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Episode 98 - Retro Knapp Adventure Time!

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 26m·analyzed·Oct 7, 2019
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TL;DR

Nap Arcade's Jason Knapp discusses Stern's new Star Wars comic art variant and pinball art criticism trends.

Summary

Jason Knapp of Nap Arcade returns as a guest to discuss pinball industry news, primarily the revelation of a new comic art version for Stern's Star Wars pinball machine by artist Randy Martinez. The hosts analyze the art style controversy, compare it to other recent Stern releases, and discuss secondary market implications as used Star Wars machines begin appearing for sale. The conversation also touches on pinball art criticism, game design preferences, and broader industry topics like production transparency.

Key Claims

  • Jason Knapp discovered the Star Wars comic art version story by finding an IGN article published early, about an hour or two before Stern's official announcement

    high confidence · Jason explains how he found the IGN link via Google News search before the article went live publicly

  • Multiple Star Wars pinball machines began appearing for sale on Pinside within two hours of the official announcement

    high confidence · Jason reports observing three to four Star Wars listings pop up immediately after news broke, with one seller explicitly stating they were selling to upgrade to the new art version

  • The new Star Wars art was created by renowned artist Randy Martinez

    high confidence · Both hosts reference the IGN article and confirm Martinez as the artist

  • The original Star Wars backglass art was hand-drawn, not Photoshopped, despite initial community perception

    high confidence · Dennis explains there was significant initial reaction claiming it was Photoshop, but clarifies it was hand-drawn art using approved poses from Disney/Lucasfilm

  • Stern is privately held and not obligated to release production numbers, unlike historically when it was publicly traded

    high confidence · Dennis explains the shift from public company transparency requirements to private company discretion regarding production data

  • The premium Star Wars art features a Darth Vader pose that the artist reportedly created that had never been drawn before

    medium confidence · Dennis references an interview with the artist describing the Vader lightsaber pose as original

  • Star Wars pinball home version pricing is too close to used machine pricing, creating market pressure

    medium confidence · Dennis expresses concern that the narrow delta between home pin and used Star Wars pro pricing makes the home version unattractive value-wise

  • The original Star Wars used market pricing was not strong to begin with

    medium confidence · Jason observes that used Star Wars pricing likely won't be impacted strongly by the new art version, as the used market was already weak

Notable Quotes

  • “I started an Instagram account. That's new. The Nap Arcade Instagram account. It's not like the Facebook page where I share news and articles and stuff like that. It's just pictures, just straight-up pictures of arcades that I've taken across the country.”

    Jason Knapp @ early in episode — Introduces Jason's new content initiative and social media expansion

  • “I think the actual – for most people, the secret to pinball art is just oversaturate all the colors, and you'll win them. Just oversaturate.”

    Dennis @ mid-episode — Cynical observation about pinball community art criticism and vague language like 'colors pop'

  • “What do you think Jason and Tony about pinball people let's call them commoners... things to say to act like you know stuff about pinball art. Too colorful is now on the list.”

    Tony @ mid-episode — Meta-commentary on performative art criticism in the pinball community

  • “I'm selling this so that I can get the one with the new cartoon art, which is probably not the best sales strategy in any event.”

    Jason Knapp @ discussing Pinside listings — Observes market inefficiency with a seller explicitly devaluing their existing machine

  • “It is just a reskin. It's not like they had to do any mechanical work. Right. it probably didn't cost them a whole lot to do it other than whatever they had to pay for the artist obviously so yeah why not try to milk more out of that license if you can”

    Jason Knapp @ late-episode discussion — Pragmatic view of Stern's business strategy with minimal effort art variant

  • “I personally think it would be in Stern's best interest to release production numbers once the games are no longer being produced because that could influence the used market pricing to help dictate to them what are the best games to vault.”

    Dennis @ closing discussion — Suggests transparency could improve vault strategy decisions based on rarity data

  • “My main problem with it was the price, sort of like with the Beatles. Like, I like the Beatles pin. I just don't want to pay $7,000 for it or whatever, you know, or Diamond Edition $15,000 or whatever it is.”

Entities

Jason KnapppersonRandy MartinezpersonDennispersonTonypersonStar Wars Pinball (Comic Art Version)gameStern PinballcompanyLogan ArcadeorganizationNap Arcadeorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's strategy to extend revenue from aging title with minimal mechanical investment; comic art reskin requires only artist payment, no engineering work

    high · Jason explicitly notes 'It is just a reskin. It's not like they had to do any mechanical work' and characterizes it as 'milk more out of that license'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jason guest appearance on Slam Tilt Podcast episode 135 discussing Star Trek preference, competitive pinball viewership, and tournament organization

    high · Dennis mentions recent guest appearance with show notes link; discussion of Stomp tournament and content about why competitive pinball struggles viewership

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Discussion of upper playfield impact on game flow in premium versions of Game of Thrones and Black Knight, indicating design tradeoff in competitive play

    medium · Dennis and Tony discuss how upper playfield on Game of Thrones affects flow differently for Pro vs. Premium, with debate over whether it helps or hurts gameplay

  • ?

    leak_detection: Star Wars comic art variant leaked via early IGN article publication approximately 1-2 hours before official Stern announcement

    high · Jason discovered the unscheduled IGN article via Google News alert before official Stern press release went out

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Disney/Lucasfilm approval process for original Star Wars art used approved character poses, indicating strong IP control over aesthetic choices

    medium · Dennis explains that original art was hand-drawn using 'the approved looks' from Disney/Lucasfilm; notes same process used for other licensed properties

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.260

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, October 6th. It's episode 98. I am Tony. And I'm Dennis, and we have something we haven't had in a long time. A long time. A will to live. Yes. And a guest. Oh, okay. And our guest is the world-famous Jason Knapp of Knapp Arcade, which we do have a link in the show notes if for some reason you are not following Knapp Arcade on Facebook. It's one man's journey to experience every arcade whilst his sons play the most East Coast bourgeois sport known, lacrosse. So, Jason, welcome again to the show because you've been on before. Greetings, gentlemen. As a repeat guest, you have actually my exclusive arrangement for podcasting. podcast guestum. Is that a word? Guestum? It's a Bruce-ism if not. Mr. Nightingale from the Slam Tilt Podcast, fond of inventing new words. And so it's our intro time. So Jason, you can talk about whatever's going on or if you want to promote what you do on Facebook.
1:19
You have a lot, I mean, like tenfold the followers that we at Eclectic Gamers do on Facebook. So You're doing something right or we're doing something wrong. I'm not quite sure. Or both. Yeah, why not both?
1:35
Yeah, well, I don't know. I really probably should have planned something to say, but I can still wing it. I started an Instagram account. That's new. The Nap Arcade Instagram account. It's not like the Facebook page where I share news and articles and stuff like that. It's just pictures, just straight-up pictures of arcades that I've taken across the country. And we went out west coast, and I did a lot of Free Gold Watch and Ace Goji and stuff like that. And then I've done all up and down the east coast. And coming up, a friend of mine and I are going to make the trip south. We're going to do Mom's Organic Market and Crab Town and a lot of the Maryland arcades. So I just picked up the new iPhone 11 Pro, so the pictures are looking good. And if anybody wants to follow the Instagram account on there, it's naparcade, obviously, on Instagram. So, yeah, that's new. Yeah, and I'm sure Apple's check for your sponsorship will be in the mail at any moment. Oh, yeah. Can you make money off Instagram? I guess you can. People probably can. You're an influencer now. Oh, yeah. You can get TwitchCon, E3, and they might invite you to Expo to be in media row. Did you get a media row invite?

  • Nolan Bushnell founded Chuck E. Cheese and previously kept Showbiz Pizza as part of a deal when leaving Atari/Warner

    medium confidence · Dennis mentions this history but the conversation is somewhat uncertain about the details

  • Jason projects fewer than 1,000 units of the new art Star Wars will be produced/sold

    low confidence · Jason speculates on sales numbers for the reskinned game, noting it's a two-year-old title with no mechanical changes

    • Tony @ discussing home pinball pricing — Expresses pricing concern as barrier to home pinball adoption

    Pinside
    organization
    Flipping Out Pinballorganization
    Silver Ball Saloonorganization
    Bruce Nightingaleperson
    IGNorganization
    Game of Thrones Pinballgame
    Black Knight Sword of Ragegame
    Star Trek Pinballgame
    Walking Dead Pinballgame
    Deadpool Pinballgame
    Munsters Premiumgame
    Ken Cromwellperson
    Slam Tilt Podcastorganization
    Backbox Pinball Podcastorganization
  • $

    market_signal: Multiple used Star Wars machines listed for sale within hours of announcement, indicating immediate secondary market response to variant release

    high · Jason observed 3-4 Star Wars listings appear on Pinside within two hours of official news, with one seller explicitly citing desire to upgrade to new art version

  • ?

    community_signal: Jason Knapp's expanded social media presence with new Instagram account focused on arcade photography across the country

    high · Jason announces new naparcade Instagram account dedicated to arcade venue photos from West Coast (Free Gold Watch, Ace Gogi) and East Coast locations

  • $

    market_signal: Home pinball version pricing converging with used machine pricing, creating market pressure on new home pin sales

    medium · Dennis expresses concern that narrow delta between home pin and used Star Wars pro pricing makes home version poor value proposition; questions Stern's reliance on non-traditional buyers unfamiliar with used market

  • ?

    announcement: Official announcement of Star Wars Pinball comic art variant with Pro and Premium tiers featuring different artwork and side art (Premium includes Boba Fett)

    high · IGN article and subsequent Stern official confirmation; Randy Martinez credited as artist; hosts discuss both Pro and Premium art packages in detail

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community sentiment on Star Wars art shifting from criticism of original to mixed reception of new comic art, with some dismissing it as 'too colorful'

    medium · Jason and Dennis note that people who criticized original art now critiquing new variant; meta-discussion about performative art criticism using vague language

    • 2:50
    Definitely not. Oh, I'm going to talk to Ken Cromwell about that. I don't fit into any sort of special guest invites for anything. I don't know. I get invited on your podcast once a year. That's about it. You're a major – and we're going to talk about one of the stories that at least I credit you for breaking here in a little bit. But, okay. Well, welcome back, Jason. Tony, welcome back to my house because that's where we're recording. What's going on? I've been here in 12 hours. Yeah, we should try to get Jason to do the recording on Saturday night, but we didn't know how long we'd last in the tournament. Yeah, we could have won that tournament. We could have. It was close. It was feasible.
    3:32
    But what I've been doing, it's been, you know when you get that period of time where it's like two weeks, but it feels like what happened two weeks ago was like a month and a half ago? That's where I'm sitting right now. Okay. Because it feels like it's been a month since we recorded our last episode. Our last episode was just... I'm going to talk insanely here for a second. It was two weeks and a day. Two weeks and a day ago, because we did it on a Saturday, because I was going to Chicago. And Chicago was great, but the only part that people here really care about is, yes, I made it to Logan Arcade.
    4:03
    I did not make it to Headquarters. I did not make it to Galloping Ghost. I didn't make it anywhere else. But Logan was pretty awesome. I spent a few hours there, played a lot of machines. Did you put your initials on any of them? I did put my initials on a machine in first place. Champion Pub?
    4:20
    Burger Time. Oh, Burger Time. You love Burger Time. Tony talks about Burger Time. Burger Time is like my favorite old arcade game. A few times a year, yeah. I have memories of playing that at Showbiz Pizza Place back in the day. Oh, Showbiz. Oh, man. Yeah, that was the place for birthdays around here. It's now, I believe, a Chuck E. Cheese. Yeah, Chuck E. Cheese bought them. Did they buy them? I wasn't sure they bought them or just took over the building. No, no, the companies were merged. Did you know that the showbiz was what, oh gosh, what's his name? Bushnell got to keep when he was out at Atari. He asked to get to keep from Warner. He wanted to keep showbiz and they didn't want it, so they let him have it. So he got to keep it. Yep, he got to have it. I think he actually founded Chuck E. Cheese, Nolan Bushnell.
    5:06
    I'm pretty sure he did. Yeah. I know I watched, I can't remember. There was a defunct land on Chuck E. Cheese. I haven't seen that one yet. Well, you got to see the animatronic band at Logan. In fact, I think there's a retro arcade bar here in the Kansas City area that has a bunch of those animatrons now. I think they're trying to sell them, actually. Yes, for too much money. Those things go for way more money than normal people would spend on a robot band member. Well, at least they try to go for that on eBay. We'll see. And let's be honest, how many people are normal people will be wanting to purchase something like that anyway? So mean. I don't think I'd want just one, though. No, that's the thing. I wouldn't want, like, the dude who plays the drums or something, and then you just have one band member in your house. Like, I would want all of them, and then it would take up so much space, you wouldn't be able to do it. You'd have to get rid of your Czech's bubble hockey. Yeah.
    6:05
    I traded that a while ago. What did I trade that for? Big guns, I think. Oh, that's a fun game. I think Big Guns is too tall to fit in my game room. It was. It was too tall. It was in my garage, so then I had to sell it because it was, like, too big. Yeah, it was too big. My Jurassic Park only barely is fitting against where the overhang is where I line all my pins up in there. So it's like there's no way Big Guns is going in there. Yeah, no. It's too bad. Speaking of Jurassic Park, tell them to get me my Jurassic Park. Oh, did you order one? I have a premium coming. From which distributor? Oh, flipping out, of course. Flipping out pinball. Okay, well, I will be following up with Zach then after this and saying, where is Jason's Jurassic Park? The media demands answers. That's right. In the meantime, it's been so long I got sucked into buying something else because I just couldn't resist. I was looking for a Game of Thrones pro for forever locally, one that wasn't like – because you ever see them on pin side? People like mod them out to like the gills and then try to charge more than new on box price for them. Yeah.
    7:11
    I found one locally with had a color DMD shaker, all this stuff, and it was pretty significantly less than a new in box price. So I was like, oh, how am I going to make this happen? Because I'm already waiting for another expensive pins. I had to sell World Cup soccer to make it happen. Yeah, actually, I should. I listed my Jurassic Park here and a couple other games in the Kansas City Facebook group to try and make some space. And I've been looking more aggressively for a Walking Dead that's not modded out that I can just get and probably would be a pro because I'm probably too cheap for a premium. You're too cheap to go for that. Yeah, quite frankly. Yeah, I don't think the Walking Dead is one of those things where I don't think it matters that much. I mean, mech-wise, I don't think it's a huge deal, and you do get more convenient ramp shots, but the loss of a Walker Bombs is frustrating from a gameplay perspective, because they open up the ability for you to advance in the game so much, because they're basically an ability to do an add-a-ball during multiple. But I've never really been good enough to get my Walker Bombs ready, because I've actually got the most gameplay time on an LE, but I have played a pro. Fine. Fancy. Yeah, but that's why I got Star Trek. I did not know anywhere to try the Walking Dead Pro at the time, and I knew I liked Star Trek Pro, and I knew I really liked Walking Dead LE, and I liked the Walking Dead LE more than I liked Star Trek, but I didn't know if I'd like the Pro, so I got the Star Trek Pro, which is good. I have a Star Trek Pro, too. We overlap.
    8:47
    Star Trek's my favorite game in my collection. It would be the last one to sell. I love that game. That game's definitely staying. yeah I have no intentions of selling Star Trek so it's my favorite that's another one with the pro I mean other than the laser lights yeah lasers I thought about I'm not paying an extra 1500 bucks for a laser now I thought about taking some like laser pointers and just like taping the on buttons down and then just like gluing them in on the ramp it's funny to stand next to you and wiggle a laser pen yeah like if you have a cat it's like that I mean, that's what it is. It's just a mod. Come on. We can do it. Well, I'm glad you liked Logan, Tony. I did. It was quite enjoyable. It's been a fair amount of time. Yeah.
    9:33
    My wife went on business to Chicago a couple months ago, and I made her go to Logan and take pictures of everything from my – Oh, no. And she ended up drinking with, like, the owner with – what's that terrible Chicago – it's like some sort of terrible Chicago liqueur. Malort? Yeah, Malarack or something like that. I think they pronounce it Malort, but I'm not sure. I think I saw them drinking it on something. Yeah, flipping out pinball stream. They have it on there a lot. Yeah. And Jack Danger often will have it. Well, I won't say often, but I've seen him reference it as it's a Chicago rite of passage. I didn't try it. You know what I drank? No. I drank whiskey and bourbon. That's what I drank. Isn't bourbon just a type of whiskey? well I drink like expensive whiskeys and bourbon oh okay anything that's in front of me whatever well I didn't go anywhere only thing that's really happened atypically is I did guest on Slam Tilt Podcast 135th episode so I do have a link in the show notes if anyone wants to listen to that yeah with Ron and Bruce they're Star Trek Sulu, George Takei references. We talk about hoops. We make fun of Zach Minney a lot, but in a nice, kind way. And we have a really long, drawn-out portion of talking about their Stomp tournament, and then there is a massive discussion of why no one watches competitive pinball. So, it's a lot of fun. I was just watching it this morning, actually. There was some dude in, like, Germany or something broadcasting a tournament.
    11:14
    Hmm. We went to – my son and I went to Silver Ball Saloon this summer. We saw Bruce's place. I love that place. Yeah, it's – I would like to – I went to graduate school up there, near there. I went to Syracuse, which I know you love Syracuse, Jason. It's your favorite lacrosse team. St. John's.
    11:36
    I'm a St. John's College basketball fan, so Syracuse is like the Red Sox to the Yankees. They're like the enemy. Yeah, but I've not been back since I graduated. So, and I thought, oh, well, that's kind of close. Bruce isn't that far away. It would be nice to go and get to visit his place sometime. But I never have a reason to get back up into the Northeast.
    11:57
    I've been up there a couple of times for lacrosse tournaments in Rochester. So I always make sure to go. It was a pretty cool place. JDL Pinball, IFPA Midsommar Open in Germany. That's what's on right now. I think JDL Pinball is who streamed those world championships, the one with the famous comeback on Bram Stoker's Dracula. They do a good job.
    12:20
    Yeah, I heard an interview with one of them on the Backbox Pinball. It's Backbox Pinball Podcast? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. There's a Pittsburgh Open, I think, is on today on Twitch. Something, one of those. If I can fit that in in between the NFL games, I'll flip it on.
    12:39
    Yes, it was Backbox I like that podcast Okay, well speaking of podcasts Most of the ones we've mentioned have talked about Pinball, so I guess we should talk about Pinball as well, even though we are A mere mixed gaming podcast And we're going to go ahead and we're going to start With something that, I don't know You're the first I saw sourcing On it, Jason, so I'm giving you credit For breaking the story and forcing all Of this out into the open I'll take the credit You should, because I saw it was your Facebook discussion from Nap Arcade that was getting shared everywhere, which the problem with all the sharing is then I see like half a dozen different pages with different comments. So if I'm trying to get a full sense of the reaction, I have to read them all. But that is where we are, of course, talking about the new comic art version for the Stern Star Wars pinball machine. I do have a link because it's now public to the IGN article in the show notes for anyone who wants to actually go and read about it and they have some imagery of it the art is by a very famous artist who's done a lot of Star Wars art and that's Randy Martinez and it's called the comic art version and when you look at them you will definitely get a very comic book vibe to it but I guess given that it's not a gameplay this is not the pen, this is not the new Star Wars home version. This is the Steve Ritchie one that came out a couple of years ago, just with a new art package. And the art is different on the play fields as well. It looks similar, but comic-fied would be how I would describe it. Comic-fied. So, Jason, what did you think when you saw this? You discovered this gem. Well, you know, what happened actually was I look up Google News, the word pinball or the word arcade quite frequently and the day before actually there was an ign article that said uh star wars pinball comic book art i was like what so i clicked on the link and it was a dead link so apparently ign had linked you know published it a day too early and i'm like what is this but then like i wasn't exactly sure i didn't really understand what it was but then i kept looking for it because i know i was like something must be going on that's when i found it you know i I would say maybe an hour or two before Stern officially announced it, IGN had the full link to the article up there, so I had shared it. I think it looks great. I love it. I like especially the premium with the Boba Fett on the side. But I know a lot of people really had a major problem with the art on the original version. I didn't really mind it at all, especially the premium, which has ad-ads on the side. If you put ad-ads on the side of anything, I'll think it looks awesome. Yeah. You did. Yeah. That's fine. Zombie ad-ads. Yeah, for me, the thing with the original art package that I always remember is there was a very big initial reaction to it being a Photoshop job. A lot of comparisons to Game of Thrones. It was hand-drawn art. It was the same poses we're always used to seeing because those are the approved looks. But it was drawn. It was not a mere manipulation. It's not like 24, where you just actually have taken digital stills and then moved them around. Willy Wonka's like that, though, where it's drawn. But it looks, I mean, if you go, I was at an arcade, and there's like a coin pusher. It has like the exact same art from the Willy Wonka pin, because that's just the approved art. Right, and it's the same art off of the anniversary DVD set. Yes. And it's what's plastered all over it. It's one of the reasons I hate the art machine. And that's something that Tony has focused on quite a bit in his personal opinion regarding Wonka. I would go so far as to say, well, I recognize that it too is hand-drawn. I would have a great deal of difficulty accepting people who would argue that they don't like the art style in the original Star Wars, but they do like the art style in Willy Wonka. I don't think you can have it both ways. You can't. It's a good point. It's the same approach. There's different names. We don't know the names of whoever they used associated with the art. Lucasfilm and Disney for that original art package. So looking at this, looking at this new art approach, and I agree, I like the premium one more. And for those looking at IGN or having a vague memory of the imagery, the premium is the one with Vader on the trans light, almost alone, out in front with his lightsaber. That was supposedly a pose that had never been done for Darth Vader before in any sort of drawing. There was a little interview with the artist, and he was talking about how he did that out of nowhere, and they loved it, so they went with it. But apparently, no one's ever drawn Vader by himself with the lightsaber, I guess. It's very menacing, and I didn't remember ever seeing it. I wondered if maybe it was modeled on something from maybe Rebels or a Clone Wars cartoon, but it's definitely not a pose we're familiar with from the movies. and I agree with Jason I really like the Boba Fett side art on the premium I like the pro package it looks nice, it's clean and it gives you a really good comic book vibe and it's definitely something that I would want on the end of a row to show off but if I was to pick to show off, I'd rather show off the premium I saw a decent amount of criticism of the new art though people poo poo on anything I guess, but it's funny how Stern went out of its way because everyone's criticizing the old art. Now they're like criticizing the new art saying it's too colorful and everything else. I don't know. It's too colorful. I love it. There's like one of these like home edition pins. I like this glass of water, but it was just, it was too wet. My water was too wet. There's one of these home edition pins like Star Explorer or something like that, and someone was sharing like a picture of this old home edition pinball machine saying it looked like this. I don't know. this has come up when I stream on Twitch from time to time when I'm interacting with chat so I'll throw it out here what do you think Jason and Tony about pinball people let's call them commoners and I'm included not the aristocracy that you are no no no not artists who then play at art critic and to me it feels almost paint by numbers we can now add here's a little checkbox. Imagine a little list of checkboxes. Things to say to act like you know stuff about pinball art. Too colorful is now on the list. Here's my favorite one that's completely overstated. Well, the colors pop. How many times is that what we've always heard? Why do you like the art? Oh, the colors pop. So I guess if it's not too colorful and you like lots of color the colors pop.
    19:37
    What's that mean? I don't know. I didn't study art so I have no idea. But it sure sounds like baloney to me.
    19:46
    I mean, art is one of those things where when I look at it and I enjoy it, do I know why I enjoy it? No, I don't. I don't have any idea why I enjoy it. It's just all like, I like that. That looks nice. Yeah, well, I mean, I try and, here's my favorite, though, is when Game of Thrones came out and everyone pretended they knew what gradient shading even meant. like you guys don't know what gradients are I know because I don't know the game of thrones gets a bum rap because of the art but it doesn't bother me the one I got actually has the alternate trans light in it which is it's nice I did replace the trans light on my star trek pro because I don't like looking Chris Pine in the eyes you don't like him staring deep into your soul I let him stare into me he gazes into your soul he's looking for the truth what does God need with a starship that's the one they said and then they could kill the Kelvinverse once and for all it's just one of those things I've tried to better articulate when I look overall when Stern was doing the run of nice art you're using Yeti and Franchi and Dirty Donnie I tended to gravitate to Franchi's style the most and I tried to explain why. You may not be seeing that anymore. I may not be, no. But, you know, I felt it was his line work. Something about how he was doing his lines was the most appealing to me. I have art. I like his work on screens. That's good. Yeah, and so, but to some people that's getting, it's so photorealistic, it's getting into that realm of what they consider Photoshop. Well, people call it tracing and stuff like that. Well, I don't know how he makes the lines, but they're nice. So I like that I mean my favorite art package of 2018 was Deadpool I thought that one because it was so comic book and I thought it captured it really really well And I knew other people who hated it because they thought it had too much red I like the shark one, actually, the premium, the Megalodon. Anything with a giant shark on it is cool. That was actually my least favorite because I didn't like the shade of blue on the side. A lot of people don't like the blue color, yeah. It was this light, ocean-y, seawater blue, and I just thought it was out of place with everything else. Dude, it's a giant shark. Look, I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying that I didn't like the color blue. And I know it sounds silly, but I'm not acting like it was too – I think the actual – for most people, the secret to pinball art is just oversaturate all the colors, and you'll win them. Just oversaturate. I'm always attracted to, like, a bird or something. I like anything that's colorful. not a super colorful work I am a bird and I'm attracted to lots of colors so you didn't care for Munster's Premium in the black and white which one?
    22:35
    that's actually kind of neat because it's black and white and then that makes whatever color there is really pop as you say yes as I say actually I really like black and white but I've always been really fond of black and white art because of the emphasis on light and what it does with that I actually really liked the other day I played for the first time was the Game of Thrones premium. Not Game of Thrones, Black Knight Sword of Rage premium. And I like the art on that. I think that art is pretty cool. But, you know, I didn't know what I would think about the upper play field. I loved it. A lot of people say it ruins the flow and everything like that. It probably helped that I started multi-ball on the top play field and the bottom play field at the same time and destroyed it on my first game by, like, random luck. So that probably made me like it a lot better. Yeah, we I had more time on the premium initially And I did like the high flow Of the pro more But I felt that the upper playfield On Game of Thrones is one of the best designed Upper playfields because It doesn't feel like It feels well Because you had two full size flippers And it was Well, maybe not for Jason, but for me It was usually pretty challenging to get all of those shots in In time, so you still didn't stay up there All that long, but But because of the ease of trapping up, that's where I think the flow loss happens, is you can actually control so well and stay on the upper play field, even if you're bricking. It's a balance. I think we morphed two pins into one because I started with Game of Thrones and I switched to Black Knight.
    24:09
    Oh, yes. Now, I have not yet played Black Knight Premium or Elite. You haven't? No, I like it. That's what I'm saying. People have the same complaint about the Game of Thrones saying the flow on Black Knight with the upper play field is not as nice. But I thought it was really cool. Oh, maybe I did play it once at Pen and Palooza. I didn't get enough time on it to be able to comment. I've played it a whole bunch of times now, but it's... Okay. I don't have... Yeah, I know. Yeah, Game of Thrones I can comment on about the loss of flow. On Black Knight, I don't have enough time on the premium to say if I would have liked it better or not. I may have played it once. I didn't get it in the tournament. I know that. so back on Star Wars obviously the repercussions of this new release involve the impact on the old used versions and I know you weighed in on this as well Jason regarding some pin side trends it seems that maybe a few Star Wars are popping up now yeah I don't know if it was just a coincidence or what but I always look at the pin side marketplace even though I'm trying not to buy anything else for a little bit But I'm always kind of curious as to what is out there. And probably two hours after the news officially broke from Stern, there was like three or four Star Wars popped up with the original art for sale. And one of them specifically said in the ad, I'm selling this so that I can get the one with the new cartoon art, which is probably not the best sales strategy in any event.
    25:36
    I don't think it's a mix. It's not going to help. And I don't think that the used market on Star Wars was that strong to begin with in terms of used pricing. But now I've got to think that the prices would fall even further if there's more people looking to sell that one. Or anyone who was looking to get a Star Wars instead of buying a used one would buy one with the new art. I think that's got to depress prices a little bit. Yeah, I agree. Part of the discussion that I had was, okay, so let's say the prices for used Star Wars pros falls now. So that just narrows the delta between the home version, the pin, and the used Star Wars that was already too narrow, in my opinion, to begin with. So, you know, I don't know. Maybe Stern has enough of a market of people that don't know anything about buying used pinball machines that just want a new the pin, and they'll buy it anyways, and it won't matter. But if it was me, there's no way I'd buy the pin over a used Star Wars pro with the original art for a couple hundred dollars difference. Right. Yeah. Even though I know they're being sold, at least – I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase it. While I know that our regular pinball distributors are selling the pin, I've assumed that it will also be sold in some non-traditional venues or places where people who are looking for game room stuff but aren't necessarily pinheads are going to go. And I just think that there is a reliance that they are either not interested or they are ignorant of seeking out things on the used market or thinking that because it's a piece of arcade equipment, it's going to be too hard for them to maintain with no real understanding. I think the pin actually looks pretty fun. Yeah, no, I think the layout looks good. I watched the stream of it on Flippin' Out. My main problem with it was the price, sort of like with the Beatles. Like, I like the Beatles pin. I just don't want to pay $7,000 for it or whatever, you know, or Diamond Edition $15,000 or whatever it is. You don't want to just fork that out? I mean, it's nothing, right? Just hand it over. So the pin, I think it looks neat. If it was priced right, I'd actually maybe consider one. But I just – if the difference between a real pin and that is small, I just can't see doing it.
    27:55
    Yeah, I agree. It will be interesting if there are enough that get out there to see what happens to the pin pricing used.
    28:03
    But I – It's not out there yet for sale. And I don't know how many of these new Star Wars – what do you think? How many units do you feel the new Star Wars will – I should say the new art package Star Wars will move? I mean, yeah, I think it'll sell. It's Star Wars. It's a new look. How many people didn't buy Star Wars just because they didn't like the art, though? Obviously, we've got someone on Pinside saying they're getting rid of their perfectly functional Star Wars because they want one that they feel is better looking. So I'm going to guess there are going to be some people like that. But how many? 100? 200? I don't know. I mean, it is just a reskin. It's not like they had to do any mechanical work. Right. it probably didn't cost them a whole lot to do it other than whatever they had to pay for the artist obviously so yeah why not try to milk more out of that license if you can i would i think they'll sell a decent number but by decent i still think that less than a thousand of these move oh that's my guess that's a two-year-old game i don't i don't know how many of these how many do you think they sold of the original game i don't even i don't have any concept it's not like adam's family numbers back in the day yeah that stuff i don't think they do like no they Inside, if you look at all the old Bally Williams, it'll say sold X number of units or Gottliebs. It'll say sold X number of units, but I don't think they have that anymore. Early in Stern Pinball's history, they did. Like you go to like 2000 and such, you can see some of that. I think the issue, what's happened is those were publicly traded companies, so those numbers had to be released for the shareholders. And now that it's privately held amongst Gary and a few other investors or investor, they are not obligated to share that information with the public. They don't really benefit by sharing. There are no public shares. Right. Well, and that brings up an interesting point. I personally think it would be in Stern's best interest to release production numbers once the games are no longer being produced because that could influence the used market pricing to help dictate to them what are the best games to vault.
    30:07
    I can see that. Because that rarity would play a factor. If people were to go in and go, holy crap, they only made 1,200 Tron Pros, then it's like, okay. And then you're going and saying, okay, well, we could vault that or we could vault Star Trek. And it's like, well, you sold 7,000 Star Treks. Why did you vault it? Sort of thing. Because the impression was, I remember a lot of people were really surprised because, well, we don't know production numbers. Star Trek, very popular game. A lot of people bought it. And then it got vaulted within a year of it being regularly produced. That was kind of strange. I don't know what went into that decision. That happened with the Game of Thrones, too, recently. They did a small run of, I don't know, I think someone said it was only 100 or something like that. Yeah, I heard that. I don't know why you would start it back up to do that. I mean, I guess if you can sell them and you have capacity, why not? To fill some time on the line, or it could be with the ending of the show coming up, they decided. Yeah, that was my guess. I figured with it being the final season, finally, they thought that might raise enough sort of casual interest that they could push a few more units out. And with them knowing internally that Dwight was doing a significant code revision to it, that that could have reinvigorated interest. I mean, that's a good one. So with that as well, I mean, that's why even though I've heard Dwight say there are no plans, it would make a lot of sense to do another run of Ghostbusters at this point, given that the massive code drop has happened and it's been restructured and there's the new wizard mode and everything. If they do another run of that, they should do as out of the factory. You ever see people put the plastics on it with the center post? They should either do a legit center post or have the one with the plastics coming off because that makes it a much better game.
    31:55
    If they want to drill, I don't support layout changes. That wouldn't be a layout change, though. What I would do is I would say drill a little center pole hole and then include one in the little goody baggie and say, If you want a center post here, you can screw it in. You won't feel bad for drilling a hole in your play field. Yeah, I can see that. They could tap that hole in from the factory. A lot of games work like that. A lot of people do it with aftermarket, not necessarily drill into the play field, but they do the – you've seen the one with the plastics. Yeah, yeah, with the extender. Yeah, and a lot of people love that. I wouldn't put that on as the default because that's just not the default layout of that game. But if you – people would rather have something. That brings up the problem of scores and comparing one person's score to another person's score. That's always a problem. If you have one game that's easier than another.
    32:46
    Yeah, but that's always the case. I mean, you go on something like Pindigo, and someone has the number one, took it from me, number one score on hoops, and I'm sure the location game isn't set on hard like mine is. It's probably set to five balls. Could be. But it's like, and based off of how that game works, on what difficulty determines when the extra balls are triggered and all of that, and it's just like, okay, well, we just played in different circumstances. So I suppose if it really bugged me, I could put my game down to very easy and then take the permanent high score and leave it at that. Yeah, I think pretty much in pinball you can. Take the glass off and just push all the buttons and then take a picture of it. That's true. I could do that too.
    33:25
    I'm the number one Atari Middle Earth score on Pindigo. I might have to try and find one of those then So I just ruined it Someone's going to hear that I know someone here in Kansas City Who does own a Middle Earth So that might motivate him to Get that back out and working Assuming it's not, I don't know Get that back out and working Okay, well We will of course keep our eyes on What goes on with Star Wars Comic Book Edition But I don't see it as a mistake In any way for Stern and I think this is just going to be positive for them, despite the tears that will be shed by some people that will feel this devalued their Star Wars game. It's not like the company has any rights. Do you think the manufacturers should care what happens to people who have purchased the game already or not? I think they should care what happens to the people in the sense of mechanically and how their game's working and that it's still supported. I don't think they need to care about whether or not it holds its value. Yeah, I don't think their value matters. I think that's nothing that the manufacturer should care about. It's, I mean, and let's be frank. We're talking maybe a few hundred dollars. I mean, what I've seen so far, the old Star Wars games are now moving at kind of what the recently new DMD era games were going at. So we're talking maybe down to low fours, which is a little atypical, to like mid-4,000s, which is what you usually see games like Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Star Trek move at. But so, okay, it's less than $1,000. Yeah, the one that was listed the other day, there was two pros I remember. One listed a pro for five grand, which is never happening in a million years. And the other one who said he was upgrading the art to get the new art, it was a pin that was on location listed for $46. I don't see that happening either. I think the prices are going to have to come down. Yeah, but I think it would be very unlikely to see them fall below $4,000. I'd buy them if they did. I think original art Star Wars Pro will end up being from $4,000 to $4,500. That's where I think it will be. For four grand, that's a pretty cool game. It is. Even though the multipliers are pretty annoying. But I still think it's a cool theme and a cool fun pin. Yeah, the geometry is good, too. So there's a lot going for it. And I think at that, you just have to consider, because that's the factor you always need to remember is, okay, for $4,4500, what else am I going to be able to get? Probably not anything with an LCD.
    36:03
    No. So now this becomes very attractive if you want a new-looking game. well whatever enters into my mind too is will i lose money on this if i decide i don't want to keep it and you probably wouldn't at four thousand i mean you could probably flip that well because i mean assuming it's whatever you whatever its status was when you got it probably isn't changing much and by that i mean like it's not all of a sudden becoming routed when you put it into your house so given that you're just not going to you just homeowners just don't put much wear on them so with that with that said it's like yeah you're probably not going to see a tremendous dip and if you did what $500 maybe you should put 500 plays on the game before you sell it and then you feel like it was a dollar a play yeah that's always my that's where I always go like with people who are like I put 75 plays on this and now I'm selling I'm like why that happens all the time why didn't you play it enough even if you hate it why don't you play your losses worth at least and feel like you didn't cheat yourself I don't know this is how my brain works So speaking of newer pinball machines, let's go to the newest of the new, and that would be Elvira House of Horrors. We did talk about that here on this podcast a couple of weeks ago when we saw the images. But since then, Jack Danger over with Deadflip did do a gameplay reveal on Twitch. I have a link to the YouTube of that video in the show notes.
    37:27
    Jason, did you get a chance to look at any of the video? I did watch it live when it was on. I didn't watch all of it. I don't know. Maybe I watched 20, 30 minutes, something like that. I don't know exactly how much. Someone said there were some issues with the game. Someone was saying there were some issues with the game during the stream. I didn't see that. I didn't either, and I was in stream for about 30 minutes. Tony, did you get a chance to see any of the video? I didn't get a chance to watch any of it. Well, Jason, what are your thoughts on what you did see of the video? The play field looks pretty open down below, but a lot of people were criticizing it saying it didn't have a lot of shots and stuff like that but I thought that the mechs on it looked really cool I think the house is pretty neat you can go into the basement different aspects of different shots move and open up and looks like there's different routes the ball can take once it goes into the house and things like that it looks like it's probably pretty neat I mean that's a tough people love the party monsters and people love scared stiffs So that's a tough pin to live up to in terms of the lineage or the previous versions of it. But I think it looks good. I think, again, for me, like we were discussing with Beatles and everything else, I think it's just going to come down to price. I think that there's only a premium and an LE and then some, like, crazy LE or whatever that people were paying, like, 15 grand for or something like that. And so I wouldn't personally pay that much probably for one, but I'm sure there's a lot of people who will. It looks like it'll be a fun game.
    39:04
    Yeah, I thought that it shot about what I expected from looking at the photos. It is open in the lower sections. It's a complete fan layout by the very cookie-cutter definition of fan. It meets all the criteria. I thought about writing an article explaining what fan layouts are to people because I don't think everyone understands what they are. But this is a fan. It looks like a Nordman design, though. I can see Nordman's fingerprints on it if you look at some of his other games. Yeah, I kind of can. I guess I was expecting a little more. One of the things that I associated with Nordman, at least in his later periods, was a little more creativity with the ramp designs. And I think it's there hidden in the mechs, but it's not there visually on the surface of the play field. And I kind of thought, you know, like, where's the crazy whitewater ramp or where's the weird ramp stuff from Pirates of the Caribbean, you know, that sort of stuff. The wiggly ramp on Skirt Stitch. Yeah, there's no pizzazz to the ramp, the physical ramp layouts. And typically he does a little, well, he's not like J-pop, let's just make them swirl all over the place like some sort of crazy figure eight. How about Oktoberfest? October. Yeah, or Balser. Well, Balser, you know, he's so eclectic, he kind of does whatever on any particular game, but yeah, they were relatively straightforward. I agree, I think the house with the diverter looks really good. It seems to flow really, really well, so that mech seems to work well. I was most impressed by the crypt shot on the right. That's the mech. It's like a three-stage where it will open, there's a head, and then that can I guess lift up, and then that exposes a hole to shoot into. so that looked like a really cool mech but I mean kind of in Jason's boat in the sense that because there's no pro and I look at this and especially when you look at the surface of it for people I don't think you see premium per se I think with the mechs I get it but it seems like this premium price point is higher than the traditional premium price point is even so with all of that factored in it's just too expensive for what it is I thought the Callouts were great. They got custom animation work, like filming with Cassandra. Yeah. That seemed really cool. The humor's all there. The voice work's all there. I think a lot of Elvira fans will like it if they get it, and I think a lot of them will get it. Yeah. I think it's going to sell well. I think it'll sell okay. They were sitting on this design for a long time. Yes. At least two years this pin has been designed from a gameplay perspective, I think. So it's interesting that it took them so long to get it out, and now it almost feels like it's rushed in order to get it out in time for Halloween. It's just a weird combination of things where they've had it for so long, and now it feels like they're hurrying to get it out. Yeah, and I feel that that sense of urgency is driven entirely by trying to make the holiday season the Halloween holiday season. Well, they have to get it out before Halloween. Right. They have to. That's like not having the Oktoberfest pin out before Oktoberfest. You got to get it out. And I don't know if maybe there were changes or delays in the process of doing the video assets or anything like that. Because we know that the layout was done for a long time. So there's nothing about that that needed to be rushed along. I also think that this was the period where they felt they could finally slip it in. I don't think Stern expects this to make them bucket loads of money and they just kind of want to get it off of the plate so that the optimization is done. so while I think it will sell well for a premium tier pin, as a premium tier pin, I don't think they're expecting to move 2,000 units of it what do they call it, cornerstone? or keystone or something like that? it's not a cornerstone game no, nor should it be so I think it was very smart that they didn't make a pro version of this, because I do not think, well a lot of people still know when they hear what the name Elvira is associated with Even younger people I think would probably go oh Elvira that something to do with horror They don the love for the franchise is aging out That might not be the first thing they think of when they see it Right right They might not They might not And so but I like the idea of it with all the B-movies and all of that incorporated in. I think, to me, I wouldn't be surprised if this would be my favorite of the three Elvira games.
    43:32
    I mean, I don't know. I actually really like the first two, which is kind of funny because the theme's kind of meh for me, but the games themselves are pretty darn fun. I like the humor of Scared Stiff. I don't love the layout of it. I don't like that scoop over by the dead heads and how it kind of shoots. It doesn't shoot into the pops. And I don't like the wide open ramp that you do to easily activate the lock shot.
    43:57
    The bonus shot, it's worth like nothing. And you're like, what? So and then Elvira and the Party Monsters, I actually like the layout more.
    44:06
    I used to have those little puppets when I was young. because it'll buy you to love those things. So that's why I like that game a lot. So I actually prefer Elvira and the Party Monsters from a layout perspective. Of course, as a System 11, it only goes so far. And I know competitively a lot of people didn't care for that game because it's a lock-stealing game. And some competitive people hate lock-stealing. Well, yeah. Don't lock balls if you don't want them stolen. That's the TNA philosophy. It adds strategy to it, actually, really, if you think about it. It's kind of neat. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's Elvira. We will keep seeing what happens with that. I still don't know if we're going to get one. What do you think the next one is? The next Stern? Well, I think it will be a Cornerstone.
    44:50
    Do you want me to guess what the theme will be? Let's see if we can nail it. I'm hearing strong rumors about James Bond.
    45:01
    I've heard Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've heard that as well. I've heard Bill and Ted's got some buzz as well. That's got to be happening. Who do you think Like I'm guessing the next game is Brian Eddie's We gotta get one he's been there for like two years now Yeah that's the thing It's like why have we seen two games out of Elwynn now And still not seen Eddie's One of them is kind of a morphed version of the other one Yeah but they I mean Archer was I'm sure it was quicker than designing it from scratch But still I mean Archer was a wide body They had to slim the whole thing down It was not it wasn't just drag the scale I thought Jurassic was going to be Brian Eddy when I heard that it was coming I was pleasantly surprised that it was Elwyn that's the other probably designer that I would have wanted right now so that was good for me anyways but I was kind of surprised it wasn't Brian Eddy yeah just in terms of how long Brian's been there because they announced that at 2018 TBF that he was hired back at Stern so it's like okay and it's been a while now. I'd expect to have had a machine early this year at the latest, and it's late 19th. If it's not Brian Eddy, then the next game is going to be Borg. Well, you know what I've heard, and I think everyone's heard this rumor, and I actually think it's probably not true that they're doing a Quicksilver redesign as a Led Zeppelin machine. I'm kind of thinking like the Beatles sort of. I think I'm starting to think that's not true because it's like such a trendy rumor. Yeah, I don't. I wouldn't be shocked if they do that. That wouldn't be Cornerstone anyways. No, no, and that's the thing. I don't think they would do that this year. I think that would be every fall they do a boutique release. It's Elvira this time. Last year it was Beatles, Kapow, Beatles game. The year before that it was the, what was the year before that? That wasn't Batman, was it? That was the year even before that. Well, that was the Kapow, yeah.
    47:08
    Right. I don't remember when stuff came out. Everything seems like it blends together. Yeah, yeah. So it seems like they do something usually at this point a boutique-esque style, non-pro available, often in partnership with Kapow but not always. They're probably due for another Kapow, I would think. Well, at first I had just assumed that Kapow branding was going to be on the Elvira. Right. Well, that was the rumor. People were saying that, and it was somewhat like there is no pro. I know. I spread that rumor. I blame myself for that.
    47:40
    Well, I always noted it was pure speculation. I wouldn't say that it's wrong. The fact that there's no pro, it might as well say Kapow. It's no different. Well, I think it's wrong.
    47:52
    Come on. I'm trying to give you credit. Well, no. It was merely the Kapow branding would merely have meant that Kamikau had secured the license, and apparently that was not the case. I don't think Elvira is a license that's super difficult to procreate. No. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, because it was all through contract work, if Nordman had kind of arranged with Cassandra Peterson to do a new Elvira game, and then they went to Stern and said, we've got the idea. I went Greg on art. I'll do the layout. Cassandra's on board to do the licensing arrangement. We've already worked out all the details. Think about how long that must have been in the works, though, because Nordman's been at Deep Root for like two years. So that means that this game must have been, you know, he wasn't doing Stern and Deep Root at the same time. No, no. So that means this must have been forever. Yeah, I've always, for a long time, when people ask me about Dennis Nordman in the modern era of pinball design, I've actually described him. I don't mean it in a negative way, but I've often described him as a pinball mercenary because I felt he's been a gun for hire for quite a while, willing to contract with anyone who will hire him. So I'd be for hire. No one's buying. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So but I mean, so Dennis, obviously, he was doing stuff with Stern. And then when that dried up, he went over and gave a design over to Highway Pinball and then back to do a contract arrangement with Stern and then now tied in with Deep Root. So you got to go where the money is. You've got to flash the cash. This would actually tie in nicely with the Deep Root discussion. Is that the way you're taking things? Do you see the segue? Well, we can hop in over to the Deep Root part now, sure. So you noted before we started recording, Jason, that it sounds like there's plans for two retro-atomic zombie adventure land game prototypes, also commonly referred to and hereafter referred to on this episode as Raza, so I don't have to say all that. At the Houston Arcade Expo. And Deep Root a while ago had been noting that they were planning to unveil prototypes at the Arcade Expo. I didn't know the quantity, so you telling me that the plan is currently two was new news to me. I did know that they are planning to use – people are not to expect this to be finalized items. They are true prototypes, and they want to see how they play in a public setting. Yeah, they really downplayed what – basically the expectations for it. They were just basically saying they want to collect data from people banging on their machines for a while. I think that was the general gist of it. Yeah, I've got the exact quote here, and it is... Look at that research. Two early prototypes of Retro-Loo Atomic Zombie Adventureland will be at the Houston Arcade Expo on November 15th through the 16th, 2019. These prototypes will not have final art, design, or code. our primary goal is to collect real world data and there'll be a minimal Deep Root staff if you follow them, Deep Root Studios it's like the art arm of the Deep Root whatever I guess I was going to call it Deep Root Pinball but I guess it's supposed to be more than that but if you follow them on Instagram they have all sorts of art that looks like it's going to be coming up in games that they're working on yeah and I've at least looked at a number of the pieces that seem to be associated with Raza. So, given how they phrased it, that it wouldn't be a variety of final things, I'm assuming, though, this won't be a Whitewood and this will actually have art on it. It just might not be finalized art.
    51:31
    That's my guess. Or do we think that's incorrect and that this is actually going to be like Whitewoods? Unless it's really far along, I think they open themselves up to a massive amount of criticism. I think people are looking to bang on them a little bit anyways because of the j-pop stuff so i if if it didn't look awesome i wouldn't i'd just make it a white wood and did not put anything on it um one of the things that's been coming up even yet again with a fairly recent interview that jeff patterson over with this week in pinball had conducted with robert uh miller of deep root was he's still referencing the hammer this is something that came up when we did an interview last year with Robert on this show. And the idea of the dimpling, the clear coat issues, obviously that's been front and center for a lot of folks lately because of all the struggles at Stern and JJP regarding their clear coat. And he's still saying that there will be a hammer test going on. There's still a lot of bold statements. There was also in that interview a lot of discussion about how Deep Root will be willing to license all of their innovative tech to boutique pinball companies.
    52:47
    I think that's them kind of thumbing their nose at the existing manufacturers. Yeah, and that's been something that's happened several times during the course of this journey, this soldier, and that we've been witnessing for Deep Root. What do you think of that, Jason? Well, they said they're going to put a 10-year warranty on the playfields against everything, including dimpling. I mean, I think that there's no doubt that play field quality seems to have deteriorated. And I don't know. People think that a lot of that has to do with cost cutting. I don't know that it's that as much as the environmental. I mean, you used to be able to throw whatever you wanted into the clear coat, like lead and all kinds of asbestos, whatever the hell you put in there. Anything that was horrible for you, I'm sure, was in there, and it was rock solid. Now it's all water-based.
    53:35
    And, you know, maybe they're cutting corners, maybe they're not. But there's no doubt that the play fields aren't holding up like they were. It doesn't seem like it to me. So if you were able to do that in-house, which most of the manufacturers do not do at this point, all that's outsourced to CPR and Merco, I think are the two, right? And then there was another one. Didn't Chicago Gaming used to make play fields for people before they started doing their own remake machines? I think they did as well. so you know if you're a manufacturer now and you're not doing that in-house you're kind of at the mercy of the suppliers to a certain degree so deep root doing it themselves which it sounds like you would think they'd be able to make them pretty solid whether or not we'd live up to the hyperbole that banging it with hammers and things like that i don't know but you know i i would think they could probably improve that they've certainly had enough time to do it so i mean i don't know why do you are you interested in a deep root game jason i mean i i want them to do well i think more pinball is good i mean i i i like almost anything i play whether or not i would want to own it or not is another thing i'd love to play deep root games on location for me you know a lot of people say it's only the gameplay for them and they don't care but for me theme is kind of important. I want to have stuff that I actually like the theme of to look at. Right now, I have Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek. I'm going to have a Jurassic Park. I have Game of Thrones. I like all those shows and movies. For me, I think theme matters. Would I want Retro Atomic Zombieland? I don't know. The trailer is pretty amusing. The game would have to be pretty awesome for me to want to own it, though, I think. Just because, for me personally, theme matters. A lot of people don't think it does, but I think so. I don't know what the price point is going to be or anything on this. If they could do something where it would be affordable for location, then hopefully there's going to be a lot of them out there.
    55:43
    Tony, are you looking forward to Raza specifically? Not specifically. I'm looking forward to see what we get out of Deep Root. I'm seriously interested in what's going to come out of it. The truth of the matter is the theme for Raza is something that's in my wheelhouse, but overall, I'm not... It's nothing extra special to me. I just kind of want to see what they've got going and how it comes out. They've built so much mystery. They've built so much mystery, I just want to see the truth behind it. Yeah, I get that. I can't comment on what I think of Raza because I've not seen the layout. And to me, that is the most important thing. Layout is most followed by code, or rule set, I should say. I don't really care about the programming per se, but how that implements. No, no, no. Surely not. No. Now, for me, because my pens aren't showpieces, so that's why I don't get hung up on art. And then theme can help with immersion on modern games, but I have so many games where there is no. You don't get immersed in Jax to Open. I don't feel like I'm a playing card.
    56:55
    You're like playing actual cards. I'm like, no, I am the card. I'm the one that wants to be. I wish I got to be in the royal flush, but I'm just an aid of spades. Sad.
    57:07
    So it's like, I don't know. I've actually heard people describe it. An immersion and what that means. It's just like, do you feel like you're in the world? I've actually heard people describe it. I remember when total nuclear annihilation was first. I hated this. This is why I'm going to comment on it. So sorry to all of you out there that think this way and will be offended. But when the art was revealed for total nuclear annihilation and it bothered people that Scarlett, the woman, was front and center because they were trying to describe how they need to feel like they are the ball. I know. They are the one doing everything and that they aren't a girl so they couldn't do that. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I hadn't even heard that. That you would even think of yourself as the ball is ridiculous. ridiculous there are so many problems with that entire line it's like this is not an rpg okay you need to quit you need to go and and larp out and the in the field somewhere this is not the game for you well see and i and i've got i read a lot i watch a lot of movies i do this and that but i've never had that immersion thing i've seen so many people comment about something they'll see something in the movie and it breaks them out of the immersion it breaks them out of the movie so they don't i've never had that i did in the third um the third version third of the trilogy of the hobbit i went and i saw it in that 60 frames a second yeah and it was the super high quality and i could tell one of the rocks was styrofoam that broke my immersion i was like you can't be afraid of that rock it's styrofoam look at it that's too much detail you could tell it was fake You could tell super bad it was fake. So that sort of stuff will be like, oh, no, the movie world is now too artificial. It's too artificial. The theme might matter to me more, too, because I have kids. I mean, I have a fifth-grade son, and we watched Guardians of the Galaxy the other day. And when Quill pulls out the ball and, like, dropped the orb and drops it, we both looked at each other and said, extra ball. You know?
    59:07
    So this seems from the movie. I just like the theme from that perspective. I think at this point you want to have smart themes. In fact, we can transition to a non-listed topic that ties in with the declared intent to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Suncoast Pinball and the problems with Cosmic Carnival, arguably one of the chief of which would be that that is a terrible theme. Yeah. I don't think the theme would have been a problem for it if it played well. Because people love the art. So that would have been my argument. And that was my when I'd seen it. And I often would, you know, when I would have my discussions with Zach Minney on this week in pinball podcast, who as a distributor was a distributor for Suncoast Pinball as well. I think he has one sitting around. I think he's working on a trade to get rid of that.
    60:00
    And anyway, one of the things I always stressed was this is it's 2019. You can't do a symmetrical layout. was a mistake. You've cut your shots in half by doing it. Unless you've got something to make up for it, and at your modern price point, you won't.
    60:19
    And all they ever did was redesign the shapes of the ramps, but they never moved them after the feedback at TPF. And most of that redesign was to allow more of the art to be seen. They banked everything on Dirty Donnie. And Dirty Donnie's art on that game is incredible.
    60:34
    That's the only reason why people want that game I think it's his best pinball art package he has done. But the gameplay is, the layout is very EM-oriented. And even with that in mind, not particularly well designed to access other aspects, like getting back up top to the top lanes and such. They were just, it wasn't well designed as a layout. That whole thing crumbled fast. They must have been flying pretty close to the sun because it was just, oh, here we are, we're selling them. All of a sudden it was like, poof, nothing. Why don't they sue some people and start GoFundMe and start begging people that they're going to hand make them in their basement? I'm glad that they saw the writing on the wall and they declared their bankruptcy. I thought that was a smart move. And my understanding as to why it seemed to crumble so quickly is this basically got triggered because they owed back rent. My understanding is the owner personally guaranteed the rent. so he could not isolate that aspect from the company because he underwrote it as an individual so he wasn't shielded from that failure so he needed to declare bankruptcy now to get that in line before it devastated him personally so that was from Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcast I believe started away I'm not very far in that episode but I do recall hearing that aspect so that was something new to me but yeah if so if he was like i'm the guarantor so that you'll let me have this lease back on him as a as an individual it's like okay i definitely see why you want to act now because people were looking at like well you only owe like seven thousand or even if doubled up it's like fifteen thousand dollars it's not really that much money it's like yeah well to an individual fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money yeah but how many games i don't know what the margins are like in that but he could have sold a couple of the pins you already had and paid i mean it's got to it's got to be a lot deeper than 7 or 15 well i mean there's got to be there's got to be some stuff coming that i mean i don't know i mean part of the thing part of the people that will have to be claimants are for people who purchased games and didn't receive them so it's not like he had any in stock to sell off and balance the books they owe people pins that sucked so given all of that it was clearly not working out for them but again a lot of people, if you just heard you're browsing around and you're like what are the current pinball machines available and you just saw a list of titles like over on This Week in Pinball and you saw Cosmic Carnival that theme isn't going to get you to click on that it's not oh carnies, they smell of space cabbage I'm not going to look at it I mean And we are in a, whether you like it or not, we are in a time where as much as pinball people say they don't care about licensed pens, licensed pens are what sells. People do, for sure. I mean, I think that's just a, it goes back to your art thing. I think it's just a trendy thing to say. I think people who do say it believe it. I think there are, there's a segment of the hobby that really does long for original pens. They're just not enough to save a company. Right. And they often want other things as well. They're not, because they may say, I want original themes, they're in no way obligated to buy a garbage symmetrical layout like Cosmic Carnival because they said that.
    64:02
    And as much as I make fun of the layout because I'd not played the game, I hear the code was pretty bad. So the rules also weren't there. It just wasn't a player.
    64:14
    Who wants pinball machines that don't play well? There is a segment of the hobby that is in it for the looks. But other than that – Magic Girl? Well, yeah. Yeah, who wants a trophy piece that isn't even fun? I mean that's one of the biggest complaints about the high values and talking about Big Bang Bar and people are like, oh, I'm thinking about getting a Big Bang Bar because they see the pricing and they think it must be this great game. And everyone is like, it's a mediocre player. So just go with it. Big Bang Bar is a heck of a lot better than what Magic Girl or Cosmic Carnival. At least it's somewhat legit game. It plays. But everyone like don think that Big Bang Bar is expensive because it a fun game It an okay game It was an okay game If it had come out in the 90s it wouldn have been a hit It was an okay game The art is what moves it as well as the story. The story behind the whole Cunningham build and everything. It's a neat story. Really cool story. Cactus Canyon falls into that category too of games that is more popular than it would be had there been more of them. Yeah, I agree. It's got that mystique of its low count. Last traditional non-Pinball 2000 that Williams did. If they had gotten fleshed out more, it would have been a decent game. I like it. It's got some cool ideas.
    65:31
    It just feels kind of unfinished at times. Well, our last – speaking of art and Dirty Donnie, our last Pinball topic that we have is there was some Instagram movement from Dirty Donnie where he has unveiled some Stranger Things art, which apparently has gotten people talking about whether or not Stranger Things, Stern, could he be doing these Stranger Things art for Stern? It has been a rumor for quite a while now that Stern does have the license to do Stranger Things. That's in their wheelhouse at this point. They're stable.
    66:08
    I guess, while it would be fun to hold it to the end, I will note, Donnie did clarify that the art is for a fuzzy black light poster that he was doing for Netflix, not for Stern. So, wah wah. But, I've not seen Stranger Things. Would that be a good pinball theme? I don't know. I think they've missed the window with that. It's almost like it's too late now, to me, personally. I mean, there's a lot of people who love it, but for me, it seems like they didn't strike while the iron was hot for that one. I think the prime time would have been just before the release of season three.
    66:44
    They have confirmed a season four. That was confirmed earlier this week, but I don't know. It could be too late for it to be the big kind of hit thing you would hope for. I've seen some people say that they who have watched the show indicate that if there was a pin, they would want it to just be season one. I could see that argument. That's the good one, for sure. Well, you could throw part of Season 2 in there, because the opening of Season 2 where they're in the arcade is probably the best part of any of them. Season 2 goes downhill from there, but they're in like an 80s retro arcade that's pretty iconic.
    67:25
    Okay. I know they didn't play any pinball. I don't even recall seeing a pinball machine in the arcade. No, I don't think there was any pinball, and there was more video games. I think they were playing like Missile Command or Space Rangers. Yeah, they were playing like Missile Command and Dig Dug and stuff like that. So I think a lot of the interest there is, I get why Stranger Things is popular, because it is designed to push a bunch of nostalgia buttons. And it does it very well. And pinball is a very nostalgia-driven hobby, so nostalgia within nostalgia is nostalg-ception.
    68:04
    And so that would have been a fun theme, inception. I think if they did Stranger Things, they'd have to do one and two to incorporate the beginning of Season 2 with the arcade in it. The arcade, even the sign for the arcade, that was pretty well received by people. Yeah, I think it might be one of those things where if they did it, they'd just do it as Stranger Things and just include stuff mixed in all over it without it being like a Season 1 or Season 2 or Season 3 thing. It would just be as a whole. and they would just grab bag things from all of the seasons as necessary for whatever they wanted would be my guess.
    68:46
    Well, we'll see, obviously. I don't know. I guess if maybe Stern's been pushing Stranger, I mean, if they've got the license, maybe that would be coming up, and it wouldn't be a bad move to have Dirty Donnie doing artwork for Stern. But if the game was coming out fairly immediately, Donnie had been contracted to do three games with Suncoast. So I don't think Stern would use him. I don't think they have to worry too much about that. Right, right. But that would be okay if the game is a ways out still, and they hadn't picked an artist yet. But if the game is more imminent, I can't imagine that Stern used him. Is he on good terms with Stern? Because what was the last game they did for them, Metallica? No, no, Aerosmith. Oh, Aerosmith. He did the Aerosmith art. Yeah. It just seems like you would have thought he would have been in the rotation more, especially if Franchi's not. I don't know. Maybe he still isn't. I heard there was some sort of thing. I don't know. I mean, I have no idea. My general sense is, I mean, with all of those, you know, Yeti and Donnie and Franchi, they're all contracted. They're all contract artists. It's project by project. So I don't know if there's necessarily an intent to do a rotation with them or if Stern's reading the tea leaves of sales and the reactions that they see on forums and discussion groups and then are like, okay, let's go and explore other artists like Johnny Crap and stuff. Let's try other artists and see how those resonate that seem to have high skill. And we'll just mix things up as much as we want. I just think that trying out new artists is a function of too many old artists burning bridges, but I don't know. I think they would have been happy to keep the same rotation had everyone been getting along. It could be, but another aspect might be that there are all of these artists, because they're on contract, I don't know how much they're making per game, but they're clearly all very reliant on doing other work as well, and it seems like it's very stressful to do a pinball project on top of doing, because most of their other projects, I think, are a lot more straightforward. It's usually stuff like posters, band T-shirts, things like that, where they have relationships established, and it's probably fairly low stress. And the pinball stuff seems to be a lot higher stress because they're jumping through licensor hoops. They're not in direct communications.
    71:14
    And obviously there's a whole lot more to do with a lot of detail and aligning with layout and everything. So, yeah, I had not heard. As far as what little sourcing I have, Jason, I have not heard. You have more sources than I do. I wouldn't say that. You're my source. I have not heard that Dirty Donnie has burned any bridges permanently at Stern. Okay, that's good.
    71:39
    I can't say the same for all the artists. Some people, there have been some fires. There have been some minor flames.
    71:48
    So, we've flamed out now on pinball. So we'll move to our video game section. Tony, you've got like three topics here. Yeah, I've got three little things. Itty bitty baby things. Tiny, tiny little things. And the most interesting of them to me right now is we finally have some solid numbers on the Epic Game Store. Because the Epic Game Store has been grabbing up all these exclusives. and one of the companies they grabbed exclusives with put out a budget notice for investors type thing. And it included the numbers for what they got paid for their exclusive deal from Epic. And it was $10.49 million. Wow. And that was with Remedy and their publisher 505 Games. That'd be a good game. I've not played it. The game's called Control, and it also was part of an advance for another game. But the way they did it, Epic is giving out advances on sales. So basically, they're taking, oh, we'll give you what you'd make for your first so many sales, so you're exclusive to us. Kind of like publishers do with authors. That's a good way for them to get their foot in the door, because I don't think Steam was exactly all that generous from a lot of the games. No, Steam's not all that generous with anything, and that's why they've been losing so many, especially the independent developers, because the independent developers are the ones who are doing Kickstarters and Patreons and early access stuff to get enough money to finish their games, and now Epic's just walking in and going, yeah, here's just a stack of money. Finish your game and publish with us.
    73:36
    Right. And even if they don't do the exclusives, the Epic share per sale percentage-wise is much smaller than Steam's. Yeah, Steam is 22% now. I think they reduced it, and Epic's is like 12 or under.
    73:54
    That's a huge difference. Yeah, it's a massive, massive difference in money. And most of the problems with the Epic Games Store are stuff that are teething problems like Steam went through. And as they get better, it's just going to be a bigger problem, and Steam is going to have to do something. Steam has already made major changes to how their library works and major changes to their entire store layout that they have started rolling out in the last few months entirely because of the fight with Epic. They actually have to change something now. People are paying attention, and they're not the big ones.
    74:30
    They can't rest on their laurels. Yeah, they can't just sit there and remain being the insanity that was being a monopoly. Another little bit of just interesting trivia is Pokemon did a 24-hour live stream for their new Pokemon game. And it was just a video set up of shooting a picture like a camera set up looking into a forest. That's it. And occasionally other Pokemon would walk by. They had more than 25 So you watched all 24 hours of it? I did not There were people who did There were people who were watching it While live streaming themselves Watching it for the full 24 hours I'm going to stream myself Watching someone watching this Is this like those Yule log twitch streams That have become really popular It had More than 25 thousand viewers. I checked it out at 3.30 in the morning and there were 17,000 people at 3.30 in the morning in central time still watching this thing. You can't even get 17 people to watch a pinball stream and there's 17,000 people watching cartoon Pokemon run around in the woods. The thing is, you'd only see a Pokemon like every 45 minutes.
    75:56
    Otherwise, it was literally just a clearing in a forest and some noises occasionally. And every once in a while a Pokemon would be on screen for like three seconds. That was it. Up until like the very last six minutes of the stream, they had my little Pokemon run out and nuzzle on the middle of the screen and then run off. That was it.
    76:20
    I just could not fathom the numbers of people. I know Pokemon is popular, but But for the final hour of the stream, they were over 25,000 people again for the whole time. That's crazy. And my last little thing is a return to a discussion we had a long, long time ago about loot boxes. Loot crate. And pay-to-win stuff. Ghost Recon Breakpoint just came out. Yes. They've got a whole crafting system and an enrolled purchase system for equipment and guns and this and that. And apparently you can buy every single thing with real money if you're willing to jump through the hoops to do it.
    76:58
    You want a bigger magazine? Cash. Sniperscope. Silencer. Cool knife. So it's not just cosmetics. It is game enhancing stuff. Even when the game first launched, for the first week of launch, had like XP bonuses and stuff like that. You know, here's five bucks. There you go. You get double XP for an hour. Game stuff. So all the horrible stuff that EA got trashed for with Star Wars last year and everything that we thought had – no, Ubisoft brought it back. I hate paying for in-game stuff. I'd rather light my money on fire, I think. But are you getting to pick the specific item and buy it versus the actual loot crate? But I'd rather pay like $60 and just have a game than pay $10 and get milked all the way along. It's games as a service now, Jason. It's games as a service. At least unlike the loot box. They do monthly subscription. Monthly subscription of this, monthly subscription of that. Wow. Again. Yay. Wow, vanilla. Classic. But no, that is one thing. You choose what you want to buy here. It's not the loot crate where you buy crates and hope that you get what you want. This is not gambling. Yeah, it's not gambling now because, you know, a bunch of companies are getting in trouble with that, especially over in the EU. loot crates are getting just thrown down left and right. Now the one thing they did to keep people from really freaking out is when you go into the PvP section, it puts everybody's the exact same. So you can't buy to win. Oh, it's just for the single player. It's for the single player and the co-op and all of that. But in PvP, everybody's equal. So it goes back to just skill based there. But the game's not designed around PvP. This is an actual Storyline game Designed around the cooperative Multiplayer or single player Aspect Okay well we'll see if they Given it's not I don't know if they'll get raked over the coast for it or not I have a video game topic For you guys if we'll slip it in at the end Yeah that's fine We can slip it in now Have you noticed Zen hasn't come out with any tables For the Zen Pinball Arcade, any Bally Williams tables in like six months it seems like?
    79:24
    I've noticed that I hadn't seen any announcements, but I didn't put really any thought into it. No, they're redoing Castle Storm. They have a new Castle Storm. Then they have a game that's I think an exclusive for the new Apple Arcade or something like that. It seems like they're stretching all their programmers really thin, and whatever programmers they did have from the pinball side they use to port the Star Wars tables over to Switch. It seems like they don't have enough programmers to properly utilize the Bally Williams license, in my opinion. You may be right. I could definitely see them desiring not to take the risk of expanding their staff and then they've got so many ongoing projects. I mean my suspicion is that the license is not been taken or in the process of being taken by anyone else I don't know who else would get it because Pinball I'd still await to see Pinball Arcade's bankruptcy because I don't know they haven't admitted their death yet they did a tournament the other day and the comments section was so toxic everyone's like screw you blah blah blah yeah I just I mean, I'm waiting for, I guess because no one wants it is the only reason why Zen hasn't taken Gottlieb from them. They took everything else. Nobody wants Gottlieb. You're the king of Gottlieb. How dare you? Hey, those are vicious stereotypes that I do not subscribe to.
    80:55
    I do wonder if it's just a matter of too many irons in the fire or if it's more of they're trying to do a bunch of extra before they start rolling ones out. Sure. Or the prioritization could be based off of sales. And if they didn't move as many Bally Williams tables as they thought they would when they got the license initially, then they thought, okay, the demand isn't what we thought it would be. So these are back burner projects. Right. Because it could be that most of the people who had the actual interest already had the pinball arcade tables. Right. And they didn't help things by doing ones that already existed. I mean, everything they've done. I think, I don't remember off the top of my head, but 99% of them. I agree. But again, you're like, well, but the most popular things are games like Medieval Madness. So we need to do the popular ones so people buy. Right. You know what they did too, though? They had the DMD physics and graphics and whatever all left over from the original tables already to a certain extent. I know they redid it, but all the games they're doing are DMD games. And all the games that they're doing are unlicensed right now. So they don't have to jump through those hoops. Yeah, they don't have to do that. If you want an unlicensed DMD game, chances are they've already been done by TPA. So that's part of the reason why there's so much overlap, I think. Yeah. And, I mean, TPA got through a lot. I mean, that was my big, as much as I would have bothered complaining about Pinball Arcade was, you know, they, too, started with basically all the awesome games. And then they just had to start doing B and C tier games after that. So every season pack was less and less attractive because it's like, Oh, Starship Troopers. I'm so excited. I bought them all, unfortunately.
    82:37
    See, I've only got the first several specific season packs. If it didn't have games that I was really all in on, I didn't bother. I only bought them at the season packs. For a while, I was trying to move up their leaderboards, so I got sucked in. I bought every single one, and then I was like, why am I buying them all?
    82:59
    Yeah, I'm just, I don't know. Even their terrible remake, the Doctor Who remake, was so bad, and I bought that just so I could move up the leaderboards.
    83:07
    That was the one they Kickstarted, wasn't it? I never did a Kickstarter for them, but I did buy them all. They Kickstarted several. They had to do a Kickstarter for Terminator 2. They had to Kickstarter Adam's Family. They had to Kickstarter Star Trek Next Gen was a Kickstarter. Basically, almost any of the major movie or TV tie-ins required them to raise outside funds. To cover the licensure. and yeah but their software is such a mess it's like they'd break other older games whenever they'd modify their main engine to a car like when they built Banzai Run the changes they made undermined multiple tables that would already been in the system for a long time because they were building all of that into their base engine as they went along it just got probably pretty bloated that's a cool game though even on there it's really cool wasn't cool enough Jason I guess I paid for it probably more than once somehow a lot of people did a lot of people picked it up when it was on Xbox and Playstation 4 yeah I had it on PS4 and then my son took over that TV with his Xbox so then I got them all on my old iPad so I bought them all at least twice probably at the time when the Bally Williams license was leaving there was the rumor that Pinball Arcade was talking about how they might do other... The impression was Capcom games. They should. I'm wondering, maybe they do Atari games. I don't know why they wouldn't. If they've got the infrastructure there to do it, I mean, they just don't care.
    84:43
    It doesn't make any sense why they wouldn't try to milk this for whatever is left. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what their plan is. Or they think they've got the resources available to rebuild a whole new engine and then try and acquire the licenses back at a later point. Wow, that seems pretty ambitious. Well, sometimes we have to be bold here in the world of video games. That's real ambitious.
    85:09
    Well, that's all the topics I have. Yeah, I said I didn't have a whole lot slated on video games this go-round. You got anything else, Jason? No, I contributed to the video game section. You did. You were a helper. and we thank you for it. Okay, well, I guess we're at the end of the show. Jason, you want to plug where people can find you at out there on the social medias? Oh, sure. Both on Facebook and on Instagram, Nap Arcade. I don't know if, I think you just search for Nap Arcade. I guess you could do, what is it, at Nap Arcade? Is that how it works? I think you just search for Nap Arcade and it'll probably come up with it. We should probably stress that. It says start with a K, and it's silent. Ooh, that's a good one. K-N-A-P-P arcade. Good call. Let's see. Google search NAP arcade. What's the first thing I get? Your Facebook page. That's right. It's the base operation for everything. Yep. For those that need to reach out to our base operation, that's facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. You can also email the show, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. we're on twitch twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and we'll be back again in two weeks until then I'm Dennis I'm Toby and that's Jason goodbye everybody