You can try and read my lyrics off of this paper before I lay them, but you don't take the sting out these words before I say them, cause ain't no way I'm gonna let you stop me from causing them. When I say them, I do something, I do it, I don't give a damn what you think. Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. Oh, welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. Happy Friday. I'm your host, Kaneda. We made it to another week in pinball, the last week of May. And June is next week. And we are going to get Sonic the Hedgehog. I reached out to my friends at JJP. There is no media day. They are just going to launch this baby. Some media have seen the game. They cannot even say they were even there. I have not seen it. We've seen the playfield image. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. I've got some news about Pokemon at Costco, what the game is going to be like. But before I jump there, I want to start with a topic I heard the other day. I heard someone drop my name. And when you say Kaneda's name, you know, I know why people do it. They want me to listen. They want me to do stuff. I didn't listen to this show, but one of my friends told me what was being mentioned around my name. I've been indicted, if you will, and I've been indicted. And here's the indictment. Here's the charge against Kaneda, that it is my fault that people are looking at Transformers and being upset that Optimus Prime does not transform. That if Kaneda didn't hear information from Stern employees who were watching this thing transform for months and get people super excited about you're about to get one of the greatest mechs in the history of Stern Pinball. I also remember Keith Elwin going on a podcast talking about one of the coolest mechs he's ever seen and it's not on his game and it's coming out soon. I wonder what that was. Do you think it was Meowth? It was Optimus Prime. And so it is Kaneda's fault for mismanaging your expectations. And because I did that, I teed up people to write this game off right away. But once you play it, people, you're going to forget that Transformers doesn't have anything transforming. That once you give this game a chance, trust me, it's really fun. We've heard this before from all of these apologists and all of these shills. These guys are in servitude of the manufacturer. They're in George Gomez's pocket. They're in every manufacturer's pocket. They're in the dealer and distro pocket. That is why they make this happy-go-lucky, unbridled enthusiasm. My genuine enthusiasm as I go over to Stern and I tell you Transformers is amazing, man. As I go see Sonic the Hedgehog, which I know blows away Transformers, and I won't even tell you that because I'm going to go down there and film it and I'm going to get paid in a machine and then I'm going to give you a review of the game in which I'm going to act like I'm not biased. You see what I'm saying, people? That is the epitome of what most of is out there nowadays. People getting paid, backdoor deals. They weren't going to be transparent until Kaneda was going to say something about that Harry Potter payment. And that's the thing. It's like, it's cool, man. It's cool. But here's where I draw the line. I grew up with Transformers. I'm a Transformers freaking fanatic, bro. I had more money in Transformers than these guys have in pinball machines. Okay. I sold my collection years ago, but I grew up with these things. Stern Pinball had one goal to make a transformer pinball machine that adequately captured the magic of transformers. And by making a physical game that has movement and then you don't have anything that is more than meets the eye. Nothing in this game is more than meets the eye. Nothing in this game is a robot in disguise. Nothing. The whole point of being a robot in disguise is when he in truck form he not a robot yet until he transforms What the key word there What the verb Transform you freaking shills Don you get it So to be super disappointed in this is valid. And this thing was working for a very long time. And instead of taking a delay and getting it to work properly, they simply put a bandaid on the wound and then they push it out to customers. They ushered in all these media that just shill everything and then all of a sudden the game's great. Yeah, you should buy one even though this game has the biggest fatal flaw of any mechanism Stern has ever made and it's all Canada's fault. This is why I miss not having the Twippies because when push came to shove and the actual community and the customers and the fans of pinball got a chance to vote, They weren't going to vote for the shills, for the guys that just tow the company line. It doesn't make any sense to me. And they have no loyalty to anybody. They don't. You know, they're going to go down to Stern and they're going to say how great their product is. And they go down the street to Jersey Jack and how great their product is. And they're just doing it right. There's no loyalty to anybody, to anybody. And there's definitely no loyalty to you, to the customer, to be on the side of the people that are spending their hard-earned money on these pinball machines. Who's looking out for us? So let me ask these shill content creators. If all we do is say this is good enough and this is worth the money and this game is great and you're going to have fun. If all we do is accept this mediocrity time and time again, guess what happens? The games get worse. We spend more money and get less because that's what these guys want. They don't care. All they want to see is their manufacturer friends get an applause, even if they don't deserve it. And so, yeah, Elliott Eisman, you did some cool stuff on the right side of the game. The entire left side of the game is empty of anything magical. That is a failure in my honest opinion. That is not worth $13,000. If only half of the game has magic, then yeah, then why don't you charge me half as much? Remember this, people. If Optimus Prime was working and transforming the way he should have been, the game is $13,000, right? Okay, now they didn't get him to work and they yanked him out. So they took out all of that, all of the R&D, all the value of that mech, all of it is now not in the game. And it's still $13,000. Do you hear these content creators saying there's a problem in that? Shouldn't the game be cheaper now that you removed what was supposed to be in it that actually had value that actually cost money? No, you took out the money and you're charging me the same amount as if it was there. And so, yeah, Kanade is the problem. He's so bad. He's so bad for this hobby. No, I am the solution. You clowns. You don't get it. You are not on the side of consumers. You are in the back pockets of these companies. And I look, I love these companies. I love the people that work there, but that's not who I make my content for. And I'm not going to tell you that you should spend money on something that is incomplete. And I can also tell you, I don't even care how much fun this game is. I don't. Because this game will forever be compromised by the fact that nothing transforms in Transformers. And yeah, I don't have to get over that. And I'm not really even that upset because I'm kind of happy because now I don't have to spend money on a Stern. Most of the Sterns that have come out recently, haven't they made it easier for you not to buy them? Haven't they made it easier for you to wait and see? Haven't they made it easier for us to look over at barrels, to look over at Spooky, to look over at JJP? I mean, Stern literally had this entire hobby in its hands. And look, they're still making a lot of games, but man, they're just mass-produced games now. They really don't have the value, not at these prices. And speaking of mass-produced, here's some news for each and every one of you. Stern Pinball is going to release shortly its Pokemon game at Costco. Now here what going to be different This game is going to have exactly and I mean exactly the same playfield of a Pokemon Pro Meowth is not going to move He going to be there stationary I heard they removed the targets in the battle arena and I think it has the rubber bands there. It's not going to have targets. But for the most part, we're going to get a $5,000 Costco Pokemon that has the same exact layout and play field as all the other games that are out there. I also heard it is going to have exactly the same code. Well, that makes sense because there is no code in this game. You know, I was saying something. I want to go the other way. I want to be a contrarian. And, you know, it's my fault people don't like Transformers. It's my fault that I was excited about one of my dream themes. It's my fault, I think, that Optimus should transform. How dare you, Kaneda, have any expectations for these overpriced toys? How dare you? How dare you not shill these companies and take dollars from dealers and make ads for them on every single show? How dare you not do that? So here's the thing, people. What I want to do is I want to go in the opposite direction. You know, life is too complicated. We got too much in our lives. And I want to go contrarian and say, you know what? I don't want more Pokemon code. You know what I want? I want less code. I want them to take code out, baby. I want there to be less to do in this game. 0.82, I don't want to get to 1.0. Let's get this game down to 0.50, baby. How much can we strip out of this game and still have a game, baby? Come on, you can do it, George. You can do a team over there. What the heck are these guys doing? They are going in, a team of people, every single week, and all they got to do is arrange all these different Pokemon episodes and give us more moments, and they can't do that? They've been developing this game for well over a year. What have they been doing? I don't understand. Now, what could also become a fatal flaw in Pokemon is I heard, you know, the company that makes Pokemon Go will not let them use the Pokedex as an online way to showcase the Pokemon you're collecting. And here's the issue. This game could have been built on a foundational strategy can now not execute on and they can't implement what they had in mind. Same way that Optimus was the centerpiece of Transformers. They built the whole game around that and now they couldn't execute on that. Here's what Stern's going to do. Mark my words. I'm almost going to just guarantee this even though I have no proof. I heard that Stern ordered all of these Transforming Optimus mechs. I heard they have like 3,500 of them in a facility over there in like Ilk Grove, Illinois. So you know what they're going to do. Everybody knows this. Instead of giving us Optimus under the glass working the way he should, we all know what they're going to do. They're going to put Optimus on top of the game, make it a topper, and they're going to charge us extra money to get what should have been in the game from the get-go. They did it once with Stranger Things. Remember, a feature everybody wanted wasn't shipped with the game. The only issue is the Stranger Things apron was like $250. Now you're going to pay $1,500 to $2,000 extra to get something that should have been in the game. Sonic the Hedgehog is going to wipe the floor with Transformers. But there is one or two things I'm worried about with Sonic. Are the shots going to be too tight? And is there going to be enough code to make the game fun and have replay value? Because here's the thing. Think about it. In Sonic the Hedgehog, who's doing the call outs? How are they going to communicate in the game? Sonic doesn talk in any of the games And so it usually Dr Robotnik So are they going to go towards some of the Sonic cartoons Is that going to turn people off I know that the hard part about Sonic That why Super Mario Brothers way easier to integrate Mario and Luigi into the game Mario talks all throughout the journey Sonic says nothing Mike Myers in Halloween says nothing Freddy Krueger way more fun Ash in Evil Dead way more fun Those silent lead characters are hard at times to develop a real connection and inject all those fun call outs we want to see in a game So I really curious to see how they handle that Now, I have faith that Steve Ritchie and everybody over at JJP knows what they're doing. They're coming out of a banger with Harry Potter. I still hope the code in Sonic is simple. Keith Johnson is on it. He's the opposite of simple. He's overly complex. He puts too much in it. Hopefully he doesn't focus on some minutia within that universe. And then all of a sudden we're talking about stuff that wasn't even the focus of the games. I hope there's a jump shot in which there is a suspended spinner that makes the sound of collecting coins because so much of Sonic was him flying through the air and collecting coins. So how cool would it be if we had the first ever elevated spinner that you jumped the ball into it to create that effect? I'm excited. There's going to be a loop-de-loop. I know the artwork is super cool. It's going to be a really neat moment. And so as we head into June, we've got a lot more stuff that's around the corner. We've got Toad in around the corner. We've got CGC remaking Twilight Zone. Where's that Mark Ritchie Halo game? Where's this Resident Evil game that is $25,000 to $27,000? Barry has asked me politely to not share any more photos of Back to the Future. And I responded to Barry abso-freaking-lutely. I've got it in my phone. If I see you and you see me out and we're hanging out in Connecticut and we're eating lobster rolls at Ruedin Seafood, I will happily show you Back to the Future. You can't take any photos of it, but I will show you the game. I just will not let these assets out. He knows where they came from and he is not happy, apparently. It is what it is. But he's not mad at me. And all he did was all anybody ever has to do. Just reach out to me. If you have an issue, reach out to me and I will happily, happily be a human being and I will treat you with respect and kindness and we will figure out a solution. Now, I did throw out some images of that Sonic the Hedgehog playfield. That thing has been floating around all over the place. A lot of people have it. It's out there. It does no damage. It just shows that it's a fan layout. There's nothing on it, though. It's a blank fan layout. Steve Ritchie can do a heck of a lot with a fan layout. So I think we're going to see some really, really cool stuff on top of that playfield. I think the art is cool. I think it's going to be colorful. It was giving people Pokemon vibes. I played Pokemon again yesterday. It's a really fun game to shoot. It needs a lot more code. I went on Pinside and there's still a ton of Pokemon at least for sale. I wouldn't do it again. I really don't see the point in buying any of these Sterns right away. I understand these content creators. I don't know why they're acting like dealers. Well, maybe because they all want to be dealers. Even I'm thinking about how I can deal in pinball. But man, I just don't think it's worth it. I just don't think it's worth it. Losing your freedom to speak your real feelings and to give your true opinions. It's not worth it to me. And what's funny is everyone doing this, they don't need the money. They don't need the money. And if you don't need the money, then why would you do the one thing that you should never do? Sell out. Everybody, happy Friday. Let's go, June. Sonic, any day now. I can't wait. Have a great weekend. And let's go Spurs. I'm rooting for Spurs against OKC because the Knicks can beat the Spurs. I'm not sure if they can beat OKC. Have an awesome weekend. Join me tomorrow on the Saturday morning. Spectacular. Later.