#22 - Jersey Jack Pinball GnR Talk

A Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·23m 39s·analyzed·Oct 2, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses reveal imminent; host cautiously optimistic despite community hype.

Summary

A Pinball Podcast Episode #22 focuses on Jersey Jack Pinball's upcoming sixth game (Guns N' Roses), which is being revealed through a marketing campaign similar to Deep Root's teaser strategy. The host expresses cautious optimism about the game rather than hype, citing concerns about past theme-based over-promising (Willy Wonka). The episode also covers the host's anticipated Avengers Infinity Quest LE delivery delays and announces the Pin Clash online tournament for streamers in December.

Key Claims

Guns N' Roses pinball game is Jersey Jack's most important release ever and the most important pinball release in the past decade
medium confidence · Host speculation about significance of this release as signaling a new era for Jersey Jack's production and business direction
Jersey Jack machines are currently on production line for Guns N' Roses, suggesting immediate availability post-reveal
medium confidence · Host's interpretation of teaser images showing upper playfield mechs 'on the line' and speculation about release timing
Avengers Infinity Quest LE was either built or shipped on September 30th
high confidence · Host confirmed conversation with Zach Minney about machine status
Avengers Infinity Quest has a 25-26 page PDF rule set available
high confidence · Host's direct observation of ruleset documentation
Pin Clash tournament registration deadline is October 18th with event on December 5th
high confidence · Official tournament announcement via Carl D'Angelo and pinclashtourney.com

Notable Quotes

“I think that this will set the precedent moving forward to when future releases are going to be and how they're going to be”
Host @ ~7:30 — Host's assessment of Guns N' Roses as a strategic turning point for Jersey Jack's production cadence
“I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm excited for it. I'm not hyped for it”
Host @ ~5:15 — Establishes the episode's core sentiment—distinguishing between excitement and over-hype based on past disappointments
“I personally would like to think that most likely it's just them making sure their line is completely in order”
Host @ ~9:00 — Rationale for Jersey Jack's delayed reveal—avoiding direct competition with Stern and managing market saturation
“I want to see a pin to where I can attack it from three or four different angles”
Host @ ~11:45 — Host's criteria for pinball enjoyment—shot geometry and rule depth over theme
“It's in texas right now stuck on a railroad that's what fedex told me”
Host @ ~17:00 — Logistical detail about Avengers LE delivery delays affecting personal enjoyment

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyAmerican Pinballcompany EricpersonZach MinneypersonKanedaperson Kerry Hardyperson

Signals

?
business_signal: Jersey Jack positioning Guns N' Roses as strategic inflection point for company's production volume and release cadence
medium · Host characterizes game as 'probably the most important pinball release probably in the past decade' because it 'signals the start of a new era, a new phase for Jersey Jack' and will set precedent for future releases
?
community_signal: Growing infrastructure for online tournaments and streaming content despite host preference for in-person events
high · Pin Clash tournament announcement; host acknowledges value: 'I think people out there are doing outstanding stuff for the community' despite personal preference for live tournaments
$
market_signal: Jersey Jack machines appear to be built and on production line, suggesting immediate availability post-reveal rather than delayed release
medium · Host's observation of teaser images showing 'multiple upper play field mechs on the line' and speculation: 'I personally fully expect us to see a working Jersey Jack Game 6 slash Guns N' Roses at somebody's house by this time next week'
?
announcement: Jersey Jack running five-day marketing campaign for Guns N' Roses similar to Deep Root's strategy, with reveal expected October 5th
high · Host confirms 'It is basically the third day that we hopefully are going to receive some sort of information from Jersey Jack' and 'it's going to be on October 5th when this is shown, which is going to be on Monday'
~
sentiment_shift: Community hype for Guns N' Roses is notably high, but host distinguishes between theme-based excitement and actual game quality assessment

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.071

0:00

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of a pinball podcast. It is October 2nd at 10 a.m., and I am ready to get this show on the road. We're going to talk about Jersey Jack pinball a little bit. We're going to discuss Avengers LE just a little bit, very briefly. And then we're going to also discuss some different news tidbits dealing with online tournaments. And, yeah, so let's just get this show on the road, shall we? It is basically the third day that we hopefully are going to receive some sort of information from Jersey Jack based on the six game that they have coming out. Now, if you've been paying attention online for the past few days, they've done various bits of marketing to where apparently they're doing their own version of the five days of whatever. We all know that there was a five days of Deep Root, and now this apparently is going to be the five days of Jersey Jack. So it was roughly about nearly 48 hours now that they released a picture of Eric, who's the designer of this next game that we don't know yet. But hence, Guns N' Roses, most likely, obviously. But they showed the play field, at least the underside of the play field. So it gave us a little bit of an indication about what is going on on the game itself. So that was a cool tease. And then yesterday's tease included Eric overlooking what looked to be multiple upper play field mechs on the line. So that's really the information that we have to go off of. Obviously, there's other people, other podcasters that are aware of what is going on in terms of the play field, in terms of the mechs, in terms of video. At least there's claims out there from Kaneda himself. And I thought I saw Kerry Hardy post earlier on YouTube that he's not going to be doing a video about the play field or about the underside of the play field because I guess apparently he has also seen it. Now, yours truly has not seen anything. I have no idea. I'm going just as dark as everybody else is on this. And I have actively chosen. I looked at the first picture of the play field, and yeah, it gets me excited and everything, but I haven't taken the time to break it down and figure it out because I figure it's going to be out soon enough. And by all, you know, everything that's pointed to, it's going to be October 5th when this is shown, which is going to be on Monday. And I don't know what time it's going to be exactly. Just know that it's going to be on Monday. Now, the conclusion that I can draw on this, just based off the picture of showing the upper playfield mechs, is that there's machines that are built. Obviously, there's going to be machines that are built. Them releasing it on Monday, my speculation, as has been a couple of months ago or about a month ago on this podcast, is I was thinking that they most likely would have machines ready to go, which I think is very intelligent to do, especially when you are trying to cash in immediately on the hype. You know, I'm not a big fan of that two-week window. Granted, that's a quick turnaround. Not a big fan of that. I'm definitely not a big fan of the several-month or a year wait. So, you know, if they go this route, which I hope they do, I think that that would be highly intelligent to do. And I personally fully expect us to see a working Jersey Jack Game 6 slash Guns N' Roses at somebody's house by this time next week. And I think that's the best way to really cash in on the hype train at the top, at the very peak of that. I think that's the best way to do it. If you put out all the pinball machine or you do your marketing, you show it in its final form, then boom, you're like, this is on sale now, let's get going. And I think that that would be incredibly intelligent. And it looks like that's the direction they're going to go with this, just based off the pictures of seeing something on the line. I think that's highly intelligent to do, really intelligent to do. If it's not the day of, I would expect it to be at least within the week. That makes so much more sense to me. Now, that being said, what is my honest opinion on what this game could be? Now, again, I don't know because I haven't seen it. I know people that have seen it. I haven't asked to see it, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I will say I am personally cautiously optimistic.

8:08

Are they going to be able to put out more themes? I would really like to see them be able to put out at least two themes a year every six months. I think that would be the perfect time, around September, October, around March, April. I think sometimes around there, I think that that time frame works out really well. and it enables you to get your line in order and it enables you to get some sort of consistency to continue growing your brand. So I'm very interested to see how that plays out and I have to think, me personally, I would think that them taking this long to finally reveal this pin and I've speculated about this in the past in previous podcasts, I personally would like to think that most likely it's just them making sure their line is completely in order, It's to wait for the dust to settle with everybody else releasing games. It's to get their own little bubble of hype that they can produce. Because, you know, I was telling somebody this just the other day, you don't see summer blockbusters trying to schedule on top of each other. They tend to try to avoid each other. And naturally, this makes a lot of sense for them to wait at least a month after Avengers was shown. I forget the exact time frame that is, but obviously they were waiting a little bit after that. I don't even know if they even cared what Deep Root was going to show. And, you know, Hot Wheels has already been months ago at this point. So that just seemed to be the one big thing that they were going to work on avoiding, and that's releasing directly against Stern. Because to me that wouldn't make any sense either because they need to basically put themselves in the best spot to be the clear number two. and I think they're already there. I just think they need to solidify that even more because if they can solidify a clear number two and make that gap between them and Spooky, them and American Pinball even bigger, I think you're going to see that Jersey Jack becomes very relative to this conversation to a lot of people that have never owned or even flipped a Jersey Jack pin before. I mean, I would seriously consider getting a Jersey Jack, Guns N' Roses pen, if it plays up to expectations, I definitely would. If it has the awesome light show, if it has the awesome audio, if it all seems to come together, I could see myself doing that. And that's even if I'm not even hyped about a theme. I mean, flat out, I have an Iron Maiden right behind me. And there's several reasons why. And it's a limited edition. There's several reasons why I got that day one. And none of them were based on theme. Zero was based on theme. And there's a lot of reasons why people buy pins. And one of my reasons why I will get a pin is if I see that the code is well thought out, if it really looks like it's all coming together, and if the shot geometry is something that is super exciting. And that's what I want to see out of this. I want to be able to see a pin to where I can attack it from three or four different angles. I want to see a pin in which the code is deep enough to where I won't necessarily figure out the game from day one, or I won't be relegated to just having to play the pin one certain way in order to achieve a high score. Because personally, I don't find it fun to play a pin, even if the rule set is super wide. If it not deep I don find myself having fun because I don have any reason to play it any other way except for the way it gets points Because I don know about you guys I don like doing a lot of flips and doing a lot of modes and doing a lot of multiballs and then not seeing any reward for hitting all those shots that shows up on the DMD or on the screen showing my score. So that's just kind of the way I am. Everybody else, play your games the way you can. That's just me. But hopefully this all will come to fruition. I'm excited to see what they have. My curiosity is peaked. But again, I am cautiously optimistic. And it's funny because I've talked to several other people that feel the same exact way. Cautiously optimistic. Now, it has nothing to do with thinking, oh, they're going to screw this up. It has nothing to do with, oh, this is going to be a letdown. It has everything to do with we just simply don't know. And there's a lot of people that claim to know, and I trust that they probably do know, but at the same time, based on anything else, it's easy to get super hyped about something when you're excited about a theme, when you're excited about potential. It's really easy to get hyped about it. I've done the same exact thing. I did it with Avengers because I'm a huge Avengers fan. I've done it with Turtles, huge turtles fan it's it's natural it is it is natural to do that but because because a lot of us aren't necessarily gnr fans but we are pinball fans we're approaching this with cautious optimism and hopefully it works out i am excited to see what's going to come out and then we can have more stuff to talk about besides just speculation all right so moving ahead i do have my avengers Infinity Quest LE that should be here at any moment now. I talked to Zach Minney just yesterday, and the game, I think, was either built or shipped on September 30th, which was this past Wednesday. My oldest son's birthday, by the way. Happy belated birthday to you, Jackson. Not saying I did. I celebrate his birthday, people. I'm just telling this in case he watches it. He loves being shouted out on here, and I don't do it enough. I do it very rarely. A happy birthday, Jackson, by the way. Lovely kid. so we're supposed to get the pen pretty soon uh as far as i know it's in texas right now stuck on a railroad that's what fedex told me it's supposed to be coming up here to oklahoma city today i believe but i don't think i'm going to be able to get it delivered today and that hurts my soul it is friday and i'm not going to be able to play a brand new pinball machine all weekend long. This is, I mean, it's first world problems written all over it, obviously. I mean, I know there's people weeping everywhere for me about that. It's just, and don't blame me. I'm just as disappointed as you are. But no, in all seriousness, I wish I could get my hands on it. I'm trying to do anything I can to get it delivered today. I've even offered to go to the dock myself and go pick it up. I don't know if they're going to go for that. So unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to be in a position to where I know that the pin is here in the city, no more than 10, 15 miles away, and it's going to sit there until at least Monday, and it probably won't even be picked up until Monday afternoon. And then it's not even going to be scheduled for delivery until Tuesday. So this is just waiting. I'm playing the waiting game right now, which hurts because I see everybody else getting their LEs in. I see them all flipping a new pinball machine. And this is like, I mean, for me, this is one of the top things. Outside of anything to do with my family, this is for me on a personal level, it's one of the most fun times I have is getting to bring in a new pinball machine, getting to unbox it, getting to see my kids react to it. Those are memories that I cherish and I really love because I have this thing to where I personally, I never flip the pinball machine first. I just rotate through my kids. I say, okay, you guys will all go first, and they'll usually play it for a couple hours before I even touch it. And so that's something that I enjoy doing with them because I love sharing a hobby that I am so passionate about and I thoroughly enjoy with my children. That's a very important thing to me. So hopefully we get it in today. If not, hopefully Monday. If not Monday, hopefully Tuesday, and I don't lose my freaking mind from having to wait so long.

16:22

Okay, enough of that. I do hear it's a great game. Everybody, all the reviews coming in, everybody's saying it's great, which I generally assume just seeing it be played myself by Elwin, by Raymond Davidson. And I haven't watched anything else to do with Avengers. I watched Ray's stream probably about a week and a half ago now. If you want to check out his Twitch stream, I believe it's RayDayPinball that he's on there. And I think he put it up on YouTube also, quite possibly under the same name. I don't know for sure, but it's on there. And if you want to see him explain out some of the rules, I think it's really helpful. I learned a lot just watching that. But outside of that, I've stopped watching anything else to do with it. I watched the tournament at the Bang Back Bar. I think that's what it's called, Fred. I hope I'm right on that, to where they hosted an event for it, a launch event for the game. And so that's practically the last time I watched it. And it was exciting to see it. The game looks like it flips well. It looks like it's fun, but other than that, I've rarely checked out anything else. I've tried to wait so that way I could just experience it myself. There is a full rule set out right now, a PDF file that you can find on CERN somewhere on there. I don't have the exact link in front of me, but it literally a 25 or 26 page PDF file I mean this bad boy is a novel Usually I can chew through rules pretty quick even the complicated ones just because of the way that my mind works I can figure it out pretty quick. But this, I'm just kind of like, I need to take a step back real quick and really, really just wait and go through it. Cause I feel like I need to see the play field right next to it. I need to have my iPad and then just gradually go, go through and figure it out. And I plan on putting out a video here in a couple of weeks, like a full review and everything, and then another video to where we'll really go in depth with the rules. And I'll have plenty of content coming out pretty soon that's not podcast related, but is entirely YouTube related to where we'll figure out exactly what is going on with the game, tips, tricks, rule set, things to look for, things to consider. And we'll go through all of that because I'm sure other people start figuring out their basic way of playing it, and we'll be able to get a lot more information coming very soon. All right, so the other thing, the last thing to really talk about right now is there was a tournament announcement a couple of days ago, I believe. Actually, on Wednesday, I think is when it came out, and Carl D'Angelo was the one that announced it, and this is an event that's called Pin Clash. And so what is Pin Clash, you ask? Well, Pin Clash is a free-to-enter remote single elimination head-to-head pinball tournament for pinball streamers. And that's directly from IE Pinball. You can find this, all the information on it at pinclashtourney.com. And this thing is supposed to be happening on December 5th at 3 p.m. Eastern. It's, and yeah, I'm aware I say Eastern weird. It's an Oklahoma accent, all right? I've been getting crap about my accent back off people, especially my wife. She gives a crap about it all the time. But it's a single elimination head-to-head pinball tournament. I think everybody has up until the 18th of October, by the way, to enter it. I know that the prize is a $1,000 prize. Additional prizes are still to be determined based on sponsorships and donations.

19:52

And so if you guys are interested in entering that, just email Carl at IEPinball at gmail.com. Or you can go to pinclashtourney.com. It's something to me. I'm going to watch it for sure. I don't think I'm going to play in it. I've had a couple people ask me about that. It's honestly, it's not really something that I'm interested in simply because it's, well, one, it's head-to-head. And I've made it apparent that I'm not a big head-to-head fan. I mean, I'll watch it. I don't personally enjoy playing in that, though. And then the other part is, is I'm just, I'll be honest with you guys. I just don't want to play online tournaments. I miss the real deal, and I know this is kind of the hand that we're dealt with right now, and I'm glad that other people are putting on the online components for the people that want to play in it, and it gives everybody something to do, which is incredibly awesome. Just for me, I think on this one, I just prefer to be a spectator. I think I'd have a lot more fun doing that than trying to do an online tournament. I miss the live tournaments, guys. I miss being able to go to events. I miss being able to talk to people in person. I mean, a lot of people that I converse with, it's either by phone, by text, or by Facebook Messenger. And that's really the extent of me being able to talk to anybody in the pinball industry. So I really do miss being able just to go to events or tournaments and see somebody face-to-face and actually have a conversation. Because I'm truthfully, that's the type of person I am. I prefer face-to-face interaction, and I love talking to people. I love meeting people. I love hearing different people's experiences, you know, how their pinball community is or how they grew up around pinball or how they got into the hobby or what their favorite game is. That's all things that I'm highly interested in, and I miss that. And hopefully it comes back pretty soon. But obviously this year, complete wash, and I think I'm kind of coming to the conclusion that possibly into the spring is going to be a complete wash as well. But I am talking to Mr. Josh Sharp himself about coming on to the podcast as a guest here pretty soon. And we might dig into that a little bit. We'll see. We'll talk about what he's comfortable talking about, which for him, I'm pretty sure it's about anything. But yeah, hopefully tournaments can start back up pretty soon, sanctioned tournaments and all that. I don't know too much about what's going on with that. But I just, for the pinball industry in general, I really do hope moving forward that there are more things like this, like the, uh, the pin clash turning. I hope that there's more online components that allows people to stay involved in the way that they want to stay involved with the community. I think that that's a great thing, whether I want to do it or not, doesn't matter. I think that that's entirely great thing. And I know, um, I know a lot of people are doing that early on. I know dead flip was doing that at the beginning with, you know, trying to put together multiple streams all into one. I don't know how he did that. Kudos to him. That sounds insanely complicated and I imagine that that's a lot of hours of banging your head against the desk. So Jack, kudos to you for doing that. Like I said, it's great that Stern did their tournament the other day and it's great that Carl's doing this. I think people out there are doing outstanding stuff for the community and I'm happy to see it. But guys, outside of that I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up. If you guys are listening to this on October 2nd on Friday you guys have an awesome weekend. If you're listening to this in the future, you just have an awesome day in general. Outside of that, if you've got questions, comments, or anything, you guys can contact me at apinballpodcasts at gmail.com. But that's about all I got, guys. So enjoy your weekend and I will talk to you guys soon. Later, guys.