm sorry. I'm good. Too bad. Yeah. I mean, maybe if I got to be Shy Huloot, I would do it for a while. I want to be the worm. I just want to be a worm going around doing worm stuff.
    94:10
    There was a trailer for Death Stranding 2. Oh, my God. So weird. It was like four minutes long. It was. It was all cinematic, of course. All cinematic. I mean, I'm assuming it's still going to be Postal Simulator, Postal UPS Simulator, whatever. Did you play it? No. I never. It looked. I don't know, because I thought, isn't Norma's Rita supposed to be pregnant? And then the game was like, here, carry a bunch of boxes on your head. Yeah. I was like, I'm sorry, Kojima. I don't. You've gone too artiste for me. Yeah. But it sold well. Yep. And so they're making another one. They're making another one.
    94:48
    Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 stars Idris Elba. Tempting, but I don't have any intention to revisit Cyberpunk. Otherwise, but they know how to stroke my poor little heartstrings. It's interesting because it's set up more as a spy thriller type is from the way I've heard it laid out. And it's got Idris Elba because Idris Elba is amazing. um immortals of avium uh is a magic based fps i can't recall seeing a game like that in a long time where it's like magic based now what i think would be cool if it was a magic based fps that kind of had the Doom feel where it's very visceral and just continuous fast. I think that would be awesome.
    95:47
    But just the fact of its existence I thought sounded kind of cool. Transformers Reactivate, purely a cinematic trailer, seems kind of interesting, seems kind of post-apocalyptic and like human soldier survivor people. Looks like they're reviving, based upon the color scheme, I would say Bumblebee. That was my guess too.
    96:12
    Could be interesting, but again, purely cinematic trailer, so doesn't mean nothing really. Horizon Forbidden West, Burning Shores, which is a DLC expansion for Horizon Forbidden West. But what's weird is it looks like it's a PS5 exclusive for a game that's on PS4 and PS5. Oh, interesting. Okay. I didn't catch that at the time. I didn't catch it at the time either until I was looking some stuff up on it, and it's looking like it's a PS5 exclusive, which is weird. It is because the base game is not. Right. Yeah, very interesting. That was the Bridesmaid game of the awards. It was up for all the major ones and one of them. Yeah. It very much was. Which happened to the first game, too. Yeah. Because the first game was beaten out. I don't remember which game beat it out on everything. I think that might have dropped the year, was it Red Dead Redemption 2 came out? Maybe. It was something big. It was something huge. Maybe it wasn't that one. But, yeah, there were a lot. No, it was Breath of the Wild. Oh, yeah. Because I'm like, Red Dead's too old. Yeah, no, it was Breath of the Wild. Yeah, I saw there was a Reddit conversation going. So what do you think is going to cheat Horizon 3? And the top comment was GTA 6. They'll drop it that year. Yeah.
    97:37
    Oh, they released the cinematic trailer for Diablo 4. You know, here's the thing. Don't you all have phones?
    97:47
    We do. But My phone can't make a cinematic trailer That amazing look good I mean Say what you will about the Diablo games Say what you will about Blizzard games in general Their cinematic Trailers Are just insane That trailer was so cool It Made me want to play Diablo 4 With zero gameplay And knowing how the last Diablo game how wrecked and terrible it was when it came out and that they fixed it to be okay at best but that trailer was just so good even if you don't plan on ever playing the diablo game i would go watch that trailer because it's just that good it made me it made me almost excited it did it's like oh wow armored core 6 now that was out of left field because for all from does anymore are souls likes right i've i mean it's been what 15 years since there was an armored core game or longer that trailer was cool too and the trailer was cool again all cinematic trailer but the trailer was super cool but i mean i remember playing armored core on playstation like playstation one playstation uh it is one of those games that i always enjoyed but it just fizzled and has been gone. So I'm, I'm interested to see what happens with that. And then the jewel for me, uh, was the Warhammer 40 K space Marine two trailer, uh, which we've known about. Yep. We, we have, and I, I had played the original back on three 60. Yep. Actually, I think I borrowed your copy of it. Uh, cause you had the disc. Um, it was a really fun game. And it looks good. The new one looks good, too. I'm super excited for it. I do have a note here that I would kind of like to see a game built like Space Marine, and Space Marine 2 looks like it's being built, that takes place during the Horus Heresy period of Warhammer, because that would just be cool.
    99:59
    But, yeah, no, I thought it looked great. There's a lot of good-looking games coming out. And the fact that this is literally probably half of the trailers that were out there. I mean, the show was like three hours long, and it's mostly trailers. Well, aside from one speech. Yeah. Other than the one speech.
    100:21
    It's like, oh, we can't cancel the first speech of the night early. Yeah. I think they just didn't know where their sound button was to play them off. Where's the button? When I pulled up to go through and watch chunks of the replay, because I didn't watch the whole three hours because I watched the trailer separately. So I was just jumping around through the chunk of the replay. There were comments that were, I hear Christopher Judge's speech is still going on. They just kind of shuffled him off stage and he's sitting backstage still finishing his speech. well i think we might have finished our speeches for this episode i think so okay well people can email us eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com or you can go to facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast and use messenger tool or you can support us on patreon of course with patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers we're available on twitch twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks. We've got the 5K next week. We do. So we'll be able to talk a little bit about that if we survive on the next episode. We'll see. Hopefully it's not freezing fog like it was this morning.
    101:35
    That would be terrible. It would. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.