All right. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of a pinball podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here. And I want to just take one second to thank everybody for tuning in, whether you're walking, jogging, working out, driving a car, sitting on your butt at home, or just watch on YouTube, whatever it could be. I really do appreciate it. I don't dive into numbers much. Of course, on YouTube, you guys can see everything. But I just noticed we just crossed 100,000 listens like with the podcast that blows my mind and that that's including youtube that's youtube and everything together on just the podcast and that i mean i can't tell you guys how much that blows my mind and i am truly humbled by the fact that you guys are even taking time out of your day to to listen to comment to like to dislike to do whatever you want to do make fun of me, agree with me, just whatever you want to do. I just, I want to tell you guys how much I do appreciate that. So moving forward today, May the 4th, it's about 5 PM right now. And as we can tell, obviously one of the worst kept secrets in pinball, Mandalorian has officially dropped. Now, this is a theme that I have been sitting on for a while and been well aware of. And I just been biting my tongue. I've been wanting to say something, but I wanted to wait until Stern got it out completely. And I've been trying just to block out all the noise because obviously there's been leaks left and right, but I've been avoiding knowing anything just because I want to be like you guys or some of you guys out there. I want to be surprised by what there is. Now, the trailer did drop or the teaser trailer. I want to be clear. The teaser did drop and it's only about 23 seconds long. And honestly, I usually have some type of reaction, but with this, As my messenger blew up, I had about 20, 25 messages all showing the trailer and saying, hey, check this out. And then somebody was telling me, well, it's a pretty simple teaser. So I ended up just going ahead and just watching it smack dab in the middle of Target as I was grocery shopping with my wife. That's a fancy term for Target here in Oklahoma for those scoring at home. But yeah, so I ended up watching it there right in the middle of Target. And I mean, it's a teaser. It's nothing that I was really going to get too pumped up about just because it didn't really reveal too much. It just had the basic Mandalorian art or I guess the imagery that Lucasfilms has trademarked or Disney or whoever it is at this point has trademarked. So there wasn't really too much to go off of with that. Now, obviously, like I said, there's tons of leaks out there. I'm sure if you guys probably might even know more than I do. I've been trying to keep my head in the sand as much as possible on this. But I think this particular theme, though, is going to be massive. Now, I know a couple of distributors that have just been thinking that this was coming along at some point, and they themselves have been getting ready for this. I mean, it's one of those themes that I don't know if you guys realize how great Star Wars really did overall in sales. I mean, it is a blockbuster theme. And now that we're bringing over Mandalorian, that's part of that Star Wars lore, and it's at its peak, I mean, come on. This is going to be a guaranteed home run There no doubt about it And it just amazing that this theme is already able to come to life for Stern Pinball Now in past episodes and I think this is on our live shows when we going over different potential themes that people would love to see, I had the prediction that Mandalorian wouldn't come to fruition until 2022 at the earliest, just because this whole show, it came out, I think it debuted in November of 2019. And that was on Disney Plus, obviously. So it's relatively new and it's only two seasons in yet this pen already exists and it's at the height of it so that's really exciting overall and i fully expect obviously le's will be gone it wouldn't surprise me people are flipping on flipping them i wouldn't be surprised if this pen basically is able to outsell other themes like double it would not surprise me at all if it outsells combined themes together just because it's star Wars. You'll you're tapping into a whole other fan base that even if they don't like pinball, this is one of those themes that will cross over. I mean, that's just, just how it is when it comes to star Wars. And I can tell you because I am a star Wars fan. Oh my God. I know some people that they are deep. If you think the pinball hobby goes deep and has deep pockets, wait till you meet a star Wars fan that wants everything. It is amazing. So I, it would not surprise me one bit if the premium for sure i think the premium will do great oftentimes a lot of these themes you'll see the pro might do a little bit better than the premium itself which there in turn it's kind of like what's happening with stranger things right now to where that makes the le a little bit more desirable all on down the road but as of right now it would not shock me if every single model of this just goes just go i mean it's definitely for sure the bank accounts are all going to go brr for all the distributors out there. This is an amazing theme to have. Now, for those that have never watched the show before, for like the three of you out there, maybe there might be more of you out there, but pretty much this show has just been around for two seasons and it is excellent. It happens before, or actually I think it happens after Return of the Jedi. And so you kind of get an idea of what different parts of Star Wars, what's going on in the world with that. And you kind of get the sense of what is happening outside of the Jedi, which is really, really exciting. Now, obviously, there are some Jedi in it. Spoilers, if you haven't seen Season 2 yet, shut off the podcast right now because we're going to talk about that a little bit. But I am curious to see if they're going to have Season 1 and Season 2 in this pen. Now, for me personally, I prefer Season 2 over Season 1. Now, don't get me wrong. Season 1 was great. It definitely started out really well. I mean, I watched every single episode at least five times, including season two. But season two, that's when you start to get into Ahsoka, and that's when you get into the big reveal at the end with Luke Skywalker coming back. And, I mean, that lends itself to so many potential pinball moments when we talk about the wizard modes. We talk about different modes and everything. And this theme, I mean, we all know pinball cells are 100% based on theme. If you have an excellent theme, it will sell regardless of what is under the glass, regardless of what the code is. A lot of people don understand what that is overall So it will sell Now what I hoping for is I really hope that instead of like star wars the way that that was to where you could play all kinds of different modes together to where you could be in one movie one second and then the next movie the next second or maybe even the third movie after that and then back to the first movie again it really felt like the story overall kind of got discombobulated very quickly now my hope is for this particular game that possibly that you can just start on season one and then maybe work your way to mini wizard mode. And maybe from there, you can skip over to season two episodes, possibly on the backside. I don't know. Maybe that might be a little too hard, but that's just my wishful thinking. Cause I think something like that would, would be pretty cool. Especially if you have a lot of the final fights, be the mini wizard mode. And then obviously Luke Skywalker show showing up would be much excellent to be the ultimate wizard mode. However, though, when that does happen, obviously it takes off from who the Mandalorian is because then all of a sudden it'd be weird to have a wizard mode without the Mandalorian in it. So I'm kind of curious to see how they'll go about that. And that's the type of things I'm wondering about just off the top of my head. In terms of play-filled layout, I am fully expecting something more like the shadow. That's what I've been thinking this whole time. And anybody that's asked me. That's what I've been telling them, just because, you know, if it ends up being Brian Eddy, he's already done a fan layout with Stranger Things, and I wouldn't necessarily expect them to go fan layout again with a Star Wars-based theme. I think they're going to do something a little bit different this time, and I would fully expect upper play field, possibly even three flippers, or obviously with an upper play field, that would be, what, five flippers total. I mean, who knows what we'll see. I, again, I have no idea. I'm just purely speculating and hopefully whatever package comes, it'll be excellent. I don't, I don't think it's going to be anything that's too simple. I'm kind of thinking that this is going to be the theme to where Stern absolutely brings it. Now I am kind of taking my expectations and I'm kind of just not, I'm not going to say flat lining or anything like that. I'm going to say I'm kind of just keeping them just even kill. I'm just kind of waiting to see what it's going to be. I'm waiting to see how much of the assets are in there. Is it going to be full assets? Because if it is, then obviously that's going to be even better, especially with the LCD. I think there's high end potential to do some crazy stuff with this game, especially if we think about video mode possibilities to where I had it in my brain before that I'm not a huge fan of video modes. However, I really wish somebody could take this game, and I'm just thinking of when Ahsoka is kind of storming that one base, and it's all dark and everything. And I just had this vision that the pen just goes completely dark itself. And instead of the actual video mode being on the screen the whole entire time, you might have some elements on the screen. But then you can just use the lights and the inserts to kind of signify shots being fired at you as a player. because you assume the role of Ahsoka, and then from there you just flip your flippers and that acts like a lightsaber, and you're just deflecting shots left and right. And that's just something to me I think would be really cool. I don't know if it's possible, but I've just had that vision in my head that I really want to see something like that be in a pinball machine because to me that would actually be a pretty cool moment and kind of a way to take a breather for a second and get something a little bit different within a pinball machine that might I don know it might be something that a lot of people don like but for me I think it just something just totally different it would be pretty cool itself but again when we do talk about rule sets and everything I'm really hoping that they have the season one in order you play those in order and then you can move on to season two just because I just don't want to feel like I'm jumbling all around I don't want to feel like one second I'm kind of meeting Grogu for the first time or you know you just know him as a child right then and there then the next moment I might be doing something that is season two related like meeting Bo-Katan or something like that so I just want to see this in order that's my main goal and I want to I think it would be cool too if the whole entire game, if we are the Mandalorian, if we just play as just him for the most part, and then maybe certain modes, we can assume a different character to where just the way that the call-outs go out. I don't know, maybe something like that. Who knows what we'll hear. Again, no idea. I'm just going all over the place just because I'm a fan of pinball. And these types of games right here, especially if it's a theme that I know I'm going to really like, it kind of gets my brain going and it gets my creative juices flowing to where I think about what could be in the game. But again, I have learned not to go too far into the weeds with it just because some of this stuff is possible. Other stuff, the creators of this game could be thinking of something totally different. And most times, like majority, I'm talking 99.9% of times, it's something that's much better than something I could come up with anyway. So I'm definitely not one of these, it's like, why didn't they do it like that? My idea is so much better. No. I'm not like that at all. But I'm excited either way. This is just a short podcast. Just kind of get it out there. If you guys haven't seen it yet, go ahead and check it out on Stern Pinball or on their YouTube channel. I'm sure it's all over Facebook if you haven't seen it yet. And I'm sure it's probably on Pennside, places like that. But what do you guys think? Are we excited about this? Are we upset that it's another Star Wars theme? Because I know there probably is one or two of you out there that aren't Star Wars fans? Would you rather see something else? I, for one, again, you got this far, you know, I love the theme. I'm pretty excited about it. I sold my Star Wars pen a couple of months ago or several months ago now. So I kind of, I'm leaning heavily depending on what it looks like. I'm going to wait and see. I'm not in for an LE or anything like that. I'm most likely going to get the pro if, big if, it looks the way that I want it to look and it speaks to me. That's where I'm at on it. I'm going to just wait and see, and I'm going to hold back, and then we'll be able to judge it next week when the trailer comes out. I think it's supposed to come out sometime next week, and as soon as it does, then we can go from there, and we'll know a lot more about this game, because then we'll be able to see the artwork. We'll get an idea of how the mechs work, how the shots work, what the geometry is, and then, of course, we'll follow up on that by discussing all of that together and kind of get a better idea about what we are going to see once the pins start hitting the arcades homes stuff like that but that's all i got though guys thank you guys so much comment down below let me know you guys excited that's all i got later guys