Wayne's World! Wayne's World! Party time! Excellent! What's up everybody? Welcome to episode 77 of the Tucson Pinball Podcast. Welcome to Wayne's World. Well, it's finally official and released and revealed and all the fun verbs and stuff. Pokemon is out there. So, uh, yeah, my, my last episode, which was forever and a day ago, um, we kind of went over my wishlist and now that it's a reality, I guess I can kind of not do my, my victory laps or anything, but kind of check off or see what boxes did get checked off. Um, I'm sure everybody has seen plenty of pictures, plenty of videos, and maybe even heard plenty commentary at this point. But yeah, this was quite an event, and it was a little bit more drawn out than I would have preferred, based on the original teaser video with the Pokeballs and the stadium music, and then that itty-bitty little bit of theme song music at the end. And everybody was trying to pull clues from that, and sometimes it's just the way things were edited and sometimes you know there's actually information in there to be gathered so let's let's kind of really quickly i mean this is not going to be a marathon uh but really quickly let's kind of go over uh the things that i'm excited for in this game and if there's some criticisms go over that as well so the biggest thing for me was like gen 1 the original 151 Pokemon. Like that was going to be the biggest sticking point for me. I don't want to call it an issue. It's not an issue, but like that was the biggest thing I was hoping for. And as we've seen, they've said the 151 is in there. They're at about 180, 182, because there's going to be some extras in there. There's going to be some other later season characters in there, but the core 151 are in there. The original theme song, I think, is in there, but I don't think it's going to be the actual original Jason Page version. He's the guy that sang the original. It's going to be kind of like what they did with Turtles. It was a reimagining of that original, but whatever. And just kind of some of the early impressions, just some of the notes I took really quick on Like the very first thing that I saw, and you replay it a couple times to try to see what you pick up on and whatever. But one of the issues, not issues, one of the things that I noticed and people kind of eventually talked about, you know, the commentators that were there or the content creators, if you will, that were there. They kind of were talking about how you start the different modes. and based on like your it's it's the original so it's the original three plus pikachu right and but they were saying that pikachu mode is a two ball multiball and you have to shoot the ramp and they were saying two or three times and i don't even remember which one is correct at this point um and then that starts your multiball and it's like oh okay well that's kind of kind of cool it's cool in the sense that it's achievable for anybody that can hit the ramp where I'm going with this is the concept of what some of the designers affectionately call a bozo multiball and that's just what a new casual player that doesn't know what they're doing but is still looking to have fun and enjoy playing the game where are they going to probably shoot the ball and, you know, all of a sudden two or three balls are on the playfield and like the thing's going crazy and they're having the best time of their lives, right? So a lot of times, you know, you look at, let's say, let's say Deadpool or Avengers Infinity Quest. Those are two easy examples. On Deadpool, it's the Lil Deadpool multiball, which has the three drop target bank. You knock that down, you hit the target in the back, and then the next time you hit it, it'll trap the ball, and then it'll shoot out another ball, or you can plunge another ball. And then if you hit any of those drop targets, it'll drop all of them, and it'll give you the ball back, and now you're in multiball. That's probably a more complicated description than what it actually takes to get there. Same thing with Thor multiball on Avengers. It's not a dead center captive ball, but it's pretty close. It's in that I'm missing shots territory, right? Like if you can't hit some of the shots on the right side, you're going to start Thor multiball, whether you want to or not, it's going to happen. Um, so I'm not quite sure that, uh, I, Pikachu being that early, easier multiball, uh, I think is a great idea because besides Charizard, Pikachu is the favorite character in the game. Um, and that's not my opinion. That's just statistically, you know, when they do polls, and I don't know who they're polling, but when they're polling Pokemon fans, who's your favorite Pokemon? Charizard is always number one, and then Pikachu is always number two. So, you know, Pikachu is pretty much the face of the franchise anyways, so it's a great idea to have that be the easier to access, quick, exciting multiball. But maybe shooting that ramp twice might be a little bit of a tall order for a newer player, just because, you know, not only do you have to hit the shot, but it's got to be accurate enough to make the ramp, as opposed to like a captive ball that you just kind of hit, and then who cares, you're already at ground level. Anyways, we're not going to dwell on that too much, but they did have a Pikachu multiball, that's cool. They also had Squirtle Squad as the Squirtle mode, which, it's very silly. Like, you have to understand the whole concept of the cartoon show, like they do have some pretty serious topics but it's a very silly overall atmosphere and Squirtle Squad is like almost the pinnacle of that environment so that was cool I'm hoping there's going to be more modes focusing on the character kind of like that but Squirtle Squad was the one that I saw a few times so that got to be the showcase of some of the presentations and kind of liking where that was going. One of the interesting things, and it's always a question of do you or do you not in these character heavy licenses, is are you Ash? Which Ash Ketchum is the main character in the cartoon show. In the video games, or in the Game Boy game, the original one, red and blue, you are not Ash, you're just red, I think, and, but anyways, like, that's, you're not following that person, so they're not laying out the episodes to say, follow the path of the episodes, you know, whatever, like, you are not Ash, you are you, and so that's cool, it got said a couple times, they're following seasons 10 through 25, which is, oh my gosh, And there's like 40 or 50 episodes a season or something like that. It's insane how many episodes were done. My preference would have been seasons 1 through 8. Because those are the voices and the animation style that I remember and was introduced to the show with. So that's kind of like peak nostalgia for me for that. But for the most part, it's a really similar animation style. and the voices if if you don't know the older ones like you wouldn't be able to tell the difference but even the like the later ones are pretty similar there was a after season eight they changed animation houses and none of the voice actors were brought over to the other one and it's a little bit of a drama gray area you know depending on who you ask situation doesn't seem to be a ton of bad blood but it definitely is a bummer one of the other things they were showing is the Pokédex. It is unique to the game and it looks like a pinball machine, which is kind of cool. That's kind of a fun little touch on there. They're going to use it to track not only what you caught but also what you seen which is very very close to what the games do If you see something but you not able to catch it it still shows up in your Pokedex with some info but it just says you know you saw it you don have one So that's, it's a cool meshing between both the game and the show. And there is kind of a challenge to that, obviously, because they're not the same thing. and so they have a little bit of core differences as to how everything tends to happen. You know, the games are not super linear, but they are a little bit linear. So, like, some of the characters do match what you see in the show, but then you also have some of the deviations, and you kind of have to deal with, you know, how do you want to handle that within the pinball machine? And because they're going to be using clips from the show, that's probably going to be what takes precedence over an example from the video game. But either way, so far, so good from what I've seen. Let's see. The clips are from the show, but no ash as far as what I've seen. And these are all just kind of like different bullet points. And some of them, you know, they're not really sequentially proper. Like some of the stuff I already know, but these are some of the things that I was kind of jotting down as I was watching the presentations and the interviews and stuff like that. so there was and again it's it's early code that they were presenting so i'm sure there's going to be more video clips added to add a little bit more variety and breadth to what you see on a regular basis but they did want to emphasize that like there's no ash there's no brock there's no misty because that's not really the the universe you're in i guess um but obviously they have to have some display presentation, so they are using clips from the show that do not have any of those characters. When we finally got into the gameplay, I was just sitting there going, I love this layout. Like, the layout looks really fun to shoot. Yeah, there were some rumors or conversation about, like, oh, these ramps are borrowed from a certain game. That's not even what I noticed off the bat, And it took me a few replays to figure out what exactly was making this shot so favorable, I guess is the way to say it. But that left orbit is the jetpack shot, basically, from 007. And that is my favorite shot in that game, and I love that shot. And Gomez actually referred to it, George Gomez, one of the two physical designers of the game along with Jack Danger. Gomez was saying, he kept referencing NBA fast break. And I was just like, wait, why can I not picture that shot? And most of the time it's because there's a diverter that's like changing that shot. But if you shoot it enough and the diverter goes up, then it does go all the way around, like behind the basket and then like into the hoop. And it's this really cool sweeping shot. it doesn't feed you back to the in lane but it like that's kind of a similar path that it takes like from the play field to like the entrance of the ramp and kind of back around but my my I guess comparison would be way closer to what's on 007 and I love that shot and so I'm really happy that that's in the game um so and then as I was driving home one day um sometime between when they did the original teaser and when they did the Wednesday content creator meeting or whatever. I've been seeing, you know, posts and rumors and speculation and all that stuff. And I'm driving home and I was listening to the Batcast and they were talking about how a John Wick contract had come up recently and they hadn't seen one of those in a little while. They were happy to see that back. And I was sitting there going, man, it would be really cool if some of the, so in the game, you can find all of the Pokemon, almost all of them. You have to be in different regions. And like they talked about at some of the presentations, there's four different ecosystems. There's a forest and a desert and an island or ocean or whatever it is. But you're not going to find a water type in the desert type of thing. That's kind of what they were explaining. and but you can't there's like legendaries that are super hard to find and you have to be like right place right time and they the the bad cast was talking about um this john wick thing and i'm like man wouldn't that be cool if because the the like super legendary rare things are are pretty hard to find wouldn't it be cool if like the way you got them was you got a notification on your Insider Connected that just popped up and said, you know, a wild legendary such and such has been spotted nearby. Play Pokemon in the next 24 hours to try to see it. And I don't know what would be the trigger or if you would have to get like, I don't know, like get a jackpot in the multiball and then that would like allow you to see it on one of the shots. I don't like, I don't know how the mechanic would work out, but I think that would be one cool way to integrate the Insider connected app, kind of how they have the contracts on John Wick. So it's more of a push notification and, you know, that would give some incentive to maybe not 24 hours, you know, a week, whatever. I don't care, but, you know, Stern can figure that part out. But just so that you can get that alert and then people would say, okay, I don't have to go like right, right now, but in the next day, two, five, whatever. I've got to go play this game. And that's kind of one of the things that operators are appreciative for Insider Connected because it draws people back to the location to accomplish this thing that's kind of on a time limit. Not like, again, not right right now, but with some sense of urgency. One of the things that Tanya had mentioned in one of the interviews that it's kind of combo heavy. Not quite sure if that's just going to be like a boosted score every time you do a combo or what, but Tanyo did the code on Deadpool, and Deadpool's combos get you into different bonuses, and one of them is like the ultimate one is mech suit multiball, which I think he said there's not going to be a mech suit multiball type of thing, but maybe still like, you know, after five combos, you can collect, you know, shoot the scoop for this after 10 combos, shoot the scooper, you know, that whatever. So, uh, it seems like that's going to be some sort of an award system of being kind of in a little bit of a flow state and getting your combos and, and then cashing them in at, at one of the shots. Um, so I think at this point, um, I've watched two, maybe three hours of the, uh, the media day videos, like of gameplay alone, not, not just like interviews and, and, uh, talking head style, like podcast presentation. But, um, I did see the, I watched the YouTube version of the, um, Loser Kid Pinball Podcast where they talked to, George Gomez, Jack Danger, Tanya Kleiss, and I forgot everybody's names because I didn't write them down. Sorry to the other two guys that were on there. But I appreciated all the commentary that they had to say and kind of looking forward to the code as it progresses along, knowing that they have some pretty good ideas in mind for what they want to do. So after I had watched, again, a couple hours of presentation, so I just jotted down a couple notes, you know, pros and cons. Again, to reiterate, it presents really well. Playfield's great. Art's great. One of the things they talked about was how, like, the Pokemon Company handled the art. I think Stern kind of gave them some sketches as to, like, how they wanted everything to be laid out. But then the Pokemon company handled the actual art and presentation and placement of everything because they've been doing it for a very long time and they have a very precise expectation on exactly how everything has to look like. they're really controlling when you boil it down to a very short phrase, but it's, it is understandable And it seems like you know they were better to work with than than some of the other IP holders You know you hear kind of not necessarily like the horror stories but like the rumors of horror stories Because, you know, speculation on this, that, and the other. But yeah, obviously it presents really well because the IP owners are the ones that did the actual art on it. The clips are really good. we saw there's a lot of like the hot air balloon stuff because there was a lot of people keeping in mind that like over the course of several hours of video it's not the same person or small group of people playing the game it's different people having like 15 minute or 30 minute or 45 minute gameplay videos so they're all kind of learning the layout at the same level like they're all starting from zero. If you watch somebody now that's had five hours on the game, they probably are not shooting it at, you know, up the center as often as they did in the very beginning. So there wasn't a ton of variety in the clips that were being played, but that's mostly because the players were shooting it in the same spot as the other players tended to shoot as they were trying to find some of the shots and get familiar with some of the rules. when you weren't in a mode or when it wasn't playing a clip or anything there's this cool like 30,000 foot view of like mountains and forest and like that's really cool just like scenic display and I don't know that was it's a really cool piece of art I thought that was kind of nice but I'm sure there's going to be more variety with maybe the backdrops maybe some of the the mode clips you know they'll add a few more and throw in a little bit of a randomization as to like what clips get played, just to kind of spread out how often you see various things and add a touch more variety. On the rare occasion that they were actually, no, I shouldn't say rare, infrequent occasion that there was a multiplayer game going, you could really tell how hard it is to read the active player score. And even when it was a single player game, I was just going like, I can't read that number. It's a yellow font, the numbers are, on, like, this teal background, which is a little too light. And, like, there's no key line or bordering around the numbers. And so it was, and maybe it was just, like, because it was dark in there. But, like, the people that were recording this stuff, like, they stream pinball. And they have really good display cameras. It's like they, I don't think it was a contrast issue. I don't think it was a dark on location issue. I just think it was a color combo that made it kind of hard to see. They kind of blended together a little bit more than, than I hoped to see. The non-active player, those, those scores are super easy to see. It was black text on like this, not, I don't want to say dark seafoam green, but kind of like a heavier seafoam green. if you want a reference for seafoam green look up guitars there's a couple signature guitars that use seafoam green as one of the color options Fender, Strats do it and it's a really cool color it was a tick darker than that but either way, the black text on that seafoam green background was very easy to see and so when it was a four player game I could read three of the player scores at any given time, and we were almost there. So if they could add a border to the current text combination or maybe change the background to be a little bit darker so that the yellow could contrast off of that, that would be ideal. Hopefully that'll get picked up at a later date. So the wild Pokemon appearing and the Pokedex recognizing it, the battle, the capturing, all that stuff, Like it was a little hard to follow only because it wasn't happening like over and over again. And I could probably just like rewind the same clip where it actually did happen. But it seemed to present pretty well. And once you get familiar with that, it's probably a pretty intuitive like sequence to say, you know, and they even explain like once you once you see a Pokemon hit the Pokedex, which is the captive ball. and then it'll recognize it or register it or whatever in the Pokédex and then you can weaken it and try to catch it. And that seems pretty straightforward to how both the show and the game kind of play out when you see a wild Pokémon out on your adventures. Meowth Multiball, which is not what it's actually called. I think it's actually called Team Rocket Multiball. It might as well be. I have a feeling most people are going to be calling it Meowth Multiball because that's just quicker to say. But it's very Meowth heavy, and that's the cat, if you're not familiar with the characters in the show. He's the only talking Pokemon, and they have a lot of clips from him. But yeah, the mech is cool. It's very presentable. It's probably easier to start for a newer player than the Pikachu Multiball that I talked about. But that is front and center. and I'm going to have to measure at some point, like, it's probably wider, like, the targets off the side than the opening on Attack from Mars. I think it's probably wider than a three-switch bank, you know, sitting horizontally, whatever the angle is that the mouth area sits at. It's probably a touch wider. So it is, you know, if you're used to hitting the shield down on Attack from Mars, it is even wider than that, which is totally fine because apparently it's going to play a really big role in more than just the multiball aspect it's going to be also a part of the weakening and capturing and battling like there's there's a bunch of switches up there so those are all going to play a part and it looks like it makes you shoot all the play field to do stuff so that's obviously good the Charmander mode I didn't hear him say Charmander because outside of Meowth all the other Pokemon, they say their own name. And they did say they have got like 80 clips of the Pikachu voice. And I think everybody else is probably going to be derived from clips from the show. I didn't hear it say Charmander when it was in the Charmander mode, like the other callouts, but maybe I didn't hear it right or it was, you know, overpowered by something else or whatever. That was just one thing that I noticed. I think there was only one time that somebody got into the Charmander modes, also there's a pretty low frequency on that, so maybe it just didn't come up in the randomizer. The normal game music, when you're not in a mode, is like this cool little guitar. It's not like non-stop riffing, but it kind of was like this really low-key guitar solo that's kind of drawn out. And, and I, after several hours of video clips, um, that is one thing that kind of popped up and I'm like, you know what, I'm not sick of this yet, which is kind of important on your, your main background music. Um, because it's, it's gotta be a challenging balance between finding something that's, you know, somewhat memorable, but not annoyingly memorable, right? Like it's gotta be cool the first couple of times you play it, but it also kind of has to be fun and cool like after 10 100 or a thousand plays and you know whether you're a casual player or a homeowner or whatever like you don't want to hate the sound coming out of the game like there's there's a couple dmd era games that i can think of instantly then it's like man i could not own that game because i hate the the main theme music loop um sorry ben uh one of them is one that you really like um but yeah i you know the on the audio side of things sounded pretty good. One of the streamers that I did see, they played several games, and I don't know if they were just trying to find the shots, you know, like, hey, I'm going to shoot left ramp only, or center area only, or my whole goal is to get in and through the Meowth multiball and kind of see what's next on that. So they're kind of shooting some of the same shots, whether it's intentional or just, you know, early plays and still trying to get the lay of the land as far the layout goes But the really early in play it seemed a little samey But again maybe that was intentional from that person goals on the time that they had with the machine Just to say maybe I don maybe I don have any goals I just going to you know shoot it whatever I just going to flail away see what happens when it flails because there a lot of people that just you know put the money in, hit start, because now it blinks at you, and then just double flip the entire time. And it's like, what happens when you double flip the entire time? You know, just to see, whatever, not a criticism on that player, doesn't matter. Just kind of something that I did notice, Uh, but once you spot your first Pokemon and you kind of get into that, uh, capture, not capture, but like the scene portion, you know, you hit your captive ball on the Pokédex. So now it's seen and recognized and registered. And then now you get into the battle portion. Like as soon as you see your first Pokemon, things start rolling. So, um, again, not super worried about that. And maybe it's just because it was a four player game setup and, you know, there was a couple of quick drains and you're just like, oh, we already saw that. It's like, yeah, but this is a new player. So realistically, you're not really watching a single player game. You're watching a four player game and you're watching ball one four times in pretty quick succession. And, you know, it is what it is. The game starts. Everybody starts at zero. That's the way it goes. um the game the games were getting restarted really fast so i wasn't really able to hear like the the outro or end of game music uh very much but i think i did hear the first guitar part of the original theme song so i think that's where they're going to play it um if it's the same version of the song that i think was kind of hinted at or dropped in somewhere else in one of the presentations. Again, it's not the original, but it's in there. So I guess that's not partial credit, but majority credit. It's there. And that's kind of one of the things that I was really hoping would be there. Again, it would be great if it was the original version. And maybe we're going to find out if Pinball Browser works on Spike 3. And somebody can swap that in and we'll see. But every time Stern releases new code, it's going to wipe out your your existing code. And so like, there's not even a point for the next like two years, because they're just going to be dropping little, little baby releases and, you know, little updates here and there, whether it's a mode edition or a couple of bug fixes or a lighting, you know, edition, or just some little thing, like they're probably going to be dropping an update like every four weeks for a year year and a half so uh the eevee combos got brought up like super late in in my perusing through all the content and i don't i don't know if it's just because i'm trying to remember where i saw it but but i saw this really funny like comparison picture on facebook and now i'm getting all sorts of pokemon stuff but it's also the 30th anniversary of Pokemon. So the algorithm is doing what algorithms do and feeding me all of that stuff. But I saw this, this picture on Facebook and it was like, it was basically saying Eevee is the potato of Pokemon. And typically when you call somebody a potato, that's, that's kind of an insult, but it was like, it had like Eevee in the center. And then it had like these breakouts to all these, it was almost like, you know, you're drawing the sun with the sun rays pointing out in all these different directions and it was showing like all the different versions that eevee evolves into and the eeveelutions and then it was showing the potato and like all the different things that you can make out of potatoes whether it's like french fries or hash browns or tater tots or mashed potatoes or like all these things and i was just kind of like i don't know why i'm seeing this but now i'm hungry i just thought it was kind of funny though but they did talk about Eevee combos, and it's, I don't know how it's going to play out, like if it's going to be a checklist, or if it's just going to be kind of a fun little thing, like, hey, you did left ramp, right ramp scoop, you know, or whatever, here is Vaporeon. I don't know. But they did get talked about, and maybe there's a bonus on them, or whatever. Okay, so last three things on my list. um there is no ash brock or misty already brought that up but i was kind of thinking about that and i'm going man that's kind of a bummer and not even from like a story content perspective it's because misty is like super snarky and brock is kind of an idiot so he's got his own little set of one-liners that are funny but misty is just like this snarky little like i mean she's still friendly uh you know she's she's one of the one of the gang but like she's definitely got a bajillion one-liners and it would be so great if some of those were included in the game um not not quite as as harsh and mean as like black knight sword of rage or the the demon on on iron maiden but like i'm sure there's you know a list of like 50 from the show that you could probably pull that are a little bit positive and a little bit negative and you know use them however they need to be If you have a quick drain, she's going to talk a little trash. And, you know, if you hit the super jackpot or whatever, after you get out of the multiball, she can say, wow, that was better than I was expecting you to do or, you know, whatever. But, yeah, that's kind of a bummer because, like, those two as supporting characters, they do have some pretty good dialogue. So that's kind of one of the bummers of them not being in there. But I get it. You're telling your own story. You're on your own adventure. It's all good. But, again, Misty's funny. I recently saw an App Arcade article that said all the planned runs are currently sold out. And, I mean, granted, the calendar will continue. They will add more to their schedule and then, you know, runs will pick up. But like all of their current runs, which like all the pros, all the LEs, all the first run premiums and all the second run pros are all spoken for. So I think we've got a little bit of a hit on our hands. And I've heard a few varieties of commentators saying, oh, it's it's not for me. I'm a little too old for that, but I think it's going to do well because it is such a widely regarded IP. And then I've also seen those commentators that say, I'm too old for this, but it's dumb anyway, so whatever. And I was just kind of sitting there going, man, I had a feeling one of you was going to be really, really wrong. And, uh, yeah, that, that class of commentator was really, really, really wrong. So, um, you know, Godzilla is king of, of stern pinball sales, but, uh, watch out. Cause, uh, there's, there's a new, there's a new kid on the block and it seems to be doing pretty well, which is great. I mean, cause that's what we want. And, uh, my final bullet point is, uh, getting one for hot rods. So that's it I'm waiting for my estimation As for when it's going to ship It's mid-late February right now And I've been projected Late first week To early third week-ish Of next month Maybe up to a month But we'll see Stern knows how to make games So I'm not I'm not worried on timing, not worried on much, mostly just excited. And yeah, so I think we have a little bit of a winner. I am definitely happy that a lot of my wish lists got got picked up on. Not that they didn't. Not that they heard my episode and actually, you know, change anything, but just kind of they were doing their thing. And I'm sitting here going, well, if this is going to be a theme, this is what I would like to see. And I got to see a lot of what I was asking for. So appreciate it, Stern. Looking forward to getting my game. And yeah, that's it. Thanks for tuning in, and sorry it's been forever. I do have a list of things I'd like to talk about, but we'll get to those at a later date. So thanks for listening. Party on. Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth. It's Wayne's World. Wayne's World. Party time. Excellent. And we're clear. you