Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching The Pinball Show. On this episode of The Pinball Show, Dennis and I chat about Stern Pinball production updates, Dragon Gate, a remastered rumor, another Dave Fitts podcast appearance, a tribute to Lyman Sheets, pinball at the beach, a new game launch from a new company, other pinistry news, and pinball market trends. Official Pinball Show Club members get exclusive content covering what future games people want to see as we take a look into the Flip N Out Pinball interested lists. What titles are their lists for, and how popular are they? Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the Pinball Show, episode 170. I'm Zach Minney alongside Dennis Creasel. And Dennis, I've got to tell you this. Look, they're not like us, is all I know. Are they not? I'm sorry. Why is my dragon on fire? Oh, no. Is that some kinky sex position? I don't know. What does the Kama Sutra say about node board tens? Oh, there's nothing sexier than a smoking node board ten. How long is your dragon's tail? They not like us, Dennis. Okay. They just not like us. We'll talk about all of that fun stuff. Will we? Yeah, absolutely. We've got a lot of pinball stuff to talk about. We do? There's pinball and sand at the beach. there's a lot of that stuff I know there were some hit games there there were some new game releases announcements there we'll discuss that Dave Fix has poked his head up again yeah but we're not going to discuss that are we we might we have a really fun exclusive content for the official club members we do like to keep them happy we'll do that we got some loser kid podcasts there's all kinds of stuff to talk about So let's jump in first and talk about Stern Pinball, shall we? Okay. What are they making? The last couple of weeks, they've been shipping Dungeons & Dragons, the LE model. Because remember, listener, they were going to get those out first, as they did with Uncanny. Get those out first and then go to Location Pros, etc. And they did get some Dungeons Pros out to Locations too. I don't understand why in the feature matrix they didn't promote that the LE version of the Dragon actually did smoke. Oh, my God. They're writing themselves, Zach. We'll talk about Dragon. I know. You and 50,000 other people on Pinside. What? No, I have to be the first. Oh, my God. They're like, at this point, they're to the level of dad jokes, these note 10 board issues. Look, as I often tell people at work when they groan or roll their eyes at one of my jokes, they can't all be winners, folks. I'm trying to find the silver lining that I'm sure you're going to present as to how this isn't a problem. As always. I'm Mr. Positivity here on the Pinball Show, Dennis. People know me as such, right? Until we get into the American pinball story. But, and the other stories that we're going to cover. We'll discuss it. The good thing is, people are getting their D&Ds and they're getting them quick. I'm an earring positive reaction to how the game plays. I have two. Even the code structure, albeit early still, of course. But not X-Men early. Yeah, a lot of positive feedback thus far from the game and the style of rules, which I was interested to seeing if people liked it because it's very different. Right, and I've seen some speculate a sort of, this seems like really good rules for the home environment, but we're kind of curious if people on location are going to, quote unquote, get it or not. Yes, very, very true. So yeah, they, listener, they were making D&D LEs. They did stop production on that and started running the pros whenever those Dragon issues were coming up from some customers. So the pro version is fireproof. The pro version does not utilize the same mechanism, I believe, that the premium LE does on the Dragon. Right, because it doesn't move in as many ways. Yeah, I think it's just coil-driven where it's up and down, just popping kind of thing. I think it's coil-driven. It might be. I don't know. So that's that. And so they were going to ship an abundance of pros, I thought. But right now they're like, while we take this break in LE production, we're going to try to get out some pros to the locations out there, which is a great idea. So they've been doing that. So next week or two, you're going to see them go back to the D&D LEs as well as back to some of the pros. Later on in February, we're going to see the premiums roll out. And then in March, same thing. Metallica remastered premium as we were expecting. Godzilla Pro premiums. and april jaws are coming and uncanny x-men before we talk about the fiercest dragon of them all we'll talk about the new code in dungeons dragons version 0.84 they added tiny's dice game okay you know what that is i do not you can light it by starting three modes in the game so it feels to me almost mini wizard mode but then again you can buy it from fismo as well so it's like a foundry item that you can purchase. But once it's lit, you shoot the spinner shot to start. It's a timed mode. It's kind of cool because during the mode, like on the Premium LE, the dungeon is moving up and down every so many seconds. That dungeon thing. So it's kind of blocking shots and stuff. And going into the dungeon is going to increase the value of that spinner. That's the one thing I've heard feedback-wise that everybody loves that spinner. It's almost elevated higher and it's an opto-spinner and that thing doesn't quit. But you've got to be careful because the dice has 20 levels, and you might wrap the value back to the low end. Yeah, that would be bad. Shooting the spinner then collects the spinner value for each spin. All the shots are going to add time to the timer, blah-biddy-blah-biddy-blah, and nobody cares. I think people care. You added this thing about code in here. I just think it's cool that it's a spinner-based mode, and I like the dungeon that pops up kind of like Punchy the Clown or kind of like the one clown in Happy Gilmore. Okay. Yeah. You're going to die, clown. Yeah. Why didn't they add a sprinkler mode? Sprinkler. All right. Let's jump into it. So this game came out. This is what you want to talk about, Dennis. Dragon Gate. What are we calling it? I'm not going to talk about anything. Dragon Gate? You're going to call it Dragon Gate? Is that what they're calling it? Is that what they say? That's what I'm calling it. Does D&D stand for Death and Disability Insurance? Is that a thing? Yeah. Oh. Okay. I don't believe in insurance. Oh, okay. Look, insurance warranties, I think it's all bullshit. Do you ever get the warranty on your – on couches and stuff? They're like stain guard and shit. No, I don't get the exclusive warranties. They're never going to cover it. It never happens. Semen, blood, no. Believe me, they don't cover it. Oh, it actually tends to be AD&D, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, excuse me, Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance. I had to look it up. Dutch Pinball Extreme. I mean, so these, the LEs. All right, so Dragon Gate. LEs were going out, and some people were reporting. Well, it was initially like somebody on location was reporting that the dragon was no good. It stopped working. And then somebody else was like, it started on fire. And then, like, wait a minute. That's like the old Atari days. We don't usually see that in modern machines. It was like, okay, it started on fire. All right. Your dick's 12 inches, too, right? So they looked into it further. It didn't start on fire. There's a little chip on there, and when that chip went bad, it gave a little, yeah, pfft. So the chip's not fused then. Yeah, on the Node 10. And then people were saying that it's like the, here we go again with the Rush. Remember Rush had Node 10 issues? I remembered a game had Node 10. I can't remember which one it was. Yeah, so it was Rush. When that chip goes bad, it burns. It poofs. It poofs. It sets dragons on fire. So people were then saying, oh, my God, it's on fire. It's going to burn your whole – no. I mean, Stern Games are actually UL certified, unlike most other manufacturers. Yeah. So they had to try to figure it out very quickly what the hell was going on because none of this popped up in testing or production or anything. They issued what they were calling, first off, they were just kind of telling people, wait, we're going to have a fix by tomorrow temporarily, and then we'll have the major permanent fix thereafter. So it came out the next day, and they said, look, the temporary fix, what's happening is there's not enough slack in the wire harness that goes to this Node 10 from the motor of the Dragon. and if it moves too much one way, it could get, I think, don't quote me on this, people, but I believe this is it. It can then get an inconsistent signal connection to that node 10 and if that is done too much, the likelihood of it shorting out the little chip on that board is higher. So some games, still a minority of the games, But still, there were some games that Dragon was flexing too much, and there wasn't enough slack for that wire harness to move. It was an inconsistent connection, and that little – that's what we need to name this episode. Poof. Poof. I don't even know if audibly they're catching that. So that's what was happening. I can hear it, so yeah, I'm sure. So what they were – Fix it in post. So what they were telling people temporarily, because we can't get your wire harness – we can't Amazon drone that shit right now. we'll get the harness out to all the dealers we'll just we're going to fix the harness we're going to beef up the harness uh so that you know all that's fixed so they're doing that but temporarily they were saying if if you can do without playing that dragon just disable the dragon until we get it fixed out but if you gotta play the damn thing then there's like wire wire what are they wire ties cable ties that like hold the wires under a play field like zip ties zip ties that kind of There is some that were, they said just clip one or two of those so that you can create slack. So is it tied too tight or did they not use enough wiring? I'm confused. I don't know the answer to that, but I think that it was too tight and too tight in a way that didn't give slack in the proper position. That would make more sense if it's been inconsistent. Yes. Because this seems like a strange thing to miss if the harness itself was too short. Yeah, I don't believe it to be that. I believe it to be it was not slacked enough. They tied it too tight. Yeah. So I've had, like, Joel's had the one that I opened up in LA, and he said he did that, and it's been fine. We've had the majority of people have told us it's been fine. But what they did tell dealers, which is something that we haven't seen much of, some of the LEs did get out. So they were like, hey, dealers, if you have these LEs, just don't ship them yet. Hold them. Don't ship them to the customers. until we get this fixed. The sad thing is, I know myself for flipping out pinball, we had already shipped out an abundance of them. How many were going to still be holding those, do you think? I wouldn't think very many. The LA people don't want to wait. Well, yeah, but if you haven't shipped them, Stern was just asking. Yeah, but what were you going to do, open up the boxes and fix it for them? Until they got initially, until they knew what direction they were going, yes. Like, you know, if we had to, we have to. but that's not ideal at all believe me but yeah that's what they just said initially but uh yeah the ones that we didn't ship we still haven't shipped i'm kind of waiting to see if we're going to get that wire harness and and what type of install that's going to be this is pretty simple so we'll see but uh hopefully they start getting those wire harnesses out this week yay but yeah still a fucking mess the the problem with something like this as you all know because you live in this world, it's communication and perception. That's the biggest issue because there's nothing that hurts a product like stories of something setting on fire, of course, right? So whether it's true or not, like it's Stern's mistake and they just got to own it. And if it destroys their sales, you know, do better. The product will do well if it's a good product. That would be my thought. But remember, they poor rush game of the year and then they quit making them in like two weeks. they did bring it back later so maybe dungeons and dragons will be brought back they'll fly again but the good thing is that uh there are a significant number of alleys they're still building those will be fixed the premiums will be fixed so sure it's only going to be a handful of impacted individuals most likely because it was caught relatively quickly so long term i don't think this does any again it's a good thing they got it now instead of like rush and get them all I'm thinking of there were a lot of Stranger Things that went out with a smaller issue but a frustrating one where the Demogorgon wouldn't eat the ball. It just seemed like everyone had that initial issue, and what they ended up having to do was basically coat around it. Did they make the mouth bigger on some of the models? I don't know. I think they eventually kind of resolved the matter, but ultimately so many people had so many games with the original build that they just had to make it so getting hits instead of feeding the thing was what you would do to advance the modes and stuff. The game ended up being appreciated, but I don't think they sold as many as they had hoped. It's unfortunate. We're going to see this in pinball. I can promise all the listeners this. We'll see this on future games from all kinds of manufacturers. It sucks. But it's part of it for better or for worse. Nap Arcade reporting that there's a rumor that later this year, Stern Pinball is going to release their next remastered title, Dennis. Oh, well, I mean, we thought that. Yeah, we were thinking I was hearing some Ghostbusters stuff. Nap was hearing some Ghostbusters stuff. But now he's pivoting, saying, we're going to see another John Borg and Lyman Sheets creation, The Walking Dead. What? What? That's a bold move, Cotton. Is it relevant? We talked about this in previous episodes. We don't think it's that relevant. This is not a game I would probably remaster, period, but definitely not one of the early ones I would choose, even though I personally think it's an excellent game. It's my favorite. They got that game into a very good position in terms of rules, But the TV show itself has been off the air for years now. I know there are spinoffs, but I don't know how many people watch them. And I assume if they were to redo it, they would theme it around the comic. But again, the comic has been finished for years as well. So it's just not a relevant theme. Yeah. And if you even look on the secondary market, Metallica was holding value very good. Remember that? Even the LE models, what was it, the Lightning? What was the LE model? I'm trying to think. Wasn't the Road Case. Road Case was like a, regardless. The LE models were holding value. Even the Pros were holding value. Walking Dead, you can get fairly reasonably. The LEs, Premiums, the Pro models. Not like a Ghostbusters, which is very expensive. Yeah. So Metallica was holding value, but Walking Dead, you can get, I mean, Hell, we got an Ellie that just sold used that was like nine grand. I mean, it wasn't. Yeah. So what about this? Because I don't know if this works at all. This is one of the greatest games ever in Pinside Top 100. It's the biggest travesty. Every time I look at the Pinside Top 100, I almost negate the whole damn thing because I see how low Walking Dead is on that. And we just got done talking about Dragon Gate and issues like with the Demogorgon and Rush and such. And it was sort of the opposite. This is like the X-Men, uncanny X-Men effect. Walking Dead came out with code that people didn't like. In this case, it wasn't so much, I think, that it was. X-Men might not be the best example because I think that's just more of a status of it being so early in code. But people did not like the Walking Dead rules. And it sunk its rating on Penn State. It had shot layout problems, too. I mean, out of the pops. It's a finicky thing to set up. Out of the pops. That right pop cluster would feed straight down the middle. The magnet would throw it down the middle. Yeah, it's just... So it was one of those games where it was very particular. Yeah, there were... I mean, it had stuff. It had issues with it. But ultimately, as people learned, if you were willing to handle the leg levelers enough, you could get the game so it wasn't constantly feeding between the flippers out of the pop nest. And then Lyman went and really advanced those rules. A lot of risk-reward. The use of the drops in order to set up your modes. It's a very, very difficult game. That's wonderful. It got set so you'd play the entire play field. And other criticisms were, it's just an ugly old game. Yeah, it was one of those where they got the rights, so you had some of the show stuff on it. But again, you didn't have any call-outs from the cast. The dot matrix didn't look like the character. It was just generic Southern call-outs. Yeah, it was kind of weird. Here's my thing, though. I'm going to pitch this to you, Dan. Listen, listener, what if Stern says, okay, we identify, you know, that maybe The Walking Dead isn't as relevant. Even the comics, which I do think would help spice up a remastered release of this product. I do. Significant enough? Who knows? Only time will tell. And that might be what we end up seeing. However, what if they were smart enough and said, you know what, we get it. And that's why we will be remastering this game and theming it around The Last of Us. Huh? Zombie-based stuff. Hot title, but maybe not hot enough for its own cornerstone. I'm not at the point, Zach, where I'm going to say remasters are actually going to be theme changes. Okay. All right. I don't think so. Just say it. It's kind of clever, though, right? It is. No, I get where you're coming from. Because you can still keep a lot of the same tone and stuff. I understand. But no, it won't be. Or maybe they stick with AMC and say, look, guys, we want to relicense some of the stuff with this, but why don't we keep your Breaking Bad and we just re-theme it to Breaking Bad and still keep that relationship with AMC on a previous product? No, if this happens, it's going to be the comic. That's what they'll do. Okay. The art will be cooler for sure. all the modes will be able to stay or no one will care. I don't remember. I read part of the comic only up through the governor though. I don't know how much deviation. I don't think the whole CDC mode that's in the first season of the show. I don't think that was in the comic. People can write in and correct me if I'm incorrect. I read the two the first two compendiums. So it went through it went far into but I don't My memory sucks. I don't remember anything. I love those comics, though, and I don't read comics. Graphic novels. Sorry. So sorry. As we move on, we're going to jump into American Pinball. But first, speaking of what's coming next, I thought it would be really fun, Dennis, for you and I to talk to these listeners about what people in this hobby are asking for. what do people want to see from pinball in the future and they can do that by being an official club member of the pinball show it's super simple just go to patreon.com slash the pinball show and by doing that signing up to that they're going to help us out they're going to help support this show and they're going to get exclusive content this episode the exclusive content will be our discussion on what are people asking for in pinball for the future we're going to go through my company the flipping out pinball we have interested lists for rumored titles we're going to go through that and i think people are really going to dig this kind of like they were digging sales of 2024 this is going to be a it's going to be a big one we're going to go through all of the interested lists that people are on and kind of tell you how popular those lists are how not popular they are and uh i think some of them are very so we talked about this last episode some I'm very surprised. I'm like, man, everybody really talks about that, but I don't have as many people on that. Or I don't think that game would be great at all, but there's a lot of people on that. Maybe I'm wrong. So we're going to go through that for you exclusively as a Pinball Show Club member. Thanks for all the continued support as part of that as well. Where can they sign up to that, Dennis? Patreon.com slash the Pinball Show. And that continues to grow. So we must be doing something right, even though they're not like us. I don't Kendrick Lamar are you a avid listener? not in your playlist it was Journey, Dolly Parton then Kendrick Lamar right? I don't think I have any Dolly Parton in my list what did we say last episode you gave a oh who was the old country singer and people were like no oh whoa I walked into a buzzsaw of errors there Yeah, he did, didn't he? Okay. So you had mentioned the Rock-A-Doodle-Doo. Yes. And Glenn Campbell. Yeah, Glenn Campbell. Glenn Campbell, I believe that was. And I got him mixed up with Glenn Frey of the Eagles. Yeah. And you didn't correct me. Because I didn't know. So I'm 20% liable, and I'm 80% liable. Eagles suck. I don't know. So, yes. Now, I don't know Glenn Campbell's music. There's one thing I knew about him. because I did know the name. I clearly got mixed up, but it was so... Glenn Frey, I had a solo album of his somewhere on CD, not Glenn Campbell. Glenn Campbell, I remember because he's in the John Wayne movie, True Grit, as the... John Wayne won his Oscar for that movie, but Glenn Campbell is so terrible in it. The remake is a better movie by far just because you don't have Glenn playing LaBeef. Ouch. If you want to, go and watch original True Grit and watch his performance. It is cringe Oh wow Okay And so I have no interest in his music because he is such a bad actor So what Dennis is saying is go sign up today and thank you for the continuous support Yes, I was very wrong. And I apologize to the entire world. People jump onto the Discord, too, as a member. Right now in Discord, they're talking about people's first impressions of, we have some people down at Pinball at the Beach, so they're talking about what they think of Evil Dead, if it took the show, what they think about Dungeons and Dragons, if they've had a Note 10 issue, all of that stuff. Good times. American Pinball. Were they at the... I'm trying to think if they were at Pinball at the beach. I don't know. They did... I saw them hiring. They hired some tech people. So confused with that company. But I'm here to talk about Day Fix being back, baby. You thought he was gone? They hired him back? Or should I say, yeah, I'm saying I'm back. That's Day Fix. Was that an impression? It was. okay this time he's back he's on the pinball news pinball magazine pinball podcast when he told really what happened well the truth uncut of america now i did not listen to this i have to i did disclaim it i i generally avoided a lot of interviews with him and i went and listened to the loser kid one and then after that i heard he was gone you're like never again never again i took one for the team there listener ah you're welcome we usually say whenever you're listening when we're referencing stuff like oh go to nap arcade look at it yourself this article or oh go go to listen to i can say no spare yourself some time i'll give you the details here dave fix talked about leaving american pinball he's on a non-compete right now 90 days i believe which is fairly short yeah and he has 30 days left but i don't know if he's like that enough or not he said a lot as he always does and he was like yeah let's probably get me in trouble yeah i don't see how it couldn't but okay he was told that american pinball they decided that they didn't want to do any more r&d work rather they were just going to go with contract manufacturing moving forward this is what he was kind of told us he was being let go thing thus they're getting rid of everybody. Later, he did say that they're going to bring in a, quote, skeleton crew, end quote, to make a game when the opportunity does come up. Skeleton crew, like as in, I can't reckon I know anything about no adding. What? No, no reference here. Now the people who, don't worry, the people know what I mean. I know. I'm a little behind on all that stuff. Thus, when he was let go, it's, you know, we're getting rid of everybody. They're just gonna, They just don't want to put the time and effort and the money into R&D work, making their own products. They just want to do contract manufacturing. They weren't pleased with the brilliance that was barbecue. Oktoberfest. He also used the – he's calling it an analogy, quote, the absentee landlord analogy. Are you familiar with that? Yes, but I'm not exactly sure what this means in the context. He was basically saying he was working for American Pinball, and they really didn't know much, but they would come in and just kind of give direction even when the direction was uninformed and not the best to sit, that kind of thing. So he's saying Ametron was the landlord, not him. Yes, correct. Okay. Correct, yeah. That makes sense. He said Mukesh and Nirmal decided the decision on how to move forward, called Dave Fix to come in to give him a pink slip, and coincidentally enough did so on the same day of Amtron's company holiday party. Oh. Hey, Dave, before you leave, you want some cake? Yeah, let them eat cake. Oh, Mike. Look, I don't mean to be mean here, listener, and the reason I am. I don't mean to be, but the reason I am mean. Because I'm just being frank. I don't care. There's enough shit thrown my way that I'm just being honest here. All right, Zofia, Ryan, and Jack Haeger, they already took another job with other pinball manufacturers. We haven't heard that yet, I don't think, but they're with other people. Then Dave Fick said to the PMP podcast that he will come out after his non-compete, going to come out talking about how Amtron does their financing. But apparently, he had to take a game for some reason as a form of payment. So all the games he said he has from American Pinball were because he had to take them? I think he only had one. Yeah. And he kind of backstepped, though, and he was like, well, but I wanted to take their game. You know, I love all their games. I wanted to be paid in product. All their games. I kind of think that he was backstepping because he really hopes and expects that at some point AP is going to take him back. To do what? I don't know. They're a contract manufacturer now. I haven't figured it out. later he then forgot that he said that and later couldn't help himself and said he ended up taking a game because they owed him money casey Casey Butler is a coder there they and casey still works at american pinball so they still have a coder game seven still planning to be launched but timeline is unknown per day fix jonathan of pinball news pinball magazine pinball podcast essentially then asked if day fix was responsible at all for any of the failures of american pinball or if something different could have been done in retrospect like here's your chance that's a bold question it's a good question well he perhaps he was like well i'll be the bad cop here and like man you just blew your whole question by saying you were going to be the bad cop of the question it's like when people are like it's my job to ask the hard questions say no have some balls just say it put it out there so he gave day fix the opportunity to say look any accountability here anything in retrospect you would do differently day fix went on to talk about the dealers telling him this is the biggest bubble in history you know he blamed it on uh on the bubble and the bubble bursting or coming down he said 2024 they were in the red but not even as bad as before he started working there Sure, they were not doing well, but hey, it was even worse before I started. After 2023, Mukesh wanted to sell the company. Wanted to sell, sell, sell. This is not surprising to me, though. Yeah. Dave Fix said the executives did not manage the cost of their new board system very well. Maybe that's part of that finance stuff he says he'll get into later. And then he made a statement that I will not believe until I see financials. because, Dennis, he said that they sold more Berrios Barbecue Challenge than they did Hot Wheels in the first year. No way. Look. No way. So I'm saying there's a chance. No way. No, you're not. I don't want to say that you're wrong because it doesn't make sense and everyone's going to agree with you, but I'm going to say that he may be accurate with this. Oh, wow. And here's why. Here's what you might not be factoring in. They had unveiled Hot Wheels at a show and then COVID hit right away. They couldn't even build them for months and months. So if you start the clock from the reveal, it's conceivable to say that in 12 months, they didn't even build as many as they built barbecues because they weren't able to. That's what I think he means. I guess the semantics and what you used to measure. So if you were to ask, like, because if the question was, did Hot Wheels or barbecue sell better? Everyone knows Hot Wheels did. But Hot Wheels had its legs chopped out from under it because it wasn't at a big show because TPF got canceled for the pandemic. It was at a little baby show just before it. And then the stay at home orders for the first couple of months or whatever in Chicago stopped them from building games. You remember the lack of. But he's running the clock through all of that. So it's – I'm going to use – it's disingenuous to phrase it in the way he phrased it, I feel, because there's a lot of factors that clearly I think he would be relying on for people to not remember. But me and Pepperidge Farm remember. I just – even – That's how he's getting there. Even – If it's true. I'm not even – it still seems to be a bit of a stretch, but Hot Wheels really struggled initially because no one had any time on it, and then they couldn't build them anyway. But Hot Wheels was coming off of two – the perception and the hobby of the first two American Pinball games was not bad. It really wasn't bad. Even Oktoberfest, the perception was, well, Houdini was great. Oktoberfest is kind of low. We'll give it a chance. It still sold units. It was coming off of those two. And Hot Wheels, yeah, you can – Barbecue, there's no way they sold more than 100. So if you're telling me they didn't sell more than 100 in the first year of Hot Wheels, there's no way. They didn't build 100 in the first year. I bet they didn't. He may be right here. I don't know. We got one fairly quickly. I just – no. There's no way. They sent their little pre-show build, whatever they had there, and that was about all they did. I will give a hefty sum of money to charity if American Pinball or AIMTROM presents to me factual data that proves this to be the case. I don't believe there's any way that it's true. They're not going to go to the effort to prove this right or wrong. This is Dave out on his own. No one cares. How about white label games? Yeah, he was saying that there was a couple hundred white label games per title that were supposed to come out. What? A couple hundred? white label games per title. So they had commitments. Like contracts with Jack Daniels and John Deere and all that? Yeah, hundreds of them were... Yeah, but what are they going to be, like one game each? No, he's saying... I think he's saying it the other way around. They had maybe, let's say, let's just for argument's sake say, two to ten contract titles but a commitment to 50 on each How? How? What are you going to put them into every loaves? That doesn't make any sense. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't make sense. I'm not defending that one. That is what he said. He said it twice. Of people that reached out to Dave Fix to give him well wishes. So that's nice. We don't even have a thousand listeners. We have thousands of listeners. I'm rounding down to prove a point. We're rounding down. Yeah. So Dave Fix was cognizant that a lot of people blame him for the demise of American Pinball. Well, they haven't exactly been subtle about it. So he said in response, he said, quote, look, he didn't say look, he said, quote, I'm the one that gave it most of its life, referring to American Pinball. So on the contrary, he's the one that gave the damn whole company their life. You can't blame any of this on him. He's a life giver. He's a life giver. Truth seeker, life giver, baby. Right now, the whole team at American Pinball consists of the following people. Casey Casey Butler, coder. Mutesh and Jessica, which is an artist. He said the company right now, the outlook is, quote, kind of bleak. I thought he was going to talk about a bus at this point, and he didn't bring the bus into it. Well, I mean, it's going to look real bleak without your life giver. Mutesh said he hadn't seen Game 7. Didn't have time to see Game 7. This is one of the leaders of the company. Dave saying, quote, he's just checking out. Oh, that's a that absentee landlord thing. He is just throwing this company into the fire, man. They said they lost a license after Hot Wheels to another manufacturer. I wonder what that was. Where did he, man, go? Masters of the Universe? Wasn't that the rumor? Where did he, man, go? Ametron would be open to selling American Pinball, and people have been in conversation. claims Dave Fix. But he says, you know what? Not having the team there is really what hurts a sale. Dennis? I don't know how unpopular this opinion is going to be. It's not going to be popular if you're hedging. But I'm here just to report what I think. Are you a life giver? I am not. I am a soul sucker, baby. I'm a soul sucker. It's a little sucker. Dave Fix, Zach here. What the fuck are you smoking? Like, it hurts the sale not having a team there. I think, in theory, sure, having no one to be able to build something does hurt a sale. But if you're specifically referring to you as the team, Dave, I kind of, I very much disagree. I don't see what you and the team who had years to prove and came up with little to nothing. I don't think the team not being there hurts anything. I don't know who would buy it. Who is buying this company? The only value I see to it is the machinery, the scrap. That's what Dave said. He said without the team, you're buying parts. Even with the team, all you're buying is parts. These licenses aren't worth anything. I don't think so either. They even still have the Hot Wheels license, which is the only real license. Everything else is just themes, themes that anyone could do. And they've already made what money they're going to make off of the Oktoberfest and the Houdinis of the world. There's no market left for it. And I also believe that the biggest selling point, honestly, is already kind of tainted, was the brand, which is the name itself, American Pimp. That's a good name, American Pinball. I always said that. But that's it. I don't – like if I have $10 million that I want to lose and I'm like, let's put it into pinball and I'm wanting to start a pinball manufacturer, I don't know anybody – I don't know anybody educated enough within this industry to think, man, we should start with American Pinball and build from there. Why wouldn't they just start their own thing? You would be better off. Yeah. I just – and I don't think Dave thinks that. If he does think that, then, Dave, I must remind you, there's probably a reason that you're no longer running the company. These are just common sense kind of things to me. But what do I know? I didn't go to business school or anything. Dave said that he – in the podcast, he said, look, guys, I'm going to answer a question before you even ask it. And I thought, hot damn, what a fucking stud. Thank you, Dave. So he's running the show. He said, American Pinball uses all a very specific manufacturer's parts. Basically, he couldn't say Bally Williams for some reason, but claims that this is the reason why people should not worry about the support of American Pinball games moving forward. He's still kind of trying to, you know, be a team player here, saying, you know, I know everybody's worried about the support that these games are going to have in the future, but don't worry about that because they're all going to be using these Bally Williams parts. They went on to say Well the biggest hiccup though On computers is that they were using A CMOS and there were some dead batteries Or something Yeah computers use CMOS But it's a A CMOS battery is a coin battery It's a lithium coin battery You just change the battery They last 2 to 10 years Yeah he's claiming that these are foolproof parts And everything should be fine Going forward yeah but the sea oh my god that's such a yeah like all like yeah i'm sure you can get a coil cmos batteries on them they're real easy to change it's not you unplug the thing and you change the battery they say that's the biggest hiccup that they kind of see you know what the biggest hiccup with smoke detectors are they have batteries oh god i hate those things they well yes because they little bastards will beep even after you take out the battery god yes but die and the cmos stuff is like it remember it's like for bio settings on computers and you usually know the battery is bad because the date will no longer be right on the computer if you turn it off. Yeah. But again, it's a coin battery. They're cheap and they're easy to change. Jonathan with the podcast asks, how is Game 7, would it even get built? How is it going to get built? How is it going to get promoted, supported? Dave Fix said that he's been asking American Pinball Management the same thing, and they claim that they're just going to do it. Very Nike of them. I think Dave's trying to position himself like one of us. He's like, I'm with you guys. Licenses are only held to company during the agreed-upon time terms, but if the company is sold, then the license is no longer held. Sure. So if they sell the company, those rumored companies or whatever. What licenses? Yeah. The license is with American Pinball. That's what they were asking. They were asking about, well, who's the license that's with American Pinball, though? And he said, well, yes, but it's under Ametron Finances, though. It's kind of weird. I don't really get it, but okay. Game 8, 9, and 10 are in development. No, they're not. As well as other projects and side projects. Side projects? Like what? Like game add-ons, toppers. Toppers? I don't know. Lunch boxes? Like me. Dave Fix had a 90-day non-compete, spoke in a third person to describe his future employment. We don't know where Dayfix is going to be at in a year. He noted that AP games have flipper fatigue, and he himself, Dayfix, figured out how to fix this going forward. Wow, he is a life giver. He did sell for the Indus game because they sent a Galactic Tank Force there, which has changed the coil and how it's kind of configured. He also said the Indus game had fans on it, so keep that in mind. So he did three things. They changed the coils, they changed the configuration, and they added fans. He said he spent two and a half days to figure out this problem. But my question is, why couldn't any of that have happened while he was actually working at American Pinball? I'm sure Ametron just prevented the fans. That's right. We're just going to do it. Dave hadn't taken a paycheck since December 13th. That passion just keeps him going to help that company. Ametron has money, so I don't understand why people wouldn't get paid. The host asked, Dave, can you see yourself? I just blocked past that. going back to American Pinball. Dave thought about it and said, you know what? He and the team have discussed this. And they can actually see themselves coming back. But only under new ownership. So the company needs to be sold and he'd be willing to come back and take a second bite of the apple. But then he prefaced it with but then again, even under current ownership, maybe some project work he could see himself doing that holy shit dave thank you so much for being you i fucking love this guy but man the position he was in it just doesn't maybe he'll launch a coil cooling system like call it pin bishop dave fakes saying that dutch pinball was and is interested in having ap contract manufacture their games i found that very interesting it would but it's it's still kind of damning to Dutch Pinball to discuss this publicly and then said something along the lines of a magic girl. I just don't know what context he was talking about magic girl. DPX stuff, like doing the – I don't know. Yeah, because magic girl is something they have the license to, the guy that does DPX, but I don't know if he was talking – And don't forget, American Pinball first tried to kind of help J-Pop make magic girls. Dave, Dave, Dave even said they need – one of the biggest needs that they have for American pinballs i have an english speaking purchasing department i mean he was talking about everything dennis he's like yeah but purchasing i can't if i'm trying to get purchases done they don't speak english because it's over in uh in india i think but they speak english in india but he said that their purchasing department didn't so there was a lost in translation of how to purchase stuff okay because they didn't speak english i mean the staff only knew hindi for example yeah but that Why are we discussing? It's so weird. I don't understand why this is coming up on this podcast. Jonathan suggested that someone could buy the company and employ the same team. Why? I know. I don't get it. Jonathan, Dennis here. Why? I don't understand any of this. What's the deal with these companies bringing the same teams in? Oh, my gosh. And then Dave Fix started pitching to the listener, quote, if you want to buy American pinball, reach out to Antron. What the fuck? So we could bring in the same old team that didn't work. And then he pushed, like, bye, bye, bye, bye now, because the team. No, I can't. I'm not even joking. He said, the team may be somewhere else in a year, so you better buy quick. Bye now. the fuck is going on how is this a thing oh my gosh my being too callous i don't how how has it even lasted this long what is going on okay so fun maybe i should go and listen to this you should no i didn't i don't want that you almost told me yes and then you were like no i tried to cover it thoroughly so you guys could spare yourself he even talked about dave fix saying he doesn't believe that aimtron allocates finances correctly for american pinball and suggested that they were not knowledgeable on how to do the job like he just ruined them ruined them it just ouch and not only as a host of a podcast, but as a dealer for American Pinball, this is not a good look for me discussing, but I mean, what do you do? This is just, this is out there. And I know you're not an attorney, Zach. I wanted to ask you, is this torturous interference? Dave Fix is his own worst enemy. There's so many people in this hobby, in this industry that I have met that are so negligent when it comes to public behavior, that one day it's going to bite somebody. And I can only hope that the ignorance that I see amongst many people some of them learn by the consequences of one I don know when it going to happen but I leave my mouth open in awe to see this year after year I'm like, this would not happen in any other industry. How is this allowed? What is going on? This reminds me of, and I hate to deviate into this. Don't worry, I'm not going to go into any details of note regarding the wristwatch industry. because this came up on a podcast in that space that I listened to. And someone had sort of asked a similar thing. There was a company and people couldn't understand the decisions. They're like, why are they making these decisions? These seem like really bad business decisions. Why are they behaving this way? And the person who responded, who was a journalist who covered the industry for a while, basically in a nutshell said, here's the thing you need to understand about Switzerland. The best and the brightest are not running wristwatch companies. like the best and the brightest in switzerland went into banking these are the c students oh yeah and when i see pinball taken in the best and the brightest in manufacturing they ain't in pinball folks i would argue that there are some very very very bright people that are doing very very well in this industry there are shining stars in all fields again this guy was painting with a brush a broad brush but i i'm doing the same here as well yes and one of the things that was noted in in that industry was there was a lot of talent in the design area but the business operational area i mean we we talk about this here in pinball all the time like we have great rules we have great designers and then we see weird decisions like hey let's first unveil this game with a live stream where everything goes wrong and then we just keep doing the same thing over and over for game after game. I mean, it's stupid behavior. Yeah, but we're not dealing with small fry. There's a lot of money that filters through this industry because it's more of a luxury product, because each unit is pretty pricey. A lot of people are like, well, it's so niche and it's so small. I hate to say there's still a lot of money because of the price tag on these things. A lot of money running through this industry that I don't think the outside world is necessarily privy to. Like just no, no. But again, just because things have lots of money doesn't make the people who wield it intelligent. Absolutely. And I don't just mean like IQ. I just mean like business savvy. And sometimes I know lots of rich people who are not who are really almost dumb luck that they ended up with money. Or they're really savvy. And this is just such a side project that their ignorance is more just because they they're not putting the effort they need to. Yes. Into it. And that's another example we've seen instances of in watch industry where people are like that's their side. It's a fun. They don't care if it's successful or not. I know it because they're rich. I know very wealthy people that own multitudes of business. I'm talking like, oh, yeah. Ten to a hundred for business. Serial entrepreneurs is what they're called. And their job is to and they do not dabble deeply in anything. And because they're almost playing the stock market. If it's going up, great. We'll sell it when it needs to, but if it's going down, we cut – and I see that a little bit in this industry. And some people, the startup is the fun part for them. Like they just enjoy starting businesses. And, yeah, it's almost like a dice throw. It's like how I buy mutual funds. I'm hoping some of those stocks and those funds will do well. It's very interesting to see where this industry is going to go in the future. But the people that are doing it that are – I mean, it's apparent. It's apparent. but thank you for the entertainment and the information over the years Dave Fix I selfishly hope you stick around in pinball I hope we see you at Chicago Expo because I have fun with Dave Fix and this is God's honest truth I don't dislike Dave Fix I have fun with him here as an entertainment piece for our product this show I have fun talking to him truthfully he pisses me off a lot and I tell him when he does and he and I are just very different type of people. But that doesn't mean I still don't like having fun with different type of people. Now that he's not making decisions that affect my company, we're good. We're good. Moving right along, Dennis, we talked about not listening to some podcasts, but this is one that I would recommend people listen to. The Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. They did a tribute to the late Lyman Sheets and had on his partner, Penny Epstein, and the Sharps, Zach, Josh, and Roger Sharp. And they were just going through some historically, some memories of Lyman and different things. It was a wonderful episode. Go listen to it. Some of the things that came up, one of which was huge to me. And going forward, I'm going to try to integrate it into just my daily thoughts and discussion within pinball. But first, did you know this? Josh Sharpe talking about working with Lyman, that Cactus Canyon enhancement stuff that they were working on. He did also kind of hint that they were working on additional upgrades as well to other games, such as Monster Bash and Medieval Madness. So might we see some of those in the future? I thought that was damn cool. It excited me because I'm like, oh, so Lyman was thinking about how can we enhance Monster Bash, Medieval Madness. that's fantastic so he said he you know josh said he hopes that we'll see those will see the light of day as well i was excited about that so you heard it you heard it listener we may see in hand josh let's let's get the cactus canyon one out first how about that let's do that what i was going to say that i really liked was another point made by Josh Sharpe i'm going to give i'm going to give him one hell of a shout out because this rang so true when listening that I cannot see it another way going forward. He talked about everyone giving so much support to like pinball designers and stuff as they should, you know, but he said he gets frustrated sometimes or let down sometimes maybe when people categorize categorize Lyman as, you know, quote a coder or a programmer because he is that. But he truly thinks that the designation of game designer also deservedly belongs in the same line of talking about Lyman Sheets. And I was thinking about that. And in my opinion, Dennis and listener, he couldn't be more correct. Everything is so relative that their teamwork approaches to everything. And we do have that heuristic that we, I think, misuse in that the game designer is kind of at the top of everything, whereas the lead code or programmer also, in a sense, is very much designing that game. One could argue even more so nowadays. so i completely agree josh especially for an individual such as lime and sheets other people you know everybody's different in this respect some people maybe all they do is program based on what the geometric designer the physical designer wants to do but damn it i do know for a fact that people like lime and sheets are designing their games just as much as if not more in some respects than the physical layout designer or engineer. Yeah, for someone like Lyman Sheets, I completely agree. And moving forward, I will try to remember to call him a game designer if compared to other game designers. Yeah, no, it makes sense. But people are always going to want to identify a key name to anything. It's like why the director gets so much credit on a movie, sorts of things like that. So the behavior isn't it's not malicious or anything. It's just the way it's it's happened, probably because of the history of pinball before they're really back in the day. The person who did the layout did the rules, too. So and that's just become divorced more and more as the teams have had to expand because the depth has gotten to the point where there's no way one person could really do the entire thing feasibly. Well, and I think that's partly why Keith Elwin has made such popularity in this field is because he did do more than just layout. Yes, and so really there are lots of game designers. As long as they are putting ideas into what gets into the final product, they help design the game. Someone who's literally turning a screw is not a game designer in and of themselves, but if they picked where the screw was going to go, you could argue that they helped design the game. Okay, so a big wide range of degree there. Yeah, yeah. Like the engineers who help make the mechs work or talk about like the layout or how this is going to have to configure or how the ball is going to interact with it. That's game design. It's a team sport at this point. So at the end of the day, Lime and Sheets, to me and to many others, you will always be a game designer and one of the best that we ever have seen and ever will see. Go listen to that episode. Nicely done, Loser Kids. Pinball at the Beach. You didn't go, Dennis. No, I did not. You know, sand, I don't like it. It's gritty. It gets everywhere. Pinball at the Beach looked like a fun hangout show. The only criticisms I heard of Pinball at the Beach was it was pricey. And I think you could only buy a weekend pass, not a daily pass, like $200 or something. People seemed to enjoy themselves. I saw a lot of smiles. I saw a lot of shorts. Shit. Awesome. Nicely done. Who was that that developed that? Dealer down in Florida? Marshall, I believe. So congratulations. Marshall. Looked like a successful show. And I think they got some help from Ed and Kim Vanderbeen from TPF. So there was a lot of stuff there. Four Evil Dead games made their way to the Spooky Booth. People were loving that. Some said that it was the game of the show. Can you believe that? Spooky Pimple? The game of the show, Dennis? Well, I didn't catch on fire. That probably helped it quite a bit. Here we go. D&D is at the Stern Booth. Dragons all fully functioning. See my previous comment. No poofs. Ramps. This is what I want to talk about. Ramps Pinball Manufacturing. It's a new company. New Pinball Manufacturing. It's a little redundancy there. But they showed off Ramps Road Trip. I'm a bit confused. Okay. Because of the company's name mean ramps? So the company's name is Ramps Pinball Manufacturing, I believe. RPM. Oh. Maybe that's why they're getting cute. But then the game is called Ramps Road Trip. Yeah, Ramps. Dennis here, can you rename to Rowdy Ramp Rounds? Rowdy Ramp Rounds. R-R-R. It's even cooler. Ramp Rounds. Rowdy Ramp Rounds. So the Ramps is, I don't know if there's an apostrophe S. Is it possessive? So is it Ramp? I don't know. I haven't looked into this. Because if it was Ramps Road Trip, it'd be Ramps as is Road Trip. So it's a game themed around a road trip. Not the movie with Tom Green. That would be awesome. Now, I would have been a buyer for that one. Oh, gosh. I think I've seen that movie once. Think it had Stifler in it? You know, he's been Stifler to all of us forever. We don't know his name. Rock out with your cock out. I'm going to rock out with my cock out. Rips Road Trip. And I saw most of the footage courtesy of Kerry Hardy's video. So thank you, Carrie, for that walkthrough video and of the dedicated Ramps Road Trip video. So Ramps is a company that's located in Odessa, Florida. You may be a familiar listener with Bob Knives. He was the designer of Ramps and probably the one that's running this company. But he did the Elf Home Brew that people have seen over the years go to different shows and stuff. So Bob Knives. They are aiming. So they launched this product here at the Pinball at the Beach. 500 units. they're wanting to make. Oh, wow. That's what I said. Wow. Okay. God bless you if you can make $500 this game. It's a wide body. Some of the features, it has this cool-looking turntable pop bumper nest that changes the ramp paths above it. There's three states there that it can change to. So I liked that. I thought that was very clever. Four flippers of this game, three cow drop targets, so larger drop targets look like booty rate, just stand up plastics but in the shape of a cow and a lot of drop targets in this game the code currently though not a lot in the code .30 on their code so X-Men oh wow wow you're a naughty boy today I'm sorry but only a little sorry runs off of the fast board set elf ran off of multimorphic but they flopped over to you know i've seen a lot more use uh maybe i'm just noticing it more i'm seeing a lot of people use fast and maybe some of it i thought was driven by that fast if you're gonna say go down the route of bally williams remakes the whole deal with planetary is tied with fast so i assume And maybe that's been the, I don't know, people are like, I want to learn this because if I want to break into the industry, I'm going to maybe do a remake someday. I'm going to have to use fast. I don't know. It's just an aside I had. Possibly. So fast board set. And it's a Ryzen 7 computer. The Bob made it a point to say, quote, it's not a $90 box, end quote. So it costs a couple hundred dollars. Does it take that much power? I don't really care. It is running off a game engine rather than just videos playing. Okay. It may very well have been. Yeah. What is of interest to me, as we'll see, he was taking some shots against what he perceives maybe as competition. I wanted to be like, whoa, fella, a little bit here. So does that mean he's taking shots at Stern? Because you always get so defensive when it's Stern. I get defensive whenever little guys with no track record start taking swings at Kings. That's what I'm like But Labyrinth I want to say that's cute They didn't take swings They didn't take any swings You know what You know what barrels did What'd they do They just fucking did it They American pinballed They did it They came out with it They proved it That's all So a Ryzen 7 computer I guess is a couple hundred dollars So alright cool no wires or switches really they're using proximity sensors kind of multi-morphic-esque yeah and uh i think pinball bros is doing a lot of that so they said no wires but i'm like well all the optos on the thing have wires i see but this game features first ever load your own music dennis you can load i think six songs into the radio and play them as you're like when you're selecting before you plunge, you can change the radio and it, yeah, your own music. That's clever. It seems like there might be some licensing stuff going on there, but maybe not. Well, if you don't, if they don't sell it with those songs loaded, you're probably fine, would be my guess, but I'm not a lawyer. Nothing I say on this podcast is to be construed as legal advice. Yeah, I don't know how it works. Also, they were pushing, Bob was pushing no deposits. That's a good thing. A lot of people like that. Yeah, he said we're going to build them and then sell them and ship them within a couple of weeks. Uh-oh, Bob. Careful. Went on to say, we're not going to take deposits. We're not going to make people wait six months. Uh-oh, Bob. What? No, these are great things to offer. These are points of measurement. Uh-oh, careful. He also said, quote, if you like it, great. If you don't like it, then go buy a comic book. Oh, there's quite a price delta between those those two things. Regarding the deposits, Bob said we are self-funded and don't need to do it. That's a breath of fresh air to a lot of people. Right. But at this point, at this point, though, I will remind everybody it is air. Yeah, but you're not you don't have any money at risk. So do you care if it's air? Is that fair? It is fair to retort my error. Yes. Even on the website, if you go to the website, there's a little graphic that says, quote, too cool with a K. K-O-O-L. Too cool for deposits. Why is it with a K? Maybe the raccoons smoke cigarettes. I don't know. Because that's what I thought cigarettes to when I saw you type this out. Possibly their aim is to go back to the 90s with their game. their game styling. JNCO jeans? Games go on sale in April. So they're showing it. They're launching it. But you can't buy it until April. That's not that far away, though. You know how I feel about that. I do, but it's not that far away. It's not six months. It's a failure. It's not my Cactus Canyon Continued Bonus Code. It's a wrong decision and it's a failure. Well, no, I will go back on that. We'll discuss that if their goal is to make money and sell products. Okay. He said, quote, we are a full manufacturer, end quote. They're going to be manufacturing 90% of the parts for this game. Basically, he said, everything but the sheet metal. That's awesome. Very cool. Very cool. But then he was saying that they were using a lot of Bally Williams off-the-shelf parts. Are they buying those or are they making them? I don't know. See, that's where I get confused. I was like, what? So, I don't know. The other things that I was questioning, like they have a Bash toy that's a Ford Bronco. I mean, I guess they're not getting the Ford license to put that Bronco vehicle toy in the games. So, maybe that's for purposes, just visual purposes. Again, I don't know the legal rules. Like if they were to go to a store and buy them, the toy already had the license. So, I mean, didn't Stern used to do that with like buying toys for Lord of the Rings and stuff and just zip tying them down? And the toys were licensed because they bought them from a licensed manufacturer. Interesting. I don't know. Maybe. It looks cool there. It looks cool. Did you see any of the game itself? Gameplay? Anything like that? Okay. So I would encourage people to go check out the layout. It's a unique layout. A lot of cool little things going on. The game. Game play, they were doing some game play. So it had really low flipper strength. That was one of the things that stood out to me. Was this at a show, though? Couldn't make the ramps. You know, low power is often a problem at shows. I just don't understand, Dennis. What do you mean? I just don't. You've rambled on about this for five minutes. What do you want to say? What's the goal of them showing this product? To launch a new manufacturing company. Okay. So if that is their goal, then I now question whether I would ever purchase a product based on the decisions that have been made thus far. What part's disturbing you? Okay, well, let's start a list. No, I didn't want a list. I was hoping for just one thing. First off, your company name. We're not going to get hung up on the name, are we? On RPM? That is a huge factor in developing a business and a product. Yes, absolutely. That is major. So that, I have questions. I mean, I agree with you. It should be rowdy wraparounds, but they can't all be winners. I just have questions there. All right. As we move to the visual of this game, the artwork. What the fuck are we doing? It's a commercial product. We're trying to sell this to 500 people with that artwork. People are going to listen and think I'm trying to be mean. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to be helpful, but it doesn't look that way. It's just not good. it doesn't look good at all the theme just a road trip i i mean vacation america was a pinball game how well did that do well we don't talk about the old days what do we just i don't understand i'm i'm gonna plead ignorance here maybe i'm just a complete dumb dumb i don't get it why would you make a game about road trip with bad art. You went from elf to road trip. I'm missing something. It sounded like you took a detour somewhere there. Road trip. And can you even use notable sites throughout your road trip? Can they have the biggest ball of yarn? Can you license that? I mean, I don't know if you have to license it. Golden Gate Bridge? Do you have to license Golden Gate Bridge? Probably not. Really? Well, I mean, it's a public thing. So maybe, but I just don't get the theme. I don't understand the theme. I'm sure their lawyers have advised them. Okay, we'll keep going here. There's things I don't understand. I don't understand why would you ever launch a product two months before you're wanting to sell a product? Well, because there's no theme or I should say license to really generate interest. They're going to have to get exposure to it for people to start contemplating if they want to buy it. Okay. Thus, wouldn't you present it in the best possible way to maximize sales? Well, what part wasn't the best possible way? I mean, they're planning PPF, they're planning Expo, and they're planning Southern Pride as well. So, I mean, they're hitting the big shows. With .3 code where flippers don't even get up ramps. Yeah, but they're going to start building in April. You have to start getting people interested now or else they're going to send their money to Harry Potter. Your first impression is what sells games. and their first impression is, this has nothing to do in the game, stuff doesn't work correctly, and I can't get up the ramps. Oh, I didn't know that the stuff didn't work correctly. You didn't mention that part. I didn't see the ball go up the ramps. Well, you mentioned the little flipper. And the big turntable, they're like, well, so that's, you know, it's functioning a little, like, if you have .3 code, what I saying is yeah I don think things are going to work as intended It not the presentation in which you are selling the product Why Why Just wait Just wait Wait How much is it Why get a yam cam as your first product video Wait. What are you doing? Because I'm looking on their website and I don't see the price. Sadly, for me, it doesn't even matter. How did they determine 500 units? Where did that come from? If you're going to have 500 units, you kind of need to know how much money it is, too. I don't know. I want companies to do well, and I know this guy's going to end up being pissed off at me going forward, and everybody else that likes the idea that's cheerleading is going to be pissed off going forward. I get all that. I just don't get it. I just don't understand something that's just so simple, so simple. Wait to launch a product whenever it's ready to actually launch. That's all. It gets to a point of offending me because I love pinball so much, and I love the business of pinball. So when I see companies start out on the wrong foot left, the wrong foot right, and we're playing twister, they're starting out on the wrong left hand. They're starting out just – it's not hard to do some of these things right. It's so hard to do so many of these things right. But the easy ones, if you can't get the easy ones, people will question everything else. You're building your pyramid on loose sand. Does that sound like a dick? Yeah, I guess so. I'm like a concerning cousin or something. Well, I just don't know what you want. Not to launch a product with .3 code. Flippers don't even work. There's bad art and there's no sale. You can't even take money. I have so many issues. That's what I want. I want them to succeed, and this is not how you do it. Spooky Femme Pinball. Trickling out Evil Dead games. Yep. They've sold 750 thus far. See how hard it is? Right there. Well, they had a license. Exactly. And they've sold 750. How in the hell is Ramps going to sell the road trip even close to 50? Much less 500. If they route-ramp-rounded it, they would. NAB Arcade reporting that we are going to see a release of Motorhead by Spooky Pinball sometime this year based around the homebrew of Dave Peck from New Zealand. I don't know if you've seen that. I think I have before, but it's been a long time. That looks like a pretty cool game if people like more classic single-level game. Looks kind of cool. Spooky then later refuted this rumor about the game coming in 2025. But keep in mind, Spooky has streamed this game before, and they do have a close relationship to the PECs. Interesting. Jersey Jack Pinball starting to ship Avatar CEs domestically. Yeah, we have some shipping this week. So congratulations there, JJP. Big congrats on the next one. Also, big congrats on a new sale that they have. Oh, I love the JJP sales. I'm trying to be. I've got a vacation coming up, so I need to be more positive. I need to be good. They do have a Toy Story 4 LE games that they did a special on sale. $9,999. So you save yourself two grand, and you get a free topper included. And I think they're doing like a banner or something. No, I think it's just topper. Maybe it's just topper. So under $10,000 for an LE, and you get a free topper. That's fantastic. I still love that game. Who wouldn't want one? So if you're interested in one, purchase through Flip N Out Pinball Pitbull. All of those strong takes this episode, we've got to thank people. Who do you want to thank, Dennis? Oh, I'd say we should probably thank Rodney, our bobcat. Oh, the bobcats. I'm just going to put a plural on it. Thank you, the bobcats. Oh, shoot that fucker! Steve, thank you as well, Mr. Bumblebee. And don't forget Rob, our panther. Our little kitten. Thank you, Rob. Appreciate the continued support. Frank, we love you. We love you so much. Our falcon, all these animals. That's true, but then there's poor David stuck as our shaker motor, our one blunder that we'll never fix. I wonder if we'll ever get a physical knocker. I don't know. I don't know because it's so hard to work it into any themes that we do is the problem with it. Otherwise, it's actually, it's like the most thematic item we have tied to pinball is the shaker motor. And it's like the best-selling accessory in pinball history. Yeah. So there's that. Joe, thank you for the continued support, Fox. We do have a physical object in the bell. Thank you, Charlie. That's true. Not a lot of bells used anymore in pinball, though, other than digital fake bells. Oh, you know what? I did see, I've seen pictures, speaking of our screaming goat people here, Rodney. I've seen some pictures of him at the beach. He was hanging out with some spooky people I saw at dinner. Who else did I see? I did see the bell. Charlie sent me a picture of him partying with John Borg and Steve Ritchie. And I think he sent that to me because there was a TPF when Charlie and I were partying with those two as well. Was William the dude hanging out with a light Russian? The dude was. I didn't see any pictures of the dude, but the dude certainly was at the beach. That one's ringing, dude. Thank you, Donnie. Man, I should have just stayed with the dude. Should have went down there and stayed with the dude. Josh, I don't know if Josh and his cock were down there. I'm going to rock out with my cock out. He would have rocked out with his cock out. Like Glenn Campbell or Glenn Frank? I don't know if he would have. I don't know, Josh. but hopefully everyone woke up to your crows. Do roosters crow? Or do they call? They don't crow because that's an animal. That's a bird. They crook? I don't know what they do. I don't know. John, I smelled you the other day. What store was I at? Dollar General. Holy shit. And I was like, yep, that's that smell. That's the aquavelva that I remember. Wow. Pungent. That is very pungent. that'll wake up the sinuses there there's something about an aqua realm of man you shouldn't have thank you all for the continued love the continued support of everything we're doing to the highest degree here at the pinball show I was going to say we couldn't do it without you would we do it without you and that's why I don't know a reminder that the next happy hour hangout for the pinball show for those part of the Nordman series of membership or the Screaming Goat Club member level of membership. We're going to have that February 26th 8pm Central. The connection details are already on the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Pinball Show. And I'm very confident this month when we do that happy hour hangout, Dennis, there will be a lot to discuss. We'll see. We're boating. I don't know. We can't leave people here. We've got to Thank the people. And the only way we thank our Screaming Goat Club members, the only way to properly thank our listening audience is to give them the joys of pinball market trends. It's a pop-time techno, boy! I like your style, dude. It's a pre-vacation tech. I'm not loud. I'm just very matter-of-fact. The industry's bumming me out with some of these stories. So, trending up this week, let's look to the bright side of pinball. and that would be Evil Dead. It was titled The Game of the Beach. Everybody seems to be liking it. Collections have been high on location for this game. You heard it. And problems minimal. Let's hope this holds true across the next 700 to 1,000 games made. I'm still waiting for mine. I have to do a little unboxing. Did you see my unboxing reel or short that I did on Dungeons and Dragons and Pulp Fiction? No, I did not see that one. I tell you, I finally hit a nice TikTok thing. I hit something with TikTok, and on the... What was it? I'm new to this stuff, so bear with me, listener. But on the TikToks, on Pulp Fiction, I got like 80,000 views on that unboxing, people like that. And then on Stern's Dungeons and Dragons, a quick little unboxing, 40-second video, a quarter of a million. Yeah, quarter of a million views. I don't know where that came from. Yeah, it felt good. And also, I can't train this up or down because this is a chaotic market when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons by Stern Pinball. I can say it's training up because of the feedback that's receiving thus far. Novel rules. People are really liking the layout, the toys and such. But I can't sit here and lie to you and not say it took one hell of a hit with this whole Dragon Gate Node 4.10 issue as well. So just, you know, it's up and down. It's up and down. Where will it end up in six months, Dennis? That's difficult to say. The fix coming out so quickly is a good sign. Yeah, that helped. Its future might actually be more dependent on code status. Do you think it has high hopes for this one? where do you think it does it land closer to godzilla or does it land closer to venom oh gosh those are such extremes well i know that's what i'm saying where i mean where's it leaning uh because it's not elwynn i guess i have to say closer to venom but i don't think it does anywhere nearly as bad as venom i i think this does better than john wick okay i think it here's where I think it does. I think it ends up about around where James Bond ended up. Okay. That wouldn't be bad then. No. I think it'll actually be decent. I think it will meet Stern's expectations, let me put it that way. Based on the sales thus far, I think it hedges James Bond. I think it does better than James Bond. But that's just based on initial sales and, I will say very strongly, initial feedback versus the feedback we got on James Bond initially. Remember that? Code? Well, I mean, there was a lot there, yeah. I mean, we're presenting .84 code, and people are already kind of digging it, where it's going. So we'll see. So that was trending kind of chaotically up and down. With that comes always trending up is the Elwynn effect. It's proving its existence once again. The Elwynn effect. Here we are, a month, going into the second month post-reveal of a Stern game. you get an increased bump in sales that we've seen with Godzilla, Jaws, and Jurassic Park. It's like clockwork at this point. I can only hope that the L1 effect will not affect the next game, which is, in fact, rumored to be an L1 game. So, we'll see if the King of Monsters continues his reign onto the pinball world. Turning down this week, unfortunately. We had a little bit of Dungeons & Dragons turning down and up, But trending down, purely down, is shipping pinball machines. Dennis, shipping pinball machines, mostly not from dealer to customer, but alternately from customer to dealer. I'm seeing so many issues. Having a specialized shipment company go out, palletize a game from a customer that they're trading in or selling to a dealer. So much so that I've made it a goal of mine, Dennis, in 2025. I'm going to figure out a better way of shipping games from customer to dealer. We're going to make a lot of moves in my company, Flip N Out Pinball. We're going to make a lot of moves in 2025 to increase the ease of pinball people trading in games. I'll say that. And we're looking into several ways of doing so. But this shipping issue is one that has just got me stumped. It's tough. It's very pricey. very pricey listener to get a game from customer to dealer because you need a lift game, right, where a dealer has a dog. You need a lift game. You need a palletized game. A lot of customers, Dennis, a lot of pinball people, a lot of you listeners out there, you're fine with getting the game off the legs. You're fine with that. You're fine with folding the head down, getting a blanket in between, wrapping it a couple times. I can get you all to do that for the most part, but damn it, to get a game, to even have a pallet, but even having a pallet, getting a game onto a pallet, and strapping it. Now, that's where you guys kind of are not really wild about. So I'm going to try to find a way to make that easier. Any suggestions? You know, there's an entire industry that's worked on shipping. It's quaint that you think you're just going to come in with expertise that they've never thought about. Who? Who's done that? The whole shipping world. Oh, I'm talking about specialization in this industry. I don't know where this is going. What I'm meaning is you can get just a general, yeah, I ship stuff. You can get those people to come in. We got a washer. I'll ship it. You got a pinball machine. I'll ship it. But I'm talking about specialization for pinball so that the customer doesn't have to worry about as much stuff. And so the shipper doesn't have to worry about as much stuff because, quite frankly, they have incompetence to ship stuff. And they get tore up that way too. I mean, it's either – because that option already exists there. You can't have a network of pinball professional shippers. Why? Okay, let me rephrase it. You could in the major cities. Okay. So what I'd like to do, I'm looking into some things, but what I think would be cool, listener, is if you guys are looking to make a little extra money and you're totally fine helping take a game and getting it wrapped up and on a pallet, If you're capable of doing that and you're looking for extra money, message me, Zach, Z-A-C-H at FlippinOutPinball.com. I'm bullshitting you not. I'm going to start getting a nice catalog of people that are willing or interested in doing that. You're not signing up for anything, but message me. Let me know you have some interest, and maybe down the line there will be some utilization of that so that everybody can get a piece of the pie. Enjoy managing all those 1099. I love the tech side of you and everything it's good I think there's some clever there's some clever things that can be done but yeah turning down I'm going to go off topic there but turning down is shipping pinball machines we do it all the time we do it weekly but man shipping companies just suck deal of the week this week we listed at Flip N Out Pinball several, several games for sale that are used games. We've got a lot in. Some of them we didn't get in because they got damaged. We've got to fix them. Alright, Dennis, I'm going to list some that we've and you get to pick. This is a Dennis' pick of Deal of the Week. I'm going to list all of the games that we recently added. We've got a Guardians of the Galaxy Premium. We've got a Up Walking Dead LE sold. Rick and Morty. We've got a Labyrinth Pinball Machine that just came in on trade. Pulp Fiction, I believe, might have sold elvira's house of horrors premium a foo fighters premium a godfather ce halloween just sold a black knight pro okay out of all those you pick one i'm gonna add a deal to it oh i don't care and he doesn't care ladies and gentlemen so by not caring he's not wanting you to save see how i turn that on you that's what you do to me all the time uh well yeah but i mean but With the left one Yeah I was going to The respective one Godfather Go ahead and do Godfather Oh man As if I haven't reduced that enough already Thanks Dennis Uh shit See even when Dennis is not trying to be mean He's still mean Okay so we originally had it at $11,000 Knocked it all the way down to $10,899 You know what? Fine I'm a man of the people Dennis Deal of the week this week on the pinball show We're going to knock that down to $10,499 Just talk another $400 off of it Bye, bye, bye! And you guys can thank Dennis for that. He's the responsible one here. I'm nothing more than the Dave Fix of the show. Sorry. Pinball Bounty. I appreciate you guys reaching out. I had a lot of messages this last week for SEGAs and Data East, particularly Batman Hook, Last Action Hero Test, and the Crypt Star Wars and the WWF Royal Rumble. And I appreciate it, guys. But if you want the bounty, it has to be mint. Stop sending me these clean games. I don't care about clean games. If it's got a smudge in the shooter lane, it's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for mint, home use only, holy shit, this thing belongs in a museum type of old Sega and Data Easts. I'm not, and everybody's like, oh, so this isn't clean. I'm not saying it's not clean enough for me. I'm just saying it's not clean enough for me. I don't, I just don't want it. I'll play it at a show, but what I'm particularly looking for are those. and as always I'm just here to report the facts and piss people off because numbers don't lie neither do I, I'm Pinball Martin Trimson where can people catch you? you can always reach out at clicktogamerspodcast at gmail.com you can reach out to us at thepinballshow at gmail.com follow, like and subscribe to our facebook and you can jump along our discord by going to patreon.com slash thepinballshow, signing up, supporting us straight down the middle. I do a video series on YouTube. We just released top 10 best bang for your buck pinball machines of all time. Any guesses as to what might have appeared on that? Top 10 best bang for your buck. Any that pop into your mind, Dennis? Oh, I would say probably a lot of game for the price. Modern games or did you go back into the 90s? Do I have to guess? No, we went 90s, but a lot of game for the price. Oh, gosh. Probably like a world poker tour? It was an honorable mention. Almost made the list. Our argument was five years ago, it would have been top three. But because of the popularity of people thinking it's a lot of game for the price, it has subsequently gone up. What about Walking Dead? It was not on there. Damn it. No. Earlier, you were all like, you know, this game, and it's still really reasonable to get, and it's got such great rules. Maybe it's just because there's so many better. I don't know what you did, because apparently you didn't follow any logic. No, I just, the numbers don't lie. I only followed the facts of the comps and did my research. And the sponsor of this show, Flip N Out Pinball. When I buy my pinball, shit, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. From toppers or play stereos, I've got it figured out. Flip N Out Pinball, figured out. When I pick a pinball, I think Flip N Out Pinball. Flip N Out Pinball, figured out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. Buy, buy, buy! Product showcase this week is Dungeons and Dragons. Why not? Why not? Sure. The Flames of Tiamat. The non-poof editions. Particularly the premium. Why not? Sure. Go for it. Metallica Remaster. You can do a pre-order with us. Uncanny X-Men. John Wick. Godzilla. Jaws. Jurassic Park. Labyrinth. Pulp Fiction. Avatar. Elton John. Evil Dead. Black Knight. Beatles. James Bond. All of them. Just bye-bye-bye. Buy, buy, buy. The trade-in program. Get yourself a trade-in. You trade in, you're old, and I'll give you something good. It's easy. It's easy. A lot of people are like, well, how does this all work? I get that question so many times. We're working on better ways to communicate on a grander scale how these things work. But it's super simple. I'll crunch the numbers for you. All I need to know is the game that you're wanting to trade in or games, their condition. If they're a newer game, tell me total plays. and then tell me your location and what games you're looking for in return. I can crunch some numbers, boom, and spit back out an analysis, and then it's easy. We'll get some shippers to come, and once they tear it up in transport, you don't have to worry about it. That's not on you. That's on us. So the trade-in program is going very well over at Flip N Out Pinball. A lot of people taking advantage of it. So do that and get yourself some new games. and on some of those new games you can get some great value on what you're trading in that's what I'm saying so why not try it now if you want to go on an interested list I don't know if you guys listened yet but go listen now as an exclusive member to who all is going on these lists like what list you guys are going on but if you want to be added to any of those lists it costs zero dollars just email me at ZachZACH at FlippinOutPinball.com and I'll add you to any rumored title you want I mean Dennis asked to be on Hot Shots Part Deux Charlie Sheen. So I added him. You know, that's actually a pretty fun movie. It is. I liked it. I'm just saying. It is. It's not a bad one. It's like almost as good as Naked Gun. In some respects, it kind of is. Escalera, Stair Climbing, Hand Trucks. We sell them exclusively at Flip N Out Pinball. Pinball. The back order for those is only like three, four weeks now. It's actually low, so get yourself one of those. Golden Tees, we got it in stock. Big Buck Hunter Reloaded. All the Raw Thrills games. Toppers. Accessories. Stern. Shaker motors. Bruh. We need some shaker motors. Us dealers are dying here. And some expression speaker lighting LED kits. Let's go. Where are they at? Flipping out with friends. Joel this week. Fingers crossed. He'll be streaming at Dungeons and Dragons. Dennis, what are you going to teach these people? If you don't want to trust reason, logic, business acumen. If you don't want to ask yourself why, why, why. And instead want to buy, buy, buy. reach out to AIMTRON and see about acquiring an American Pinball before it's too late to bring in the team that somehow didn't make it a thing and if you buy within the next five minutes we will throw in a GTF Classic I want to know who's really talking with them about ownership I just don't understand this hobby I don't either and always practice safe pinball and if you want to make money first must make a great first impression. That's actually just wise more than anything.