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Episode 157 - 2021 Year-End Review

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 49m·held·Dec 27, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

2021 pinball review: Godzilla dominates awards, JJP struggles with production, Steve Ritchie moves to JJP.

Summary

Tony and Dennis conduct a comprehensive 2021 year-end pinball review, covering manufacturer releases, industry awards, and key personnel moves. Stern dominated with four releases (Led Zeppelin, Mandalorian, Godzilla, Jurassic Park (Home Edition)), with Godzilla emerging as consensus Game of the Year despite strong competition. Jersey Jack Pinball released no new games, focusing on Guns N' Roses production backlog while facing criticism over playfield chipping issues. Key personnel shifts include Jack Danger permanent designer role at Stern and Steve Ritchie departure to Jersey Jack Pinball, signaling strategic shifts in both companies.

Key Claims

  • Godzilla will sweep most major pinball awards (Game of the Year, Layout, Rules) due to superior execution across nearly all categories

    high confidence · Tony predicts Godzilla will win the vast majority of Pinball Industry Awards and Twippies based on its layout, rule depth, music, and art execution

  • Jersey Jack Pinball did not release any new games in 2021, only continued production of Guns N' Roses from 2020

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony confirm JJP released zero new titles in 2021 despite claiming two-to-three games per year capacity

  • Steve Ritchie recent games (Black Knight, Led Zeppelin) have underperformed commercially and received more critical feedback than his earlier work

    medium confidence · Tony notes Led Zeppelin and Black Knight sales/feedback were weak; speculation based on community response rather than confirmed numbers

  • Jack Danger designed Jurassic Park (Home Edition) and has been confirmed as a permanent designer in Stern's cornerstone rotation

    high confidence · Tony and Dennis confirm Jack Danger as permanent designer after Jurassic Park (Home Edition) release announcement

  • Mandalorian was the most popular theme of 2021 for most players, beating Led Zeppelin in art, theme quality, and feature richness

    high confidence · Community consensus discussed; Mandalorian featured Carl Weathers callout and superior art package compared to Led Zeppelin

  • Jersey Jack Pinball is positioned more as a high-end boutique manufacturer than a volume competitor, unable to sustain promised production rates

    high confidence · Tony and Dennis conclude JJP functions as boutique despite claiming higher output; consistent production delays since company founding

  • Pat Lawlor is rumored to be retiring after Toy Story game completion at Jersey Jack Pinball

    medium confidence · Tony references 'rumors are swirling' about Lawlor's retirement post-Toy Story without confirmation

  • Stern's supply chain issues suggest they should reduce output from current levels to 2-3 games annually for better market balance

Notable Quotes

  • “Godzilla dropped the Schreonk and then won. Yes. And, I mean, I'll apply, Godzilla's hands down my best game of the year.”

    Tony @ ~19:45 — Strong personal endorsement of Godzilla as best game of 2021, reflecting broader industry consensus

  • “It will just be as I have said it will be. These are like Newtonian laws of physics. It will walk away with most of them, though.”

    Tony @ ~20:30 — Confident prediction of Godzilla's award dominance framed as scientific certainty

  • “Jersey Jack will never make it to the next level until they actually can put out a game a year. I'm tired of hearing them talk about two to three.”

    Dennis @ ~49:20 — Harsh critique of JJP's production capacity and credibility gap between promises and execution

  • “There is a place in pinball for a high-end, high-quality, super fancy boutique. Jersey Jack Pinball falls into that perfectly.”

    Tony @ ~51:15 — Reframes Jersey Jack's limitations as positioning strength rather than weakness

  • “His games aren't selling anymore is what I think. We don't know the numbers. Right. But based off the feedback on Led Zeppelin which was his last design we know I have heard so maybe I shouldn't say we know but we know. Allegedly we know. Allegedly.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~38:30 — Acknowledges speculation about Steve Ritchie's recent game performance without confirmed sales data

  • “Jack Danger wants to make pinball weird again. That could either be good or terrible.”

    Dennis @ ~42:00 — Captures uncertainty about Jack Danger's design philosophy post-Jurassic Park Home

  • “It's because we get all the sterns there. Right. But I look at it and I'm like, what were you guys thinking? Holy cow.”

    Tony @ ~32:15 — Expresses bafflement at Led Zeppelin Pro/Premium layout choices, particularly third ramp conversion

  • “Making Deadlines has been a massive struggle from how long their very first game was was to the huge amount of delays.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyGodzillagameThe MandaloriangameLed ZeppelingameJurassic Park (Home Edition)game

Signals

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Mandalorian criticized for dominating competitive strategy of 'keep shooting the center ramp and win,' indicating shallow high-level meta despite thematic integration

    high · Tony notes Mandalorian has 'let's keep shooting the center ramp' strategy frustrating high-level players throughout 2021

  • ?

    product_concern: Jersey Jack Pinball's Guns N' Roses exhibits widespread playfield chipping issues with company non-responsiveness to Pinside community feedback

    high · Tony: 'Jersey Jack in 2021 seems to primarily be continuing to push out quantities of Guns N' Roses... ignoring Pennside feedback about all the chipping on the playfields'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Steve Ritchie's reputation declining due to recent game underperformance (Black Knight, Led Zeppelin) with community questioning 'King of Flow' design philosophy effectiveness

    medium · Tony and Dennis discuss weak feedback on Ritchie's recent designs and note his games 'aren't selling anymore' based on community response

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jack Danger elevated to permanent Stern designer role in cornerstone rotation following Jurassic Park Home Edition; strategic design direction shift toward 'weird' gameplay

    high · Tony: 'Jack Danger designed Jurassic Park the pin... They just recently confirmed he's now, like, a permanent designer with them... he will be in cornerstone rotation now'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Godzilla predicted to dominate 2021 awards across Game of the Year, Layout, Rules categories with near-universal industry consensus

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.329

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 26th. This is episode 157. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Happy Christmas, Tony. Happy Boxing Day, Dennis. That's right, it is Boxing Day. Pow, pow, right in the kisser. Pow, right in the kisser. Yeah. I peaked out a little bit. Oh, peaked out. Push my mic a little bit. It sounds a little different. I did get a new mic for Christmas, so hopefully I sound better. Mm-hmm. I mean, I don't know if I can really sound any better. No, it was once better. It was already sound. I don't know.
0:50
So what's been going on? Obviously, Christmas, family time. That type of thing. The winter sale started on Steam, and I've been very good so far. I purchased one thing, which was MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries with all the DLC. I picked it up because I'm a Battletech geek.
1:16
Also, in addition to that, for Christmas, I received three of the Battle Lance boxes from Cattles Game Labs full of Battletech minis that includes there's four mechs per lance obviously. So since there's 12, I have all of my favorite mechs plus a few extras now. I picked the boxes I wanted specifically because they have like my favorite mechs in them. So now I need to get my whole kit together and start painting. Now these are things that need to be painted, right? They need to be painted. They don't need to be assembled, but they do need be painted so I can get my whole kit together and start painting them up in the style of my Battletech mercenary company. That will make me happy. Glorious. Glory to Steiner. Okay. Well, I got a new video game, Resident Evil Village, with the famous vampire lady. It takes a village. I finally met her in a cutscene. so yeah started that yesterday and was working on it a little bit this morning before you got here to do the reason so that's why you were kneeling on the ground going mama when I got here yes that was why because it was a little awkward is what I do so anyway this is our 2021 year end review episode like normal so let's go ahead and just get right into that oh and thanks for those that emailed us saying happy holidays and all of that. I'm not going to read those out or anything because I will be merciful, but I will not be merciful in terms of covering the pinball. We've got a lot to do because of the year and stuff. A couple of awards things to announce though. So first, I want to talk about the DG&E's. The DG&E's. I think I've seen it right. So Joe Chervino, I think that's how I say his last name. Joe, if I'm wrong, correct me. And I apologize preemptively if I'm wrong. We'll call you Joe C. So Joe C. reached out to me about this. So in celebration of reaching the 1,000-group member mark, the High Council of the Pinball Degenerates Facebook group, and FYI, I do have a link in the show notes to that Facebook group if anyone wants to go and follow it, they are proud to announce the first annual and very likely last Pinball Degenerate Awards, a.k.a. the Degenese. All are free to nominate others or to self-nominate for an award category, regardless if they are Pinball Degenerate group members or not. To be eligible, please post your nominee's full name with any written explanations, pleas, begging, bribery, and visual accompaniment on the Pinball Degenerates Facebook group page. Winners will be selected entirely by the members of the High Council of the Degenerates. The award winners will be announced on the Pinball Degenerates Facebook page via Facebook Live on Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 4 p.m. Eastern. And they have the following award categories. Most Degenerate Pinball Tattoo. Most Degenerate Pinball Collection. Most Degenerate Pinball Haul. Most Degenerate Pinball Score. Most Degenerate Pinball Retheme. Most Degenerate Pinball Restoration. Most Degenerate Pinball Mod. Most Degenerate Pinball Stance. Most degenerate competition pinball player. Most degenerate pinball operator. Most degenerate pinball event. Most degenerate, oh my God, I'm tongue-tying myself. Degenerate homebrew pinball. Most degenerate pinball location. Washrooms. Oh, pinball location washrooms. I like that one. Oh, we're cutting to the quick there. Most degenerate pinball streamer. Most degenerate pinball commentator. Most degenerate pinball artist. And most degenerate of the year. so and he notes thank you so much to the incredible people who made the pinball community so welcoming and fun and good luck and the nominations they need to be made by Monday January 31st last day of January 11.59pm eastern for consideration I know one that would have been a really good chance for a location washrooms before they put the door on the stalls they decided to put doors on the stalls so it wasn't awkward where you could see into the stall when you walked in the door while I was sitting And they're with the number two.

medium confidence · Tony and Dennis opinion-based analysis; Dennis suggests Stern over-produces relative to demand while JJP under-produces

  • Jersey Jack Pinball playfields have quality issues with chipping, generating Pinside community complaints that the company ignores

    medium confidence · Tony notes 'Pinside feedback about all the chipping on the playfields' and company non-responsiveness, suggesting ongoing product concern

  • Toy Story licensing has been 'dead' for years following Toy Story 4 reception, making 2022 release timing questionable for market relevance

    low confidence · Dennis commentary that 'the iron hasn't been hot on Toy Story in a decade' based on audience perception of franchise decline

    • Dennis @ ~53:30 — Documents Jersey Jack's chronic production delays as company-wide pattern since inception

    Jack Danger
    person
    Steve Ritchieperson
    Pat Lawlorperson
    Joe Chervinoperson
    Tonyperson
    Dennisperson
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Twippiesevent
    Pinball Industry Awardsevent
    Guns N' Rosesgame
    Toy Storygame
    Mark Seidenperson
    Pinsideorganization
    [name withheld pending review]product
    Jack Guarnieriperson
    Elvira 40th Anniversarygame

    high · Tony predicts Godzilla will sweep awards with 'Newtonian laws of physics' certainty; Dennis concurs 'It's going to pull the vast majority of the wins'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern facing supply chain constraints limiting production while Jersey Jack chronically underproduces despite designer/talent acquisition; market supply/demand imbalance

    high · Dennis suggests Stern should cut to 2-3 games/year while JJP must hit minimum one game/year; both failing production targets due to different constraints

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball experiencing internal strategy shift; newer ownership stake diverging from founder Jack Guarnieri's original vision (playfield consistency, output promises)

    medium · Tony speculates behind-scenes conflict: 'Jack Wizzle promises... they dropped that' and 'doesn't have the same vision that Jack Guarnieri had'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack Pinball reframed as high-end boutique manufacturer rather than volume competitor, with portfolio emphasizing mechanical artistry over accessibility

    medium · Tony: 'There is a place in pinball for a high-end, high-quality, super fancy boutique. And JJP falls into that perfectly... half of them aren't that fun to play, but they're beautiful'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Godzilla's motorized collapsing building mechanic and magnetic Newton ball technology established as innovative mechanical breakthrough; layout praised as distinctly non-generic

    high · Tony highlights Godzilla as 'such a different layout' from Stern's typical fan-friendly design philosophy; Dennis confirms 'better, more interesting layout and better rules'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Steve Ritchie's career transition reflects broader industry dynamics of aging designer demographics; 'King of Flow' philosophy potentially outdated vs. mechanical complexity expectations

    medium · Discussion of Ritchie's 47-year career and recent game underperformance; question raised whether 'the king of flow' design approach remains competitive

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Degenerates Facebook group reached 1,000 members milestone, launching first annual Degenerate Awards (Degenese) with 16 categories recognizing community culture

    high · Joe Chervino announces Degenese awards with nominations through January 31, 2022; awards ceremony February 13, 2022 on Facebook Live

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Stern rumored to announce Rush game within days of podcast (Tuesday), breaking multi-month announcement silence; production delays creating anticipation

    medium · Tony: 'Rumor mill is it's going to announce a couple days after this podcast comes out. But, like, Tuesday. And we'll see. We'll see what happens'

    • 5:34
    Also known as Tony's preferred recording. Little turtle head poking out. Everybody can walk in and see it. Oh, hi. Hi. I had curry. Sorry.
    5:50
    So anyway, so yes, another award thing in February, too, which normally I don't think we see awards given out in February. So this will be a nice wedge because the Twippies will be happening in March at the Texas Pinball Festival. And the second thing I was going to note is Pinball Industry Awards, which will be happening at the end of January, are back for 2021. So let me go ahead and run that. I won't read out all the nominations on this one. Yeah. Just so FYI for people that are curious. So the Pinball Industry Awards, the judge ballot applications are open until December 29th. I do have a link in the show notes so people that want to look at all the criteria can go and look. The criteria are the same as 2020, except we did expand. This is not just media anymore. We're now going with sort of a personality. I think that's how we're describing it because we brought, yeah, personality.
    6:39
    So the main thing is because we added some things on the social media side. So now sort of like the NAP arcade style, if you across multiple platforms meet a certain threshold of followers and you do a certain number of pinball posts, we figure you've got enough knowledge of current games that you would be a good judge. And then on competitive pinball side, we have two there. We have one for people who organize tournaments, like six IFPA tournaments a year, one of which has to be sizable, like 40-plus attendees. Right. And then the top 50 overall IFPA or women's tournament ranked. And that can be either women's overall in tournaments or women's tournament specific. We'll do both. So we had a question about that, so we clarified, because they break them down that way. And, again, we're kind of – I'm on the committee planning this, and the idea was let's not – the concern is the committee overwhelming itself vetting judges, because we do try and confirm all those people meeting criteria. So, yeah, we might broaden it up more if we're not overwhelmed with judges this year. I know we've already got more judge applications in than we had judges last year. I've turned mine in already. Yes. Thank you very much, Tony. you do continue to qualify from your hard work in the hobby. I do what I can. So am I. So that, December 29th, is the deadline for the judge applications. Voting will happen in early January, and the awards will be rolled out at some point before February. So that's that. And so now let's go ahead and go into the year-end review. The year-end review. So the way we normally do this in pinball is we typically break it down by manufacturer because that's generally how I think people kind of get it. I think that's a good way to do it. Well, that's how a lot of people kind of consider new stuff in the hobby is generally driven by new games. Yeah. I think it's easier to do that because the other option I would think would be to break it down by like month. Yeah. Then you kind of get timelining and you're jumping back and forth. And I think I prefer breaking it down by manufacturer or like item. Yeah. I think it's easier to research by manufacturer. So that's part of it. So let's go ahead and start with the main manufacturer, Stern Pinball. So there were technically three games that came out this year, but we're going to cover four. Because Led Zeppelin actually dropped in late December, but I don't think it made our year end. It was known when we did our year end last year, but I don't know if anyone had received it yet.
    9:08
    Technically, a few did go out as of December. So Led Zeppelin was a late December release of theirs.
    9:15
    Then we had The Mandalorian. Then there was Godzilla. than Jurassic Park the Pen edition. So, in terms of that, I mean, it's been, other than the inability to produce enough games to meet all the demand, it's been, I would argue it, a great year for Stern. Of all of these games, I would say Led Zeppelin easily was the least well-respected. Oh, easily.
    9:36
    Pretty well-respected from what I've seen from high-level competitive players on its rule set, but its layout, especially the pro model, was felt to be exceedingly lacking. You seem to concur. I do. Okay. Mandalorian was met with great fanfare. It is, for a lot of people, the best theme that came out this year.
    9:57
    For most people, I would say, I think this was true. People are allowed to have whatever theme they like. It's a great theme. The theme is very good. This is the way. I think it felt much more feature-rich than Let's Upland did. Yeah.
    10:11
    And they got Carl Weathers to do a call-out, so that was popular. That was popular. The art was popular. Led Zeppelin's art was not popular. So, you know, it basically beat Led Zeppelin in pretty much every category except probably rules.
    10:26
    And that, again, depends on your perspective. High-level players, I know, have been very frustrated with Mandalorian, which for a lot of 2021 has consisted of, let's keep shooting the center ramp, and that's how you win this game sort of strategy. but for people that are into moments because Dwight Sullivan coding on this often integrating the spirit of the show into the game that's been seen pretty positively from what I've seen. I personally have enjoyed Mandalorian quite a bit when I've played it. Yeah, I've got no problems with it. It's been enjoyable. Then the last of the cornerstones for this year was Godzilla.
    11:03
    That's my Godzilla roar. Arguably by a minority of people the best theme of the year. I mean, that's where I stand, but I understand that I am a special case. I mean, it's a very recognizable theme. We knew they had the Godzilla theme from years ago. But I think what just shocked people is just how it ended up being so good, especially when Mandalorian was already seen as such a good game. And then here comes Godzilla, which, for a lot of people, has both a better, more interesting layout and better rules. Yes. And it's kind of like, and then nuclear bereft everyone and melted them. Godzilla dropped the Screonk and then win. Yes. And, I mean, I'll apply, Godzilla's hands down my best game of the year. Oh, yeah. No. In fact, when we're talking, be it, well, other than the generous awards don't seem as game focused, but Pinball Industry Awards-wise and Twippy-wise, I fully, I don't expect it to sweep every award. It will walk away with most of them, though. I think so. And I'll be 100% honest, I don't think there's anything from this year that could possibly rob it of Game of the Year. I mean, what's its weakest area? The art? The amazing art? Arguably the art, the Marvel Method art style that was approached, rather than the gritty art style that some other more seasoned Godzilla artists have run with. True. But it's still well executed. art. It's extremely well executed art. It's not a bad art. And I know people who love the art package on it. But other than that, I mean, you have okay, maybe it won't win call outs too. That would be one where I could see it losing call outs. But I think it's got the best music. I mean, maybe Led Zeppelin wins music. But layout, it's got to win layout. It's going to win rules. It's going to win game of the year. These are givens. These are laws. These are like Newtonian laws of physics. It will just be as I have said it will be. Right. I mean, you... No, I'm not going to disagree. I think you're absolutely right. It's going to pull the vast majority of the wins.
    13:14
    It has to. It's science. In the words of Ron from Anchorman. No, wait. What was his character? What is his character? I was going to say Ron Perlman, and I realized, no, that's a real actor. And he didn't play the Anchorman. about it. What was Will's character's name? Ron Burgundy. I was okay saying Ron, but now I'm leaving it in. Dennis, Ron Perlman was Hellboy. What's wrong with you? Don't judge me. It's here in review.
    13:45
    Things are going crazy. Jurassic Park The Pen. I haven't had a chance to play it. I haven't played it either. However, initial reaction, very positive, sort of from a lot of people, seen as better than Star Wars The Pen, which was seen as pretty good for The Pen. It's The Pen Game. Yeah. I think some people perhaps have turned to this to buy because they can't get anything else, though, rather than really wanting it. Because, I mean, ultimately, everyone really wants Godzilla. How bad is your need that you're going to buy something that you don't really want just because I just want it? Well, they can always sell it when they're done with it. I have that new pinball machine fix. Oh, I need that truck in front. Oh, God. I got my pallet jack ready. Got to roll it in the garage. Oh, baby, where's my fix? You may not want to believe it, but from my now couple years of doing the pinball show, those people exist. The difference is they are not the majority of the hobby, unlike how my other co-hosts might think. They're actually a very small minority. They're just vocal and they're rich. Yes. They tend to get more deference than us plebes. Yeah. But it is what it is. So, oh, the other game thing was that, I'm going to go ahead and almost say ridiculous Elvira 40th anniversary.
    15:03
    Oh, yeah. That's cool. It's ridiculously priced. That's great. It's for those people we just talked about. Yeah, yeah. And fine. But you can still find these readily available because people are asking for $30,000 plus in some instances. And it's like, your special number isn't going to command that. Maybe number one.
    15:22
    Maybe number one. But that's about it. Yeah. Anyway, other big stern news, I'd say the two big shakeups. One is, so Jack Danger designed Jurassic Park the pin. Correct. This is the newest of the news. They just recently confirmed he's now, like, a permanent designer with them. I don't think that's surprising, but my understanding is he will be in cornerstone rotation now.
    15:50
    Interesting. We'll see how that works out for them. Yeah, again, with one game, which I haven't played, and it being a pin model, it's hard for me to get a feel for, like, I don't know his design philosophy. The only thing I've seen Jack say online is that he wants to make pinball weird again. That could either be good or terrible. Yeah. I mean, I'm all for weird, but if weird means, like, clunky bad shots, then obviously people are going to have a problem. Until we get a full-size real pin, nobody's really going to know. Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't, maybe that means he's going to work on some weird themes. That could be interesting. Yeah. I think Stern will only go so far in deviation from, I mean, that's part of the shock of Godzilla is it feels like such a different layout.
    16:37
    Stern usually leans into the fan layouts and stuff. Right. So, and Jurassic Park didn't feel all that different from that. So, and it's over, you know, again, I haven't played it, but I can judge a lot from photos. Yeah. Fans are saying people like fans. So I don't want to be, I'm not anti-fans. We like to see a little variety. So it'll be interesting to see what variety Jack gets to bring to the table. I'm also kind of interested to see what kind of licenses he gets thrown on. Because I don't see them throwing him at a non-license title. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I mean, what was the last non-license title they did? Sharky Shootout? Yeah. And the closest they came was that it's not a quasi-license. It's still a full license. It was Black Knight. Which is this, oh, okay, it's a license only known by pinball people. And I still feel it was a desperate attempt to keep Steve Ritchie happy, which obviously didn't work. Obviously. But that's the other big piece of news was the shakeup of Steve Ritchie leaving and going to JJP. Do you think that was a big loss for Stern?
    17:39
    I mean, honestly. He's a legend. He's a legend, but honestly, I don't think so. I mean, at this point, with the stable of designers at Stern, I think they can weather a loss like that where, say, six, seven years ago, it would have hurt him a lot worse. I think you're right. Yeah, he's a loss. It's more of a loss. it's just but his games aren't selling anymore is what I think. We don't know the numbers. Right. But based off the feedback on Led Zeppelin which was his last design we know I have heard so maybe I shouldn't say we know but we know. Allegedly we know. Allegedly. Black Knight did not sell great. I've heard that. Allegedly. And it's been his games that generally have had the most pinhead negative feedback lately. Now a lot of that's not all his fault. necessarily. We suspect a lot of studio Disney interference on Star Wars, for example, which got a lot more respect once the comic art edition came out. And it's not his fault that the art was what it was. But Steve has been running for quite a while now with the, oh yeah, I'm the king of flow. And then you look at his games and it's like, where are the mechs? And I am a more flow person than a mech person, but we've seen good use of flow in games like Godzilla that don't feel like they're skimping on the mech. Right. Very true. And Led Zeppelin Premium LE felt okay from my perspective looking at it from a mech thing. But, you know, turning that third ramp shot into a non-ramp and not having this uplifting. I mean, it's like, what the heck is that? I'm still flabbergasted they sold it. I still can't believe we have it at 403. Honestly.
    19:30
    It's because we get all the sterns there. Right. But I look at it and I'm like, what were you guys thinking? Holy cow. I mean, we'll get on that a little bit because lately it seems like, oh, yeah, even a miss can't really miss in pinball lately. And it'll be interesting to know if that ends up biting some companies in the butt. I think it could. So, speaking of companies, let's move on to what I think a lot of people think of as the number two in production manufacturer, which is Jersey Jack Pinball. Which, claim of fame in 2021, Tony, is they didn't put out any new games. Jersey Jack Pinball didn't put out a game? I know they didn't. Oh, wow. I know they've been saying, like, two to three games a year, two to three games a year. Well, you can say lots of things. It doesn't make it true. So, given that, the news of Jersey Jack in 2021 seems to primarily be continuing to push out quantities of Guns N' Roses, their hit game from last year,
    20:26
    and ignoring Pennside feedback about all the chipping on the playfields. That's all I could think of with Jersey Jack. If you were to ask me, Dennis, what was Jersey Jack in 2021? I'd say trying to catch up on GNR backlog and not answering questions about chip points. Well, see, and that's the thing is if you'd asked me the same question, I would have gone, oh, yeah, Jersey Jack. They still exist, don't they? Well, you know, they moved to Chicagoland. And, okay, I mean, it is what it is. I mean, they have had some other moves lately. I guess their biggest positive thing would be, because they're partnered up with Scorbit. Like, they have Scorbit integrated freely into their systems. They actually rolled out achievements, I believe, for all the games now. Last I heard, Pirates was the only one that was still remaining. I think they got that out in December. So, in fact, they actually, in people's homes, got the achievements active before people had them active with Scurm. Right. So, that was seen as pretty positive. A lot of people like Scorbit. I mean, the biggest critique I've heard from Scorbit has been the cost, but you don't face that on the J.J.P. side, like there's a month off. Right. But with the J.J.P. games, it's just integrated. And I've heard really positive things about the achievements and stuff with Scorbit. So that was a positive. See, I'm not an achievement hunter, so I don't really care about that. The same way with the Stern Insiders thing. I don't care. I mean, I'd probably, I like the idea behind the Stern 1, but I'm not used to it yet. Like, I need to get used to setting my cell phone on the little thing. I haven't even set up an account yet. So, I mean, I do have mine set up. I've only ever signed in, though, like at Expo. Like, I haven't done it on the location Godzilla is here in town or anything. So, you know, I don't know. We'll see. I like the idea behind it. As long as it's free for the user, people will do it. I think that's great. Yeah, sure. if it's free for the user, that's what's important. It's a new way to approach the game. And I could see, I think it's probably more, Stern's really angling to give it a location value. For me, in my view, with Scorbit, it seems more homeowner-oriented. Like, let's give you more ways to approach the game. And that would be the purpose of achievements.
    22:42
    You know, I think, you know, with Steam and trophies on PlayStation and Xbox achievements, I think that's, like, here's just a new way to think about playing a game that maybe you'll have fun with. That's how, if you do them right. Don't play through it like, here, we'll just give you achievements for playing the game, sort of thing. You know, it just depends.
    22:59
    Other than that, I'd say the big Jersey Jack news is, obviously, picking up Steve Ritchie. They also picked up a new designer from the homebrew side. I'm probably going to mispronounce his last name, so I'll apologize. Mark Seiden?
    23:12
    I'm not quite sure how to say it. I should, but I don't because I stink. But anyway, Mark. Steve and Mark.
    23:20
    I think picking up Mark was a good move. Yeah. They need to prepare for moving ahead. The rumors are swirling that Pat Lawler, after Toy Story is out, that he's retiring. And the thing that I thought was so weird about them picking up Steve Ritchie is I get Steve was unhappy with Stern, but how many years does Steve have left doing this? I get it. He doesn't want to retire. And if he wants to keep doing games and they sell, I think he should keep doing games. But this is Jersey Jack, where I still think that we ain't seeing a Steve game until 2025. We'll be lucky if it's 2024. Right. I just don't. Because they talk a big game about putting out more than one game a year, and they just can't do it. They can't do it. See, here's the interesting thing is I think Jersey Jack put out too few games, period. I think with the current issue with the supply chain problems, I think Stern's still going too heavy. I think they'd be in a lot better shape overall if they cut back to no more than two or three games a year. Maybe two Cornerstones and something. Like the pin or a vault or something. Yeah, I think that would be in a better position with supply and demand if they did that. I agree. But Jersey Jack has got to put out a pin in 22, period. Yes, and the rumors are yes. Toy Story is coming out. Toy Story was supposed to come in 20. Toy Story was supposed to come in 21. But now, when the iron is hot. Now we're coming to 22. When the iron is hot. The iron's hot. The iron hasn't been hot on Toy Story in a decade. Toy Story 4. Nobody cared. You mean Toy Story 4, the Toy Story that took everything you learned about Toy Stories and threw it all out in the garbage and completely changed everything. I don't know because I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it either. That's always been the first one. Every complaint I've heard about it, though, is it just, like, threw away, like, almost everything that was built up in the previous one. And now they're going to have a Buzz Lightyear movie. Oh, good whippity-doo. And they tried to get me to want to go see it because they played Starman.
    25:27
    Oh. From David Bowie. They're trying to do the member berries. They're trying to member berry and pull you in. The member berry me. They're trying to grab your member berry and pull you in. I already have the MP3. I don't need to go see your movie. So, yeah. No, I agree. It would be, I think, Jersey Jack will never make it to the next level until they actually can put out a game a year. I'm tired of hearing them talk about two to three. I want to see a game a year. I don't think you needed to put anything else in there. I think Jersey Jack will never make it to the next level is all you needed.
    26:00
    That's harsh. But we're just a simple podcast tournament like it is. I mean, at what point in time? I heard all their employees have bonuses, so they must have had a good year. I mean, that's good. I'm glad they're taking care of their employees. Maybe they're just a little bit bigger spooky.
    26:18
    See, that's how I feel. They feel like a boutique to me. They put out games like they're a boutique, a high-quality boutique, but they still put out games like they're a boutique.
    26:31
    And I think if they can't put out more than a – if they cannot put out a game every single year, If they cannot, with the stable of designers they have, if they cannot put out one game every 12 months, they're a high-end boutique. And honestly, there's nothing wrong with that. There is a place in pinball for a high-end, high-quality, super fancy boutique. And JJP falls into that perfectly. Everybody talks about how good their games look. All the mechs in their games. how deep their rule sets are. It's just half of them aren't that fun to play, but they're beautiful. They are works of art. So maybe that the niche they need to lean into Maybe they need to just cement their place as the high boutique in pinball And you know what Maybe they're trying. Again, based off of what's happening now and what happened early in the company, to me, it seems like the controlling, newer ownership stake doesn't have the same vision that Jack Guarneri had. Right. And my guess is there's probably behind the scenes some conflict between those two positions, but it looks like the new ownership's winning out. Because a lot of these, like, Jack Wizzle promises, like, there would be no play field differences between models. They dropped that. Right. And then there was the move to Chicago, away from New Jersey, which Jackson, New Jersey, seemed a little odd. Also seemed odd that they didn't start in Chicago from the get-go. So, you know, there was a shift there. And I just, all that sort of stuff, I wonder. It's always been Jack that's been talking up like the two to three games a year. And I don't know if the new owners have that philosophy or not. I don't think they need that new philosophy. I think, especially the fact of talking it up and never succeeding, just hurts the company more. Right, right. That's the thing. It's when you miss your own self-imposed deadlines, rules, whatever, that the embarrassment comes.
    28:44
    And I get it. There have been incredible confounding factors since 2020 that easily impact pinball. And they've thrown off all sorts of projections. I mean, Stern was supposed to have Rush announced by now. Right. And it's not. Rumor mill is it's going to announce a couple days after this podcast comes out. But, like, Tuesday. And we'll see. We'll see what happens. That they're still trying to announce in December. Right. But, I mean, the thing is, is Jersey Jack has had issues since its inception. Yes. Not since 2020. No. Making Deadlines has been a massive struggle from how long their very first game was was to the huge amount of delays and redesign almost by committee because of a blowback on the art of Hobbit to let's not forget the Dialed In, which in a way seemed like one of the cleanest executions, but then because it was an original theme, didn't move units very well. And it's still their best game. And then, and I agree. And then Pirates of the Caribbean, which they blew over half a year failing to engineer their triple spinning disc to work after they went out there and said this is what you're going to have. And they took it away, took away the opening and closing chest. People backed out. And then it became a popular game after they only made 1,000 units and dropped the run. The two, Wonka, which, again, just didn't live up to hype, though a lot of people like it as a shooter. I think it's a defensively playing game. It's my second favorite. I'm in the exact same boat with you. It's my second favorite JVP game. But, you know, there was at that point, it got, again, there were, you know, while I didn't feel it was super delayed, you had all this. Do you remember the rumors? We're going way back prior to the year in 2021. Do you remember right before they dropped it, there was the, it just, like, Ori Boros, people were eating their own tail style of stuff on feeding what this game was going to be. Do you remember the rumors like every ball was going to be a different color and using different materials or something? The game was going to know if the pink ball was in play or the yellow ball was in play. Like how the ceramic ball behaves differently in Twilight Zone, but they're going to do it with four balls. I was like, no, they're not going to put in tungsten balls and stuff. These guys are taking crazy pills. This stuff is nonsense. And, like, the big innovative feature was a subway gobble with a rotating, and I'm like, how is this? It's basically the trunk from Theater of Magic. It's not. It didn't. I'm sure. But it wasn't as fancy as the Theater of Magic trunk because it didn't have, you know, the magnet catch and everything else. Right. Instead of the trunk spinning a portion under the play field spun, but to me, that wasn't innovation. No. It was the same thing. Yeah. Well, a less visually impressive thing. Anyways, we're going on. So, yes. Well, I have to say with Jersey Jackets, I think they've got all the stuff to be like a contender. They could be a contender. They just, they've got to be able to execute on a reasonable timeline, and that's actually defined by them. They need to use their timelines that they can meet. And the thing is, I think what they need to do is, like I said, they need to aim themselves as a high-end boutique, and they need to get a game of the year. Yeah, I do think they need to get a game of the year, because right now it's kind of feeling like American Pinball is doing better than them. You know, honestly, yeah. Honestly, yeah. I will go with that. I think so. Well, let's talk about that then. Let's go into American Pinball. So, American Pinball was kind of looking like maybe they weren't going to have a game out this year. You know, about a year and a half later than when Hot Wheels was announced. Now, Hot Wheels, of course, for those that don't remember, 2020 game, very unfortunate in its timing. Very unfortunate. They got it out to a show, but the show was a small, non-major pinball show, and then boom, pandemic. So people didn't really get to play it. However, I have heard rumor-wise it is, of the three games they had, you know, Houdini, Oktoberfest, and Hot Wheels, it sold the best. And that makes sense. And it does. It does. It was their first time to do a licensed, they've always used non-original themes. You know, Oktoberfest is an existing thing. But now they're required to license it. And this did require a license. Plus, pretty fun game, I thought. I liked the layout and everything. It's simple, but... But the thing is, with the actual license theme and everything else, it has a lot of draw, especially to kits. Yeah. Now, and it was themed very much geared to, hey, let's have a game that operators might actually want to have. And we have one at 403 still. Yeah. So, I mean, it's working in our area.
    33:26
    So Legends of Valhalla was the big thing. They announced essentially just before Expo. And, okay, so this was designed by Riot Games. They basically changed nothing except, like, it had to be updated to work on their P3 Rock system. But they got a game out.
    33:44
    It sold out. The LE sold out so quickly they upped the LE run, which was controversial. Very much so. And I don't know if they've sold out of that new LE run. They've talked about having the standard edition as well. I don't know if they're actually going to need to or will build that. haven't really heard anything since. We tried it. I didn't love it.
    34:05
    Here's the thing. But they got a game. They got a game. It's still better than anything Jersey Jack put out.
    34:10
    Their other big news, I'd say, this year was their announcement of their homebrew contest for next year. Met with mixed reactions. Some people seem excited about it, and some people seem to feel this is like farming out your design while into the latter camp. It does feel that way. They're, hey, homebrewers, come up with a game and show it off at Expo, and if you're worthy with building. The question is, so many homebrews are off of themes that they're never going to get licensing to, so that instantly will take them out of contention. Yes. I mean, if I was going to homebrew a game right now, I would homebrew a game based off something I know will never get the license, but I love. And, I mean, that's the truth. I've talked about it in the past, multiple ideas. But that's where they're going to run into the problem. The only ones you're going to see that are realistically able to win it are either ones that they will take it, they will dump whatever theme, which probably will hurt whatever cool rules were put into it, and they'll re-theme it to something else, or they'll pick something that was an original theme, and then it'll have the same problem of every original theme in pinball in this day and age. Yes, those are fair concerns. I'd say the only real other noteworthy news I've seen out of them was Steve Bowden. They picked this from Deep Root. And we'll be covering Deep Root in a little bit. But, yes, very good for him. And, you know, pretty exciting because he's so likable.
    35:39
    It makes American pinball likable. Yeah, it does. It's that simple. You're the nicest person in pinball. I'm second only to him. And me. No. I'm the nicest person in the podcast. Yeah. Well, some episodes maybe.
    35:55
    No, I'm not. We know I'm not. All right. Let's go ahead and move to our next company, which is Spooky Pinball. Spooky. Okay. Oh, you're welcome. Yeah. So, obviously, their big thing was that they put out Halloween and Ultraman. Those games have been shipping. They've been getting them built and shipped. and so I'd say the big thing about it, besides the new game, there was a bunch of initial huge excitement. As there always is with Spooky. Within the first day, both Ultraman and Halloween were all pre-order committed. As it always does with Spooky. And this was easily their largest run ever. Just the Halloween games alone, I think, were almost more than anything. Yeah, actually, they were more than the Rick and Morty's. I don't remember the exact Rick and Morty count, but that was more. And then you have like the 500 Ultramans on top of it. Same layout, but different art, all of that stuff. However, and we haven't played either of these, but the feedback has, other than some sort of fan support, and different people like different things. That's true. And we are not here to change your mind on what you like or don't like, so let me go ahead and clarify that. But that being said, feedback has been fairly brutal about the quality of the build still. Something that Scrooge has suffered with from America's Most Haunted to the layout choices and the design by committee look of that game to the rule set itself, which I've heard has been getting better, kind of, with the updates. Most of the betterness I've been hearing is this, like, better integration of clips from the movie and stuff, not like, oh, this game is fun now.
    37:44
    They're getting rid of those really dumb static image moving things. I mean, that was, of anything, I'd say that was easily the biggest blowback. Right. The filler animation access that they ran with and the kind of, oh, yeah, this was PowerPoint look that it had. Yeah. Which, and I think a lot of people just coming off of Rick and Morty were just so disappointed with that. But, again, I have not, I don't know anyone, I'm sure there's people, but I've not seen anyone argue, like, this layout is better than Rick and Morty's layout. I haven't seen anybody argue for this game other than a few people who really love the theme and a few people who are amongst the group of people who believe that Spooky can do no wrong. There are a few of those, though. Really, ever since the chipping play fields of TN, that, to me, is always the turning point for them. When they had about 100 units, I think, that were chipping on total nuclear annihilations, and they acted like every other manufacturer and weren't willing to fess up to which numbers were affected and stuff, they lost a lot of luster with the public. Plus, I think, especially once Rick and Morty came out, while they still advertised themselves as a boutique manufacturer, and I think that's a fair label, relatively speaking, They, at this point, should be professional enough that they shouldn't be having these built, like, their build quality, playfield shipping solution aside, which they seem to have mastered. Right. It's like, they seem like they are a couple miles behind everyone else on build quality. Their build quality still, to this day, feels borderline homebrew. Except for I've seen homebrewers with better build quality. And so, I mean, the big change, which I thought was great for this, is finally dropping those IDE connectors and going Molex and stuff, things that didn't require so much glue. Yeah. But still, there's been a lot of feedback that the game is broken a lot. And I don't know if that's because it's so mech-rich, or they don't know what they're doing, or if it's a combination. Right. I don't know. And again, I haven't played it. The images of the layout had me concerned from the get-go. My concern continues to hold true. most, actually I do not know a single high level competitive player that thinks this is a good game. I don't know a single one. There may be one, but I don't know them. Right. And it's just and from what I've heard as well from people monitoring, like Zach my co-host on the Pinball Show, monitoring the market, these games are not like, in a time where it felt like everything pinball, no matter how garbage it is, becomes more valuable than when you bought it. That is not true for Halloween. People have been dumping their pre-order spots, some at a loss. And I know people that have been mentioned. They have this game, and they don't want to sell right now because they will take a loss, and they are hoping something somehow changes that they'll be able to unload it at cost. Wow. And you know what? Maybe it's worth taking that gamble because, yeah, I understand. When you've gotten the habit of, oh, yeah, I can buy Godzilla and I can sell it for as much as I bought it for. It's a very different thing to think, and even though it was only a couple years ago, where anything you opened out of a box you knew to expect, oh, yeah, you're going to lose $500 for opening the box. That's actually not that bad of a loss. But people don't want to take it right now. Then you're like, everything else is worth more. What's wrong with Halloween? And my first thought, to quote from Con Air, would be a lot. it's definitely I would qualify it as a hot mess of a game what sources the rumors swirling around from what few sources I can muster supposedly leadership is different at Spooky now the youngins are in charge on this game and it's kind of showing if those rumors are true it is something that should be very eye-opening to spooky. Because as we were discussing earlier, here's the question. Historically, my stance has been pinball is so hot right now to take a line from Colonel Tavington's character in The Patriot. This will be forgotten.
    42:05
    That was before he burned everyone alive. Will it? Yeah, that's the thing. Will it? Can? Are we at the point where people will go, oh look, here's Spooky, they've got Nightmare on Elm Street or here's Spooky, they've got Friday the 13th I'm not a day one by because I'm worried it's going to be hot garbage or is it going to be FOMO? Because Spooky the thing that I think has been most impressive about Spooky is unlike almost any of these other manufacturers they have completely, rapidly and efficiently leaned into FOMO and have totally exploited it to build their company very successfully.
    42:45
    And so far, it's always worked. The fear of missing out, for those that don't know what FOMO is, the fear of missing out is so high to get into their limited build runs on these games, these licenses, which have, as time has gone by, become more and more attractive to people. I think their license game has really picked up over time as well. We're past the days of Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie. We're into the realms of Rick and Morty and Halloween. but if you get burned on it on a sale will you lose those people in the future and I'm at the point where I think it may become a problem and it's not just like oh Halloween wasn't as good as we wanted it to be it's also spooky as I think wisely increase their build numbers so the FOMO risk I mean look at Halloween I have like a dozen I could pick from right now there's no, I can have it before people are still waiting to get their new inboxes there's no reason for there to be a FOMO on it, these people just have to cast commit so for me I think of it as a multifold thing if Spooky is going to keep increasing their production numbers, obviously that undermines the FOMO because there's more and more games available and you know, even if a game is good it will come up second hand eventually so there's that angle there's the issue with the quality control and or the quality of the game, just the gameplay experience. And then there's Spooky continuing so far to mandate non-refundable deposits on people. And that's not a direction that I feel the end. That's the one thing that I think is the mistake out of any of the strategies. No one else is really doing that at this point. No one sizable outside of maybe LEs. It's like you want to buy a game, you buy a game. When the game's ready, you buy it. But this, you know, locking down for 18 months people with $1,000 plus sort of stuff, like you're a small fry and you don't want to commit your own cash to these builds, I don't know how people are going to keep tolerating it. I don't think so. Especially for a quality like this. When you're starting to have, yes, Rick and Morty went over very well.
    44:59
    But then Rob Zombie was a piece of garbage. Nightmare Castle was okay yeah you know some people like the layout the main thing I always heard about Nightmare Castle was a lot of respect for the rules right we'll touch on that too when you get there we're not looking at anything there is nothing that they have done recently that qualifies as anything that is going to keep that level of interest that's going to keep that day one. The way things are going, unless something big changes with their next release or two, I would not be surprised to see that dropping off. And the question is, how will they handle it once that drop-off starts happening?
    45:49
    I think it's just realistic. I know I remember back when the whole thing occurred between them and Stern over the Godzilla license. Right, right. and all of that anger. They came out, and that's why we knew Stern had the Godzilla license. Right. And they came out, and they really criticized how Stern went in, and their view poached that license away. And I'm glad Stern did, because they could never have put out a good game with that license. I'm going to say, you know, I don't know if they could or couldn't have, because, again, Suki has had good games, but it seems to me it's going to be my hot take. And I like Dallas Cooper okay, so that's kind of the exception, But the success with Spooky had been when Denisey has been involved. And that said, I heard a lot more criticism of his Rick and Morty layout than his TNA layout. Right. And personally, I think TNA is their best game. I do too. But it's also not really a Spooky game. Right. It's like Valhalla. Spooky came in and built it for Denisey. Right. And unlike Rick and Morty, TNA is a game where you spent years refining it and getting it perfect instead of building something under contract on a deadline. The saving grace, though, for Rick and Morty, and where I think there are a number of people that would, even if they acknowledge that TNA is a better player, layout-wise. I don't know if it is or isn't rules-wise. But because of the cooperation of the creator of Rick and Morty, it's very funny. He's got a great asset integration, something that Halloween has struggled with. And, again, that just goes to show, I mean, look at GNR. I don't know anyone who's criticizing the integration of the band with GNR. Oh, no, the integration on GNR is great. So that goes so far. And that was something that was sort of a, that was Spooky's lightning in a bottle, was that integration with, yeah, they had extraordinary cooperation with Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper on those games as well. but just Rick and Morty is so beloved that you know it was sort of this huge exception in that regard yeah I just with Spooky it's yeah there's a lot of questions that I have but the nice thing about it is they are very consistent in terms of being able to put out products so it's a company where I would feel confident buying from like that I'm going to get a game right they're well past that in some ways they almost are more professional than some of the other manufacturers They seem to keep to the schedule a lot better than many of the others. They do. So they have a lot of positives in their favor. But I think that their deposit pre-order approach is completely anachronistic at this stage compared to where the rest of the hobby has gone. Right. Coupled with just the shocking difference in the build quality that we see. And I mean the actual literal putting together of the game. not like they've got great hard coat clear coat formulation again they have wins it's not all that's like a big old cluster right I'm not going to be overly harsh but you know what I mean it's one of those companies where I just like I would rather have Led Zeppelin and that's harsh it's still a better layout even with nothing on it it's still a better layout I can tell that from photos I can tell it from photos. I think the big thing is, for Spooky, is if they could move away from, like you said, their pre-order model. But I think the biggest thing, even if they don't leave the pre-order model, is if they could get that build quality under control. If they could get it to the point where the first thing you do when you get your brand new Spooky in your house and have it set up, isn't open it up and go through and check every connection and make sure the screws are all tight and make sure things are in the right place and not the wrong because, oh, this whole set has been shifted to, you know, one set of holes to the side of where it's supposed to be. And you shouldn't have to do a complete rebuild of your machine before you fireball one. But with Spooky, I've talked to people who the first thing they do with their spooky game is open it up and do a complete go-through of it before they fire it up just because they know there's going to be stuff they've got to adjust.
    50:17
    Yeah, honestly, I think the biggest, and again, this is something spooky won't do, but just like if it was, if I were spooky, I would seriously consider locating the build in the Chicago area so you have access to the worker pool. I think that's the big, I think the struggle is they're in a very remote rural area, and so you're just kind of stuck with what you can get and train, and these people they're bringing in, I don't think have prior manufacturing experience, much less manufacturing pinball experience, because it's a location challenge. It could be. They could even go by if they just got a better, like bring in somebody, which is the hard part, bringing somebody away from Chicago, just to act as a quality control manager. And they've been saying, like this year, they did talk about adding on quality control people. So they're trying to fix it. They are trying to fix it. So kudos to them. They recognize their issue. They know. They're not stupid. And a lot of what they've done, while it has been very conservative in the sense of the growth model, it has been safe, but it's been successful. And so you can't, I mean, they have an incredible success story going on there it's just they are not next level and I would like to see them achieve it I just every time I you know what would be I think it would be really interesting to see and I don't think they faced this as America's most haunted what it would be like for them if they did a run let's say they build let's say the next game is probably the 13th and they say they're going to build 2000 units and they only pre-sell 1500 of them be interesting to see like how do they What do they do to move 500 not pre-sold units? Yeah, that would be interesting. I want to know how it would work.
    52:03
    Because one of the critiques, and I don't mean to spend too much time on it, but one of the critiques I remember hearing from another commentator in the hobby was when they had Jack Danger come in and do the Halloween Ultraman reveal stream. In his opinion, it was the dumbest move they could have done. They had pre-sold all these games. No one or next to no one had yet received them, and it looked bad. It looked bad and it undermined confidence. People saw the lack of assets. People saw they had mechanical issues. And it's like, you've already got everyone's money. Why are you showing a game when it can't even show itself in the best light? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Because you don't need it to sell. So why are you doing it? You've already sold it all. Why do you need to do this? And while I was annoyed that we didn't have access to it at Expo, I totally understood it simply from a perspective. Saying aside the purported issues that Spooky has with the Expo crew that runs it, and why they aren't there at the show, because they're at another show a little bit later, a couple weeks later, is, you know what? They pre-sold all the games. They don't need to show us Halloween. Yeah. They don't. Just like, Zatman brought in a Godzilla LE, which was nice of them, but there was no need. Those were all sold. You don't have to show off an LE. They're gone. Someone needs you to do it, and you don't need to do it. You sold them all.
    53:19
    Congratulations. But thanks for letting me play. Thanks for letting me play, and thanks for all the fish.
    53:25
    So let's go ahead and move on to another company, which some people think is the second largest manufacturer. I think most people think it's the third largest manufacturer, though lately I had no idea where they would fall in the rank, and that would be Chicago Gaming Company.
    53:41
    You want to talk about a company that cannot keep with a production schedule in terms of new releases. we finally, late in this year, got to see the long-known Cactus Canyon remake. This was a surprise to no one. Cactus Canyon was known to be coming out for years at this point. Cactus Canyon? And holy cow, you thought we had to wait forever for Monster Bash remake?
    54:07
    Jeez, I swear they are getting exponentially slower. That's what it feels like. Oh my gosh, I just don't understand. So, anyway, when it was finally formally revealed, and they announced the name a few months ago, and then at Expo in late October is when they finally showed the remake. And I would say there was a lot of excitement on the new feature, the new molded toys and stuff. A lot of people seemed really positive. I mean, it does look better than the original. It does. Coupled with a lot of people, especially on the LE pricing, were really shocked slash pleased with how affordable the LE was compared to other LE games that had been coming out But I feel a lot of us got distracted by the confusion about getting the topper and then rolling out an SE which ended up being the same price as the LE except it's still just the standard edition with a topper. It didn't have any of the other features added in, coupled with the still unknown price to getting the Lyman Sheets Josh Sharp software. But it will be more and it will be extra, including for the LE buyers. Um, again, the game sold out the LEs pretty quick. So there's that, you know, the FOMO still was, FOMO still ruled, just like we saw and discussed with Halloween and Ultraman. FOMO ruled with this as well. But I know there are a lot of people that are uncomfortable with where that might be going, but we don't know enough yet to be sure. You know, the rumors are that the, the enhanced code is still going to be 90s level deep. So if that's true, I think some people will be really happy that it comes down to what the price is. And, you know, rightly or wrongly, people are thinking $1,000 at this point. But that's begging the question about, like, when you're talking non-module P3 games, you're talking a few hundred dollars. So why is this so much more? But, again, we don't know that it's so much more. We don't know anything other than it's coming, like the Dragons. Like the Game of Thrones. The Dragons, they're coming. So, I mean, all the sources I have say that Chicago Gaming's next game is a new licensed non-remake. And that they're done with remakes. For the foreseeable future, they're done with remakes after this. Okay. Which I think is great. But, I mean, I'm really worried because it took them forever to get the remake out. In fact, I heard some of the delay stuff was trying to get some final approvals on it. This is Cactus Canyon. No one cares about this license. It's not an exciting license. It's a Williams license.
    56:42
    So I don't understand why it was so slow. Anyway, I don't understand. I just, I don't know what's going on with Chicago Gaming. They're still really respected from a quality perspective. Their quality is amazing. And I think a lot of the decisions they make with the remakes are really good decisions. But I just, they're so slow. Everyone's so slow now. I feel like we're, they're so slow. I mean, Spooky's turning out games here left and right, and here's Chicago Gaming. They could barely cobble together two prototypes of Show Us. They're like 15 minutes late to their own reveal. Which was terrible. It's so weird. It's so amateur. I just, I'm so confused.
    57:25
    So, I mean, my overall thoughts for 2021 on Chicago Gaming is simply I'm glad they finally got this out. I'm in no way interested in it. I'm not interested in it it's fine, Cactus Canyon is a fine game we'll see what happens with the new code but yeah it doesn't do anything special for me I'm more interested to see what they do going forward, that's where my real interest lies, is what they do and what it turns into now that they are moving out of the realm of being a full time remaker. Yes. So, I think we'll see. Hopefully, we'll see more.
    58:08
    In theory, there's no reason that progress on planning the development, design, the rules for their new game was affected by Cactus Canyon. So, I'm going to go ahead and say, they'd best be having this new game announced. It'd best be in the first half of 2022. And I think I'm being pretty generous saying, you have until July.
    58:28
    Do not fail me. because you know I get to set all these things I'm the arbiter I think if they were smart they would drop it in 22 I think the reality of what we've seen from Chicago Gaming 23 I think we might get announcements in 22 I don't think we'll see the game until 23 I think that they will announce it in 2022 and I think if they were smart it's announced by or at TPF No, I think that would be the... That's what they should do. I do think that they're going to get some out by the end of the year. I don't know.
    59:10
    I mean, we'll see. It sounded like they were claiming really aggressive CCR production levels. Yeah, but JGP had claimed really aggressive stuff, too. Everybody claims... They can claim all they want, but none of them have shown us the reality. None of them have shown us that they can actually do what they're claiming.
    59:35
    Historically, I've always associated Chicago Gaming with missing expected, though they've done better than others about making promises, but missing my expected deadlines for revealing, releasing new games. But normally their production rates haven't been, now again, the pandemic has complicated stuff. So in this case, it may be true and they were overly aggressive. But I'd like to think they have a pretty good sense of their capabilities on their build rate versus JJP, which should have a good sense of its capabilities and then seems unable.
    60:08
    But we're not going to go back on that. So anyway, so that's Chicago gaming. So let's go across the great waters of the Pacific and talk about Hoggis Pinball, a name which always makes me think it's supposed to be based in Scotland, but it's in Australia. Yeah. Okay, so 2022 should be an interesting year for Haggis. 2021 was supposed to be an interesting year for Haggis. They have continued to put out Kelts games. They have, as I've last seen, been building all the way through the end of this year, Kelts games. Their big announcement was, hey, they're now in the remake game, just like Chicago Gaming. That's how I have them, just after Chicago Gaming here. Now, there in the remake game, too, Fathom revisited an interesting level of excitement. The price, I assume, put a lot of people off. This was a game that was not set to sell out the enhanced editions by the deadline. My understanding, and my understandings are very good in this case, is there were some distributors that picked up a number of these games to go ahead and sell it out, but they weren't going to make it otherwise. A sellout. Yeah. Which it didn't have to be a sellout. Right. But, you know, they were able to say, hey, we sold all these units. I'm like, yeah, but I know how you did it. But that's okay. They're a newer manufacturer. Here's the thing.
    61:27
    Obviously, like many manufacturers, not making the deadlines. No. These games were supposed to start getting built in the summer and still haven't started yet. So they're now talking, I think, January. And they've been building Celts in the meantime. The reaction to this news, I want to get your take, but let me go ahead and share some pin sides. So the pin side reaction is interesting because Haggis was given, in my opinion, quite a pass by a lot of people initially. However, at this point, there are some people that are kind of in that fan category, that things we've seen out of Multimorphic and out of Spooky, The smaller manufacturers get these fans that are kind of like, we've got to hype them up. You know, too small to allow to fail. That's kind of how I feel, it seems, rightly or wrongly.
    62:17
    But Haggis had kind of built a reputation on doing a lot of updates. Overly, I think, updating. At some points, they were putting out videos weekly. Then when the updates flow, people get suspicious. And then there have been lately more people going, what's going on with Haggis? There's problems. Now, some of them may be overreacting because, again, almost everyone's behind because of the pandemic. But that being said, much like Highway Pinball, which built some cred by running not very many full throttles and then running the issues on Alien, some people are going, you know, not very many Celts actually were sold. Is this company really – is it really proven just because it turned out a few games? Like, not everyone's a spooky where they turn out 150 of something and there weren't 150 Celts sold. either. So, anyway, your thoughts, Tony. Because that's all the news that I have on Haggis. I always forget they exist. Well, we've not seen any of their game in the flesh. Right. And, I mean, a Fathom remake is... It's nothing but... Best of luck. I don't expect anything from them at all. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious about the enhanced version's rules. Martin Robbins pinball podcaster he's over on Final Round now but he was best known for head to head back in the day we've had him on our show before he worked for Haggis he's doing those he's with the company now I think he's weighed in a little bit on Kelt's Rules but I think Fathom was the one he's really been developing obviously he believes in the company that said Steve Bowden worked for Deep Root and what does that mean? sort of thing I'm not overly concerned at this point because I don't think these delays are excessive in comparison to other manufacturers we've seen. I think it's on par. But they are new, and I'm not going to just defaultly think that everyone gets the benefit of the doubt on bootstrapping their way to victory because we've seen so many fail at it. Right.
    64:22
    There are plenty of people that claim to have a strong will that break on the wheel. and the pinball wheel apparently breaks a lot of people. It does. So personally, I'm not concerned at this point. I'm also not really in the market for anything that they're dealing with. They're not big enough to be concerned about it. No, no. If they vanish, they vanish. My biggest critique, I guess, of Haggis isn't the delay. I think the decision to only offer the enhanced software to the enhanced edition of Fathom was a mistake. Yes. They should have had it as an add-on option for those that end up buying the classic version, But there may be logistical reasons that they couldn't. I don't know. But anyway.
    65:04
    So let's go ahead and transition over to Multimorphic and their P3 platform. Now, they've actually had a number of games come out over the last 12 months. There was the Shoot and Scoot game, which technically came out in late December of 2020. Then Silver Falls, that's Nick Baldrige's game. and then their mainline add-on for, it was for the other CCR, the Cosmic Cart Racing module, I believe, for Sorcerer's Apprentice, which we got to play along with Heist, which was a 2020 game, but we hadn't played it until this year at Expo.
    65:39
    So the thing is, the only one of these games that's come out of there is West Sorcerer's Apprentice and I didn't really like it. I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it either. I understood what they were going for with kind of this RPG mechanic, and maybe that works better in a home environment, which, again, is kind of, I mean, that's what P3 is focused on is a home experience. That's my view of them. What were your thoughts? Because you played it. I played it. It was all right. I know we talked about it just a few episodes ago.
    66:11
    Once again, it fell into the nothing that I would buy, no reason I would buy a P3 for. The only thing that did, I mean, a heist was very enjoyable. Heist is a reason to get a P3. Sure.
    66:25
    The other stuff is just add-ons, and I don't think any of the other add-ons are enough. There is nothing that continues to be the issue. There's nothing that makes me want to buy this system. And I felt, and I heard they picked up sales from their showing at Expo, and I think that makes sense as more and more people get to experience heists. The thing for me is, and actually I just heard an interview with Jerry, the man behind Multimorphics P3 on Final Round podcast, actually, was to talk about them, and this makes sense. I mean, the whole structure of this makes sense, about it being about you wanting to keep the people who buy the system owning the system. You know, the rest of the manufacturers don't really care in terms of after support in the sense of, you know, people are going to flip the game and move on and get a new game. With P3, ideally, you keep the platform and you just keep adding more and more and more to it. And we've discussed ad nauseum about the issues with, you know, you can't really unload a module easily because the market share of just for a module is so small because it's really only existing P3 on it. Right. All that whiny stuff that we won't need to go into. The thing, though, that I've wondered is, I think it's to P3's advantage that pin prices from the traditional manufacturers have continued to go up and up in price while P3 has held the line. That is very true. So that's been helpful. But the flip side is, with all those other ones, it's also very, and there's no reason why this couldn't work with P3 also. But currently, like, most people don't have a lot of qualms about going, dropping over $10,000 for a Godzilla LE, knowing that they can sell it and then buy another game later. Right. At no loss. Yeah. And that's the big thing that the other, I mean, okay, yeah, Halloween, no, you ain't going to get that. But you buy a Mandalorian Pro, you're not going to lose money on the Mandalorian Pro in the current market. So you could sell that and buy another pinball machine, bring it in, sell that, bring it in. And that demand, because it's always the full game, it's always there with you. I'm using air quotes. It's easy to move in and out of traditional pinball for the typical pinhead. Once you're in, you always have the ability until you get to a point where it's like this game is permanent collection. Then suddenly you have to generate the funding to get another game. Right. And, of course, the big challenge as costs go up and up and up is the amount of cash that you tie up in inventory. Correct. That's where there is an issue and where I know some of my collector friends, they're too short-sighted to see that. They just see it as, oh, well, the value is still there, so the price of the game is irrelevant. It's like you're close in the sense that you're not losing money, but you're wrong in the sense that it costs way more now. If you were to get into, let's say you wanted to buy five new in-box games in 2015 and you wanted to buy five new in-box games now, the amount of cash outlay you need now is significantly, significantly way more. And your paycheck is not kept up in the same inflation rate the pens have gone up in. That's the thing. That's what I try and emphasize. And I think most people get it. It's not that hard to understand conceptually if you think about it in terms of other pocketbook issues. the thing with P3 and we didn't cover this is new news they have announced that now Bowen Karens who was doing rules for Spooky is now with them as is Colin McAlpine another top level player and we've seen good rules coming out of top level players so this is all good provided they can put out a thing that anybody cares about And that's where the licensed theme comes up. And again, that got discussed on that final round episode. This is, and here's my, I don't think this is a hot take, so here's my take. They teased that licensed game way too early. I don't know if they thought it would be out by now or not, but I mean, setting aside the confusion people had between Silver Falls and Sorcerer's Apprentice being that game. Yeah. Silver Falls because Nick ended up getting Scott Denisey to do the sound for his game, and Scott's confirmed for doing the sound on the licensed game, so people conflated the two. And then Sorcerer's Apprentice because it has a name that shares the name or a similar name with a licensed Disney property, even though P3 did try and make it clear this was not the licensed one. Right. Still, people just heard the name and they just made assumptions. So it's not all their fault. No, but they shouldn't have. The way it is their fault is they teased the game and it wasn't the next game to come out. That's the problem. And I get it. Like, Silver Falls was a third-party development. That's Nick's game. They just sell it on their platform. So I get, like, they can't control when Nick was ready to put his game out, but they could control when Sorcerer's Apprentice was. Right. And see, that's one thing that people fault Stern for is their, oh, the biggest secret in pinball type stuff. they don't make an official announcement until they're showing you the bloody game.
    71:38
    And I think that is something that would help a lot of these other groups. You know, I'll disagree. If the models stayed exactly the same, I suppose, but I really don't understand why any of them continue to play this game. Video games announce their licenses years ahead of time. I don't know why Stern and the rest of them don't just play this, oh, the next game's a license that... No, just come out and say, guess what? It's Rush, and then it's James Bond, and then it's Back to the Future. Boom, there's your next year's games. Travis Murray has advocated this for doing like a stern day and then dropping just like the next year's games. I would even go further and say, drop all the licenses that you know. The argument that the line, people are going to hold off on buying because they're waiting for stuff, they're doing it off the rumors anyway. Right. The line will be successful and move as long as the game is good. Right, and then also, I mean, I can see that you also have the point where people are doing the whole, well, I put in my thing for Mando, but my Mando hasn't come yet, and now Godzilla's out, so I'm shifting to Godzilla because it's a better game. Sure. Well, I mean, that's the kind of thing. Yeah, imagine if the license were known. I bet a bunch of people have been like, okay, let's say you knew Led Zeppelin, Jurassic Park, The Pin, Mandalorian, and Godzilla. you can see a lot of people going off the list and going, okay, I like Led Zeppelin as a fan, and I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to get on my distributors list for The Mandalorian when it drops. They go and they buy The Mandalorian. They love it. Then Godzilla comes out, and they're like, this is a better game. Now I'm going to sell The Mandalorian. I'm going to also buy this. Where did Stern lose in any of that? They didn't. Yeah. See, I think the important thing there that makes that better than what we're looking at with what we're looking at P3 is, when they do say it they show you something immediately.
    73:34
    And I think even in this case they'd be better if they just said it instead of saying we have a license and then not say anything else. Let's approach it from remember we're in the current FOMO everyone desperate for stuff environment. So rather than selling units off of Heist, which is a very fun game in my view. It is. Let's say you knew that sometime in 2022, P3 will be releasing The Legend of Zelda. Let's say that's what they've got. I don't know what they've got. All I know is that Jerry has repeatedly said that it is a grail theme to some of the people who are working on it. But grail themes for a slap, the people in pinball are insane. Well, yes. But I could envision The Legend of Zelda being such a grail. So let's say that how many units would he sell before were the games even ready, if we knew what the license was. Because people wouldn't want to wait once it's ready. They'd want to buy the module and get going. Right. I see no downside. I mean, if it's a new module, they'd still have to wait for the module, but they'd already have the system. And currently, well, I shouldn't say currently. The last I heard, people ordering were having to wait three months to get their P3 system. So if you're really into the theme, you probably want to get your order in now. But if you don't know the theme, who's going to order off of that? off of a mystery. I think it's a valid point. So that's where I'm like, to me, in my non-business, mere simpleton, non-profit perspective, it's like, I just, I don't get the deal. Unless there's some reason you might still lose the license, which if you've got a signed agreement, you wouldn't. Right. Unless it's written in the license. And again, I don't know why they, because everything else, again, everything else I'm familiar with, it's just like stuff just come, You know, people can say it. Right. The thing would be they might not be able to show you any assets, but you just need to know the name. Don't forget, Deep Root cultivated a lot of interest when they just said, hey, you guys. They didn't even say Goonies. They said, hey, you guys. Yep. That's a dream team for some people. Sure.
    75:40
    And so, you know, that's the one thing. I just think they teased it way too early. And maybe they didn't mean for it to take this long to come out.
    75:50
    But it's confused people. which I don't think is healthy and it may be people's fault but I don't think you get very far as fun as it is in pinball by just saying well people need to be less dumb if you're selling stuff. They didn't say that but I'm sorry.
    76:05
    I've known supporters who've been like well they clearly said that Sorcerer's Apprentice isn't the licensed game. Why are people stupid? I'm like it's good P3's not posting that on their Facebook because going around telling your customers that you're too stupid to understand our marketing strategy is a bad look. And also So just because it says, well, they said when they made the announcement that it's not the licensed thing, doesn't mean the people who hear about the game later heard that announcement. A lot of this is coming up on forums and stuff. That's where it's coming up. All right, so Dutch Pinball. Not much to say.
    76:42
    Basically, I listen to Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcasts, and one of the hosts, Jonathan, is friends with one of the guys behind Dutch Pinball. So occasionally he has updates. There's basically been nothing. It sounds like they are still making big Lebowskis. It sounds like the sales have way slowed. And from what little I've been able to tell via Pinside, there are a whole lot of preorderers who are still waiting. Because, you know, they have to sell X number of games before they issue one to a preorderer. Wasn't it like 10 to 1 or 5 to 1 or something like that? You know, I think originally they were shooting for 3 to 4 to 1. And it sounded more like 5 to 1 at this day. But, again, that's all alleged by my – don't quote me on that. I'm not saying that's what the company said. And it's dead. You could say that's what I said, but don't hold the company to it. I'm not saying I know for sure. My mind doesn't. I don't care about them enough to double check. I'm sorry. I don't. Here's the thing. They are attempting to make right their issues. Sure. That's cool. I hope they can finish and successfully make right all the people that they screwed. and I hope they go away. Yeah, that's the, I mean, we've discussed it in our historic episodes a number of times when this was more front page style news, but in my mind, Dutch Pinball shouldn't be a manufacturer anymore. At best, wrap up TBL and then shut down. You know, don't bankrupt but go out of business. In a lot of ways, personally, I felt that bankruptcy and pennies on the dollar might have been the better solution. I mean, how many years has it really worked? To me, it's not a victory if you had to wait a decade to get your game. You're like, I got my game. I'm like, yeah, well, if you had your money and you were able, even if you only got like 80% of it back and you were able to throw it in an index fund, how much more money would you have than the value of that TV? Right. That's where I'm kind of at with it. And I've been at that for quite a while. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't think, anyway, it is what it is. Speaking of other is what it is companies, so Pinball Brothers. Oh, yeah, they exist. Yeah, they exist. They were tied to Highway Pinball in some capacity, and they now run the Alien license.
    78:49
    Not a whole lot of news on that front. They had a limited, I think they called it the LV model. They finally just recently revealed that. They've been shipping Alien pins. People are getting them. There are still build issues, like Highway had build issues. I hear less build issues, but I don't have a good scientific method. They took steps to make it more stable, but there are still some high mechanical fail points that exist. So there's that. And then, of course, we don't have a lot of information, but they did tease the Queen license. Like they had that pop-up shop in England, I think in London, and it had a non-playable game. So there will be more from them, I think, in 2022. 2021 has basically seemed like a mostly keep your head down, turn out aliens at a rate that isn't great but isn't terrible and people have some concerns but ultimately it's going better than Highway so yay.
    79:48
    Yeah, they're still exist. We'll see. Given how they were able to kind of get a lot of the assets out before Highway was kind of bankrupted at the time, this was when I was still idealistic and naive, more naive than I am now, and thought that people would remember, have the member berries and be like, we will punish companies that deliberately salvage stuff and cost the real creditors money. And no. No, no. This is where, after seeing stuff like that, I get where you come from, where you're like, you wouldn't be surprised if some company hires John Trudeau. Oh, I expect it. And y'all being the listeners actually tolerate that and buy games. I expect it. I 100% expect it. So it's stuff like this sort of short-term memory. You know, as long as I get what I want, you know, put up a... I got mine. Yes, I got mine. And I... That's... It's... Yeah. I'm not here to be overly judgmental, but the I got mine stuff gets a little tedious because there's a lot of bad behavior that people give a pass on. And I was never keen on how highway was set. Like, the way they... Yeah, the way... The way they finagled all the assets I thought was super sus. The way the assets got moved strategically... I thought it was super sus, yeah. Exactly within the window that's allowed to do under the rules. You want a cruel but modern analogy? Purdue. The opioids. That's what it reminds me of. I can see that. And how the Sackler family, oh, how convenient, took all the money away. And then now Purdue Pharma can't pay for any claims. And here's the bankruptcy stuff and all that. And it's like, where'd all their money go from selling opioids? Oh, yeah. The owners funneled it out well before the time frames could go back and kick in. How convenient.
    81:36
    Anyway, I'm whining. So let's end with the final manufacturer I have on the list, Deep Root. No, James.
    81:46
    This was the manufacturer drama story of the year. I know we have talked at great length. Exhaustively. Exhaustively about them. And during this episode, we talked about and given a lot of critiques on a lot of the manufacturers. Yes. But holy cow. I have never seen as spectacular an implosion as we have seen with Deep Root And you deserve credit Tony because you have been one of the most skeptical people about Deep Root In fact, you and Scott over with Loser Kid were like the two most skeptical people.
    82:23
    I mean, I was giving Deep Root more of a pass than you. You were always like, ain't going to happen, never going to happen. None of this makes sense. For me, people wonder, why were you more right than me? It doesn't happen. Well, obviously it does. But the thing with me with Deep Root was always that the numbers didn't work for me, like the burn cash rate and all that. I just assumed Robert was lying about that. That was the difference. I thought when he was saying we're spending $750,000 a month on staff, I'm like, no, you just said that to be boastful. you're not actually spending that much because that would be millions of dollars and you're not making anything it's hyperbole you're lying I'm not lying so aggressive you're using hyperbole like the hammer test you're using a little bit of hyperbole for hype you're not really spending that much because that would be crazy it would be crazy to spend that much money on well, looking at what the FTC Gary's going to exchange a commission and they're doing a civil suit over where the money came from. But based off of the transfers and such and that, it's like, no, I guess he wasn't lying. I guess he really was spending that much money, millions of dollars to turn out nothing. Nothing. I think I read that. I think Ben Heck claimed that when Spooky got its start with America's Most Haunted, it was $40,000 was what they committed.
    83:52
    That's. and to be successful as a company, they needed to sell 100 games. That was the target. They sold 150, and they set that as a limit. Ultimately. They didn't originally have a limit, as I recall. But, so, I mean, again, with Deep Root, what we've been seeing, especially in the latter part of the year, the company at the start of the year had been putting out almost monthly updates because Raza, Retro Atomic Zombie Adventurelands, was supposed to be out this year. It was supposed to be out before this year, but it was supposed to be out this year. They take in some pre-order money. There were things about the start of the year we were hearing about UL certification and issues with getting certain parts and things. And then the next thing you know, there are no more updates, and this SEC thing is discovered, and no one's there anymore, and it all falls apart. All sorts of accusations that the SEC has regarding the taking of investment funds that were supposed to go in certain types of investments and being poured into the various subsidiaries under Deep Root, including Deep Root Pinball. It is, well, to some, perhaps not the most dramatic of all the pinball failures we've heard about. To me, it is the most, and it easily is, the most shocking waste of money. Yes. And when you think about how much was poured into, and we're seeing, you know, we've talked about the Blueberry Johnson handle individual on Pinside and the information he shared from former employees, the sheer magnitude of waste. Right. And meddling by management on decisions they didn't understand. In and of itself, setting aside the whole SEC's legal concerns, which are very serious, just the pinball meddling and the lack of understanding. I've actually seen people that Blueberry has stared from saying that, like, John Papatou, J-Pop was one of the sane voices in the company saying things were going, were way out of scope. And he was being ignored. How bad is that? That is fascinating. With J-Pop. That is fascinating. He's one of the people who's like on the level. And you would hope after Zidware and what happened with him in American Pinball that he would be like, I know what doesn't work anymore. You would really hope that. I mean, you would more hope that he would not be involved in the hobby anymore. You would hope. You would hope that he would have learned some stuff. But a company where you would hear that claims, allegedly that Robert would go in and just change stuff and start making demands that weren't based in reality and all of a sudden shifts would happen to happen and how much delay happened because I don't think it surprised a lot of people but the pin bar was this huge barrier and it put them so far behind on things and then the thought that he had hoped that they were going to sell like a thousand units of Raza was the goal and it wasn't even nearly 200 and all the money they were spending on designers and the animation studio. And Dennis Nordman coming out and saying he didn't even have an engineer. And one of the things with the deep, you know, bringing the deep six down and then they not having any manufacturing capabilities yet established. And it was like, it's wow. Just wow. Here's the thing. Fascinating. this whole deep root drama thing is going to make an awesome, like 45 minute YouTube deep dive documentary from some creator in the next few years, where they just do the complete and utter run of it all and dive into it. And once we get more of the background information, once the SEC stuff starts rolling up, it's going to just turn into this amazing long-form thing that I cannot wait to watch. I've already actually come up with the title of the series. Lula Deep.
    87:55
    Lula Deep. So, people can go back and hear all the details, obviously, on our prior episodes, was talking about Deep Root. Many of the times I incorporated Deep Root into the title, so they're easy to find on SoundCloud.
    88:10
    So just to wrap up our year-end review on pinball, just some other highlights. I wanted to throw out a couple. One of the positive highlights for me was we finally saw the resumption of the IFPA points, which kind of marked the formal resumption of the tournament scene. So locally, we've been playing pinball again. Not this month, unfortunately. No, no, but just we had one cancellation of the event, and then we had one that I had to miss. But that was on me.
    88:39
    But overall, it's been nice. It's somewhat of a sense of normalcy, seeing our pinball friends in the area again. That's been really nice. That's been real good. And then Expo. You and I hadn't gone to a show since 2019, and so we went to Expo. And in my opinion, the actual Expo itself was hot garbage. I actually heard on another podcast Josh Sharp from Raw Thrills software co-creator of the Cactus Gang remake actually say to someone not to listen to me and my statements about Expo Josh probably doesn't listen to this but if you're listening Josh you weren't even at Expo this year you don't know you don't know what I saw you don't know here's the thing we had fun at Expo Yes. It was great to meet up with friends and talk to people that we'd never talked to before or that we hadn't talked to in several years in person. It was great to get together with fans.
    89:40
    The actual mechanics and existence of the show wasn't that great. And like another Kansas City-based fan said when we were talking about the show afterwards, it probably would have been more fun overall just to set up a big group friend run to Chicago than to have actually burned the kind of time that was burned at Expo just because you could hang out with your friends and do fun stuff around Chicago that was enjoyable. Yes. It was basically a good excuse for a lot of people from around the country to get together and then leave the Expo location and actually have fun. Yes. I do not regret going and doing not a bit but I'm not planning to do it in 2022 I'll do TPF instead I will say that if we get to if we're at a point where I can comfortably do two shows in a year which this obviously isn't because it's two separate years but if I got to a point where I could do two shows in a year easily Expo would not be on that list I'd find something new I'd want to try a different show as well I agree and I don't know did you have any other year end review highlights you wanted to hit on that we didn't talk about no okay no I think we did really good I think so before we move on to video games let me wrap up Guy the Rumor Corner because people don't people love the rumors did you know that we are the number one free podcast source of rumors I just naturally assumed well I would naturally assume as well But apparently, this was like a title that's now been bestowed on us by me. So here's one. Do we get crowns? Maybe. And we might be the first source of this for those that can't read because it's been on Pennside. But I just recently saw it. So I'm going to share it here. There is now a rumor going around that Jersey Jack Pinball has the license to do The Godfather and that Eric Menier will be designer on it. That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm reading. They can't all be super exclusive rumors, folks. Sometimes I have to turn to the pen side. Sometimes I use my spies and informants. Sometimes I go with the most crazy tales I hear across the ocean. You know, Harry Potter and Home Pin. And sometimes it's what I read from an Australian posting on pen side. It just depends. It just depends on the sources. It's wherever you get. Rumors is as rumors does. That's right. Are you not rumor-tained? We are rumor-tained. Oh, God. Godfather's such a terrible thing. Oh, it's so bad. I probably re-watch Godfather 1 and 2 about every 12 to 18 months. I really enjoy those movies. But they are dramas, and they're not fast-paced. There's not a lot of action in either of them. Obviously, you wouldn't do Godfather 3 because it's a terrible movie.
    92:33
    And so because of that, I think you were mentioning earlier, and I've seen this on Pinside as well, so you definitely are not alone in this company, thinking a gangster-style movie like Scarface would make a lot more sense. Oh, it would totally make more sense. And actually, there are a number of Martin Scorsese mobster movies, like The Departed or whatever, that would be, I think, work a lot better than Godfellas. Goodfellas. Goodfellas would be excellent. So, yeah, Godfather is an iconic, incredibly great film. And if you haven't seen Godfather or Godfather 2, I really do recommend it. Even if you're not into dramas, but as a pinball theme, I wouldn't go this way. It seems like a terrible pinball. Like, with all our rumors, we don't know how true this rumor is. But it is a rumor, and it is our obligation to show it to you in the score. If there's a rumor that is true, that means one of the upcoming pinball slots from JJP, which, given their current rate of putting games out, means in 24 or 25, it's going to be Godfather. Which means they're not going to get another game out until, like, 27, and then they'll probably have picked something dumb like Ace Ventura.
    93:45
    That actually might not be terrible. The Who is the Horror. That's what they can play during the match sequence because you drained. Oh, gods, that would be good. Do not go in there.
    93:59
    I think you need to do both. There needs to be a mode where you birth yourself out of the rhino. Where you birth yourself out of the rhino. That could be a mech. You slam balls into a rhino's butt to build up your multi-ball, and then it bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop out. There we go. I already half-designed it for you. I designed this special mech. It will be a brand-new mech. Nobody has ever given an anal exam to a rhino and then multi-balled out of it. Yeah. It's a brand-new mech. There you go. That one, I just put my name somewhere on the design team. And I'll be good.
    94:40
    That would be fun. I look forward to it. So, video games. Tony. Okay. We're done with pinball.
    94:48
    End of the year video games. It was a crap year. Lots of bad stuff happened. I'm not even going to talk about it. We're going to go. I've got a few interesting little notes from the last couple weeks. And then I thought we would just talk about the games we've played and what we've enjoyed. So, for our interesting notes first, in what I think is very humorous, the Hugo Awards, those are the literary awards for science fiction and fantasy. Yeah, they've been around a long time. Yeah. They created a one-off category this year specifically for video games and are considering making it a full-time category. Oh. That they put an award for. Okay. Interesting. I was surprised when I heard from it the nominees this year were Hades, Animal Crossing New Horizons Spiritfarer, Final Fantasy 7 Remake The Last of Us Part 2 and Blazeball and Hades won and I think that makes sense it was a great game with an interesting story the writing and I'm wondering if that's what they're judging yeah I don't know because even when I went to their website they did not say how they decided It's really interesting how it tells the story. Yeah.
    96:04
    To me, from the story point of view, it would obviously have been Hades or Last of Us Part II. But I thought it was interesting for something like that to have added a video game category. So we'll see if it becomes a permanent edition or if it's just a one-off, how that goes. I was interested to notice that when I was going through their award winners, I haven't read a single book in their best book of the year nominees and that's unusual because normally I've read at least two so that was weird for me Amazon's New World's MMO that started so strong with a huge opening spike they had almost a million concurrent within a week or so of starting up has dropped down to a point where they're merging servers and I'm not talking like they're merging servers like we're just going to merge a couple servers here they're merging hundreds of servers to bring their player counts up now one interesting thing is the way Amazon New Worlds worked is they aimed for a server player count of around a thousand so they had lots of small servers but some of their servers are so low on people they are combining seven servers to get a player count back up to 1,000.
    97:30
    And this combination has, this merger is done at this point. They did it last week. But yeah, they were merging, sometimes they were merging just two servers, but when I was going through the merge list, there were lists of up to seven servers to make into a single server to get it to a player count of near 1,000. That is their goal. the game has also dropped on Steam from mostly positive to mixed so the fall is continuing to be quick ouch for a game that came out in like October late September early October yeah it wasn't that long ago that you first brought it up yeah now in the exact opposite corner Square Enix for the second time this year has ceased selling Final Fantasy XIV and they have closed new player signups and new character creation because their servers are so overcrowded with the release of the Endwalker expansion. Previously, when they'd done this over the summer, it was because when the WoW collapse happened and so many people transitioned. Yeah, Surge from WoW to Final Fantasy XIV. They had to do that for a short period of time, and now they're doing it again until they get their servers brought back up and build up to a point where they can handle the current surges.
    99:03
    Also, on an interesting bit, Tencent, the world's largest gaming company, bought Turtle Rock Studios, makers of Back 4 Blood, which is the Left 4 Dead. Yep, spiritual successor, yeah. And so they're 100% owned by Tencent now. But what's interesting also is, and where I initially had found out about this, was because Turtle Rock finally released a patch that is working on their biggest complaint about Back 4 Blood, which is the fact that even if you're playing alone with bots, you had to be fully online. Yep, I remember that. That's like the only criticism I've heard. Yeah, and they're finally fixing that. You don't have to have an internet connection for solo play anymore. Twitch added new features for when you unsubscribe from somebody you follow that allows you to say why you unsubscribed.
    100:02
    Or like if you just do a one-month manual subscription, it drops. It'll just say, hey, manual subscription. but it just gives content creators an ability to look to see if there was something that they did or some specific reason why they have a sudden surge are these like radio dial options because if it's putting write in it might be I don't know I hate analyzing write ins it's frustrating from the way they listed it it's more like the unsubscribe buttons oh spam where there's like you choose unsubscribe and there's like five different things and it falls into one of those is how it sounds like. And they set it so it's not, as a creator, you have to search for it. It's not just thrown in your face because that was the big concern is that people didn't want to deal with seeing why people were unsubscribing all the time because for some people that would be hurtful. So they chose to put it where it's there for the content creators if they choose to look it up, but they don't have to see it. Okay, wow.
    101:06
    And what I think is the most interesting of everything, Minecraft hit one trillion views on YouTube this year. Wow, that's a lot of views. And in celebration for that, YouTube created a special page just going over the numbers and talking about it. I included a link in the show notes for you that will take you to the little page and they just show you the trends and talk about the hours and the amount of time And it's like, if you were to watch like a minute of every video, it would be like 30,000 years.
    101:46
    Well, I'll put it on to you. It'll be fine. But just, it's kind of interesting because they've got a, I don't know, a graph that shows the changing over the years trends in YouTube Minecraft videos. from just like normal playthroughs to like super hard versions and speed runs. And the big ones, which are like RP and there's a lot of people out there who use Minecraft as the background to build and do animations where they're just telling like entire stories, where they're using my Minecraft server as just the world, but they're playing characters and telling stories almost like it was a TV show. Okay.
    102:37
    Which I know. Red versus blue style. Yeah. From the old Halo days. Right. And I know they get a ton of views just from my household because both of my daughters watch the crap out of a couple of those creators.
    102:51
    So one interesting thing I saw was that it took eight years for Minecraft to generate its first 500 billion views. It generated its second 500 billion in two. it has been perhaps the most incredible video game success story I bet Microsoft is really glad they bought it oh yeah and they bought it and I remember when that buyout happened and it was for so much money and people were like but Minecraft is over it's done why would they spend $2 billion on this that it's so simple and the graphics are I thought it was overpaid at the time. I didn't think much else. But it was a great buy. It was a wonderful buy. It's been super successful. It's just gotten bigger and more popular.
    103:45
    So, yeah, good on Microsoft. So, after that, I thought we'd just talk about a little bit some of the games we've played this year, what we've liked, what we've not liked. My year has had a lot of I guess I want to call them older games, call them repeat games, games that I've played in years past that have been a hard core of what I've been playing, like Battletech from Harebrained Studios. My play time is up over 800 hours now. I know I was under 700 when this year started. I think I was in like the 650s when the year started.
    104:34
    I played several other pretty good-sized games, specifically Project Wingman when it came out. I played a lot of Project Wingman, which is an indie Ace Combat game. Okay.
    104:57
    That was quite enjoyable end of the year. Hades, I've played Hades a lot more this year, continuing it.
    105:07
    But for the most part, it's been Battletech and Battletech-related games. And Final Fantasy XIV, which ate six months of my life before I took a break. Because I started Final Fantasy XIV in late May, just ahead of the surge. the big surge that happened I got in just as that was rolling before it really got going and I'm still subscribed and I've still been playing not as hardcore as I was there for those first five months but it's definitely going to be the game that I would qualify as the game I probably played the most this year that makes sense given how heavy you were hitting it there Because I was playing it just like continuously until like October when I started playing other games. So.
    106:02
    Yeah, I was looking over my list here to see kind of what I had done over the last year. And as usual, I didn't play a whole high volume of games really. The big change for me this year is historically I used to put in quite a bit of time doing my arcade modes weekly in Overwatch. Kind of faded that out after about halfway through this year because they just haven't been putting out new content. Right. So other than like currently they're doing their winter event, I'll come in and do the winter event. But outside of the events, I think I played one competitive season. I've distanced myself from that because I just – I need some new stuff to it. I still like it, but I need some new stuff to it to really make me want to spend that time. I kind of opened the year, did late last year, early this year, once I got that new Xbox Series X, which is what Zach got me for Christmas last year, which was very kind of him. doing the Gears, finished Gears 4 and played Gears 5 to kind of get caught up on that story.
    106:57
    As I recall, wasn't that the one where you started Gears 5? Because I forgot. Because I'm bad with numbers. And so a couple games that kind of surprised me, I played a rhythm game called Arrow, which was kind of with an EDM style electronic music. And that was sort of interesting as a time killer. I got about halfway through it before I moved on. I played a Sherlock Holmes crimes and punishment investigation game that was actually quite a bit of fun pretty quick but quite a bit of fun I also really enjoyed Call of Cthulhu which I played before the Sherlock Holmes game similar in terms of doing a lot of investigatory style work but you know in the Cthulhu verse it was a different tone than Sherlock Holmes and then since my birthday since October I've been spending a lot more time with some other games so I've got Hades then. I've put in a ton of time on Hades. It's probably my favorite new game of the year that's new to me that I've been playing. I've been playing a lot of Battlefield 2042. I've slowed up more now lately than I did the first month, but I just played that a couple of days ago. As I noted, I just started Resident Evil Village, so I can't say a whole lot about that yet. I also did some of the multiplayer in Halo Infinite, which as usual is pretty well polished.
    108:13
    Halo's multiplayer is good. It's not my favorite style, But I don't mind jumping in from time to time. So that's kind of where I've been at. So still sort of shooter heavy this year, I would say. Aside from Hades, which in terms of any game I've done, due to the first half, I might still technically have more hours in Overwatch in 2021. But second half, it's Hades easily. Put in way more time in Hades than anything else. Because I can go in and spend 35 minutes on Hades and I can do something else. Right. And it's easy to save and quit out of Hades, though. Right. It's something where you can just walk away from as you get to the point where it's just like, eh, I'm good. Yep. So, no, that's where we're standing at the games this year. Well, it's been a longer than normal episode, so we could probably go ahead and end it. So, I'll say, if you want to reach out to us, you can email us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in two weeks in the new year. And that's the episode where we would normally go ahead and give you some analytics at the start about how our podcast is performed. You know, we're sharing. We like to share with everyone. We like to share. I don't know how we – I haven't really looked. So we'll find out. We'll find out. We'll find out together. We will. It'll be an adventure. As I can. So until then, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.