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Episode 134 - $1k Increases & Stadia Fail?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 5m·analyzed·Feb 8, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

JJP and Stern announce major pinball price increases amid supply chain pressures.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers discusses pinball pricing increases from Jersey Jack Pinball ($1,000 increase on Guns N' Roses) and Stern ($500 on Elvira and Batman '66), speculating about bill of materials cost drivers versus potential demand suppression strategy. They review the Pinball Industry Awards Hall of Fame results and analyze game selections across decades.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball increased Guns N' Roses prices by $1,000 effective immediately for new orders

    high confidence · Host states this was announced 'days ago' and confirms existing orders are locked at old prices

  • Stern Pinball raised prices on Elvira, House of Horrors and Batman '66 by $500, canceling outstanding distributor orders

    high confidence · Host mentions discussing this 'over on the other podcast I co-host, The Pinball Show' and describes forced reordering at new prices

  • Guns N' Roses standard editions are no longer in production

    high confidence · Host states 'standard editions are not in production anymore' and they're not taking orders on standards currently

  • Guns N' Roses CE model sold out quickly and is considered a 'hot potato' commercially

    high confidence · Host references Ken Cromwell (JJP) stating they were surprised at speed of CE sellout

  • Guns N' Roses 'basically cleaned up quite a few awards' at the Pinball Industry Awards

    high confidence · Host indicates strong performance at industry award ceremony documented on Straight Down the Middle Productions

  • Medieval Madness currently sits at number one on Pinside rankings for 1990s games

    medium confidence · Host states 'Medieval Madness currently sits as number one on Pinside still'

Notable Quotes

  • “Everyone who's already got an order in is locked in at the old price. Well, that was smart. In some cases, that was required legally.”

    Dennis @ ~13:30 — Identifies legal precedent protecting pre-order customers from price increases

  • “I've wondered if the whole purpose of all of a sudden...was done deliberately to try and stop more people from ordering GNR so that they can catch up and then once caught up, move on to what we assume will be Toy Story”

    Dennis @ ~20:45 — Presents speculative theory about demand suppression strategy to free production capacity

  • “Pinball machines have been spiraling in this...they're going up so far above inflation in terms of the price increases, and I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring how much of this is price gouging and profiteering”

    Tony @ ~24:15 — Expresses skepticism about legitimacy of cost justifications for steep increases

  • “I just don't see the value in it. I don't see for any pinball manufacturer, why would you move on unless, like, licensor made you move on? Why would you move on when you have something that you still aren't – your output's not keeping up with the demand?”

    Tony @ ~26:00 — Questions economic logic of shifting production from hot-selling game

  • “Grand Prix is the pick that people that don't like EM machines pick because it's Rip the Spinner. So it's like if someone asks you to name an EM that you like...just say Grand Prix and people will just lap that up.”

    Tony @ ~42:30 — Critiques EM Hall of Fame selection as default/obvious choice rather than best game

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyKen CromwellpersonDennispersonTonypersonGuns N' RosesgameElvira House of HorrorsgameBatman '66gameStraight Down the Middle ProductionsorganizationGeorge Gomezperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Guns N' Roses winning multiple Pinball Industry Awards reinforces market success

    high · Dennis: 'it basically cleaned up quite a few awards over with the Pinball Industry Awards'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Bill of materials cost increases cited by multiple Pinside forum users as explanation for price hikes

    medium · Dennis: 'there are a lot of people...talking about bill of materials...due to supply chain, and so the RONA causing an impact'

  • $

    market_signal: Guns N' Roses positioned as commercially hot but production-constrained; JJP potentially using price increases to suppress demand

    medium · Dennis hypothesis: price increase designed 'to stop more people from ordering GNR so that they can catch up and then once caught up, move on to what we assume will be Toy Story'

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball prices rising dramatically beyond inflation; hosts unable to determine legitimate cost basis vs profiteering

    high · Tony: 'Pinball machines have been spiraling...they're going up so far above inflation...I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring how much of this is price gouging and profiteering'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern Pinball forced reordering at new $500 higher price by canceling distributor pre-orders

    high · Dennis: 'Stern just recently...they raised the prices...everyone who had an order outstanding with a distributor had their order canceled'

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.197

0:00
Welcome to the Collected Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, February 7th. This is episode 134. I'm Tony. I am Dennis. We're back, Tony. We're back. It's Super Bowl Day. It is. It'll be exciting. We don't know how it's ended yet because it's not even begun. Yeah. But the important thing is I have plenty of snacks picked up and purchased and ready to put together so I can watch the one football game a year I watch. Yep, I have snacks. I think my parents messaged me that they were dropping off meatballs because we're not doing the Super Bowl together because of the Rona. The Rona. And I'll order pizza like I usually do. Yep, we're doing meatballs and little smokies, and we've got a bunch of other snacky stuff. So I cooked a big old pot of chili yesterday. So you're a chili person? I'm a chili person. I normally, if I was having people over, I'm normally one that does the Rotel dip. Yeah, I always enjoy Rotel dip myself. It's pretty good. That puts me as a nacho person. Nachos are, hey, it's all good. I said I did that and then my wife made a big thing of beef stew also so we've got plenty of warm stuff for this cold weekend and lots of snacks it'll be good so so what's been going on besides your your food prep um well I'm in quarantine again again again uh so we'll see I'm waiting to get some results back so I go back to work yeah, my daughter was sent home and locked down from school because I've got one who's in virtual school and one who's in physical school.
2:07
Other than that, I'm up to 500 hours on Battletech. Oh my, Tony, where's the end? There are other games you've not yet played in your Steam list. Oh, there are so many other games. Here's the thing. Since I started, or since our last episode, I have actually purchased. Let me pull up my Steam list real quick. I have actually purchased one, two games. Because I picked up the Early Access Dyson Sphere program, which is a satisfactory, factorio type game. I also picked up Space Engineers which is another game in those same vein and I've not played either of them but those are the games that normally consume lots of your time they are the games that normally consume lots of my time but I've been playing this new heavily modded version of Battletech and it's been a lot of fun and I started in 3025 and it is currently summer of 3029 and it only took me, you know, 95 hours to get that far along in the game. So, and my goal is to take it to the end which is, for this mod, the time stops counting at 3057.
Charles Acostaperson
Emoto Harneyperson
Gavin Freeperson
Carl D'Angeloperson
Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization
Medieval Madnessgame
Attack from Marsgame
Lord of the Ringsgame
Wizard of Ozgame

market_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball $1,000 increase on Guns N' Roses effective immediately for new orders

high · Dennis states JJP announced increase 'days ago' with existing orders protected but new orders at new price

  • ?

    product_strategy: Toy Story speculated as next Jersey Jack Pinball release, potentially motivating GNR production cessation

    low · Dennis mentions 'what we assume will be Toy Story' as next game, used to justify demand suppression theory

    • 3:44
    Well, at your current pace, it sounds like it's going to be a while. Probably. We'll see. I'm sure at some point I'll get burned out enough that I want to sit down and play some other games. But right now, it's still holding my attention really well. Well, that's good. A good game is always a good thing. That's my philosophy.
    4:06
    Yeah. Well, I have been playing some games as well. I wrapped up since our last episode, Doom Eternal, and have now started a game called Control.
    4:15
    Okay. I've not heard of this game. You play as this woman who comes into a, it's kind of like the FBI, but it's investigating paranormal stuff.
    4:27
    And the place is on lockdown. And she essentially becomes almost immediately the director of the organization because she has the ability to kind of bond with this alien paranormal tech. And you're trying to go and figure out what's going on and restore order to the building. and also she's got some mysterious elements of her past as to why she came to this place in the first place. And so you're trying to solve that as well. So it's mechanically, it's a third-person shooter, but you get like some telekinesis abilities and such. So it's got those sort of mechanics going on in a way. It's kind of like, think of cyberpunk, but instead of hacking, you've got telekinesis sort of things. Okay, that sounds kind of cool. The story's actually, so far, I've really liked it. Like a lot of it is told in items as well. as you might think of from a Dark Souls or something, or a cyberpunk. But in addition, there's a lot of narrative storytelling that's going on. It's actually fairly dark and horrific at parts, and it's just weird. It's like a blend of mystery. It's almost like you'd think it was a Twin Peaks wannabe. What was that game that was almost a straight rip of Twin Peaks? Deadly Premonition. But graphically good. Deadly Premonition was sort of clunky. in more than one way. But it was a funny game in the sense that it really felt like Twin Peaks. This isn't quite that oddball in the humor realm, but it's touching on a lot of that weird paranormal. If you like X-Files, you probably like Control as a game. And you know why I like X-Files. I know. That's why I said it. Anyway, interesting. I've been enjoying it. The only problem is it does make me a little motion sick, so I usually only play it in about one hour bursts, and then I take a break so that I don't... It's been a while since you've had a game that made you motion sick, hasn't it? Doom ran the risk. Doom got better once it opened up if I wasn't in the narrow corridors. Also, I think I turned off one of the settings. Basically, if a weapon has sway, that's usually one of the main things, and a lot of games will let you disable that now. So, yeah, I typically don't have a big issue, especially because things are smoother than they were in the 90s. I used to be really bad, and that was just... But I do have Dramamine. If I need to, I can take it. But I usually think, nah, an hour. I can get through a mission or two in control within an hour. So I don't feel like I'm cheating myself or anything. Like, oh, I only made it to a checkpoint. I have to stop or something like that. So it's been okay.
    6:52
    Speaking of okay, before we go to our segments, we don't really have a section where we deal with our mail, our emails that we get. No, we just kind of bring it up from time to time. Yeah. so I'm going to touch on, we got two messages of note that I wanted to touch on. The first one is the disappointment message, which I did email back to, this is from Skippy, but I wanted to touch on a couple elements of this because he brought up some good points. I'm just going to read part of it. He says, love you guys, but this podcast, and he's referring to episode 133, the last episode, was hard to listen to. The pinball segment, I had to skip past it. It was sort of fluffy boredom for me, but the main reason I'm emailing you gents is the lack of love for Half-Life Alex. So first, let's go ahead and touch on the... So that was the John Hughes episode, which I had a lot of fun doing, but I do want to reassure Skippy and others that we aren't going to put every episode as a fluff episode where we do those sort of exercises. Yeah, no. We just, we needed to mix it up for our own mental health.
    7:54
    That's what I'm going to cite. And I thought it was a clever idea. We only have done... How often do we do theme concepts? We've done them before, but maybe every 25 episodes? Yeah, it's happened in the past. We've talked about them, but it's not super common. So let's touch on the Half-Life Alyx thing, because this is where Skippy was mostly upset. I know you can't play everything, but you guys just ignored it to fit your narrative. You owe it to yourself to play this. It is incredible and a worthy addition to the Half-Life universe. so Tony this is regarding when we were discussing Valve and them not making any games and we mentioned Half-Life Alyx but we didn't spend any time on it and I addressed this in an email to Skippy but I thought we should probably address it on the podcast because there are going to be others that are going to wonder I don't have VR so I can't say anything about Half-Life Alyx if it's good or not I know it's reviewed well, I know it won the game award for best VR game last year, so two awards ago But that's all I know about it. I have not heard anybody say anything bad about it at all.
    9:05
    But like you, I don't have VR. I have considered getting VR. I've talked about it on the show in the past about getting VR, but I haven't actually done it yet. So I just have no experience with it. So what I would say is, based off of Skippy's email, for those of you that listen and have VR, try Half-Life Alyx, because he says it's really, really good. And I will take his word for it, because I have no knowledge otherwise.
    9:37
    So let's touch on our second email, and this is from Chad. And Chad says, let's see, he talks a little bit about the upcoming game, Super Bowl game. And he says, I really enjoy your podcast, and most recently the one with pinball ideas based on John Hughes' movie. So here we have someone who liked our fluff episode. It was a lot of fun to hear what you both had to say about that subject. There are a couple of really solid ideas in there that could make a great pinball machine. Another idea for you, maybe a discussion over modern or relatively modern video game themes as pinball adaptation. I know what you're thinking. Gottlieb Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter II weren't exactly blockbusters. Maybe everyone learned their lessons from these mistakes in the 90s, that history is doomed to repeat itself eventually. And he goes on to talk a little bit about some of the ideas he has in terms of that. So just as something for us to consider, and I guess if others would like us to touch on that, maybe write in or post on our Facebook and let us know. But I think Tony and I could definitely do something on video games. I know we've touched on it before thematically, way in the past. As I recall, it's been a long time, but at one point we had a really deep discussion into an Overwatch-themed pinball machine. yeah I can't remember if that came up in the topic of video games in general or we just I know I've I've pitched that it as a video game on the on the air before for pinball yeah um but yeah that's definitely something that we could consider for our next fluff theme topic so thanks Chad for the email we appreciate it and remember you can always write in to us at eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com with suggestions or critiques we're We're open to all of it.
    11:15
    So speaking of open, let us open our podcasting ears to the first of our two main segments, the pinball segment. I only have a couple of items here, Tony. Only a couple of items. It's been slow. But the first one's a juicy one. Oh, I know you like a juicy burger just like you love juicy chili. Is chili juicy? Not typically. If it is, you've done something a little wrong. Yeah. Well, maybe you put a lot of tomatoes in it. You have a very juicy chili. But we're going down the juice row, and we're not – this ain't no grocer. We're not meant to do that. This transition failed. It just goes on. But I'm keeping it in. We failed. Just keep going. It's failed as hard as Lou Dobbs did on Fox Business. Oh, sorry. Oh. Too soon. Oh, so much drama. All right. No, this is even more exciting than all of that. All of it. I'm talking about Jersey Jack Pinball, and their out-of-the-blue announcement that Guns and roses, all models have increased in price by $1,000 effective immediately. And by immediately, I don't mean me saying it. I mean them saying it days ago. Everyone who's already got an order in is locked in at the old price. Well, that was smart. In some cases, that was required legally. I know in the UK, you cannot bait and switch people on their price after they're locked in. Though they could pull, I assume, they could pull what Stern did, which I don't think we touched on because it happened in between episodes, but Stern just recently, as I discussed over on the other podcast I co-host, The Pinball Show, they raised the prices on Elvira, House of Horrors, and Batman 66, their two current production boutique pins, by $500. And my understanding is everyone who had an order outstanding with a distributor had their order canceled, and they were told they would have to reorder if they wanted the game and be paying the additional $500.
    13:08
    That's pretty crappy right there. Yeah, crappy would be a great description. But unfortunately, that's the old news. But I want to touch on it because obviously people are going to want to draw, and it makes sense to draw a comparison to what Stern recently did on those two boutique games and what Jersey Jack Pinball is doing specifically to Guns N' Roses. As a reminder, Guns N' Roses standard editions are not in production anymore. They might come back in production. It wasn't a guarantee they would never build them again, but my understanding is they're not taking orders on the standards at all. But I guess if they resume that, it will also be $1,000 more than it was. Tony, I'd like to know, as price conscious as you are, what are your thoughts on this sort of price increase on Guns N' Roses? To me, it seems really high.
    13:57
    It's huge. I think the $500 Stern did was huge. I can't imagine, considering the sheer number of complaints and everything you always heard with the, oh, they went up another $100 with this new machine to literally increase the price of a machine $500 or $1,000.
    14:19
    Well, it's insane. Let's remember the landscape on Guns N' Roses. So, as I just noted, they're not doing, currently, they're not doing any more standard editions, and we don't know if they will in the future. they're already sold out as i last heard like the first day of all the ces the 12 000 what was 12 500 ces so there aren't any more of those to sell so it's just the le which now has had an over what it's like a 10 price increase yeah i mean i mean we talk about all the time stern always every year it seems like they tack a hundred dollars on during a run uh on pinball machines. In fact, I think it's been less than a year. They did $100 essentially twice within the year, you know, setting aside the Batman and Elvira, which in that case, Stern's argument was those games, because they're so low production at this point, that's why they needed. I think that was the argument. I think they said something about that. I've not heard any argument exactly why JJP needs a thousand more dollars all of a sudden. But I... Yeah, it's weird.
    15:25
    Let me give you a theory I have, a hypothesis. And you tell me if you think I'm off base or on. I've wondered if the whole purpose of all of a sudden, because obviously everyone who's already ordered is locked in, and they're way behind. Like, they're finally getting more CEs shipped out. but they're way behind in terms of how many orders they have versus how many they've shipped out. I've wondered if this was done deliberately to try and stop more people from ordering GNR so that they can catch up and then once caught up, move on to what we assume will be Toy Story and not continue to do Guns N' Roses. I like this idea because it makes sense in a way like what I think you do when you raise a price $1,000. Anyone who was thinking about ordering this game, by and large, will now no longer buy it. But I also have trouble thinking like why would you if the game hot and doing well why would you stifle the sales to move on So I not sure I like my own hypothesis But anyway what do you think of that idea I don understand why in the world you would take your game that is selling really well making you good money and just say Ah, nah, we're done. We're done with this. We're going to raise the price because we don't want people to give us money. let's get ready for our next game that will hopefully be as popular, if not more popular, than this game. Yeah, I mean, I know JJP, they've said, like, I think I heard in an interview, I believe it was with Ken Cromwell, who works for JJP, that they were surprised at how quickly the CE sold out. And so they knew when that happened, at the speed it happened, that this game was a hot potato. But I just, I would have thought if you have a hit, I mean, this is like the opposite of Pirates, where Pirates suffered and struggled, and then it became popular right around the time they decided they weren't making anymore. Here's a game they know is super hot, super popular. As we're going to touch on in the next part of this segment, it basically cleaned up quite a few awards over with the Pinball Industry Awards. I wouldn't be shocked if it ends up doing the same with the Twippies. this game is popular and it's like why would you jeopardize unless the logic and the other logic would be they realize they left money on the table and that they think they can honestly get another thousand dollars out of people on this game but most of the pinheads knew what the old price was and if you didn't get in already you were probably someone debating it and I just really struggle with thinking that most of those people are going to be willing to buy new in box knowing that had they only ordered it a week ago, it'd have been one grand less. Yeah, that's harsh. I mean, that's a whole topper from Stern, a grand. Well, let's not get crazy. That's a whole old topper from Stern. I'm sure the next toppers they announce are going to be $1,200 or $1,500. I don't know what Stern's doing with the topper pricing because I was like, I don't know. Because the Led Zeppelin topper's not $1,000. I don't know what's going on. I don't get it. I mean, back to G&O. The thing that makes the most sense to me is more that either Bill of Materials has gone up, or with the changes required at the line for proper separation and RONA issues, the general cost of production has gone up. and they've gone from making money to not making money.
    19:12
    Or if we're not making enough money to warrant it. Right. Well, and I've read online on Pennside in the discussions about the price increase, there are a number of people that have been talking about bill of materials. So you bring up a really good point because there are a lot of people either speculating or mentioning other items that have increased in cost. a lot of that being, I believe, due to supply chain, and so the RONA causing an impact on the bill of materials. It's just, I mean, $1,000, though? All of a sudden you realized you needed another $1,000?
    19:47
    I mean, it's $1,000. Pinball machines have been spiraling in this, you know, they're going up so far above inflation in terms of the price increases, and I'm having a lot of difficulty. Maybe if I was smarter, I would be able to suss through it, But I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring how much of this is price gouging and profiteering and how much of this is actually dealing with cost increases. Because I think it's a blend, but I'm not sure what, like, what are we talking 60-40, 70-30? I just, I don't have a good sense of it. And JJP hasn't said anything that I've seen acknowledging anything about the price increase and the motivation. Like, yeah, the price of the wood for the playfields and the price of copper has gone up so much, we have to do it. I think that your idea has added credence because of Stern's decision to raise Elvira and Batman by 500, possibly, I mean, motivated by Bill of Materials as well. And they kind of hinted at that in terms of the production and the quantities of the stuff they were getting. So it's like, okay, so they need, but those are low production pens that have been out for a while. Those aren't the same level as a pen that is in the midst of its initial production run. It is the popular pen, and I would assume it's the one that's getting the most sales of all of their pens. I mean, we're not talking Pirates of the Caribbean here that crashed and burned. Even though everyone talked about how great it was, this pen's actually selling.
    21:20
    Yeah, I mean, in a way, I can rationalize it on one side and say, okay, well, Stern has a lot larger economy of scale. So what might require them to raise the price by $500 requires JJP to raise the price by $1,000. But then on the flip side, I'm like, yeah, but Stern only did it on the weird boutique non-pro model games. Everything else is still at the same pricing they had. And JJP's got the super hot Guns N' Roses that everyone wants. So why did they need, if anything had an economy of scale, shouldn't it be Guns N' Roses? Do they really need to add $1,000 on it? Why not just $500? I just don't know what's going on. No one knows what's going on, it seems, except those that work at JJP. I think that, I guess my takeaway is, if you wanted to kill future sales for GNR, I think you accomplished it. But, I don't know. Pinball, you know, there's a side of pinball that's like the flex side, where that means it makes it even more exclusive. And the only thing is, there's so many people that got their orders in before the $1,000 price increase. It doesn't really show that. It's not like, look, I bought the diamond edition of Beatles to prove to you how rich I am. This doesn't have the same ring to it when you've already sold all the CEs at the old price and a bunch of Ellies at the old price. It just doesn't have the same flex to it. but do we really think that they're at a point where they're so close to toy story? Uh, if that's the next game coming out that they're willing to shoot themselves in the foot to free up space on the line to start building them. And that seems weird to me because I'll be a hundred percent honest, seeing another game from JJP this early. Uh, I have a hard time believing it. I just don't see the value in it. I don't see for any pinball manufacturer, why would you move on unless, like, licensor made you move on? Why would you move on when you have something that you still aren't – your output's not keeping up with the demand? So why would you want to slow the demand? Why not? You can't increase production. I understand that that's frustrating, but you want to try and satisfy as much of that as possible, keep those customers happy, and it's basically money in the bank once you get going. So, yeah, I just don't know. And I don't know if that's the motivator or not, that Toy Story's ready, and that they're like, we gotta move on, we gotta move on, we gotta move on. It's like, the line's moving. Be happy. The line was moving. Isn't that the goal? To keep the line busy? That's what my understanding of manufacturing was all about.
    23:58
    I would assume. Anyway, we will have to just keep our eyes out and see if we learn anything new. The interesting thing is that we see any other pinball manufacturers follow J.J.P. and Stern's lead and start doing some sort of increases that look suspiciously like trying to compensate for increased bill of material costs. Because I'm very curious if that's the driver. So we'll have to watch American Pinball. I imagine sometime this year Spooky may be announcing their next game. So we'll have to watch and see what happens between Rick and Morty's prices and that. Because those are all sold, so we can't do anything off of the Rick and Morty price, really. So the other pinball thing I had was just to sort of recap through, like we've often done with awards, the Pinball Industry Award results. I do have a link in the show notes to people that want to go and watch the ceremony video that was done by Straight Down the Middle Productions. And so if you want to watch that, I think it runs about 90 minutes for the whole thing. And then I also have a link to the website where people can go and look at the results. I believe the website will ultimately, though it's not yet live, have a breakdown of the percentages of how the critics voted for the various category game winners. It's just the webmaster, George, has been really busy with work. And as you know, Tony, work comes first. So I told him, yeah, don't worry about it. The results aren't secret. I have the spreadsheet breakdown. We did it through SurveyMonkey, but I gave him a breakdown to make it easier to incorporate into the website. So I'm always more than willing to share the percentages with people if they want to know. in terms of like, oh, well, where did Hot Wheels fare in best lighting effects? Like, I can pull that up pretty quick, but we'll get it up on the website at some stage. It's just, it's taken a little longer, but that's just because of out of pinball needs that must come first. Yeah. But I thought we'd talk about some of the stuff here. I just want to, I'll run real quick through the excellence recipients, because I don't really think there's a lot to discuss. I want to discuss the game stuff, because that's what's more interesting to me. But in terms of those that received various excellence awards, and that was that group, with that panel of TPN people that you had expressed some concerns about when I mentioned the breakout. And no Excellence Awards went to any TPN entities. Well, that's good.
    26:07
    It's one of those things that would just kind of, oh, yay, we're the best. Woo. We were chosen the best by a panel of us. Yeah, and that came up real early in the discussions because there was no prohibition on that. There were nominees that were suggested that were in TPN or like TPN stuff was nominated. Then there were also some instances where people that were affiliated with TPN were nominated as well, which was that was less controversial to people like, oh, well, that's like recognizing someone else's show that was not on the network. It didn't have the same level of controversy amongst the panelists. But it was, yeah, it was a subject of discussion. But in terms of the recipients, there was no limit on the number. I'm not going to cover any category that didn't end up having any recipients because that did happen in the writing category. So I guess I did cover it. There was one category that actually had multiple recipients. That was videography. And that was Emoto Harney received a recognition. And so did Gavin Free, who's with Slow Mo Guys. So those were the two recipients in that category. Photography recipient was Charles Acosta with Pinball Photos. The podcasting recipient was the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. and the streaming recipient was IE Pinball. That's Carl D'Angelo's Twitch channel. So congratulations to them.
    27:27
    Hall of Fame. So here's what the, these were the, and this was a public vote of who wanted to, within these various, most of these are by decade, except there's obviously there's a bit of a cutoff in the 70s and the EM stuff. So, and the EM one was a write-in. Everyone else got drop-down choices, I believe, to be able to make their selections. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on these. So the EM winner was that Williams Game Grand Prix. So what are your thoughts about that?
    27:57
    No real surprise. That's a really popular EM. It is. I critiqued it a little. I mean, I enjoy shooting Grand Prix, but there are so many other games that get me the same feeling. I always feel like, and maybe this is a little unfair, but I think it's mostly fair. Grand Prix is the pick that people that don't like EM machines pick because it's Rip the Spinner.
    28:20
    So it's like if someone asks you to name – here's a tip for all of you people that never play EMs. If someone asks you to name an EM that you like and you don't know anything about EMs at the party you're at and, of course, you need to impress everyone and pretend you know something, just say Grand Prix and people will just lap that up. So there you go. I was not surprised either. It was not the right answer, but I'm not surprised that it won or was inducted, I should say. So for the 70 solid state Or early solid state Meteor won I think I voted for Meteor Yeah So I like this one This is the true right answer That's a good answer I'd have to look to see If I wrote down what I voted for I don't remember But I have no qualms with Meteor That's a good game The 80s winner was 8 Ball Deluxe So a ballet class of 81 I respect this choice. I'm actually surprised, though. I really thought a System 11 from the late 80s would have won, just out of sheer popularity. I would have thought the same. And I believe I voted for a System 11 game.
    29:25
    If I didn't, I'd be surprised. But this is what, if you were to ask me what of the seven Valley Class of 81 games is the best, this is the one I would name. It would be 8-Ball Deluxe.
    29:38
    Yeah, no, that's fine. Here's one I know will shock you. The 90s winner was Medieval Madness. No. This was not my pick. It wasn't my pick. I think our pick was probably the same, Tony. Yes, I'm pretty sure it would have been. I chose Attack from Mars. The right answer, Brian. The correct answer. Yes. But I am in no way surprised. The one that should be. I believe Medieval Madness currently sits as number one on Pinside still. So this is not surprising. Yeah. Here is another one I did vote for and I think was objectively the right answer for the 2000 to 2010, which was Lord of the Rings.
    30:18
    Yeah, no, there's not really another answer. Simpsons Pinball Party is the only other game that's going to come close. And is it really going to come close? I, you know, I'd need to go back to see what the breakdown. I do have the results of the Hall of Fame percentages, but I didn't spend any time analyzing them. So I bet you it was easily number two. It's just, yeah, I mean, it's such a clunk fest. Lord of the Rings has the deep code like Simpsons, but it also has a good layout. Right. It's a fan layout, but it's good. It's fun to shoot. Great call-outs. Of course, Simpsons has great call-outs, too. But, yeah, it's just a better game, is the thing. And then the 2010s, the last category. That went to Wizard of Oz.
    31:01
    How? I'm surprised at this. I guess, I mean, I can see it from, like, especially if you're thinking Hall of Fame. I don't know how many people went, like, this broad or, you know, this meta with their analysis and was like, well, we're thinking Hall of Fame. It's the game that brought in the LCD screen, which is the new major visual innovation of pinball. It also brought in a whole bunch of RGB-controlled lighting, and that's really take— So it had a lot of quote-unquote firsts that made things that are now mainstream and pinball popular. So I could see it for that reason. But I don't like this game very much. It's not Jersey Jack's worst game, but I don't like how this game plays. Not really. I need to spend more time with it, but it's such a clunker.
    31:48
    Even if you're going that broadly, it's surprising to me. I really thought Elwynn was going to win something here.
    31:58
    One of his games would be inducted, like an Iron Maiden or Jurassic Park. Right. because the layouts have been so refreshing, and the code's popular and all that. I know my vote here was Walking Dead, actually. I wanted to give a Lime and Sheets game credit.
    32:16
    Not a bad one. I don't remember, except for I know that it wasn't Woz. There's no way I put Woz on. Because even if I was going to pick...
    32:26
    Yeah, I can't even... Maybe you picked Pirates. Oh I know I didn't pick Pirates Then I'm fresh out of guesses for you Tony Yeah I don't know But Woz that's The only reason I can see it making is because People looking at it as Because like you said all of the Firsts and everything It the only thing that makes sense I can see it for that reason Because it not that great of a game
    32:54
    All right, so let's go over the game winners that went in the various categories. And this was the group of 40 judges, and you were one of the judges, as was I. I was. And so not every judge voted in every category. But in some categories, they all voted. I did not vote in every category because there were ones that I felt I could not truthfully vote in because I did not have enough experience due to the fact that I've not played a pinball machine that wasn't in my house since March. Yep. I couldn't vote in all the categories either. So I'm only going to go over the – I'm going to mention what the winner is and what percentage it won by because that's already interesting. We can talk about our thoughts on that. I'll do the first two categories simultaneously. and that is there was art for Cabinet and Backglass, and there was also art for Playfield. Both of those wins went to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Turtles won the Cab Backglass category with 42.5% of the vote, and TMNT won the Playfield category with 35% of the vote. I believe I know I voted Turtles for one of these categories. I don't remember if I actually did for both. I voted Turtles for Cab and Backglass. I don't remember on Playfield. Yeah. See, the thing is, I think I might be part of the reason why it was lower on Playfield. I think if I... I was torn between it and Avengers at the time, and I was doing a lot of side-by-side photo comparisons to make my choice, and I think that's what ended up happening for a number of people, given that we see it's almost a 10% drop.
    34:30
    But I do know from the results that Avengers was number two in both of those categories. So it was very much the... Zombie Yeti is getting this. It's just a question of which game. Right. It was pretty much a lock.
    34:43
    Speaking of a lock, best lighting effects, Guns N' Roses, 97.44% of the vote. This is the largest margin. What the number two slot was. Yeah, I'll pull it up. So tell me, Tony, I'm guessing you're probably not the deviating vote in that category. No, I was not the deviating vote in that category. I know I was not, just because the lighting, I mean, the hot rails, you had the cam lights on the rotors. I just, I could not really fathom another game that was going to fare, you know, at all worthy. I can tell you that was looking up, pulling up the analytics. So one person did not vote in this category, so it was 39 votes. and so it was 38 for Guns and Roses and one person voted for Stranger Things.
    35:39
    I, okay, I can see the argument because of the UV stuff. Yeah, with the UV stuff, okay. I kind of get it. Still, I guess in a way the UV is more innovative, I guess. I don't, I and 90 plus percent of the judges don't quite see that logic, but I can kind of, like, mentally I can get there. I'm not just like, what the heck? You picked something without any lights at all? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not so out there that I can't fathom what they were thinking. I just don't agree. Right. So let's go on to the next category, which is theme integration. So that also was won by Guns N' Roses, and that was with 60% of the vote. And I believe I did choose this. I just thought the idea of incorporating it as you feeling like you were actually looking and shooting on a concert stage and the guitar necks and all that, really thinking about the LE and collector's edition sort of stuff. Yeah. So for me, that was pretty easy.
    36:45
    I can tell you that the number two game, which was with 17.5% of the vote, was Rick and Morty, which I've heard a lot of people. Obviously, I haven't played that one yet, but a lot of people really do feel Rick and Morty really got the theme down well with what they did with that, what Spooky did with that play field.
    37:05
    The next category was Best Toys, Heist, with 32.5%. So, Multimorphic, coming out of the shadows. I did vote for this. I just think that, yes, it's another crane, and people can say, well, we saw the crane on Batman the Dark Knight and Batman 66. This is so much more cool than what those games do with the crane, just in terms of how it articulates and moves around the play field. I just, as a piece of tech, as a toy, to me, it wasn't even close.
    37:44
    And it looks like a fair number of people agreed with you. Yeah, obviously this was not... Do you remember what you chose for Toys?
    37:53
    It wasn't Heist. The second most popular choice was Guns N' Roses, which had 22.5% of the vote, so 10% less. And right behind it, one vote less at 20% was Avengers. So this one was a lot tighter. Though, in terms of... Heist only won with a plurality, but it was a fairly handy plurality. It had several more votes over. Two and three were right by each other, but Heist had a little bit of a lead there. But that's why Heist is in full 50%. Quite a slight step up. Right, right. But that's why Heist is in full 50%. Innovation was sort of a similar vote because Best Innovation went to Guns N' Roses with 40% of the vote. Heist was number two in that with 25%. Again, probably driven by, I would guess, the crane mech mostly. though some might be fully crediting the platform and the other pieces of innovation that exist within P3 itself. I could see you going either way with that. As I recall, I'm pretty sure I voted stranger things on innovation for the camera stuff and the UV stuff and the, the video projector stuff. I mean, and the UV stuff. And that was third with one less vote than heist at 20% of the vote. Yeah. Okay. So stranger things.
    39:09
    Nine and guns and roses at 16. for those that are, and all 40 judges voted in this category. So yeah. No, I can see, I see all three of those. I see arguments for all three of those.
    39:21
    Best playfield layout. This one did not surprise me, and apparently it did not surprise most of the judges. With 75% of the vote, Avengers won that. Avengers Affinity Quest, let me be specific, it's not the old Avengers. Obviously.
    39:33
    That's that Elwynn layout. I voted for it. Just looking and analyzing the layouts, I was just like, that's the one that looks the most fun to me, the one I've enjoyed watching the most. I'm pretty sure I declined to vote.
    39:47
    I declined to vote on the next category, Best Rules. I definitely did on that, too. I feel that I am capable of, as long as at least a halfway decent player is shooting a game, I can tell how good a layout is. I don't mean it to sound snobbish, but I'm able to do that. I think most, well, maybe not most, but I think many people are able to do that. I cannot judge rules just watching a video, though. I just can't. And so that's why I had to say that. Well, it makes sense. And in fact, only 33 of the judges were comfortable voting in best rules. Well, see, my thing on the layout is because I've seen games where I thought the layout looked really good, but when I played it, I hated it.
    40:24
    So I just, it's one of those things that I don't, until I actually play it and see how the geometry actually works for my play style, I had a hard time making that choice. I can't remember the last time after watching, because I almost always see video first before I get a chance to play a game. I can't remember the last time a layout felt any different than what I knew I would get after watching it. One exception has been if you have a bunch of noobs going in and playing on a show floor, and they're just draining all the way. Then you're not really seeing how the ball works on the layout, and that will taint your opinion. So that's why I have to note, I want an above-average player to play it. But watching Jack Danger shoot around gives me a good feel for a layout. That's different than just John Doe walking up at a pinball show and shooting a play-doh. Right. But anyway, on best rules, Avengers did win that as well with only 57.58% of the vote. But in terms of, it's still over half, and so the numbers fall way off after that. Guns N' Roses was number two, but that was at 15% at that point. So that's not too surprising to me, just given the reputation Elwynn has for rules. I'm not surprised that most of the judges went that way.
    41:38
    Next category I skipped because I don't care about this stuff, but it was Best Accessory. I actually voted for this. Did you vote for the Stranger Things Interactive UV Lighting System? I did. Okay, because that handily won with 57.58% of the vote. But, yeah, no, I did, because I voted for Stranger Things a couple of times, and it was based entirely off of the UV lighting and stuff and the projector and all that. The only other accessory that had a significant amount of support with just over 21% was the Medieval Madness Remake's XL display and upgraded sound system that Chicago Gaming came out with that had seven votes versus Stranger Things' UV had 19. So just to give you a sense of the raw numbers.
    42:27
    So next category was Best Music. That one's somewhat controversial. I saw that Kerry Hardy on his YouTube channel didn't like that Guns N' Roses won this. And it won it with over 79% of the vote. And I believe, if I remember his video right, his critique was, well, but this is just Guns N' Roses music. Is that fair? Are we just saying, well, Guns N' Roses is a rock band, of course they're better than whatever generic custom music is being made for a game. That being said, I know at least, I believe one person who I think was a judge as well noted to me, well, Guns N' Roses had custom music made for it as well. Like, Slash did do custom music for it, and they thought that that was better than what any other game had. So I don't know how many people did just go with. You know, you'd have to ask each judge, did you just go with, well, it's Guns N' Roses, they're an awesome rock band, so they win, sort of thing. That's my assumption of what happened. Well, you have to ask each individual. I mean, it's left open, obviously, so it's at the judge's discretion.
    43:35
    It was obviously at 79% of the vote. That's very handy. Rick and Morty was number two at 15%. So, not particularly close there. But speaking of Rick and Morty, it did win Best Sound Effects. and that was with 29% of the vote 29.41% of the vote and that one was actually as you can see actually of all these percentages this was the smallest margin percentage wise of a win of any of these awards 29% Stranger Things was number 2 with 23.53% that's 2 votes less than Rick and Morty and 2 votes less than Stranger Things was Guns and Roses with 17.64% five percent so that's your top three in terms of the breakout but and um 34 of the judges voted in this category so six abstained um so after sound effects would be best call outs that was rick and morty by a landslide 75.68 people love those rick and morty of course they got the guy to do the call-outs who does the show. I'm not too surprised. What actually kind of surprises me is that Guns N' Roses came in third with 8% because they got the band to do the call-outs, but actually Turtles came in second with 13.51%. They used Mark Silk and a number of voice actors to do that. But they didn't get the original Turtle cast, so some people I know were pretty critical of that.
    45:08
    Interesting. That's not how I would have expected that to have gone. Yeah, I didn't I thought it would be closer at the very least I'm not really surprised that Rick and Morty won I'm surprised it won by that much But I don't watch Rick and Morty So I just, you know, again, I'm not really thinking about how All the Rick and Morty fans are probably like, oh, easily Best Callouts, and that's what I've heard from everyone Who's a fan of the show, is like, oh Dennis, come on, Rick and Morty, it was just Like the show, I'm like, I don't watch the show So, I mean, I thought they were good callouts But I just, I don't know last of the non-overall categories was Best Animation, Display, and Effects. And there was no edict on the judges to determine how they balanced those. It was up to the voter, obviously. And Guns N' Roses won that pretty handily, just under 59% of the vote. And Rick and Morty came in second on that with about 18%. So easy for Guns N' Roses. I always like what John Paul DeWin does on the screens for Jersey Jack. So I know I backed it. I liked Rick and Morty's as well. Rick and Morty's was easily my second pick. It does look like the show, but I don't know. There's something about the crispness of those JJP animations that won me over. And I really focused a lot on that, what happened on the display. But coupled with the effects package that Guns N' Roses had, I just didn't think it was a contest, honestly. And the last was best in show. So what was the pinball machine of the year? 65% of the voters said Guns N' Roses. All judges voted in this category, and that was 26 votes. I'm pretty sure I voted Guns N' Roses. Yeah. It's not my favorite. It's not a game that I would want to own and put in my house, but it's the one I think deserved, I thought, objectively deserved the award. Avengers was the second place finish with 22.5% of the vote, and it falls way off after that. I think third actually is Turtles with 5%. That's like two votes. Yeah. It really dropped off after Guns N' Roses and Avengers. Which, just like with the Twippies, my guess is it's coming down to Guns N' Roses and Avengers. It's always been fated to be that. And it seems like it's been that way for the last, now this being the third year. It's Elwynn's game versus whatever JJB puts up.
    47:26
    But interesting to me about the PIAs, and that's where just the analyst in me wants to see what happens with the Twippies, is five different games, if we include the accessory win for Stranger Things, which we do because it was a game winner. Yeah. Five different games won an industry award, or a crystal as they call them, won a crystal for their 2020 stuff. That's pretty diverse. That is more diverse than I expected. I don't think the Twippies will be that diverse. I don't think the popular votes are going to go that way. I don't think we see Heist win anything in the Twippies.
    48:00
    The question is, can Rick and Morty? it's such a popular show I wonder if it could but it's such a low production game compared to GNR and Avengers that I wonder and the one thing is I'm sure it'll be more than just well no I can't be sure I was going to say I'm sure it'll be more than just Avengers and Rick and Morty because I was thinking well because Zombie Yeti's got to win art but he did the Avengers art I don't know if Turtles is more popular in my head for art like people have more nostalgia for Turtles so I wonder maybe we see three wins. That's going to be my guess. I think with the Twippies we see Turtles Avengers and GNR win Twippies and no other games. That's my guess. That's based off nothing but just gut instinct.
    48:44
    I think that you're right. I think it'll be... I don't think there's any way that we're going to see a Stranger Things or a Heist in there. There's just no way. Well, I mean, now they do have Twippies have other categories too like Best Topper and stuff. Who knows with that sort of stuff.
    49:02
    I don't know what happened. I never vote in Best Topper because I don't care. I always skip it. Sorry Topper fans I always skip it But you know what I don skip Tony What do you not skip I don skip the video game segment Oh Well that very good because we have a couple interesting little things in the video game segment this summer What I find almost depressing, really, is during an earnings call this year for Blizzard, they said that they do not expect Overwatch 2 or Diablo 4 in 2021, which isn't a surprise for me for Diablo 4, but I think for Overwatch 2, it's a major failure for them to not have it drop this year. Oh yeah, the Overwatch community, the Overwatch fan base is in shock. I don't know if they'll recover. There was a lot of speculation that Overwatch 2 was going to be what was played for the next round of the Overwatch League, and that's obviously not going to happen. Obviously not. I mean, it's shocking to me that from the point where they were talking when they showed it previously at BlizzCon, which was in 19, that we're not going to have it until 22. just seems incredibly shocking, especially considering that they've already said there's no more heroes after Echo until 2 comes out. There hasn't been a new map since 2019 because there's no more maps until 2 comes out. What happened? Where did this drop off from being this huge release to basically being on the back burner? do you I mean my guess is the same thing we've seen with so many other studios they have for however it's structured despite that it's software when it came to COVID and working from home are developers incapable of it I don't I wonder what the deal is but it seems like once they're outside of the in the studio environment like is that the only is crunch necessary Tony is that the only way can these programmers are they just too lazy to work from home?
    51:23
    I don't know. I don't think that makes any sense. It doesn't make any sense at all. But it seems like every single studio keeps pointing out to how hard it's been to, I don't know if it's like when they're doing their Slack stuff and all that, but they just don't work as well. It just becomes inefficient when they're all working remotely under the COVID structure. So that's the only thing I can think of to blame. Right, but at the same time, I would think the stuff that would be harder to work from home from would be like the visual effects companies, but they've made the transitions pretty well from everything I've read. There was some slowdown while they got things figured out and got equipment shipped to people, but once they got the specialty equipment shipped, they're doing special effects with no issues, but somehow you can't program at home, considering that developing is something that in a lot of cases already had a pretty large number of people who worked from like satellite offices or home. Yeah. So maybe that's not it. But if I, I don't know how else to blame COVID. So if it's not COVID related, then perhaps Blizzard has shuffled their staffing and people that we or they initially thought would be working on these games are working on other projects.
    52:47
    Why would you do that, though? These are the big sellers. Yeah, I don't know why they would work on those type of things or on anything other than that. This is where they make their money. At this point, we've not had a major release from Blizzard since... Has there been a major release since Overwatch?
    53:13
    I mean, I know they've put out two expansions for World of Warcraft and the World of Warcraft Classic. they put out the reforged of Warcraft 3, which tanked and is terrible and hated.
    53:35
    But I can't think of any of the major releases. I mean, Overwatch has an entire studio or entire group that that's all they do is Overwatch. And they pulled almost all of those people off of Overwatch to work on Overwatch 2. Yeah, nothing's really standing out to me.
    53:55
    Those were, and looking up on the wiki of Blizzard Entertainment Games, yeah, the last, looks like the last real big, real release was Overwatch in 2016.
    54:07
    Huh. They got the Switch version out in 2019. With Diablo Immortal, TBD, Overwatch 2 TBD, and Diablo 4 TVD.
    54:22
    Which, and Immortal's a phone game. Don't you all have phones? Of course. We all do. So yeah, this is terrible. Terrible games on it. Thanks for that news, Tony. I appreciate it. There you go. No Overwatch 2 anytime soon.
    54:39
    Like I said, I don't know. It's weird. Continuing this strand of bad news, kind of? Maybe-ish? Bad wrong. The DONG. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not really surprised by it, but Google Stadia is closing both of its game studios. They had game studios? They had two of them. They never released anything ever.
    55:03
    They never put a single game out, but they're going ahead and closing their studios. They're attempting to find jobs for those programmers elsewhere in Google. Maybe they can help with Overwatch 2. Oh, wait. Use it within Google. Within Google. So Diablo needs you Go over to Blizzard Hey well this sounds like a very Google thing to do Man Google is all about Making something and then just dropping it I've been saying For years this Stadia thing is going to get The plug pulled on it this is Google's way When it doesn't Why were they trying to break into this industry I don't understand it I don't know They did say that they are still going to Continue operating the gaming service and the pro service and they're going to continue uh bringing in third-party releases but at the same time they're also going to start offering the stadia tech to publishers so i believe this is more along the lines of them going hey look it worked and it worked pretty well and it's doable and here's how we did it. If you would like to purchase the rights to use it, you can. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've heard really positive things about how well the streaming aspects of the technology work. So I could see an avenue for them with that. To me, this is just another slow Google thing dying where they don't want to kill it all off right away. But again, And for most people where they don't need the streaming or you're starting to compete with other gaming systems that offer various degrees of streaming, like what Microsoft has been messing with and such and Sony's been messing with and things along those lines. It's like if you don't have any unique stuff to Stadia, why would someone like me waste my time with it?
    57:01
    There's no reason. I play this third party stuff on my Xbox. You're going to play this third party stuff on your PC. We have no purpose to this. Right. And the thing is, is for those people who have limitations on their bandwidth or limitations on the amount of, before they get, you know, throttled, this could be causing issues with their day-to-day usability. I think that's part of the issue, and it's not really Google's fault, but it felt like, at least for the U.S. market, that Google Stadia honestly is just premature because our ISP setup is structured in such a way that you are punished for consuming large amounts of bandwidth. Right.
    57:47
    And again, why would we do that? Why would most people who don't need to constantly stream do that when they can install something on their PC or play it on a console? And after it's downloaded once, they don't have to worry about their caps and their throttling, and they'll just enjoy it. So it's just – Microsoft ran into this barrier. It was a worse barrier back then, but back with the Xbox One when they were talking about doing some of this stuff and this always-on, and people were – and back then it was being always-on, able to touch the internet for something. That's less of an issue now, but the throttling definitely is. Yeah, very much so. Okay, well, I'm not surprised at any of this. But yeah, not good news for those that are invested in Stadia, though. We'll see how long Google keeps it around. I bet at least a year. Well, the question is how many people are actually invested in Stadia. I don't have numbers for how well they actually sold. So, um, also, uh, Gearbox Studios, the makers of the, uh, Borderlands games, very popular games, has been purchased. They were purchased by the Embracer Group, uh, which is a parent company to, to like THQ Nordic and, uh, Saber Interactive and Coffee Stain Studios and a few other studios. This deal is worth 1.378 billion dollars Wow They wanted Gearbox bad They are saying That this isn't going to impact Any of the development of Future or existing Borderlands games They're still going to have The ties with Take 2 For the Borderlands games The question is just going to be What's coming next or is this one of those purchases where they're picked up and then just kind of left on their own? It was just like, oh, we'll add them to the stable without changing anything.
    59:43
    Yeah, I don't know. Gearbox is an odd company to me where they have things like Borderlands, which have gone over very, very well, but they have also been no stranger to controversy with things like their arguments that they used funding for other games, that they rerouted to different titles, like they agree to publish stuff and then they route it to fund their own development. There have been some controversies. So my nutshell summary would be I would hope that while a lot of the IP is allowed to flourish and be as creative as it was when Gearbox Studios stood separate from the Embracer group, that a little better managerial control probably would be healthy for this company, which has had a bad habit of doing inappropriate things from a corporate responsibility standpoint. That would be my take. I think is a pretty valid take we'll see where it ends up going the last thing I had added was the Mass Effect Legendary Edition which was initially announced back in November or October but the big reason I wanted to talk about it was not only is it coming out as a remaster of the original three Mass Effect games with you know tweaks and cleaning up the video and making it look better and a few adjustments to make them flow better together. But now it's coming out that one of the adjustments they've made is they decided playing the games, there's a lot of times where there are random shots of just butts or upskirts that they feel, as they worded it, they feel that this is a different time and they need to make some adjustments. So they're leaving the story and stuff alone, but they're changing camera positions. So you no longer have conversations where you just see somebody's butt taking up three quarters of the screen and then somebody off away while you sit there and have a conversation. It's been so long since I played it, I don't remember all the butts.
    61:48
    I've never really, I don't think I've ever played all the way through all of them. I think I played some of the first one. but what got me on this was I read a lot of people who are genuinely angry about this change.
    62:03
    Apparently it was a common enough thing that it was like to the point of being a meme with the games is, Oh, we're going to have this deep heartfelt conversation. Let's make sure that the butts framed up so you can look at this. So there's just a butt fill in most of your screen while you talk about your dead family. I mean, I remember some odd, like, where I always just assumed, like, maybe the cameras were almost randomized in terms of where they would shoot. And you did get some weird shots, which did involve butts. I vaguely remember that. I just didn't remember, like, gratuitous butts. But they're probably right. There were a lot of them. Look, I didn't know this change was coming, probably because my gamer new stuff has been not dominated by Mass Effect butts, but rather dominated by Resident Evil and some super tall vampire person that everyone is losing their minds over. Yeah, I saw a couple things about that. I'm not a big Resident Evil person, so it didn't really click into my thing. But yeah, like for Resident Evil Village or something like that, there's a super tall... Yeah, I get it. It's not one I've played, so... Yeah, Resident Evil Village. Yeah, there's like a super tall vampire, and people find her extremely attractive and are determined to meme about it constantly. Yeah. All right, Mass Effect, the Less Butts edition, coming soon.
    63:25
    I just hope they clean up the shooter mechanics in the first game. The first game is clunky. I would hope, and a lot of the stuff I've read says they are, one of the things they're doing is cleaning it up so that the play style is more similar throughout the three and cleaning up a lot of those issues. That's a good change. I never played three. I only played one and two. I've heard that the ending of 3 was really terrible until you got all the DLC which the Legendary Edition comes with I actually am pretty sure that I own all of Mass Effect that I got it on some sale or on a humble bundle at some point you should start with Andromeda I've never played any of it so maybe it's as good as the TV series Andromeda I don't know it's not I only have Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. I don't even have three. I have the first two.
    64:23
    That's it. Well, we've reached the end of our show, Tony. I guess, yeah. I guess people want to email us, as I noted at the start, they can. EclecticGamersPodcast.gmail.com Or you can go to Facebook.com slash EclecticGamersPodcast. We're over there also. Yep. We're on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as Eclectic underscore Gamers. and tune in in a couple weeks where maybe we'll find out another pinball company has raised their prices by two thousand dollars or maybe another video game company has been gobbled up by a larger company while an even larger company discontinues an even larger project that failed we don't know the future is a mystery it's exciting we don't know where anything's going uh next thing you know retro atomic zombies are going to be five thousand dollars uh for the first 15 minutes and $1,000 for every additional two minutes. All I know is production is delayed on that. That's all I know. Ooh. Surprise. There was a little bit about that. But I didn't read up on it because I've been busy. But one thing we will guarantee, the next episode, less butts. Less butts, maybe. Maybe there'll be more butts. I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. Butts.