Pinball Omnibus: Episode 8

Cary Hardy·video·12m 35s·analyzed·Sep 13, 2021

Analysis

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TL;DR

Home Pin announces Spinal Tap; Stern reveals Godzilla this week; Jeff Patterson on hiatus; CGC Cactus Canyon progressing.

Summary

Cary Hardy covers multiple pinball industry developments: Home Pin's Spinal Tap announcement featuring simple rulesets and dual screens, Stern's upcoming Godzilla reveal with moving mechanisms, Jeff Patterson's hiatus from This Week in Pinball, Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon remake progress, Christopher Franchi's art blades work, Stern's new online connectivity hardware, and Deep Root Pinball's internal turmoil with Robert Muller reportedly telling employees to seek other jobs.

Key Claims

Home Pin's Spinal Tap will feature an orange DMD dot matrix display and a 27-inch LED backbox display showing movie scenes
high confidence · Information sourced from Pinball Network's TPS show interview with Mike in Taiwan, as reported by Cary Hardy
Spinal Tap will not have a deep ruleset and is designed to be a simple game
high confidence · Mike (Home Pin) directly specified this in TPS interview; multiple confirmations in video
Stern's Godzilla will be revealed in its entirety on Tuesday with possible leaked images on Monday
high confidence · Cary Hardy citing upcoming announcement schedule
Chicago Gaming Company has over 850 silkscreen playfields ready for Cactus Canyon remake
high confidence · Cary Hardy stating recent information about CGC production status
Only 378 Medieval Madness Royal Editions were ever made, with one at Churchill Cabinets
high confidence · Christopher Franchi specified this production number
Jeff Patterson is taking a hiatus from This Week in Pinball for an undetermined amount of time
high confidence · Cary Hardy cites Patterson's own announcement on his website and Facebook
Robert Muller from Deep Root Pinball told employees that recent news reports are false and everyone should look for other jobs
medium confidence · Hearsay account reported by Cary Hardy; Muller's actual statement not directly verified
Stern will be charging approximately $500-600 more for upcoming games due to new online connectivity hardware
medium confidence · Cary Hardy's speculation based on Stern's pricing patterns; specific pricing not officially announced

Notable Quotes

“Mike specifies that he's actually not very fond of this monitor. And this 27-inch LED display is going to be primarily showing you scenes from the movie.”
Cary Hardy reporting Mike's statement@ 1:08 — Indicates designer dissatisfaction with a major technical component of Spinal Tap, raising potential design compromise concerns
“This is not going to be a very deep rule set game. So if you're into games that have a lot of deep rules and complex multipliers and stuff like that, this will not be a game for you.”
Cary Hardy reporting Mike's statement@ 1:28 — Direct communication of Home Pin's design philosophy for simplicity over competitive depth
“Steam Dream has lived in my mind for the last two years. I have spent the last seven months building it, with a bit to go yet. Tons of problems and challenges for me as I am no engineer.”
Paul Clark (via email to Cary Hardy)@ 3:57 — Insight into homebrew builder's creative process and self-aware acknowledgment of technical limitations
“I think there's just a lot of things that he does for this hobby that not a lot of people are even aware of.”
Cary Hardy@ 3:13 — Recognition of Patterson's behind-the-scenes industry contribution and community impact
“This is not a new module pack, so $500 for a new game utilizing the Cosmic Kart Racing module.”
Cary Hardy@ 7:51 — Business model signal: software-only updates at premium pricing for P3 platform
“Stern if you can set this price point correctly, I think that it will be massively well received, but chances are you're going to be like, you know what, we're going to charge a ridiculous amount of money.”

Entities

Home PincompanySpinal TapgameStern PinballcompanyGodzillagame Jeff Pattersonperson This Week in PinballmediaPaul ClarkpersonBarry OwslerpersonEdward Van Der Veenperson

Signals

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business_signal: Deep Root Pinball facing serious internal crisis with Robert Muller telling employees to find other jobs while denying recent news reports
medium · Secondhand report of employee meeting; specific allegations being denied not clarified
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event_signal: Texas Labor Day celebration featuring Barry Owsler signing restored Doctor Who pinball machine, indicating ongoing designer engagement with collector community
high · First-hand account from Cary Hardy attendance at event
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product_concern: Homebrew builder Paul Clark self-identified as 'no engineer' while undertaking complex Black Knight 2000 conversion project (Steam Dream), highlighting technical skill gaps in DIY community
medium · Direct quote from Paul Clark's email to Cary Hardy acknowledging limitations while pursuing ambitious project
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design_philosophy: Home Pin positioning Spinal Tap as intentionally simple ruleset game contrasting with complex competitive alternatives; designer Mike expressed dissatisfaction with 27-inch LED backbox monitor choice
high · Direct quotes from Mike in TPS interview about design intent and technical component preferences
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market_signal: Community poll on Cary Hardy's channel shows 67% preference for Godzilla over Cactus Canyon remake (262 total votes), indicating strong interest in Stern new releases
high · Direct poll results reported by Cary Hardy
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Topics

Home Pin Spinal Tap announcement and design specificationsprimaryStern Godzilla reveal timing and moving mechanismsprimaryJeff Patterson's This Week in Pinball hiatusprimaryChicago Gaming Company Cactus Canyon remake production statusprimaryStern's new online connectivity hardware and pricing concernsprimaryDeep Root Pinball internal business crisisprimaryHomebrew and restoration projectssecondaryMultimorphic software-only game releasessecondary

Sentiment

mixed(0.55)— Cary Hardy maintains generally positive tone about announcements (Spinal Tap, Godzilla, Cactus Canyon) and expresses excitement about new features. However, significant concerns emerge about Stern pricing strategy for online connectivity, worry about Jeff Patterson's departure, and serious concern about Deep Root Pinball's internal crisis. Overall optimistic about game releases but skeptical about industry business practices.

Transcript

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What's up guys and welcome back to pinball omnibus episode 8 where I talk about a lot of things going on in this hobby in just a short amount of time. So let's get started. Let's start out with Home Pin, their previous game Thunderbirds as some of you may know. They announced their next title and that is going to be Spinal Tap and it's based off of the movie. The numbers all go to 11. Look, right across the board. Now the information I'm about to give you is based upon the Pinball Network's TPS show. They had their Dr. John, he did an interview with Mike in Taiwan talking about the game and here are some of those notes here. It was designed by several people. Before the playfield design, they actually planned out all the mechs that they were going to be putting into the game first. They also confirmed that there were mistakes that they did make with Thunderbirds, but they have learned from them. There's going to be two different screens. One of them is going to be your orange DMD dot matrix, and you're going to have a 27-inch display on the backbox. And Mike specifies that he's actually not very fond of this monitor. And this 27-inch LED display is going to be primarily showing you scenes from the movie. Cabinet images should be released in the next couple of months. There will not be any gameplay footage or any other streaming or anything like that done with the game. Mike also says this is not going to be a very deep rule set game. So if you're into games that have a lot of deep rules and complex multipliers and stuff like that, this will not be a game for you. It's going to be simple. And there's no price tag yet set in stone. Star Wars' next title, Godzilla, is going to be revealed in its entirety this week, more than likely on Tuesday. Chances are, as it has been in the history, we may get leaked images on Monday, or not, but Tuesday we should have everything we need. There was a quick little teaser trailer kind of giving us a little bit of the feel of what the game will be like, I guess, theme-based-wise. For me, it looks like it's going to be a dark version of Godzilla. Like a dark tone to it. I can say that there will be a moving mechanism within the premium and the LE that is supposed to give you the nice wow factor. Jeff Patterson with This Week in Pinball has announced that he will be on a hiatus for an undetermined amount of time at this point. The post is available on his website. He posted it on Facebook as well. at this point in time he's not willing to divulge any information on or even off the record I actually requested for it. This is a big bummer because a majority of the news that a lot of people get in this hobby to divulge to the rest of you is from this week in pinball because he is able to get a lot of the inside information the deep dives that he puts on his website he puts so much work and effort into this definitely something I not willing to do because he does this on an every week basis He puts a lot of work into the Twippies and his website guys I think there's just a lot of things that he does for this hobby that not a lot of people are even aware of. He's not gone forever, and as far as the Twippy Awards, if they're going to be a go or not, that is undetermined at this time. It's basically just specified that he's going to be taking a break for an undefined amount of time. Take a break, Jeff, but please come back soon. Next up is Steampunk Pinball. This is something that is definitely out of the ordinary. I remember seeing this shared on Facebook, watched the video on it, and thought that was pretty cool. And turns out this is done by a guy named Paul Clark. Paul Clark actually sent me an email to give me a little bit more information about this game. And this is what he had to say. Steam Dream has lived in my mind for the last two years. I have spent the last seven months building it, with a bit to go yet. Tons of problems and challenges for me as I am no engineer. I'm just a pinball loving guy with my own little dream. If you can't tell by looking at the game, this definitely looks like a Black Knight 2000 that has been converted into something definitely out of the ordinary. Keep up the work, Paul. The game definitely looks intriguing. Cannot wait to see it in action. Within the last couple of weeks, a group of us pinball lovers here in Texas came together to do a little bit of a Labor Day celebration. And one of those guests was Barry Owsler. And I got to see him sign Ed Van Der Veen's Doctor Who. So this is Edward Van Der Veen's Doctor Who. And we've got the designer Barry Owsler here. that is going to be signing Ed Van Der Veen's Doctor Who pinball machine. Translight. Oh, the Translight. Look at that. Nice. All right. Yeah, that's the finest signature I've ever seen from a designer. Is that what you were wanting? It looks gorgeous. Kevin Moore did the restoration on this game and it looks sexy. some of you have probably already noticed it looks like the getaway is down again it's not necessarily down it's just currently off because I'm working on the pin sound package for the next cap mix will be the getaway I'm excited about this one I'll give you a little bit of a teaser as of right here as I going through all the sounds and audio files for this particular sound package this is going to be a daunting task if you will for what I have in store for it I'm looking forward to it. It's just definitely going to take longer than my previous sound packages I've done. So Chicago Gaming Company should be giving us a full reveal of their Cactus Canyon remake this month. I mean, we're about halfway through right now. I am aware that they are supposed to be doing some filming and recording of an upcoming video to basically hopefully give us the wow factor of the game. Something to note is that they've already got over 850 silkscreen playfields ready to go. The code will be complete, including people from back in those days that gave the new coders an idea of what they were wanting to do back then. So we're going to see Cactus Canyon in the ideal state that they wanted it to be back in the 90s. Medieval Madness remake will be returning to the line in early 2023. And if you're curious, there was only a total of 378 Medieval Madness Royal Editions ever made. One of those is obviously at the Churchill Cabinets where CGC is at. So technically only 377 of those Royal Editions are out in the wild. Christopher Franchi has also specified that he is doing the Art Blades for a Cactus Canyon remake, so that's something else to look forward to right there. P3 Multimorphic has released their next game, but it's only going to be changing in software. This is not a new module pack, so $500 for a new game utilizing the Cosmic Kart Racing module. It is the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Now, this is not their licensed title. They have basically teased at us. So we will be having a licensed theme for Multimorphic in the future. When that's going to be revealed, don't know yet. And finally, we have Stern announcing that they are putting their games online. And this new hardware feature that's going to be able to be added to a lot of the games that have already been released, such as my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Deadpool, Iron Maiden, I can go on. basically your spike 2 systems should be able to be installed this new hardware that will be released and the upcoming title godzilla will obviously already have it integrated here's the thing i was going to do a video on this guys i really was but i wanted to wait to see what the price was so in a nutshell i'm going to tell you that this is something i'm definitely looking forward to i see the potential i'm excited about it but i need to know what that price is stern if you can set this price point correctly, I think that it will be massively well received, but chances are you're going to be like, you know what, we're going to charge a ridiculous amount of money. Chances are it's probably gonna be about five or 600 bucks because that's how much the price of the games are increasing on this next title. We're going to see a price jump of $600 across the board If they could release that system the Insider Connect system as an upgrade for us to purchase for like it not going to happen I know, it's not going to happen. But I figured that would be the price point to where it would be most well received. What if it's even cheaper than that? Oh man, that'd be sweet. We should be getting the update from Pinball Brothers on September 24th for showing off their limited edition of their Alien Pinball. I need to state that my Alien Pinball video was released a couple of weeks ago, and it has been very well received. I thank you all for the compliments. Some of those were saying that it was my best video to date. That's good to hear, I guess. I wasn't trying for that, but that's what it turned out to be. And I guess, you know, the best videos to date are the ones that don't include my face. Notes taken. Do not show me. something else recently revealed was that robert Sébastien Muller from deep root has basically gathered all the employees together and said that pretty much in a nutshell that everything that we're reading about and seeing about is not true he will fight this till the bitter end and everyone needs to start looking for another job so that is what has been told and we'll see what comes of this in the future. For those of you out there that like to have pinball related apparel then by all means let's talk a little bit about that from a different couple of people here. One of them being straight down the middle as well as the pinball show and even Kaneda is finally throwing his hat into the ring when it comes to apparel and pinball related content. When it comes to an update with my Johnny the Monic I have got decals. They're laying across the playfield as you can see right here. I've got the ramps assembled I just need to get the ramp flaps done I have a friend of mine that has the appropriate materials to do that just got to work our schedules out to where we can get together to get that done I recently posted a poll on my community page asking those of you out there which of these two games are you more interested in for this month and that was either between Cactus Canyon Remake or Godzilla and we have a total of 262 votes with 67% of that going to Godzilla. And that should conclude this omnibus episode. You are going to see more than likely a couple of videos from me this week. That's typically how it goes when it comes to Stern releasing a new title. We go over gameplay and thoughts and opinions and stuff like that. So by all means, you should see more stuff from me this week. If you like what you've seen here, give me the thumbs up. It really helps out the channel, guys. And if you haven't already, be sure to hit that subscribe button down there. Ding my dong. That way you can be notified of whenever I upload something for your viewing pleasure. And until next time, guys, peace out.