thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 36 with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott before we get going into this let's thank some of our friends of the podcast uh brad hunter with lit frames if you haven't checked them out yet they are fantastic product um you definitely want to go check out some of the special translates that are made specifically for his frames. There are limited quantities there. And also, Zach and Nicole Minney with Flip N Out Pinball. I know that new machines are going to be coming off the line, and you're going to want them. So give Zach a call, give him a text, give him an email. He doesn't care how you get it. Especially one of the games we're going to be talking about a lot today is Hot Wheels, and you can get that from him. Just shoot him a text. Right, Scott? That's correct. So today we are going to welcome from American Pinball, Josh Kugler. How are you doing today, Josh? I'm doing great, guys. Thanks for having me on the show. Fantastic. So it's been a little strange there in Chicago with everything frozen out. It probably throws a little wrench into your release timeline. Well, certainly the timing of COVID-19, obviously devastating for everyone. But the timing was obviously pretty harsh on us as we had a mini reveal for Lack of a Victor. It was an unintended reveal when the game was seen at Amusement Expo with our real reveal scheduled a couple weeks later at TPF. And between those two things, the world changed and everything came to a screeching halt. And that certainly was unfortunate and disruptive. So it sounded like you guys had a big reveal planned. I heard on your other interview on the Super Awesome Pinball show, again, another friend of the show, You talked about that you had two, I think two or three full size Hot Wheel replicas that people had built to basically show that there's enthusiasm for the Hot Wheel brand and how this is how kids and adults connect to the brand. But that obviously went sideways when we decided we couldn't do it. Well, you know, Hot Wheels is a lot like pinball in the fact that you have some very serious hardcore enthusiasts out there. And there are guys who have taken Hot Wheels originals and turned them into full-size real vehicles. And, you know, obviously we're working with Mattel, and they put us in contact with a couple of folks, and we had arranged for one guy. He was bringing the cars all the way from California to Texas. And we had two of them because that's what he fits on a trailer. And I want to say it was a rip rod and a bone shaker, which actually, you know, are two of the most noteworthy, famous, whatever the word I want to get in there, Hot Wheels cars. So we were really excited because I'm living with these things all the time now to the thought that we're going to get to see full size ones. It was going to be pretty exciting. So we had gotten a pretty big booth space with Ed from TPF. One of the things that I wanted that we were going to have was just a lot of Hot Wheels tracks set up for people to play with. I was going to say kids, but let's face it, you know, there'd be plenty of adults be playing with it as well. And we had eight games planned to be there. So we had, you know, planned for a really big release. Because one of the things, too, that we really strived for on this game was to be starting production when we show the game so that games would be available. So here we were literally starting production when, you know, the governor, you know, said, OK, let's everybody go home. Let's be safe. So we're very looking forward to that being changed, which is hopefully going to happen in a couple of weeks. And we can flip the switch and the games will be coming off the line. So I'm pretty excited about that. At least the end is in sight. Well, before we get the cart before the horse, Josh, I want you to kind of introduce yourself. And can you kind of tell us your background a little bit and how you end up at American Pinball? sure um i'm actually relatively new to the pinball industry i've been a pinball player since i was nine years old i actually had a friend in elementary school whose dad uh sold pinball retail he had a retail store and he always had a couple of machines in his basement so when i was you know 10 11 years old he had a brand new fireball um in his basement so i was hooked from pinball from a pretty young age. And I built a game back when I was a kid out of rubber bands and nails and stuff. And I played pinball forever. And I'd always thought about building my own machine. And every once in a while, I would think about it. And it's a pretty daunting thing. And it was actually through work where I always brought pinball machines to wherever I worked. I always had brought in machines. Everybody knew I was a pinball guy. And one of the guys came in and said, have you ever seen this? And he had printed out a page about the P-Rock, which I had never heard of at that point. And so the P-Rock is what then allowed me to finally, you know, fulfill that dream of building my own pinball machine. And I did two custom pinball machines that were shown at Expo for a couple of years. And that's ultimately what led me to American Pinball. American Pinball had its, you know, rough start at first with John. And then they brought in Joe to kind of let's shift gears and let's start over. And Joe was in need of a programmer. And pretty much everybody he knew was already working. So American People was pretty desperate. And somebody said, oh, you know, there's this guy in Chicago doing a custom game. Maybe you should talk to him. And so they got in contact with me. I was basically doing consulting work at the time. Most of my career has been as an executive with technology companies here in Chicago. And I just left one about a year before that. It was just doing consulting. So I was like, why not? And that's how I ended up programming for American Pinball. That's way cool. Like, I don't think I've honestly ever heard that story. I guess my biggest concern, though, I mean, you started out as a hobbyist and you have a love for this hobby. And that's what brought you into it. Has it become one of those situations, though, where, you know, where people say never do your hobby as your job because you'll end up hating your hobby? Well, you know, some people mentioned that to me early on. You know, the custom pinball group, especially here in Chicago, is really strong. And in reality, you're seeing, you know, that impact. The professional ranks, you know, Scott Danesi, he was a custom builder. And Eric Pripke, who's now working for Spooky. Eric had said, the first thing he said to me when I took the job was, he goes, you think you're going to end up hating pinball now? and I always joke with him along the way about it now that he's working in the industry. I asked him that. He really had no memory of him commenting that to me. I'd say the big difference is I play very little pinball at home now. When you're working on it all day and I'm usually so focused on the game that I'm working on that my games at home get very little play at this point. And I think that's the big change. And there's actually just a local open league here that I've started to go to monthly just to make sure I got out and played some things other than Hot Wheels or Houdini or Oktoberfest or whatever I'm working on. So to me, that's the downside. So I always enjoy when I get somebody's having an event or a party because it means, oh, you know what? I'm going to get to play a bunch of stuff because usually it shows I don't get to play very much either. So I actually probably play less now other than the game I'm working on than before I was doing this as a job. So when you transition to doing, you know, programming and helping orchestrate the rules, what is your philosophy? Maybe maybe a better way of doing is that walk us through the the Hot Wheels game. And I see you at a show. I'm standing next to the game and I turn to you and I say, Josh, what am I supposed to do and how how can I do it? OK, well, so I'm not sure which we were going with the question. So on Hot Wheels, one of the things we try to do on Hot Wheels was make sure that the objectives are very clear and obvious to a player when they step up to the game. We tried to make sure we did that with some of the inserts and in the way we structured the rules. So, you know, the feedback we got on Houdini and Oktoberfest is it could be a little daunting at first because they're games that are very deep and there's a lot going on. And some people find that a little intimidating at first. so we want to make sure that this game was it was super approachable uh given that we we want to try to uh have our games be successful on location so more people get to play our games you know to me that's one of our frustrations as a new company is getting our games out there for people to play them i'll get emails from people or see postings where somebody's finally gotten to play one of our games and like wow this is great you know how come i've never gotten to play this before But when we approached the rules for Hot Wheels, that was something we want to make sure that it was clear and straightforward what to do and that the complexity is still there for those who want it. And when we looked at Hot Wheels, so each time I've done a game, you have to kind of really look at the theme and this story and what it's all about to figure out where the rules need to go. And you kind of look at that in conjunction with the layout. You kind of try to fit those things together. And how do those things come together? So on Hot Wheels, Joe had been working on the layout, and there were some key elements we knew were going to be in there. But then we looked at it from the perspective of what is Hot Wheels to you, what is Hot Wheels to me? I grew up when Hot Wheels first came out. I remember getting them when I had some of the original cars, wish I still had them. So to me, a lot of it was about, you know, we used to race the cars down the track and the imaginative play. And we obviously knew there's a lot about collecting. So we want to incorporate that in the game. Building tracks was always one of the things I loved as a kid, right? You try and create these complex tracks. Of course, what they have today is so much cooler than when I was a kid as far as the ability for these modules that will keep accelerating the car. So you can do these really complex tracks. We really want to incorporate all of those things. When you approach the game, it talks about car collecting, track building. And then, of course, we have this element of battling creatures, which was a new thing to me with Hot Wheels because we didn't battle creatures when I was a kid. But now with Hot Wheels, that's a big part of it for young kids to play is they have all these really cool play sets with these elaborate things where they fire the car and shoot the cars. And so that was something else we wanted to incorporate into the game. so josh when you go to start coding a game do you have a specific philosophy that you follow when you are trying to make a rule set or is it kind of more joe helps you push along that that way uh well balser gets involved zero in the rules you know joe's a guy who's very focused on the layout of a few thoughts some things he thinks might be cool but joe doesn't get very involved in the rules. And Joe Schober and I on Oktoberfest, now on Hot Wheels, developed the rules together with input from other members of the creative team. And we had Jim Pat on board who had some thoughts. Roger Sherp, who was doing the licensing with us, he's given us some thoughts along the way. And so we've had some input from others, but Joe and I kind of craft those rules. But what we look at that's really important is we want to make sure that there's something in there for the three different types of pinball players. You have the – I'll start with the middle group, which is the collector and the enthusiast, which makes up the largest portion. These people are going out and playing all the time. They're seeking out pinball on location. They're in their collectors. Then at the one end of the spectrum, you have the tournament guys, the super competitive who study the rules, who know everything, who practice their skills and all the rest. And then there's the third group, which are the novices, the people who, when you mentioned you have a pinball machine, they said, oh, they still make pinball machines. There's those people or people who are just getting familiar with it on location. And you always want to make sure when we're developing the rules, we want to make sure there's things in there for all three of those groups and that we're trying to balance those things. And so Houdini was an example of that. when I looked at the layout the very first time and I saw that Joe had put standup targets, you know, between all the shots. And I said, sure, that's what I'm going to be hitting all the time. I said, Ooh, we're going to make that a multiball because if you're not making the shots, you're going to hit all those little standups and that's, what's going to happen to the novice. So, you know, let's make sure that gets you a nice payoff. So there's something fun for, for that novice in that case. You know, the other end of the spectrum is the stuff for the advanced player and you know in october fest we almost you know some people might say we went way overboard on that because there's just so much there strategy wise uh for an advanced player so it's really trying to find the balance to make sure we have all three of those things um in there so i'm i'm looking at the play field and it looks like a um basically a fan layout layout and i'm trying to see all the different shots and i uh so anything anything that's interesting about it looks like there's one in the middle where it's uh is that the bone crusher car i i don't know the names of these cars but it's it looks like a hot rod car that spins around in the middle tell me about that one right so it is the bone crusher so when we started to work on the game you know the idea was okay this game needs to have speed it's got to be a fast flowing game um you know So it is a fan layout because obviously those can lend themselves to that. And it's got what I call the inner loop, which is not quite the inner loop because actually the ramp is to the left of it the way it's laid out, which gives you some nice speed back and forth to the flippers. And, you know, the left orbit shot actually feeds into a ramp. And then probably the most interesting thing in the game, and it's just funny how these things can evolve, is there a set of stand targets right in the middle of the play field which is where that spinning car is And at one point originally those were set up in a very traditional way and then Joe came into my office one day with a layout. He actually had three – it was actually three layouts on a giant, giant printout that he was playing around with. They were all just about changing that middle area. He was trying different ideas for that middle area. So he actually just came across this printout when I was cleaning out my office the other day. and one of these was this idea of these stepped stand-up targets rather than kind of next to each other they're they're in a tiered shape and i i don't think i've ever seen that before i'm not one of these guys with the encyclopedic knowledge of games and layouts and rules like some guys but i don't think i've ever seen that before and it really creates a very interesting risk reward challenge in the game with those shots because they act a little bit differently than when they're kind of lined up right next to each other. So it creates a very different feel in the game. And that's sort of an interesting aspect of it. And the key thing about Hot Wheels, and this is something Joe Schober wants to do. As soon as we started, he's like, this is something I've wanted to do for years, and this is the perfect game to do it. And what it is, is the tachometer, which is very prevalent right in front of the flippers, is basically indicating the scoring level of the game. You can think about it as your playfield multiplier. And as the tack goes up, all the scoring in the game goes up. And you raise the tack by hitting those stand-up targets in the middle, those RPM targets. So it really creates an interesting risk-reward because shooting those kind of targets, especially with them being step, it was going to create some randomness with the ball, but it's pretty key to, if you want high scoring, to get that RPM value up. so it's a basic concept but it really creates a lot of interesting activity in the game and strategy in the game so when you increase the rpm is it time-based or does it stay that high until you drop the ball it is time-based so it's always moving it's always moving down every time you raise it up it'll hold for a little bit and then it'll slowly start to come down so the tax starts at let's say a hundred thousand and so all your points are based on on that in some form but then it you know so now it's two hundred thousand three hundred thousand four hundred thousand every time you hit it it moves up it slowly starts to come back down um if you can raise it all the way up where you red line it we we kick you into a very cool multiball and once you've completed that multiball now the the tachometer is a gear higher so now your scoring is permanently raised where that'll maintain throughout. So if I was at 100k in gear in the first gear, now in gear two, my lowest shot is at 200,000. And then again, I can raise it all the way up and I can repeat that all the way up into fifth gear. And if you can actually pin it in fifth gear, which would be very hard to do because it gets harder to advance the tack in each gear. Each time you move up a gear, it's a little bit harder to move it up. But there's a lot of strategy about, you know, getting your tack up before starting a multiball or before starting a mode. And the spinning car spins at a couple of different speeds. Originally, it would always adjust. Now we kind of have it tiered. So it'll start to spin once you get to fourth or fifth gear, and then it'll start to spin faster at eighth gear, and then it'll go crazy once you get it close to red line. And that just becomes a good indicator to help you recognize, ooh, you know what, I got to get my RPMs back up if I care about scoring. If you don't care about scoring, if you're worried about, hey, I just want to get through the modes or I just want to collect all the cars so I can get to some of those modes, then you don't have to worry much about the tax. So again, depending on your approach and what you're trying to accomplish. so one thing i i have been hearing that you have been talking about um on like the super awesome pinball show was the red line mania and when i hear that name i parallel it directly to the getaway because you know that's like the final mode once you get to the fifth was that kind of where it came from was it just something totally separate that just came along with the hot wheels thing is there any inspiration from other racing games red lines a big hot wheel term in general. So certainly that was part of it. That's a case where I was not familiar with red line mania. So when it first came up, but then Joe was, he's like, oh yeah. And then we thought that was even a better reason to do it. Just, you know, cause it's a, it's a great name and, you know, it's always great to have a call out to an old game. But the original cars are called red line cars. And then cause they had a red line tire and then a white wall. And then there's a red line club, which is a very prestigious club among Hot Wheels collectors. So Redline was a term we wanted to use, and it fit well to, you know, so it's a little bit of using it in a couple of different ways as associated with the TAC. So that's where it came from. You had also mentioned about the ability to customize, which I think is brilliant. Tell me a little more about your ability to put whatever cars you want in the game. So that was something Balser wanted to do right from the start, was he wanted to put cars around the game, and he wanted them to be able to, that you could swap in your own, so that if you're a collector, you have cars from when you were a kid, or just you have a certain kind of cars, you like to be able to replace them. So when he designed the holders for those, they're just using some kind of a locking Velcro. It's not normal Velcro. It's like the stronger stuff. And we'll include some of that in the coin box, so you can swap out any of the cars. There are five cars on the game. So you can swap them out for whatever car you want. And it was funny because I was at a pit bull event. I was talking to somebody and they were asking about Hot Wheels. And I said, well, you know, I don't know if that's a game anybody's doing that game. But, you know, he had mentioned he was a collector and he had all of the original 16 cars. And he goes, yeah, it'd be great if I could, you know, show off my cars. And I said to him, I said, you know, if somebody was designing a Hot Wheels game, you know, the designer might plan for that. So that's something Joe did. I think, you know, a lot of people will enjoy getting to do that, whether it's a car brand they like or just cars from their own collection. So Hot Wheels is the very first officially licensed game from American Pinball. What made you guys decide to go the licensing route and why Hot Wheels as your first one? well we've been looking at licensing you know pretty much from the time we started but there's a couple of things we knew and obviously joe the boss has been around so we recognize that licensing takes longer to do it's a longer process and getting the license and working through all the logistics around it working through assets approvals and all of that and so that wasn't really something feasible for our first couple of games because we needed to you know, be pretty nimble and move quickly. I mean, we did Houdini in four months. I mean, there's no way you do a licensed game in four months. And, you know, what's nice about an unlicensed theme like Houdini Oktoberfest is you get to do whatever you want. So I was pretty happy doing the non-licensed, but, you know, license also has some huge benefits. It gives you name recognition. It gives you, you know, interest in that regard, depending on the license, various assets, you know, things you get. And that's one of the things you look at with a license. Am I getting assets? Am I getting a story? Am I getting characters? What are we getting out of it? So we looked at a bunch of licenses. And what we liked about Hot Wheels was I'm very big on timeless themes. Houdini is a timeless theme. Oktoberfest is a timeless theme. And Hot Wheels is a timeless theme. Hot Wheels has been around for 50 years. It is the largest selling toy of all time. We've been talking for, what, about 25 minutes now? So in the time we were talking, they just made 25,000 Hot Wheels cars while we were talking. That's crazy. When they shared some numbers with us on the number of cars they make. It was mind-boggling. And literally, it's 25 minutes, 25,000 cars they make. It's a mind-boggling number. They're all around the world. And what's funny was, until I started on this, I didn't realize there are Hot Wheels cars everywhere. When I'm at the gas station, there are Hot Wheels cars. I was at Michael's craft store, on the shelves were Hot Wheels cars. I was at the supermarket. They had bins of Hot Wheels cars at the checkout aisle. I just wasn't really noticing them before. They're everywhere. So it's a huge brand and it's a huge name. And it's something that we felt had a lot of the elements. Again, we wanted to increase our presence on location. So we wanted something that was very family-friendly. That would be good in family entertainment centers. And it really checked off a lot of those boxes. Well, and the cool part, too, is bringing up all these numbers. I think a lot of people from the outside, especially the enthusiasts in this hobby, look at Hot Wheels and they go, really, Hot Wheels? But when you start spouting off numbers, 25,000 cars made in the last 25 minutes, and it's a worldwide recognized brand. And there's a lot of name to the brand that really brings power to this pinball machine. and I think people forget that they they look at it and they kind of just go they dismiss it because it's not exactly what they want and so it's it's a wake-up call to those people that are in that might be a little too far in with their head in the sand maybe uh to this so well I think the thing with theme is um you know I look at the themes that have come out over the last couple years there aren't too many themes that I'm like oh my god I have to have it right I mean there's only a few themes that come along for any of us where that's a must-have theme and then the other end of the spectrum are the themes where there's no freaking way i'm having this in my house all right so those are the the two extremes so the reality is most of us fall somewhere in between and you know some themes are going to be a little more interesting to us than others but at the end of the day it also really comes down to gameplay all right let's be honest would Iron Maiden have been the hit that it was, you know, based on the theme or is it based on the layout and the gameplay and the rules? Honestly, yeah, it's the gameplay and the rules. It's obviously the band because the band is the biggest band on the planet. OK, so there's no talking with you that about. But, you know, if you think about it going in when you said, OK, Iron Maiden, the number of people were like, I don't care about Iron Maiden, whatever. who then became interested once, you know, they played the game or saw the game and learned about the game, right? So I think the key with any theme is certain things are just going to be a complete turnoff for people. I get that. But, you know, hopefully it's what you're able to do with the theme and how you incorporate and how you tie it together and bring it to life, I think, is what matters. Because if it's well done, you can take, you know, make anything into a great pinball machine if you, you know, put all the pieces together the right way. But I was really happy with Hot Wheels as a theme. Again, we wanted to do something that's fast, moves quickly. The thing with the creature battles was sort of a happy coincidence or happy bonus, as it turned out, when we were sitting down working through developing the game. We came across this YouTube series called Hot Wheels City. And the first time you watch an episode, you're thinking, oh, my God, this is really goofy. And then you watch a few more and it very quickly grows on you. There's just something fun about it, the way they do it, and the production values on it are actually surprisingly high, having gotten all the gory details of the assets. Really quite impressive, the production values behind what they did with this. So it was really a great series. So we said, hey, can we use this? Because we'd love to maybe figure out a way to incorporate it. And we were actually pleasantly surprised when they said, yeah, you know, we own the rights to it. You guys can use it. and it really gave us another element we could add in addition to the racing and track building and collecting this idea of battles and it worked very well for us to create modes in the game based on battling these creatures and it's just really fun animation and it really kind of add a nice variety to the game where we have these very distinct elements within the game although the primary focus we like to think is the race itself there's a there's four main shots in the game um well there's seven shots but there's four that are the kind of the looping orbiting shots that advance you through the race that gets you to the kind of the biggest of the multi-balls and hot wheels is a very multiball heavy game so if you like multi-balls you're definitely gonna like hot wheels are you gonna have something where you get bonuses for having two balls collide like those X Hot Wheels road or whatever, the tracks that they used to have where you'd speed them up. And, of course, that was what I always did. Right. So, well, one of the multiballs is called loop crash multiball. You earn it by hitting the primary loops in the game. One of the two loops is lit throughout play. Once you've collected enough, we light the left orbit shot for it. When we hit the left orbit shot, we grab the ball on a magnet. So at the start of the mode, we do a crash like that for you. After that, you have to collect pops. And once you've collected enough, we light that left orbit again. You shoot the left orbit. We hold that ball for you. And now you have I want to say it 10 seconds to shoot one of the other balls and knock it off the magnet and crash into it for the super jackpot Now with Hot Wheels a lot of people have and I see all over your play field the iconic thing that you always think about in play wheels is a loop Now they have done loops in the past, such as pinball magic, where they did it off the shooter. Why did you decide not to incorporate that into the play field? Yeah, we wanted to get a loop in there, but the feeling was to have a loop that you're not, the players not really interacting with from a flipper standpoint, you know, we thought just made it sort of there. So the idea of doing it off a shooter, we looked at it doing it off of a kicker, you know, and we just didn't, you know, feel that wouldn't do it. And then Joe tried to figure out, could we do it someplace else and not create ball hang ups and not do all that? And he just found that there was no way to really do it that made it special. And he goes, I don't want to do it where it's sort of this, you know, meaningless aspect of the game. So that's why it did not make the final cut. You know, he tried in a few places and just wasn't happy with it. It probably would also be challenging because if you did the loop, you would want it in the iconic orange color. And I believe the other places that have done something similar, it's more of a wire form. So there's certainly less opportunity for the ball to hang up and it's easier to guide it under a tight turn. So, right. I mean, I think that some of that could, you know, be resolved. But again, not if you're trying to make it so you're shooting it off a flipper to be able to do the loop. And that's sort of how we wanted it. Versus you shoot it someplace and then there's a kicker that fires it through. Because the problem is, if it doesn't make it around, now the ball is going to get all sorts of places. And that becomes a big concern relative to trap balls. so and that's what we're always very cautious about is okay if this is this ball going to get stuck is it going to get trapped and joe tried a few things and just wasn't happy with it and said nope we're not going to do it so i want to talk about one of the things i find impressive about this game i know you guys have sent over video and and some pictures that we can see that that you're able to release and whatnot but the thing that really impresses me about this game is this base game comes with a shaker motor internal side art blades this whole package of a game and you guys are doing it the this at 62.95 msrp that is on par with a pro but you're getting so much more packed into a game how how are you able to do that and was that kind of the the point at the beginning of this journey when you started making hot wheels our goal was so right from the start we did want to try and come in at a lower price point than our last two games. And our goal has always been to let's make a complete game at the best price we can do it at. And the Oktoberfest came a little pricier than we would have liked. It was just so much in that game. That game is so loaded with the ramps and the locks and the 22 stand-up targets and all the rest. And so that was our goal. So we went into it with that in mind and how do we get the most bang for the buck and spend that money wisely. And again, it kind of gets back to that loop. Do you put a lot of time and money into that when it's going to be sort of an afterthought or something else? And we put a lot of the money actually is in one place we did budget a decent amount of money is in the LEDs. The game has over 140 RGB LEDs in it, which is pretty much rivals, I think, with anything else that is out there. And we really do a lot with trying to use those colors and bring that to life. And that's something you typically won't find in a Stern Pro. The side art thing, we did it on Houdini. It was an add-on. And we found people loved it. People were buying it, and they really were beautiful. And I had personally never been a huge side art guy until I saw it on Houdini. And then I was like, you know what? It really does bring a lot to the game. And so it's really been our goal to include it in our game since. And it was a little trickier to do it on this game, but we really felt that was a key thing to really give that game the complete look. And one of the things this game has that I don't think has been done before is the back panel is actually a lenticular image. So it sort of has like a 3D effect to it. And with the lighting we do on that, it's kind of cool. It really brings it to life. It gives it just a little more dimension to it. So there were some things we did like that to also add value into the game. Yeah, I've actually been a big fan of side arts. I randomly bought it for my Simpsons pinball party, and it's just amazing how it seems to tie the entire field together. And so it gives you a little more of an environmental experience, for lack of a better term. Yeah, it kind of brightens things up. It really does add something. I'm just sitting here looking across, and the Hot Wheels machine I have in my house right now, first of all, it's in an Oktoberfest prototype cabinet. And it's got some Houdini stuff on it. But the next to it, I have my Houdini. And just looking at the side art, it's just that color on the inside. We actually have side art on the inside of the apron, too. So not sure anybody ever sees that. Kind of looks cool when you notice it. But it does enhance the look of the game. And the shaker motor was not our plan originally to include it. And I think we're only including it on the first X number of units, the first 200 or 300 or whatever the number is. I forget. And that came from two things. One is Jim Patla just loved what we were doing with the shaker motor in the game. He just thought it was great. And so he really wanted to include it. And then we basically said, you know, we can't afford to squeeze it in. I said, you know what, we're not going to do some of these shows. Can we divert those marketing dollars into shaker dollars? And that's basically what we did is we took marketing money from the shows we weren't going to be able to go to and turn that into shaker motors. So are you guys planning on doing maybe a topper with this as well? Or is it something that's not really in the works? I think it includes like a plastic topper, but I don't think there's any work underway for a fancy topper. I think Joe's too focused now on the next game and the game after that. Wowzers, you guys already have two more games in the pipeline going on? Well, I think we're always working on a couple of things, you know, in varying degrees. So I know Joe's working on a couple of different playfields. Being a hobbyist and then coming into this hobby, how is it? I assume you played Joe Balcer's games, you know, throughout the hobby and whatnot. How is it now working alongside him? Well, yeah, it was interesting because, you know, I knew nothing about how real pinball companies operate. I only know how a custom homebrew guy does it, which is you do everything. All right. So when I showed up to work the first day, so I met Joe once before I started the job. when they had made me an offer. I reached out to Joe directly and said, I'd like to take you to lunch. You want to pick your brain? I wanted to talk to him about what was going on and what his experience had been so far. You know, I want to do my due diligence. Something, by the way, I'll make fun of that he did not do, which is a story for another day. You'll have to ask him that sometime. We will definitely do that. About not doing your due diligence. And so I came in the first day and Joe had just finished the first cut at the play field for Houdini. And he printed it out on a full-size sheet and he hung it on the wall. And he kind of walked me through the layout. Okay, we got a ball lock here. We're going to have the catapult throw in the ball here. And Houdini always did his axe on his stage. So we're going to have a stage and that's where he does his axe. And there's this target here because he always used to hide keys. So this is the key target. Okay, there you go. and that was the extent of it so just like okay go go create go do what you do so i'm like okay and i was didn't you know because i had no idea do i do the rules does he create the rules where does that go so it became pretty clear right from the start that from joe like you go do the rules and i'm going to do the the layout and the mechanical and you know hopefully everything comes together and so you know took me a little while to just to get the feel for that but having done a homebrew game, that was fine with me because I was used to you do everything. So it worked out pretty well. So Joe and I've had a really good working relationship. I'll give him some thoughts and some suggestions when he's working on a layout for things I'd like to see or minor changes I want. So in each of the games, usually there's a few tweaks I'll ask him to make to make the rules work better or things of that nature. He usually doesn't have a lot of requests on the rule side. On Houdini, he wanted outlane modes because he really liked those on Wizard of Oz, which is obviously one of his games. So he wanted a video mode, which was something Keith P. Johnson refused to do. So Joe was happy that I was open to doing a video mode. And so I think those were his two big asks. And other than that, he kind of let me do my thing. That's pretty cool. I think we've lost Scott. I was coughing and I was trying not to interrupt the response. So, you know, what's interesting is I was chatting with Dwight Sullivan at one of the shows, and he commented how he'd love to do a game with Balser. And I could understand that because, you know, Joe kind of gives you this canvas to work with, but he kind of lets the programmer, you know, do his thing. And I think that's probably why, you know, Joe's had some very successful games with that partnership. Obviously, he and Keith P. Johnson had a couple of great games together. So I've really enjoyed working with Joe in that regard. I have two of his games. I have Simpsons Pinball Party and I have Wizard of Oz. So they certainly aren't leaving anytime soon. So I was excited to hear that he was coming out with a new game with you guys and that he has been able to develop games with American Pinball and continue his tradition. What's amazing about Joe is, you know, his layouts are all so different. You know, occasionally if you look, you'll find, oh, here's an element he's used in some other game. But he's not. They're all different. You know, some some guys you can walk up to a game and you immediately know who the designer was. All right. And with Joe's games, you look at the game, you're like, who the hell designed this? Because there's no set pattern to how he does things. And so for us, that's been pretty key because we're obviously a small company. and it's been great for me because you know i don't want to just keep working with the same layout you know that's really hard to be creative if you've got the same basic thing so um we've really had three very different layouts you know hot wheels you know a little more similar to houdini than oktoberfest is to either of the games because oktoberfest was really a truly a really unique layout um really interesting stuff on that but that's been fun with joe too is he kind of gives you interesting stuff to work with. The Oktoberfest, we really had a lot of fun with all the stand-up target banks he created and creating rules to be able to incorporate those in different ways. Hot Wheels is a little more of a straightforward, given the fan layout, of how you approach the game. Well, and that's what I love about Joe Balcer games. I mean, like you said, there are certain designers, you don't want too many of their pins in your collection because they feel repetitious. You put four or five of Joe's games in your collection, and they're all unique. And so it must be refreshing, like you said, to be working with that because you don't feel like you're working on the same thing over and over. Right. And for our company, that's important, too. You know, since Joe's designed all three of our games, you know, it's good that they have that variety, that it's not the same game. And, you know, it's funny because I was reading a comment, you know, someone was talking about the rules and they were projecting, oh, you know, Hot Wheels, it'll be like Oktoberfest where you collected steins. And now you'll collect cars that give you different capabilities. And I had to bite my tongue from typing. What are you crazy? That's the last thing we would do is just replicate what we did on the last game. you know if anything as we're going through the rules if something even seems similar to what we just did we're like no no we just did that we can't do that or that's close to what we just did now our goal is to make sure each game is really different and unique and if you have all of our games they're completely different games different rules different layouts there's very very little similarity between them surprisingly so and it's awesome and and it is funny when people start speculating and start making claims and stuff like that. You know, I've talked to multiple people in this industry and there's a couple of different reactions. You know, there's the, there's the people like, please just shut up. And then there's people that just laugh because they, they make it like a drinking game. Like every time they're wrong, they take a shot, I guess. But you know, that's, what's wonderful about this hobby. There's so much wild speculation that even when rumors start popping up, you don't know if they're true or not. You know, You have to take it all with a grain of salt because you honestly don't know what's the truth behind it. Well, and I have to laugh about rumors because sometimes something is this breaking story and it's like, yeah, a lot of people have known about that for months and months and months. So it's not really breaking. Maybe you're just the first person who felt that it was your place to tell the world about it. But, yeah, it's pretty funny stuff that goes on. And, you know, Pinside's hysterical with people, you know, telling you how things work behind the scenes at these companies. And you read some of it and it's, you know, completely wrong about how things operate. And so, you know, I don't know how much what goes really goes on at Stern, but I know enough to know that most of what I read about people say is going on at Stern. It's not what's really going on at Stern. Well, you guys are moving to a new facility right now. You actually mentioned you were cleaning up your office. I'm assuming that's to transition to the new facility. Tell me about the reason why you're moving to a new facility and what will that allow you to do? Well, yeah, this move is taking forever. We were supposed to move over a year ago and through a variety of delays. First, we couldn't get the current tenant out of the building to even start demolition or because they basically had to gut the place And then one of our sister companies they needed to move in first because their lease was expiring where they were so we had multiple multiple delays And so we're finally ready to move in. And actually at my old office this past weekend, I went in when I could be alone to pack up my stuff. So we were crammed in like sardines in our old place. So my office, and you can't see that I'm doing air quotes, It was also the conference room. And throughout the time I've been there, more often than not, I've had other people camped out in there, which really not much fun for them when I'm working on the machine all the time. But, you know, we've had I've had salespeople camp down there, had marketing people camped out in there. Jim Patla, who's our COO, he was camped out in there for, you know, for two or three months. so we're you know sitting on top of each other so the first thing we're actually going to finally have enough space to spread out and have offices and be able to have a better work environment and more importantly our factory was similar in that regard we really had to cram everything in i felt bad for the the guys who work on the loading dock because they spent half the day just moving stuff around to get to stuff because it just wasn't enough room for everything and we would store stuff at off-site and have to bring it back and forth all the time so the new place is is brand new i mean they've gutted the whole building so it's been built from scratch it's huge it's beautiful lots of room for us to grow plenty of room for everything so i'm very excited that we'll be moving there as soon as they lift the stay at home um so like i said i was in packed up my stuff so it could be moved and um hopefully in a week or two when they open things up we'll actually everybody will come to the new office and that's where the line's been set up and we'll be cranking games awesome well and i can't remember if you mentioned this at the beginning but um when do you hope to see hot will start going into people's homes well uh assuming i should pull up my calendar here yeah i didn't call the governor before we got on the call to check. So I'm not sure if maybe JB's emailed me. I'm just joking. Well, we know you have them on speed dial, so. My wife does. But my wife has pretty much every congressman center you can think of on speed dial. She's very politically active. Anyhow, so we're supposed to open like next week. They're supposed to allow businesses to resume again. And I think if that occurs, as we're expecting, then we'll be shipping games by middle of the month. Awesome. So the games are, you know, we're ready to go. All the parts are in. Everything's ready. We just got to tell people to come back to work. And, you know, it'll ramp up a little bit. You know, they won't be cranking out 50 games the first day, but they'll ramp up pretty quickly. Joe does a pretty good job of trying to design the games to be easy to build, easy to assemble. That really was not the case on Oktoberfest, and he got a lot of grief about that from people, because it was a really hard game to build because of that huge left ramp and the way that had a mount was extremely difficult. This game a lot easier to build. So I think we'll be cranking them out pretty fast. And we'll basically, once we know that we're starting back up again, in fact, Joe and I, Joe Schober and I were talking today, it's, you know, final punch list time to go through on the code, final tweaks, improving things, cleaning some things up. And so we're pretty excited for people to finally get to play the game because it's a really fun game. I was just going to say, and we're excited to see this game. I mean, we were expecting to be down at Texas Pinball Festival with everyone else and getting our hands on this game, and it stinks that we've had to delay for at least two months now, and hopefully everything starts working out better now. Yeah, and obviously we're all going to be staying at home a lot. You know, location play is not going to happen for a while. And, you know, the nice thing with the price point on this game is it's an affordable game in relative new-in-box terms with a lot going on. It's a family-friendly theme, and it's a fun shooter that people are going to really enjoy. I know I have. I've enjoyed playing it a lot. so Josh if someone wants to find out more information about the game and also if they want to get that in their house as soon as possible what's the best thing for them to do certainly if you're interested in hot wheels you want to get with your distributor you can find a list of our distributors on our website so american-pinball.com and you certainly want to get in contact with them because even at this point if you're not already on a list with your distributor, you're, you know, you're, you're probably, you know, into early July at the, at the best, uh, just based on I know how many of that have already been sold. Um, so you want to get with your distributor quickly. Now in some cases distributors will slot you in cause they're, some of them are smart enough to buy a bunch knowing they'll get the sales, uh, but get with your distributor right away to get on the list. Um, cause games, like I said, should be shipping in a few weeks. Awesome. Well, we want to thank you for coming on, Josh. It's been super informative, especially for those that have been stuck in their homes and more intrigued about this. I mean, there's plenty of collectors out there that are salivating at a Hot Wheels pinball machine. I want to hear more for them, too. Well, hopefully we'll get to do some streams soon of gameplay. I've actually recorded a bunch to share internally with people, so I'm looking forward for folks getting to see it. We haven't finished getting all of our approvals yet with Mattel because we're getting more into the game while we can. So we're kind of keep delaying that or saying, OK, hold on. We're going to get some more stuff in there. We want to load it up as much as we can while we have this extra time to do so. But until they give us their blessing on everything, we really can't show anything. It's a mixed bag, obviously. However, if you have interest, again, reach out to your distributor. it's always good to be a certainly on their interested list and so you can get the game sooner if you are so inclined um again thanks again we wish american pinball all the best um all pinball is good and we wish you uh i guess continued success because the more we have uh competition in the market the more it drives uh the product absolutely competition has i think been great for pinball um you know we have an awful lot of companies out there hopefully that they all can survive and and find their their their niche in the market because there's some great stuff going on out there in pinball you know for those of us who you've been in the hobby for a long time and kind of saw the post williams error and what went on there and you looked like pinball was gonna die a a quick and painful death um you know you know thankfully stern kept it alive and Others have all stepped in to kind of take it up to a higher level than where it's been before. Totally agree. At least as far as the games themselves, obviously. We'd still like to get a lot more players out there. So if you want someone, do you prefer people just leaving you alone? If someone wants to contact you, do you want them? People are welcome to contact me. As you guys know, I'm pretty visible on Pinside. I put my email address on Pinside, so certainly I'm always willing to – if someone wants to email me with ideas, thoughts, or whatever, it's josh at AmericanPinball.com, American-Pinball.com. I'm not that popular. I get that much email that it's a problem for me. You're just signing stuff by the bucket load, right? Exactly. Although the first time I was asked to sign something, it was a little bit of a take back. I was like, really? But having been somebody who was on the collector side, the enthusiast side, I always liked getting information from the inside or learning about pinball. So I've tried to make a point of being engaged with the community to answer questions, share what I know, help people when I can. And part of that's, you know, the whole homebrew thing that's out there. You know, the first time I met Keith Elwin, first thing he said to me was, hey, thanks for helping, you know, my brother and I on Archer. And I'm like, I don't remember what I did to help, but if I helped you, that's great. You know, and that's part of the homebrew community. So it's been great to see, you know, Scott and Keith and others, you know, from that, Michael Ocean, who's doing work for Multimorphic. Like people came out of that community now becoming part of the industry. So it's a nice trend. Yeah, and that's basically where we're going to find the next designers. I'm sure people are just going to be tinkering in their basements and doing homebrews as their resume because that's the way we're going to see the next generation of pinball designers come about. Certainly might be. And even if that's not your aspiration, with what's out there today between the P-ROCK system and 3D printers and just the availability of parts and the support of people in that community, there's some really great homebrew projects going on out there. And I love when I go to shows and I get to play some of these games and there's an active online community of the guys who build machines. And there are people there from pretty much every one of the manufacturers who participate and pipe in or answer questions or whatever. And, you know, that's a great part of pinball. A lot of people aren't aware. I mean, it's just great seeing some of the games that people are doing, the creativity, the elaborateness. you know the the the amigos doing their crazy mansion pinball and pin side i don't know if you follow that thread yeah it looks it looks a lot of fun you know and what i love about that not just that the game itself looks fun and spectacular but to me what's great about that is you got three guys with very different skill sets coming together every single friday having a good time together building a pinball machine and you know what i'd love to figure out a way to help more groups of guys get together with the right skill set to do that type of thing, because they're having so much fun. I love that they post as much as they do, that it allows the rest of us to go along on the ride with them. And there's a bunch of great threads on Pinside with folks doing games out there. Really some creative, interesting stuff. And, you know, Jerry from Multimorphic, you know, hats off to him for introducing P-Rock and bringing a bunch of new talent into pinball, and more importantly, some really cool and fun, unique games that are out there to get to play. And I think that's one of the things I'll miss most about no shows for the next three, six, nine months is not getting to see games like Spaceballs and Doom. And there's somebody working on a really cool-looking Mad Max right now that I'm interested to see. And there's somebody doing a Sonic Hedgehog game. men this is some really fun and great games out there they really are and my hat's off to the whole homebrew community because those games just look fantastic i mean you know it's doable if jack danger's even attempting to make his own game right so if jack can do it anybody can do it but i think he's been you know publishing along the way what he's been doing you know and haggis pinball which is you know and i guess he's not homebrew because he's looking to sell and make the games, but, you know, he sorted off a little bit in that way as a guy in a garage. And, you know, he did a nice job documenting along the way his journey in doing that. So I just, you know, I always like to encourage people, you know, to give it a try. You know, a lot of people will start, they may not get very far, but, you know, if you're really willing to try and keep working at it, you know, there's ways to do it. And it's a fun activity to do. And you never know, you might be the next Keith Elwin or Scott Denisey or Josh Kugler. There you go. Oh, yeah. There's no better way to end it than saying that. That is awesome. That's a perfect way to go out. So if you want to get a hold of us, you can contact us at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. We're also on Facebook and Instagram. Scott and I are pretty open to conversation. And so is Josh here. You want an autograph? His inbox is just going to be flooded now for Hot Wheels autographs. Do it. so scott anything else i'm missing no we just need to make sure that uh josh gets the loser kid pinball hat and we can send that out to him yeah i'm expecting that absolutely i'm looking for its style especially with my my hair being so crazily long right now hats are going to become my thing because i've had a haircut in three months okay well i'm bald so I don't really feel anything. Only slightly jealous. On my way there, my friend. Yes, we'll make sure we get that hat out to you. And I want to thank you again, Josh, for coming on. It's very awesome for you to come on. And I know that you said that we need to talk to Michael about getting our free Hot Wheels pinball machine or something like that. Exactly, yes. You talk to Michael, and if that works out great, let me know how that goes for you. I'll just borrow it. I'll be a play tester for you. All righty. Well, I'm stopping it there. So you want to send us off, Scott? Check us out at loserkidpinball.com coming soon. And also just reach out to us if you want to start the conversation. We are trying to put a little more shows out right now just because we want to give everybody a break since they're not going out and playing pinball. But if you have ideas of things that you want to talk to us or even suggestions for us, we're always open to that. either a lot of times if you just message us on Facebook we get it right away awesome all right thanks again