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Episode 61 - Heighway v BattleTech

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 13m·held·May 6, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Zidware judgment and Highway Pinball collapse reveal industry financial troubles and potential asset-shielding tactics.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers Podcast episode covering pinball industry crises: John Papaduke's Zidware civil judgment requiring repayment to 26 creditors, and the collapse of Highway Pinball following investor takeover, with speculation about asset transfers to newly formed Pinball Brothers and refusal to sell Queen license to Deep Root.

Key Claims

  • John Papaduke lost civil suit filed by 26 Zidware pre-order customers; judge ordered personal repayment (not corporate bankruptcy protection)

    high confidence · Dennis detailed civil case findings: six claimants testified; Papaduke's countersue for full payment was dismissed; personally liable for at least six-figure debt

  • Highway Pinball shut down via voluntary liquidation on May 4th after investor takeover; Cointaker distributor refused to accept Alien container shipment citing poor customer service and parts issues

    high confidence · Dennis citing This Week in Pinball coverage and leaked employee layoff information; liquidation timing coincided with 'Alien Day'

  • Original investors ousted Andrew Highway and formed new company 'Pinball Brothers,' potentially transferring assets before liquidation to shield them from creditors

    medium confidence · Dennis speculating on timing and legal maneuvering; unclear if asset transfer occurred before statute-of-limitations threshold; Pinball Brothers listed as creditor supplying parts to Highway

  • Deep Root attempted to acquire Queen license from Highway before collapse; Highway refused sale, suggesting assets were being preserved for Pinball Brothers

    medium confidence · Dennis citing Deep Root's Robert Mueller post on Pinside; refusal to sell contradicts expected liquidation behavior

  • Highway Pinball purchased expensive equipment (CNC machine, flatbed printer, packing machines, commercial ice drink machines) that went unused or underutilized

    medium confidence · This Week in Pinball article reporting anonymized ex-employee claims; Andrew Highway disputed accuracy, citing employee grievances

  • Container of Alien pinball machines intended for CoinTaker was sold to Europeans through Pinball Brothers instead

    low confidence · Dennis noting unconfirmed reports; unclear if this constitutes proper asset liquidation or misappropriation

  • Iron Maiden Stern Pinball will 'do gangbusters' in sales despite polarizing heavy metal theme, driven by licensed IP appeal to non-pinball collectors

    medium confidence · Tony's opinion based on market dynamics; acknowledges theme polarization but argues IP licensing outweighs gameplay originality for home collector sales

Notable Quotes

  • “This is a civil case not a criminal case, people it's really simple to keep straight.”

    Dennis @ ~15:00 — Correcting misconceptions about Papaduke's legal liability; distinguishes civil judgment from criminal conviction in community discourse

  • “It's just math. I probably said that phrase more than any other phrase [in the tax presentation]. And this is the same case.”

    Dennis @ ~35:00 — Frames Highway Pinball failure as inevitable mathematical/business reality rather than market surprise

  • “Unless he wants to declare bankruptcy... even if he does bankruptcy, I don't think it gets fully shed. He might be able to get it down... But him having a career that's fairly high paying... it's in the claimant's best interest that John make as much money as possible.”

    Dennis @ ~22:00 — Explains why Deep Root employment is actually beneficial to Zidware creditors despite industry drama; frames garnishment and debt recovery pragmatically

  • “If Pinball Brothers sells Queen, that's just pure profit for them. They don't have to make the machine. They can just sell the license to somebody to make the machine.”

    Tony @ ~48:00 — Articulates motive for asset transfer: license value captured by new entity rather than distributed to Highway creditors

  • “The math never worked. And as I often have to stress in that tax presentation I said I was going to talk about, it's just math.”

    Dennis @ ~34:00 — Reiterates predictability of Highway collapse based on financial fundamentals

  • “Are you telling me that there is a CEO who would wastefully use money and not do everything exactly right for the company? I have a very hard time believing that such people exist in this infallible, perfect world.”

    Tony @ ~52:00 — Sarcastically dismisses anonymous wasteful spending allegations; frames as typical CEO behavior rather than unique misconduct

  • “Theme anymore is probably a bigger draw for most people than the game... unless the license fees are ridiculous, in which case there are thousands of licenses to choose from out there, you are really setting yourself up for having a harder time selling machines.”

Entities

John PapadukepersonAndrew HighwaypersonHighway PinballcompanyPinball BrotherscompanyDeep Root PinballcompanyCoinTakercompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Suspected asset transfer from Highway Pinball to newly formed Pinball Brothers before liquidation to shield valuable IP (Queen license) and equipment from creditors

    medium · Dennis: 'why not sell the asset that you can't use because you're liquidating?... If Pinball Brothers sells Queen, that's just pure profit for them... It's not clear to me yet, but the case is pretty strong, obviously, for the lack of it.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Highway Pinball voluntary liquidation on May 4th following investor takeover; company ceased operations after Cointaker distributor refused Alien container shipment

    high · Dennis: 'a few days later, it is leaked out, not through official release, it was a leak, that Highway had shut down, that the employees were laid off, they were informed that business was closed, and voluntary liquidation was going to happen. And that process began on the 4th of May.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Iron Maiden LE art package reception mixed; some prefer Pro model due to simpler mechanics reducing delays, paralleling Game of Thrones Pro/Premium preference patterns

    medium · Tony: 'Some people don't like the art package as much on the LE versus the Pro... Some people don't like the delays that are involved with the more advanced mechanisms... There are a number of people who have always said Game of Thrones Pro plays so much better than the Premium models'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Deep Root Pinball attempted Queen license acquisition from Highway, refused; suggests Highway assets being preserved for Pinball Brothers rather than liquidated

    medium · Dennis: 'Deep Root claimed they asked to get Queen, and Highway said, no, we will not sell you the Queen license... it's part of that credence that's being lent to this idea that Pinball Brothers is planning to do something post-Highway'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.401

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, May 6th. It's episode 61. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And, well, we've got quite a mix. We've got good news in the world of video games, and we've got not-so-good news in the world of pinball. Yeah. But before we delve into either world and have worlds collide, we need to do our introductions. We both went to the 403 Club tournament, the monthly tournament in the Kansas City area, Tony. Tony, you went to a pinball tournament. I know. I played pinball. It's the first time I've played pinball since Texas. Did you beat anyone? I had one victory. So you basically have just been resting up to restore yourself to proper physical perfection?
1:05
No, probably not. I think it was more of a fluke. You weren't healing some finger injuries? No. Okay. I'm not murdering. I'm not off to the side getting better.
1:20
Yeah, so we were both at that, and that was last night, so that was good. I haven't been. I've been working. We lost a couple of employees that have moved on to greener pastures. So it has been this chaos of trying to disseminate workload across the remaining staff. I had to go down to the southern part of the state a few days ago to give a presentation on taxes. I won't be giving that presentation on this podcast. As an aside, before I went, there was someone, one of the audience members came up to me and said, just tell a lot of jokes and make it fun.
1:56
And I said, you understand that this is taxes, right? I can't make it fun. Even if you like taxes, I can't make it fun for you. I can make it informative. I can tell you some jokes, but they'll either be tax jokes and not funny, or they'll be irrelevant jokes. So I used irrelevant jokes. Okay. Well, you know, what you could do next time is you could hire me on as a contractor, and we'll just kind of do a two-man town hall talk type thing.

  • Jersey Jack Pinball's Dialed In (America's Most Haunted) is their worst-performing game despite being their best mechanically/creatively

    medium confidence · Dennis citing second-hand network reports; attributes poor sales to original theme not resonating with collectors

    • Dennis @ ~10:00 — Core market strategy observation: licensed IP licensing outperforms original themes for home collector segment

  • “I'm currently receiving garnishment for someone who didn't finish doing a deck build... I'm getting money generally every week, but the amount I get ranges from as low as $3 to the highest I think I've received in a week is $80.”

    Dennis @ ~24:00 — Personal creditor experience demonstrating practical realities of garnishment recovery; frames Papaduke's debt recovery timeline as potentially decades-long

    • Stern Pinball
    company
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Tonyperson
    Dennisperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    Robert Muellerperson
    Nateperson
    Iron Maidengame
    Aliengame
    Full Throttlegame
    Queengame
    Playboygame
    Magic Girlgame
    Dialed Ingame
    403 Club Tournamentevent
    This Week in Pinballmedia
    Pinball Newsmedia
  • ?

    design_philosophy: Iron Maiden's four-flipper layout with upper flipper area creates different flow than traditional Ritchie-style games; still maintains good pace despite unconventional design

    medium · Tony: 'The shots feel really good once you find them... It's a game that has flow, but with the four flippers, you've got the whole upper area. It doesn't flow like a Steve Ritchie game. it flows differently, but it's still got a really good pace to it.'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: John Papaduke personally liable for six-figure civil judgment to 26 Zidware creditors; judge dismissed his countersue for full payment collection

    high · Dennis: 'J-Pop lost and the judges said he needs to pay the money back to these creditors... 26 claimants. Six actually went to the hearing and testified... apparently J-Pop, through his vidware position, countersued... that was just dismissed outright by the judge'

  • $

    market_signal: Licensed IP drives home collector purchasing decisions more than original themes or gameplay quality; Iron Maiden expected to outsell despite polarizing metal theme

    medium · Dennis: 'theme anymore is probably a bigger draw for most people than the game... I don't see the point in doing original themes... you are really setting yourself up for having a harder time selling machines a la America's Most Haunted'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: John Papaduke employed by Deep Root Pinball despite Zidware creditor judgment; hosts frame this as beneficial to creditors' debt recovery prospects

    high · Dennis: 'if John's doing what he knows how to do, which is design, supposedly, then him working for a pen law company would be better for getting more people more money faster than him working as a greeter at Walmart... it's in the claimant's best interest that John make as much money as possible'

  • ?

    announcement: Iron Maiden LE art package officially revealed; gameplay reveal conducted by Jack Danger with Keith Elwin rules explanation; expected strong sales performance

    high · Dennis: 'Iron Maiden, Stern Pinball's most recent game. The limited edition art package was revealed a number of days ago... Jack Danger with Dead Flip did it... I think the whole Iron Maiden line is going to do gangbusters.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Highway Pinball purchased expensive equipment (CNC machine, flatbed printer, packing machines, commercial ice machines) that went unused or severely underutilized

    medium · Dennis: 'Some of the things that were listed as having been bought by Highway Pinball, but they barely used. There were packing machines... And a flatbed printer... items that were listed... but then never used at all A CNC machine A couple of commercial ice drink machines'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: CoinTaker distributor refused Alien container shipment citing persistent parts issues and poor customer service support for previously sold machines

    high · Dennis: 'Cointaker, they're a major distributor for pinball machines in the United States. They refused to take possession of a container of Alien pens... citing that there was poor customer service and there were parts issues with the games.'

    • 2:24
    And my contractor rates are very reasonable, $500 an hour, six-hour minimum. It's not a big deal. That includes drive time. Oh, yeah. Well, we've found that with contractors lately. They all want to count the drive time. So now it's like, okay, well, what town do you live in? Because that's where we're hosting it.
    2:44
    Yeah, we have. It's sad. It's very sad. Okay, well, did you have any other introduction stuff? That's it for me.
    2:53
    My oldest daughter ran in her fourth 5K yesterday. And like an appropriate, proud papa, I was so exhausted from watching her run that when we got home, I took a nap before I had to go to pinball.
    3:11
    She didn't even take a nap. I woke up because she's like, she took a shower and she went to lay down. I'm like, are you going to take a nap? She goes, yeah, I think I'm going to take a nap. I'm like, okay. She was watching some YouTube, but I laid down and I passed out for like two solid hours. And I woke up. I was like, how was your nap? She goes, oh, I never actually took a nap. I was like, oh, oh, I'm old.
    3:32
    Well, I mean, running, it is exerting to watch. Apparently, yeah. So, speaking of exerting, we need to get working here. and we need to start with the pinball segment. And first item is a pretty brief one. Iron Maiden, Stern Pinball's most recent game. The limited edition art package was revealed a number of days ago. We shared some of that information on our Facebook page. Only thing I really wanted to note is that there was a gameplay reveal. Jack Danger with Dead Flip did it. We have a link in the show notes so people can go back and watch the archive of the footage if you're interested. Once again, Keith Elwin walks you through the whole rules and stuff. I like that. I do, too. I think it suits it really well.
    4:20
    Did you get a – I haven't really watched that video. I watched a little bit because I already watched a good chunk of the pro. Right. I didn't watch the LE video. Did you get any time on the pro at 403 Club?
    4:33
    No. I wanted to, but there was always somebody on it before the tournament started. And then once the tournament started, every game that I got in my random draw of games to play was either titled Ghostbusters or Totem. Because, you know, I angered some gods by taking a nap. I think that's what it was. Okay. So, no, I didn't get a chance. It was open a couple times, but there were really close matches going on on the machines right next to it. I wasn't going to be so rude as to go start up a game just for fun. So, and then we left. Yes. Then we left, because we had Overwatch to watch. Exactly. But don't worry, we won't talk about that. I played one game on it before the tournament started, just to start to get a feel for it. I see why people like it. The shots feel really good once you find them, which is true for any pinball machine. It's weird in the sense that I would describe it as. It's a game that has flow, but with the four flippers, you've got the whole upper area. It doesn't flow like a Steve Ritchie game. it flows differently, but it's still got a really good pace to it. Yeah. And I think that it works really well. The whole thing with the LE, some of the, I don't know if I'd say criticism. Some people don't like the art package as much on the LE versus the Pro. Obviously, that's very subjective. Some people don't like the delays that are involved with the more advanced mechanisms and toys on the LE. Again, that's not anything new to us either. There are a number of people who have always said Game of Thrones Pro plays so much better than the Premium. models because of the upper playfield. And this, with the physical locks and such and the ramps that lift, some people would rather it just be more virtual. So, anyway, there's footage length, though, for anyone to explore. And that's really all I had to say about the Iron Maiden LE.
    6:21
    But I think it's going to do... I think the whole Iron Maiden line is going to do gangbusters. I think it is going to be a pretty good turnout.
    6:30
    And that's, in all honesty, that's in spite of the theme, I think. Theme is very polarizing just because there are a lot of people that either don't know Iron Maiden or know Iron Maiden enough to know they don't like it. Right. Versus those that love it. Right. And again, that's very specific. And like I was, I don't know if you were part of that conversation last night, but I was having a conversation with a couple of the guys at Pinball last night. And I have a co-worker who likes Iron Maiden a lot and not really into pinball, but has a big interest in the machine because of the theme. And I think that's the kind of thing. It's kind of like the Supreme machine that got turned out or anything else. And let's be honest, theme anymore is probably a bigger draw for most people than the game. I think when you're targeting a home collector or market and you're thinking, which I believe Stern does, thinking about collectors who aren't necessarily pinball collectors. They're just collectors in general.
    7:29
    There's a lot. I don't see the point in doing original themes. I just don't. I don't think it's smart business then. I know there are some people, especially some pinball people, I'd say it's a minority, but they can be fairly vocal, who they want the artistic creativity of original themes. They respect original themes more. But the bottom line is this is a business. This is an art. And it's just, unless the license fees are ridiculous, in which case there are thousands of licenses to choose from out there,
    8:03
    you are really setting yourself up for having a harder time selling machines a la America's Most Haunted dialed in. We don't know the numbers from Jersey Jack, but from everything I have heard through my network of connections, it's the worst performing Jersey Jack game. Which is sad because it is Jersey Jack's best game. Yes, it's their best game. But that theme doesn't click for anyone. And I think some people may be thinking, well, now that's not such an operator world. That's not a big deal because the theme was just to get people to put the first dollar in. And then after you put the first dollar, the gameplay should make you want to play it more. But with Home Collectors, who goes out just in general and is like, oh, I just want this unknown, made-up, pretend theme. versus, oh yeah, I'm a Trekkie, so I want Star Trek. Or I'm a Star Wars nut, I want Star Wars. Or I love metal, so I want all the metal bands. Yeah. It is what it is. It's a valid argument, and it's the reality that we live in. Yes. Speaking of reality, we'll go to our second pinball topic.
    9:07
    And the law is reality. I am the law. I'm not. I am the law. I'm not a judge. Okay. Double whammy. Yes.
    9:17
    As reported via Pinside, there was an update regarding Zidware. For listeners who are not familiar, Zidware was the company established by famed pinball designer John Papaduke, who worked for a number of years for Bally Williams. He designed some very popular games such as Theater of Magic, Circus Voltaire, the World Cup Soccer, Star Wars Episode I. I'm obviously naming games that aren't exactly good. and TOTAN, as Tony referenced earlier, which stands for Tales of the Arabian Nights, for those that don't know the acronym.
    9:55
    So he established his own pinball company. He set out to make a game called Magic Girl. Later, he set out to make a game that's commonly referred to as Raza, which I believe is Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. It used to have another name before that, where it was like Ben Hex Zombie Adventure, or something along those lines. and then An Alice in Wonderland is the third game. None of these games were produced by Zidware proper. Magic Girl games were ultimately built with the aid of American Pinball under a relationship that's not entirely clear to me.
    10:31
    As in, I think they built the parts, but J-Pop, John Pop Duke's commonly referred to as J-Pop, I guess he assembled it himself. They went out, it's essentially a box of lights. The code is rudimentary, there are spots for mechs that weren't installed it's not real pinball but it is plunge, kind of for not having a groove in the shooter lane so what happened here? there was a civil suit, and I need to stress this because I've read online and I've heard from others thinking that J-Pop is now a criminal, this is not true this is a civil case not a criminal case, people it's really simple to keep straight so what happened was a number of people who pre-ordered gains from John Papaduke's Zidware company filed a civil suit against him on the grounds that he failed to produce the machines and they wanted their money back because he didn't complete what he was contracted to complete. What happened was J-Pop lost and the judges said he needs to pay the money back to these creditors or the ones that were the claimants. There were 26 claimants. Six actually went to the hearing and testified against him. That day, the decision was handed down.
    11:48
    So, what does this mean? It means J-Pop owes at least 26 people a great deal of money. Thousands upon thousands of dollars in all cases, I believe. Everyone was owed at least several thousand dollars. Hence why it was this combined. It's not a small claims court. This went to a regular civil because the dollar amount's so high. I believe this essentially functioned almost like a class action. They're all clumped together as one case. I did see that apparently J-Pop, through his vidware position, countersued, I think, all of the claimants, at least some of them, demanding that they needed to make full payment because many of them had only paid partially.
    12:29
    As far as I can tell, that was just dismissed outright by the judge, so that didn't go anywhere. Should have been. I don't know why it was attempted. I don't know if he insisted on it or if his lawyer thought maybe there was a legal angle they could argue that. well, he wasn't actually required to complete the games and deliver them because he didn't get all the money for them.
    12:48
    Again, how does that absolve you from having to pay back? It's grabbing for anything you can. Right, right. Well, the civil suits aren't saying give us the games right now. It was give us our money back that we paid, not give us the full amount that the game would have cost or anything. So anyway, I found that to be an odd, desperate act that didn't look good. I agree. That comes off very much like, please, please, please, I just need something. Right. Now, I'm assuming, in terms of what happens now, that J-Pop doesn't have this money. No. I believe him when he went on, you know, years ago when he was on Coast to Coast Pinball in that.
    13:26
    Abomination might be a bit strong of a word. I like Nate, and I really like Coast to Coast Pinball. And I know, because he's said it multiple times, that the interview with John Papaduke is his most popular episode ever. It is a terrible interview. Truly terrible.
    13:40
    And I don't mean even the questions that were asked. It is rambling, nonsensical nonsense. Nonsensical nonsense. Yes, we get the double non. No, it's really bad. Now, he chose not to edit it because he wanted people just to hear John without any accusations that he had modified it. It needed editing. Because if you didn't already know the J-pop situation, that will only confuse you. I had just read up on it when I went back and listened to that episode, and it confused me. And while I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, I think I do a pretty good job tracking the legal chain of chronology that was going on and the whole rise and fall of his business. So I would have edited it and then maybe had an unreleased, like a link off to, here's the unedited version. and you really want to hear Ramblin' Man. But anyway, so given all that, if you were able to sift through that interview, there was a point where he did fully acknowledge to Nate that, yeah, that money was gone. He didn't have the money to produce. I don't think anything has changed about that since then. So given that, what I think would most likely happen is garnishment. It's the most logical way to try and start to recoup money. Now, this was interesting because online there was a lot of this discussion about, well, now that he's been found guilty, and let's remember again, this is a civil case. He's not some sort of convicted con man here. I want to stress this. I am as disappointed with his business acumen as anyone, but let's not go crazy here. But that deep root should drop him. But for these now creditors, they have this legal claim.
    15:35
    Him working for Deep Root actually is probably for the best for them. Right. Now, we had the interview a few months ago with Robert Mueller from Deep Root. At the time, they were having an offer for people to basically turn in their evidence that they had tried to purchase from John through Zidware. and they could get some deep root product or there were other compensations that were offered. Now, that wasn't extended to those with the lawsuit. Initially, it planned to be, but they pulled that back. So these 26 weren't eligible for that anyway. But if John's doing what he knows how to do, which is design, supposedly,
    16:16
    then him working for a pen law company would be better for getting more people more money faster than him working as a greeter at Walmart. Yeah, just because it's sheer dollars. I posted an example of this on Pennside where someone had asked about garnishment and what was available by state. I did a little bit of research on that, but as we've mentioned one other time on the show, I'm currently receiving garnishment for someone who didn't finish doing a deck build. That was a small claim. It was still a couple thousand dollars, and that person works at a gas station. So I'm getting money generally every week, but the amount I get ranges from as low as $3 to the highest I think I've received in a week is $80. It just depends how much you work. Right. And I think he's got more than one job, and I'm only garnishing one. Right. And I'm seeing here that it's, I mean, you look at John Papaduke. I mean, he was born in 62, so he's, what, 56?
    17:12
    Okay. So, garnishments of any amount, unless he's making huge money, they're never going to get everything back. Probably not. unless he gets other income streams or he has other assets. Yeah, that could be it. Because what's interesting, what's relevant about the civil suit is he was not able to just chalk this all onto his S-corp Zidware and say, well, Zidware's out of money, so... Bankruptcy. Right. Zidware's gone. Zidware had the debt, not me. He's personally liable for the debt. And that is something of a big deal. because it means he can't just, unless he wants to declare bankruptcy, which maybe he will, he won't be able to fully shed the judgment.
    18:00
    Even if he does bankruptcy, I don't think it gets fully shed. He might be able to get it down. He might be able to control it. He might be able to prevent interest or something. It just depends on what happens with that, and I don't know. But him having a career that's fairly high paying, and Robert claimed that he was paying good money to the designers,
    18:22
    that's, you know, overall, you know, whether or not you want Deep Root to succeed or not, it's in the claimant's best interest that John make as much money as possible, just from a practical standpoint. And that's all I'm saying about that. So, well, we'll have to see what happens. But if his designs are successful with Deep Root and they keep him on board, in theory, at least a portion of this money should start to flow back. It's a lot of claimants for a lot of dollars. Even if you're making good money, I mean, when you're talking, if it's hundreds of thousands of dollars, it may not be plausible for him to do it before he retires. Right. It just depends.
    19:06
    And 26 people, I mean, you have to figure at the bare minimum, and obviously we don't know, but at the bare minimum, that's got to be at least $70,000 probably. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's six figures. I'm pretty confident that there were some pay-in-fulls on that. I think some may have been on the lower end, which maybe were like $4,500 deposits. Right. But, yeah, I've seen some things about the number amount, but, yeah, it's a lot. It's significant. So, anyway, that was the news on Zidware. so let's go to our third pinball news item and it's going to be our big discussion regarding pinball in this episode for obvious reasons and that is the collapse of highway pinball so first I've got a couple of links in the show notes for people to read more on this one link is to this week in pinball's coverage of highway pinball it has lots of good details in it and a whole timeline of the Rise and Fall of the Company. So I recommend that one. And then there is also a link in the show notes to an interview that Pinball News conducted with Andrew Highway. It was a written interview that posted by our time last night. It was up at some point. And so there are some interesting highlights from that. It's very long and there's a lot of detail in that, giving Andrew's perspective. We'll cover some of that, what I think is the most relevant. So I'm going to try and walk through this in a way that makes a lot of sense, but there are so many pieces that it gets a little bit overwhelming. But what are we known for here, Tony? We're known for our deep dives. So let's dive deep on this.
    20:50
    Tony, you and I, I think we kind of called that Highway Pinball wasn't going to last a long time ago. Right. I mean, if it hadn't been for the investors swooping in last year, this would have happened last year. And we thought it was going to happen last year, but that was before the investors. Right. And then after the investors started to do what they did, the ways that they were going about doing it made me think that I didn't see the long term how it was supposed to be viable. Right. So were we the first? Sure, we were probably. Yeah, why not? We were the first that actually based it off of research and knowledge and strength. Or not. Not just hope and love. Not just the rumor mill. But with serious number crunching. The math never worked. And as I often have to stress in that tax presentation I said I was going to talk about, it's just math. I probably said that phrase more than any other phrase. It's just math. And this is the same case. So let's talk about what's happened with Highway recently. I'm not going to go through the whole timeline. That's what this week in pinball is for if you want to know about it. Okay. Cointaker, they're a major distributor for pinball machines in the United States. They refused to take possession of a container of Alien pens. They cited that there was poor customer service and there were parts issues with the games. So people weren't getting what they needed to fix machines that were being sold through Cointaker. So when Highway said, we've got another set, a whole container full, which is like 20-some pens, ready to go to the States, Cointaker said, we're not paying you. Because they said, you have to pay us for the pens and then we'll ship them. Right. No. until you resolve your customer service problems and start getting parts out to the people we already sold pins to, we're not buying any more from you because it's making us look bad. I think that's just good business. No, it makes sense. I haven't heard a single person really criticize Cointaker beyond those thinking maybe now if they had done that, they would have machines that they could sell for even higher dollars because they're a collector's item now. Whatever. We can go into that if we want to later.
    22:58
    Pinball is an investment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A few days later, it is leaked out, not through official release, it was a leak, that Highway had shut down, that the employees were laid off, they were informed that business was closed, and voluntary liquidation was going to happen. And that process began on the 4th of May. Be with you.
    23:22
    I kind of said it like Yoda. Which is kind of funny, because the official notice of the liquidation came out on Alien Day. at 426. Yeah.
    23:33
    Everything was timed. The circle is complete. Fox and Disney are both ladies. The world is done. Everyone's together. So. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Mm-hmm. Did you get to that mode when you played Ghostbusters?
    23:47
    No. Okay. Well, that was a fun story. Wow. Thanks for sharing with us. Thank you for reminding me just how poorly I played on Ghostbusters last time. That's what I'm here for.
    23:58
    So. So what's going on? Well, it turns out when the new investors, which I need to qualify that a little bit. The investors who took over were actually old investors. I don't mean age-wise. I mean, they actually had invested in Highway already. Yeah. But they went ahead and they took it over and sort of ousted Andrew Highway and assumed control. Hostile takeover. How hostile remains unclear, and we'll get into that a little bit when we cover the Pinball News article. where they did the interview. But they formed another company when they did the takeover, apparently, called Pinball Brothers.
    24:38
    And the questions that are remaining now is, why does Pinball Brothers exist? Was it just set up as a way when they were doing the takeover to kind of shield themselves from if they weren't able to save the company that things wouldn't completely blow back onto them? or was it anticipated that Highway was going to definitely die and they began the process of transferring assets from Highway Pinball to Pinball Brothers so that when this liquidation process began on May 4th, they would be able to say, oh, Highway doesn't have any assets to liquidate and you can't touch Pinball Brothers because it's not in trouble. It's not in an administration and it hasn't asked for voluntary liquidation. It's doing just fine. And it's a completely separate business. That has nothing to do with this other than, oh, it's listed as a creditor against Highway Pinball because it was supplying all the parts.
    25:32
    It's not clear to me yet, but the case is pretty strong, obviously, for the lack of it. I would assume so. So, they stopped the information coming in, but we don't know. We don't know what the intent. Obviously, there's a difference between what's happening and what the intent was. so next element that adds to this tapestry of a narrative that we're weaving here, Deep Root which we talked about back with the Zidware discussion because they have John Papaduke on payroll, they posted, I'm assuming Robert, posted on Pinside indicating that they had approached Highway before the liquidation announcement but very recently, I think it was the same week and wanted to see if they could acquire the license to the band Queen. As had often been rumored, the next game from Highway Pinball was supposed to be Queen. From what we've seen with that announcement, it was Highway had three games in the pipeline to varying degrees. There was Queen, Playboy, and then Barry Oswald was working on an unlicensed pin. So Deep Root claimed they asked to get Queen, and Highway said, no, we will not sell you the Queen license. which, factoring that in, is part of that credence that's being lent to this idea that Pinball Brothers is planning to do something post-Highway. Right. Otherwise, why not sell the asset that you can't use because you're liquidating?
    27:01
    Deeper didn't want Playboy, and they don't need permission to do an original theme, so they didn't need to get anything for the third one. And here's, I mean, just straight off the top of my head, The obvious thing there is if Highway sold Queen with the amount of debt Highway had and the amount of money that was owed to creditors, anything they got for the Queen license that got sold off would just disappear to creditors. Sure. Or with the transfer to Pinball Brothers. If Pinball Brothers sells Queen, that's just pure profit for them. Yeah. They don't have to make the machine. They can just sell the license to somebody to make the machine. Sure. The question is who has the license right now? Is it Highway or is it Pinball Brothers? If Highway still has it, then Pinball Brothers' plan would be to buy it in liquidation. But what people think is that it's already been transferred. That would be my assumption. And Highway Pinball as a company limped along long enough that there are laws against doing gamesmanship like this, where you take a company and you're going to plan to let it fail, but you're going to actually move all the things of value out to another company. But there's like almost a statute of limitations to it before it's no longer seen as you having done that. And the question is, did this take long enough? Did they allow Highway to survive long enough and move the assets over really early in the process that this could pass legal muster? That's the question. And that's up to, I think, when the liquidator who was appointed, and that's all that really happened on May 4th. There wasn't any major news. It was all very pro forma. That sort of stuff will be, I believe, investigated during that entire process as they spin everything down and sell off whatever remains with Highway. Right.
    28:43
    Okay, so we have that. It should supposedly include a container of pinball machines. Well, that's an interesting point. There have been reports that that container that was meant for CoinTaker has been sold to Europeans through Pinball Brothers. But I don't know if that's speculation or not. I've not seen confirmation. Let's just put it that way. But it's an interesting point because, yes, you would normally think those pins, at least, should be assets to Highway. Now, if they sold them, then the money is the asset to Highway. So, again, it's not necessarily wrong that they ended up getting sold. I don't know.
    29:24
    Some other interesting pieces of information, and this was mostly out of the This Week in Pinball article, But this was just reports of things coming in. A lot of this had to do with back when Andrew Highway was the one running the company.
    29:37
    So it was noted that Andrew Highway, and a lot of these claims were anonymized. So we don't know who claimed what. Right. I know Andrew, and we'll talk about his response through Pinball News. But he stated a lot of this stuff is coming from ex-employees and their ex for a reason. And that they have an ax to grind. Sure. He says take all this with a grain of salt, essentially. So, one thing was that he used money wastefully.
    30:05
    Are you telling me that there is a CEO who would wastefully use money and not do everything exactly right for the company? I have a very hard time believing that such people exist in this infallible, perfect world. Yes, I know. You are an eternal optimist. the well some of it just seems like if it's true when you qualify it it's all alleged if it is true some of this just seems like poor choices versus you know like corrupt-esque acquisitions and blowing money on oneself there's a little bit of that in the claims as well so here's some of the things that were listed as having been bought by Highway Pinball, but they barely used. There were packing machines, so they would be able to pack their own stuff that didn't get used very much. And a flatbed printer was listed as something that was purchased, but only used a little bit. I mean, to pack stuff, you would have to actually complete something to have it shipped. They completed some full throttles. If you remember, we had full throttle on location Yeah Some items that were listed as having been bought by Highway Pinball For Highway Pinball purposes, but then never used at all A CNC machine A couple of commercial ice drink machines What is a commercial ice drink machine? This might be like UK phrasing Is that a pop machine? Is that like a vending machine? Micah, that sounds almost like a slurpy machine or like a frozen margarita machine. But who would get two? Maybe it's daiquiri time. Who would get two of them? Well, obviously you need one for margaritas and one for daiquiris. Oh, okay.
    32:00
    Okay. I mean, how are you going to have your proper Friday night parties without margaritas and daiquiris? Perhaps they were just different branded. One was Slurpee and one was Icy. Oh, yeah. Icy, the Pepsi of Slurpee.
    32:16
    Okay. And an injection molding machine. I guesstimate plastics. Never used it, according to the person who was reporting this.
    32:26
    This was one that I'd heard repeatedly in the past, well before the failure, that they moved facilities several times, and at one point they were in a massive warehouse. They used one-third of it, but it was just a huge, like a hangar. Huge. Yeah. Huge waste of space. So that claim was there. It's like the space I want to own. Yes. But you'd probably fill it with your desk. Pretty much. Yeah. A Porsche that Andrew Highway got a Porsche, and he had the lease payments paid by Highway Pinball directly. It's a company car. People get company cars all the time. And let's be honest. It's a Porsche. It's not like it's something that's for real high-end rollers. Porsches are for people who think they're high-end rollers, but they can't actually afford a high-end car. So they get a Porsche and it makes them feel like they special even though it like the Taurus of sports cars Oh okay I lose track So it like it not a Lotus
    33:32
    It's not a Ferrari. It's not a Lamborghini. It's not one of those Mercedes AMGs. It's a Porsche. It's like, oh, I needed a sports car because I'm having my midlife crisis, but all I can afford is a Taurus. Okay. That's good to know, because I wasn't aware of that. So I'm glad you've explained this. Pinball is a world of carguments, and I'm glad you're equipped to battle on those equal terms. Okay, so there was the low-end sports car and a generous salary to him. And also that he had been, I guess when the company had started up, renting a villa with an indoor heated pool. But he then moved into a six-bedroom house.
    34:15
    That's a lot of bedrooms. Hey, you never know. You've got to have party rooms. Oh, no, I find it used for everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's bedroom outs. Yeah, I would definitely find one of those rooms that have the disco ball and the fog machines.
    34:32
    And, no, no, there's plenty of possible uses. Okay. So, another item that I thought was interesting. This comes back from Pinside versus this week in pinball. But it was noted that Andrew also had a habit of meddling in the design process, like the playfield design process.
    34:52
    And by that I mean there was a key example, which I noted because it stood out so much to me, was he at one stage, and purportedly this is what kind of drove Barry Osler off a cliff in terms of just mentally trying to deal with this guy. because someone came in saying Barry had done, actually worked really quickly, had done really good play field. In that person's opinion, Barry's designs were great.
    35:20
    So he's a professional doing a professional job. Yeah, like you do. But Andrew, for example, came in at one point and he said, I want this game to have 14-ball multiball because I want to beat the record set by Apollo 13. So put that in somewhere. Just find a way to stick in 14-ball multiball. The game's a turd. Why would you want to copy it? I guess this set a record. Maybe you should have figured out what game had the most flippers and add one more flipper in. And call the game Flipper and theme it off a dolphin. It'd probably be more popular than Motocross.
    35:59
    Could they have gotten the license for Flipper? Oh, sure. Surely. No, probably not. I don't know what sort of hoops you have to jump through, much like a dolphin to get the flipper license.
    36:12
    That's our next research topic. We're going to research the flipper license. We're going to find out who has the flipper license and what it's going to take to get a flipper license. I'll just get the SeaWorld license. Their brand is so toxic now. You can get that cheap. You can get that one cheap. Then surprise them and call it Blackfish.
    36:31
    Killer whales aren't fish. Okay. All right. That's a little side, Dick. It was. Just an aside. I don't want to confuse people. Now, I'm going to give you another aside because this is really weird. We had a law clerk at one point years ago, and she was very upset because there were bats in her apartment.
    36:50
    And she was explaining how they had done roof work at one point because there was a way they could get into the attic of the apartment she was renting or something along those lines. But they had already sealed that up, and then there were bats later. And so she had decided that the bats must have laid eggs in the walls, and then the eggs had hatched, and then the bats came out and lived with her. See, there are things that sometimes make me realize that this world should just burn.
    37:21
    So what I did is I started sitting in, and I often would, I haven't recently, but sitting in on the interviews with law clerks. And I inserted a new question, which was, you're living alone. bats have appeared in your house. How did the bats get there? Was it A, they flew in, B, they laid eggs?
    37:44
    I actually did have that as a question. And then after the interview, I had to explain that we had to do that because I had to stop stupid.
    37:54
    Unfortunately, there were others who were very confused by the question. Well, I can understand. Well, look, I think it should be a requirement that if you're going to go to law school, you have to know that bats are mammals. that is it's you know it's my judgment call and I felt that that's appropriate I'm not going to work with people that think bats lay eggs we will have law the law people will have law and I will insert that law they also I'm not I don't get to ask interview questions anymore without screening it because all my interview questions are mean you're mean ones they're all legitimate they're not all they're not like violations of labor standard law, but they're all scenario-based. They either make people look stupid or they ask really, really difficult scenarios, ones that I've actually seen. So they're healthy questions. But I've found that we've had multiple people who we ended up hiring and then we asked them afterwards about the interview process after they're acclimated and stuff, and they always have said that they were nervous around me. And so that's a problem. That wasn't the goal. Well, I liked everyone, but Dennis, I don't know. I just got this vibe that he hated me. He strikes me. I'm like, I thought I just had my poker face on, but apparently I have my die, die, die face. I don't know. I'll have to work on that, maybe in a mirror. But anyway, no, don't apply anywhere I work if you think bats lay eggs, because stupid, no. No, sorry. Sorry. Anyway, that was a no-brainer. So back to Highway Pinball, which has nothing to do with eggs, except for Alien, and it's pop bumper. Yeah. But we're not going to talk about the pop bumpers. Throwing my pen everywhere. Throw it. So, the interview with Pinball News, what came out last night. This was Andrew who, he had seen all the pin side discussion. This Week in Pinball had already been out for a while. So, this was in response to a lot of that content. These are the elements I thought were most noteworthy based off of what we've already discussed here, Tony. So, number one, he claims he never lied to customers. Just unforeseen problems constantly kept messing up the timelines. Again, I'm not surprised.
    40:08
    I'm not surprised he would say that. I'm also not surprised it would be true. I wouldn't be surprised if he just recorded himself saying two weeks and just put that as the answering machine's answer. So every time he called, it's like, two weeks. Yeah, I mean, it has become a running joke where his answer to everything seems like two weeks. Another highlight. He acknowledged that there were payment issues with Highway Pinball actually paying people and suppliers for parts, and that it was because of their financial position that they were in that he did have to juggle. The exact quote was juggling. Juggling expenses with what money is available. Do you pay for food or gas? Right. But on a business level. What happens when you're paying off your visa with your MasterCard? Exactly. You have to ask for a discover. that's right you're one of those people but i get cash back no one cares because no one takes it another point he did acknowledge he did he did pay a salary to himself how much was the salary he said in the fourth year of operations it was 40,000 pounds a year in the fifth year it was 45,000 pounds so that was the official salary he qualified this because he said that did not include him loaning his own money back to the company to give them cash so they'd have capital to work with. So that his actual take on those years was more on the order of 25 to 30,000 pounds versus the 40 to 45,000. But that is what it is.
    41:42
    That's a little... I mean, that doesn't sound generous. Not overly. But, of course, he had shares in highway, so if they had been successful, there would have been something you'd think on the back end.
    41:59
    That's what? 40,000 pounds, current conversion rates, $54,000 a year? No, it's not a high dollar amount, but I think part of the issue that some might take with it is a lot of business owners, when they're trying to get their business established, paying themselves a salary is a lower priority than any... Obviously, they need to be able to live. Right. But that the priority is making sure all your employees are paid and all that other stuff. Was his salary one of the things being juggled? Or was his one of the ones that was solid and always there? Well, he didn't say. I'm guessing that his salary always got paid to him, but he would counter by saying, but I had to keep taking some of that money and loaning it back to the company so that it could actually do other things. So there was also, he talked a bit about Dave Sanders. For those that don't know Dave, he is the pinball designer who developed Full Throttle and did most of the design for Aliens. Aliens, Star Alien pinball started with Dennis Nordman. He left very early in the process.
    43:03
    And so the design is really Dave's design at this point. Okay. Dave's been pretty open on forums talking about how he didn't get paid at all. Like, he got practically nothing. And so there's even a GoFundMe that's been running recently. It already met its level when I looked. But to get him some funding to get by on, because he has nothing.
    43:28
    And that, of course, has probably been what's caused, outside of the collapse of the company itself, has been what's probably most discussed. This was very odd, because Andrew spoke about it at length, or wrote about it at length, in the interview with Pinball News. And he said that Dave chose to work voluntarily for the company and that Dave had specific reasons that Andrew would not go into for wanting to be considered a volunteer rather than an employee.
    44:00
    And ultimately, royalties were what Dave was expecting to get for his work. And there's more detail there. People can go and read it if they want. It was more like Andrew and Dave were in conflict. Andrew wanted to give him more stock options instead. Dave was more interested in royalties. I don't know how it ultimately shook out, and it sounds like there was supposed to be some sort of contractual arrangement on the royalties with the new investor group, but Andrew doesn't know if that happened or didn't happen. The whole voluntary status thing, I don't get it. I don't know what the way, again, Andrew did not make a claim. The way it was phrased in writing to me was suggesting that there may have been governmental benefits in play, and he was suggesting that Dave was trying not to lose access to benefit packages from the government, and he would if he was an employee. That was the first thing that came to my mind. Yeah, if you read how it's written in Pinball News, he didn't make a claim at all, So I can't say Andrew accused him of anything, but the way it reads, it was phrased in such a way that it really suggests that that was what was going on.
    45:15
    Regardless, he does have an explanation about why Dave never actually got a paycheck. But he said that was Dave's choice. He didn't pressure Dave to not be an employee. Dave didn't want to be one. And I don't know what – Dave chose to not make money. And I have not yet seen if Dave has a response to that or what. The whole thing's really convoluted, obviously, when you're dealing with all these weird contract structures for royalties and stuff. But anyway, it's caused a lot of consternation for people because they're like, you know. Again, it has these weird echoes to Zidware and people who didn't get their payments, didn't get their games, didn't get their money. The programmer, Zombie Yeti for his art.
    46:00
    That's all sad little echoes from all that. Another thing out of the interview that I thought was noteworthy was he claimed confidentiality clauses were signed between him and the new investors when he was bought out of the company. So he was unable, and even as questions were asked about it further in the interview, most of the stuff regarding the transition he would not comment on, saying he's under NDA, so he cannot. Andrew did indicate he thinks the new investors, as we talked in our speculation earlier, he thinks that they never actually intended to save Highway Pinball. He thinks that the Pinball Brothers company was established to start transferring assets over to that entity, dropping the liabilities, and that Highway Pinball was just continued on up until the Alien Pinball license would lapse. and then the ailing license is stuck over with highway, but it's lapsed so there's no value there anymore, and then liquidation time, get rid of whatever's left with highway pinball. I don't know. I was not able to see when the license was going to lapse. It sounds like originally the license was through the end of December 2017. Right. Whether or not they got an extension or were selling without a license or how long an extension was, don't know. Andrew wasn't with the company anymore, so he doesn't.
    47:27
    Okay, so that's that. Andrew also noted he, and this is a weird one, so I want to mention this a little bit.
    47:37
    He indicated that he believes there was a rival manufacturer that drove a sabotage campaign against Highway Pinball, which he says sort of began or culminated or primarily occurred around the time of Pinball Expo 2016. In Andrew's mind, what happened was Alien Pinball was seen as such a threat to the status quo that people started sending out false bank information to customers, telling them, here's the account you need to send the money to. They weren't highway bank accounts. There were other bank accounts, illegal bank accounts set up to trap them. And that there were also people that were going around saying that Highway was unstable as a company, that you can't trust them, and basically trying to convince people to back out of purchasing the new game. He also cited two people, one who's pretty active on Pinside and one who's a pretty active pinball podcaster, as both being directly involved in a campaign to try and undermine sales of the game and that he's exploring legal options against both.
    48:56
    So we were not the podcast. Everyone likes us because no one knows us. We are the hashtag pewter standard. This is some serious next-level conspiracy theory. This makes no sense to me. Actually, I was corresponding with Ryan, who was on last week. Thank you, Ryan. We've had very good feedback on that episode, actually, because apparently he's funny, so it helped.
    49:28
    Maybe that's implying we're not. That's okay. Anyway, he had noted, how did this rival manufacturer get the customer list, the pre-order list, to know who to hit up for bank?
    49:45
    I can't wrap my mind around the notion of another, if it's a truly established, quote-unquote, real pinball manufacturer. Not that they wouldn't sabotage, but sabotaging in an illegal manner. Right. Like trying to bait people into sending money into offshore weird bank accounts. I mean, he didn't say offshore. I thought I was buying an alien machine, but apparently I was funding ISIS. Yeah, exactly. It's really weird. I can see something more along the lines of, hey, look, here's a new upstart pinball manufacturer. We don't like them. Let's contact our parts suppliers and tell them you don't sell parts to them or we won't buy parts from you anymore. No, I can understand something like that. that's a way where you can undermine and sabotage without, you know, bank fraud. Right. But here's the thing. I've played Aliens. Do you know what undermines and sabotages Aliens? Bloody Aliens. It's not that good of a game. Some people really like it, Tony.
    50:41
    Some people really like everything, and some people are the type of people who when there is something that they have, it's the best, no matter how terrible it is. They have the best cancer. Oh, ouch.
    50:57
    Well, let me ask you this. Which is better, full throttle or alien? Oh, man. That's hard. I mean, do you prefer the full-blown liquid diarrhea, or do you prefer the kind of chunky diarrhea? Oh, Tony. This is so mean. I thought full throttle stopped fairly well. It was okay.
    51:24
    I really liked it when I tried it at a Texas pinball festival. Then when we got it on location, I liked it less the more I played it. But that game was also broken all the time. It was completely broken. It had issues. It wouldn't launch the ball half the time. It was a piece of junk, which is why the operator got rid of it and didn't hold on to it long enough to get an alien kit, which was just as well because he'd never have gotten the kit. Right. Which was just as well, because even if you'd gotten a kit, you would still have to have upgraded the computer to run Aliens. What a terrible idea.
    51:56
    But no, I mean, I agree with you that I don't think Alien is a great, it's not a top 100 game. No. Maybe it's a top 200. I think the software behind Alien is really good, but that geometry is not. It's just not, it's not a good geometry. It's a clunky game. and I don't think that the shots feel like it was what was originally intended. Right. But, again, we think this about all sorts of games. Right. We do.
    52:29
    People know that there's games we don't like that people love. The thing is that if it was a truly great game, then maybe what was ostensibly planned by the new investors could have happened. And we'll talk a little bit about that when we get to the end. The last piece from the interview I just wanted to note was that Andrew sort of in a summary challenged many of those reports and claims I mentioned earlier coming from This Week in Pinball's anonymous sources or on Pinside regarding mismanagement. He just said most of those are inaccurate from disgruntled former employees. Yeah, no, he wouldn't have said anything else. No, I don't think so. All right, so let's get to the part that is the fun part for us. and we kind of did a little bit of this as we were going along, but let's talk about our thoughts. Alien Pinball. Is it finally, super-duper, truly dead? Yeah. I don't see how. I mean, with the license going out, and I've seen, I went onto Pinside, and I saw the people begging for a real manufacturer to buy the license and put the game out, and nobody's going to do that. Nobody's ever going to do that. And I don't see how anybody could believe that would ever actually happen. It's so far-fetched, yeah. I mean, saying aside that, and I get it, some of you really care about this game, or you really like it, you really love the theme, but it sounds so desperate. People, you need to let this stuff go. It's just for your own mental health. Let it go. It makes less sense for this game than many of the other games. Now, let's just consider some of the issues here as to why this is not going to happen. first of all it's highly questionable that Fox would ever give this license over with this current model of a game no way I mean I'm not saying they would never license in pinball again but this is not done well you would have to somehow convince them that it was worthwhile number two you have to re-engineer the thing because the alien machines are a pile of crap there have been a handful of people who have had no to relatively no problems with their Alien games. That is not the common consensus. The common consensus is there are problems with the mechs, there are problems with the installations in general. Now, going to another manufacturer may get your quality control at the installation side up so that, oh, look, people remember to plug in the lights. But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that I don't think a lot of those mechanisms are actually designed to last. They just didn't know any better. because I don't think there were very many people over at Highway Pinball who knew how to do pinball. You know, it's a story as old as Atari.
    55:18
    Read my article over at pinballadvice.com. Atari. Failed. Very sad. Okay, so there's that. Who would take it on of all the existing manufacturers? No one needs it. the one manufacturer that tends to exhibit the most I'll use the word sympathy for the community the most engaged one with the community is Spooky.
    55:45
    They better not take this on. They're behind schedule as it is. They've got a pile of games they need to make. I don't want them putting Total Nuclear Annihilation in suspension for this turd.
    55:57
    No, it's stupid. They already have a great game that they're building and they've got their Alice Cooper game that they need to start building. There's no reason for them to get involved with this. Not to mention, it's a wide-body game as designed. Spooky doesn't build wide-bodies. Stern doesn't build wide-bodies.
    56:16
    Dutch doesn't build anything. We're not even going to get into the other manufacturers. The only one that does, that builds wide-bodies, is Jersey Jack, and they've got enough of their own problems as it is. Yeah, they don't need to dig the hole deeper. What do you think about Pinball Brothers? Do you think that this was just a tool for the investors to protect themselves, or do you think they plan to be Highway Reborn, Phoenix from the Ashes style, and that that's why they did not let Deep Root buy the Queen theme? They're going to try and just, they're going to say, we're done. We have what we have. We're building Queen. It's going to be a Pinball Brothers product rather than Alien.
    56:53
    That's possible. But in all honesty, I think it's more likely that Pinball Brothers is holding assets for the sheer purpose of selling the assets off for more than what would happen in a liquidation sale as they sell off highway.
    57:10
    But why would they need to sell it at, I mean, okay, so you're thinking maybe they'll sell the assets. I think it's designed as a return on investment. Okay. We created this shell here, so as things are going downhill, we'll start slipping little bits of stuff over here. So once this collapses, we can make up our investment and maybe make a little tidy profit off of what is here without trying to use it to build another company. I can't honestly believe they want to build another pinball manufacturing company and try and enter the zone. Not with the limbo that is Dutch and how things have fallen apart and how things have been. I just can't believe that anybody would want to get into that business right now. Your angle makes sense for a lot of the... I could see it working for if they've moved over any of the machinery and such. I don't know on the... The clean license one confuses me. The license will ultimately expire. What manufacturer wouldn't just wait for them to lose it? because they're going to lose it. It depends upon the terms.
    58:20
    I just don't see it because there's no immediacy to Queen. Yeah. I mean, if anyone really wanted it right away, like, for example, Deep Root, they would have contacted and said, here's what we're willing to pay. They didn't want to sell. They either think they're going to get more money from someone else or if it was, and it may be, a license still under the highway name, it may fetch less money through liquidation than it would if they had negotiated with Deep Root. Because I'm going to assume it'll probably go like a bid process. And maybe he's the only one who bids, and he bids low. Because Stern has their next two years planned out. And, you know, it is what it is. But, yeah, so I don't have a good read yet on what the intention of Pinball Brothers is. I think even if they were planning to start manufacturing, though, they're going to have difficulties. I mean, we've already seen the difficulties that Deep Root is experiencing just because they have John Papaduke on a payroll with another, you know, he's one out of four or five designers on list. This would be a company that people are going to go into it going, if they did it like that, I think a lot of people would say, you deliberately let Alien fail so that you could try and have a fresh start. Why should we trust you? Why would we buy from you? Right. I don't know. So that's why it seems like a weird strategy if that's the intent. So as a final element to all of this discussion, I thought it might be a fun time to talk about sort of the, you know, failure results in reflection, or it should. Maybe people who constantly fail don't do that. But I thought it would be a good time to sort of reflect upon the status of other companies. So let's start with our big dog and Stern. What do you think about Stern in this wake of financial troubles, difficulty building machines that we're seeing with Highway and the already complete collapse of it? How do you think Stern is doing? Stern is still, as it's always been, the queen of the ball. And I'm sure that if you asked Stern what they thought about Highway, their very first answer would be, who? Oh, you don't think they thought of him as a serious threat, huh? I don't think they thought of him at all.
    60:42
    Given how many games went out, I think that probably would have been at least a fair approach. A fair approach. Yeah, you know, I'm really pleased with my Empire Strikes Back theming that I've run with. It's like I've themed prom for Stern. and it's Empire Strikes Back and every episode where we talk about anything pinball, so all episodes, all I think is, wow, my foresight is great. I am the pewter standard. This is awesome. I am the pewter standard. You know, a little bit of tin, malleable, all your figurines, they're pewter. You know, you love it. It's your real favorite metal.
    61:20
    Yeah, no. The thing that I didn't expect is I just really thought that Stern was going to be advancing themselves this year. I didn't expect in any level of specificity that half of the battle would be everyone else shooting themselves in the foot or face, depending on the degree of foul-up. Because of the pay respect. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But with the broad-based success and excitement around Iron Maiden, a level of excitement I haven't seen for a stern pin since Ghostbusters.
    61:53
    I can't remember. Ghostbusters had a really good theme in Iron Maiden. Right, right. But the difference is, Ghostbusters, the controversy with it came to be a lot of people don't like how it played. A lot of people didn't like how it played, a lot of people didn't like how the rules were programmed, and still don't like how the rules are, from the lackluster final wizard mode to the ladder progression system. So far, the rules have been greeted by maybe at most confusion from people who aren't real players, but the competitive base loves it. The art package is just as good as Ghostbusters. because Jeremy did both. So that's not surprising. Yeah, no, the art package is really good. And a lot of people are like, it's put back in some of that quality of life stuff, like service rails instead of the stupid little pegs, four flippers on a pro, spinners, multiple, on a pro. It's stuff that people were missing for a while. Yeah, it doesn't have a bash toy in it, but some people don't care about that. Some people aren't all about, well, then they're glass. You know, they play. They're players. As long as it plays well, it doesn't matter what it looks like. To some it still does, but to a lot it does not, yes. Spooky, what are your thoughts on the financial status of Spooky? Because we don't know. We just have to guess. I think that the delays Spooky put in place due to working Total Annihilation into their lineup, I think it hurts them This year for what people think But quite frankly The shift to the P-Rock system I think in the end They're going to end up ahead Because of the changes they've put into play I mean come on Al Scrooper sold out Everything Scrookey does sells out It's a given And it doesn't matter how terrible The game ends up being They've sold out their run People love them Now, I hadn't heard that Alice Cooper has actually sold all 500 units yet. Oh, I just assumed. I don't know that it happened. You're the researcher. I don't know. Everything else they've done has sold out so quickly. There's been so much good buzz for Alice Cooper, though the actual what I've played and the actual call-outs thing makes me not have any real interest in Alice Cooper. Right. Well, I mean, it's been an interesting mix. I mean, and we've touched on this before because we know people, we know operators, we know local players who think very, very little of Spooky. They will never say it publicly. No. That you cannot, it's the American dream, everyone likes Charlie. If you criticize him, you're going to get ripped apart. So they just stay silent. Who used the third rail of pinball? in some ways the social security of Penn State in some ways but the Alice sales have definitely been slower than Rob Zombie's were which sold out of the 300 within a week if I remember and a lot of people that I know who had experience with Rob Zombie have said that they think so many people got burned on Rob Zombie that they're being really cautious now so while they may publicly still have the same full-throated support of Spooky that they always have had, that the criticisms of concern about the build quality, criticisms about that once you won't have the game, your customer support level is subpar compared to what you get from other manufacturers, that those things are holding some people back from wanting to invest in another machine from that particular company.
    65:37
    Regarding Alice Cooper specifically, I think it looks best of any of the pure Spooky titles that have been. And I think the shift to the P-ROC makes a lot of sense from getting it to get it to the next level visually with in terms of the screen interactions, because they were starting to look like the worst in the industry at that. Right. And it was a board set issue. So I think that made a lot of sense. Obviously, they fell behind because of the need to code, but they are so far behind on the production versus the purchase orders for total nuclear annihilation that they have plenty of time to get that up. It just depends when they want to go onto the line and start doing the outlast. Right. Because I think I've lost my bet, and they have finally passed the 50% of the worst performing street level on sales of total nuclear annihilation. However, they still have not built 200 of them, even though they have definitely sold over 400 in terms of numeric count. They're still on the building stage, and that's just going to slow down whenever they try to pull them off the line. As long as that demand exists because they didn cap that one I think financially as a company they be okay Yes I understand and believe Charlie when he said that the profit margin on total nuclear annihilation is a lower amount than they normally would accept But it's still profitable. Right. So, they're doing that. I think they'll be okay because that demand is high. Now, patience isn't infinite even for a game that plays that well. There was already a thread where someone was confused, and then there were starting to be complaints because the average sale price of Total Nuclear Annihilation on Pinside, I think, is $1,400. People are selling their pre-order spots because they're sick of waiting, and it's non-refundable. It's $1,000 non-refundable, and it's a six-month-plus wait to get a game now. So some people are like, well, I have a spot that isn't going to be that far behind. If you want to take number 227, I'll sell it to you, but not for $1,000. I'll sell it to you for $1,400 so you can jump the line. Yeah, okay. That's fine. Somebody wants to do that, they can do that. Sure, sure. People were like, they wanted a way so that wouldn't say that's what the game sale price average was. Right. It wasn't a criticism. People were trying to make a little bit of money off of their pre-order spot. But that is a, it's not so much a financial issue, but it's a fundamental challenge. It's the challenge I think that Spooky has that's the biggest challenge that I also don't think they're really addressing, and that is their production speed is not adequate. Right. And people won't wait forever. But enough people will wait long enough. I don't think it's devastating, but this is the way they're choosing to grow the company is prohibiting, in my view, is prohibiting that line from moving at the speed it should be moving.
    68:29
    Yeah. I don't think Spooky's going anywhere. I don't either. I think their model is very conservative. I would even argue it's too conservative, that they could have so much better growth.
    68:43
    But they don't want to take – there are certain risks they don't want to take. And, hey, it's their business, so it's their right to do. But because of that, you don't – and this is why I don't see them doing – it's like they can only do so much. You need to understand that they might have all the good intentions in the world, but what's the point in building four games a year, four different games in a year, when production-wise your output can only be 500 units a year or something? Right. That's your limiting. That's your bottleneck. And if they're not willing to expand the line, that bottleneck will not change. Very true.
    69:19
    Multimorphic, the P3 platform. They're going to continue doing what they're doing. I think they'll be okay. They'll keep putting out a couple. I mean, let's face it. Their income stream isn't putting out the P3. Exactly. It's P-Rock, a highly successful board set. Right.
    69:39
    I mean, so they'll be fine. I agree. Even if they never sold another P3, they'd be fine. Yeah. Their revenue diversification has protected them. So, yeah, I don't see any issue with that. Home pen.
    69:53
    I'm not going to say they're dead. But without an actual interesting title that actually gets a decent wide release, they are nowhere near even the level of safe or interest that there is with a spooky.
    70:11
    Yeah, on the pinball side, I agree. And I know that Mike, the guy who owns Home Pin, he knew the theme would not have an appeal in the United States. But much like Multimorphic, though, perhaps not to the, I don't know. I don't know enough about his business. But they do arcade cabinets and have for years. They do arcade games. So I think it's sort of like Multimorphic. They've got a diversified revenue stream. They don't need the pinball side. And so he may have ultimately wanted to be more known for being a pinball company than someone who's making new versions of both Hankin games. But with that, I think he's got plenty of time to take it at whatever pace he wants. And, yeah, I know next to nothing about Thunderbirds. I'm more interested in seeing whatever the game number two is and if it can come out faster than what it took to do the first game. Thunderbirds are bro.
    71:08
    I'm telling you, Team America, buck or five multiball. American pinball. On sprigs. You know, Houdini, it's got tight shots. Have you heard that it has tight shots? I've heard it has tight shots. It does. It has tight shots. It's got tight shots. So what do you think?
    71:27
    I think American Pinball has managed to recover from their initial stumble way better than I ever expected of them.
    71:41
    I am 100% confident. Oh, wait, 100% is hard. I'm 90% confident that we will see a game number two from them. I don't think there's anything that's going to make them collapse and go away this year or honestly probably next year. Now their long term, it's completely going to depend upon game two and perhaps game three if they exist. If we still see American in five years. I think that's where the question is. I mean, Houdini's not been, not from what I've heard, it's not been like an Iron Maiden, but it's not been nothing.
    72:23
    It's out there. People have been buying it. People enjoy it. So I think that they are in a good position to survive and possibly move into actually thriving, but they've got to get solid hits with their next couple games. I think that makes a lot of sense the biggest issue I've been hearing about lately with American Pinball is that their production speed is not great now I do think it sounds like enough of the game has come out but they're not really struggling I think their production rate may be higher than Spooky's production rate but otherwise they're probably just about the slowest but yeah in terms of I don't know how deep of a pocket the investor is obviously some of the way they've set it up is they've got other businesses that the family is involved with that's supplying some of the parts and stuff so there's sort of like this vertical integration going on so that kind of helps the viability because some of that money that looks like is going out of that company is going into other family companies that are doing the board sets and stuff so that that adds to like you're not really losing as much as you might look like Right, and it also helps that, I mean, you still have to rewind everything back and take a look at it. And there's the simple fact that they said, here's the game, we're going to put it out. And the game came out. Not, hey, we're going to start taking pre-orders on this game. This game will be out in two years. And four and a half years later, maybe the game comes out, maybe. I mean, they're in a much better position from a startup situation than a lot of the other people we've seen in the past. Even some of the ones that are still around and are arguably doing quite well for themselves, they're in a better position than a lot of those, at least at this point. I do think that if Oktoberfest is their next game, that it will be a setback for them, that it will sell worse than Houdini did. I think you're right. And I don't think that's healthy for them. I think they need to have a more popular title for the next game. Right. And, I mean, unless, well, here's the thing. Just like we talked about earlier with Dialed In, even if it's an amazing playing game, in this day and age, the non-license route, non-knowledge route isn't going to go as big. And, quite frankly, Oktoberfest is going to be beer and I would assume scantily clad women, and that just doesn't play the game like it used to. this isn't the 70s yeah I just as holidays go it's just not important enough is what I would chalk it up to you'd have better luck with a Christmas pin right just because it's more popular you know that is what it is that's just a quote unquote let's be honest you'd probably have more luck with a Cinco de Mayo pin than you would an Oktoberfest pin it'd be more fun in my view what do I know Chicago Gaining this one interesting because just as an aside, when they didn't make the reveal of their remake number three at Texas Pinball Festival, I really thought that we would have seen the official announcement by now. I don't know what they're working on. I guess it's good that they're taking as much time as they need. I don't see any necessarily a major reason for them to have to have it be an imminent announcement, but it really makes me wonder how far along they were is they were so last-minute insane they weren't going to be at Texas, and we still don't know officially.
    76:04
    I think that, yeah, I expect to have heard about it. My guess is that they're pouring everything they've got into their current issues, but I don't know. What do you think of them on a financial level? Do you think they're okay? I think they're okay. I do too. I think that, I mean, I'm not saying, I'm not talking about, you know, oh yeah, round for a decade, round for good, whatever. No, but this year, I think they'll be flying through the year, probably the next couple of years on all honesty. Yeah, yeah. As long as they can continue to exploit the intellectual knowledge of others, continue just to remake things that are already proven, nostalgia will drive the rest. As long as they execute competently, I don't see any reason. Obviously, they started with the lowest hanging fruit, so each piece of fruit becomes a little higher and harder to reach. But that being said, there are plenty of popular Williams titles from the 90s, and with them only doing about a game a year, there's plenty. Yeah. They could last a decade as long as the hobby continues to sustain this amount of demand for old games to be remade new. So, yeah, I think they'll be all right. Now, what about Jersey Jack?
    77:22
    They're not going anywhere this year. Not this year. I think they're going to make enough off of Pirates, provided they don't push it back another 12 years, that they'll be fine through this round of game development. Okay. Now, their next game, if it has the kind of issues they've been running into with Pirates and the kind of stumbles, and if they continue to have the yeah, start pre-ordering now that game's going to be out next year the year after that three years from now if they keep running into stuff like they have in the past with what, everything except dialed in even then I think they'll probably be okay just because there's a certain portion of the community that worships them for reasons that I don't understand But I personally will see what happens. I think they'll be okay no matter what. I just think that they are in more. I mean, they've already been bailed out once or twice. Well, they have an investor that came in and did the bailout.
    78:39
    Here's a, I'm not as optimistic. Now, part of that is I was listening to the most recent episode of this flipping podcast with you. Taylor and Tommy. Taylor was on with us a few episodes back.
    78:54
    And when Tommy was at, apparently, I didn't meet him there, but he was at Texas. And when he was at Texas, there were people who told him, they didn't tell me, I don't know if they told you or not, probably not, given what you just said, but that Jersey Jack is not doing well financially. that dialed in, did a lot worse than they had expected it to do, and that they still have not turned a profit. That doesn't surprise me because it's not a theme game.
    79:25
    So if the company, though, still isn't a profitable company, I don't know how long the investor stays in. Right. Would be my area of concern. I think that from, again, no one had discussed those elements with me. This was new to me to learn about. We obviously both had already been in agreement that Dialed In mathematically should be the worst performing Jersey Jack game, despite it being the best game they ever made. Because it's a collector-oriented manufacturer on a theme that's not collectible. Right. I mean, it's just that simple. It's that simple. And then they followed that by choosing a terrible theme. I don't think any of the themes they have gone with are good. Hobbit was probably the best of the themes they picked Because it was, at the time they picked it A timely choice And also a classic book Unfortunately it's built around movies that weren't very good And it took forever to actually come out By the time it came out The Hobbit hysteria was over And done Just like by the time Pirates comes out Pirates has been over For a decade Nobody cares I mean if they'd been smart They would have gotten like The Fast and the Furious Or Oh I did it again Or they would have gotten A Mission Impossible I mean Mission Impossible Has more fans Than Pirates of the Caribbean I think it would be A terrible fan Yeah The It's Given the The decision to drop The triple disc For the single disc And the treasure chest change We talked about with Ryan last time. I think that that's showing that they're desperate to get it on the line. Yeah, I don't disagree. While, obviously, it is possible to conceive that the engineers just don't have the capabilities to solve the problem or to solve the problem within whatever financial constraints they need to get it to work.
    81:28
    I'd like to think maybe with enough time they could have solved it, but they're out of time. I think they're out of time. They wanted Q1 of 2018 to be the Pirates release. obviously we're past that. We're almost out of Q2.
    81:41
    So, I don't know. But I don't think Pirates is going to be a super successful game. I don't think so. And I think that Jersey Jack's entire model was a mistake. I think that their idea that they were only going to appeal to the high end collector has put them in a very awkward position where they have to sell low volumes at high dollars and they can put every trinket under the sun, but as the prices have gone up, because understand Woz was originally, Wizard of Oz, for those that don't know Woz, was originally listed at around like $6,500. We're so far past that now. A lot of people just will not buy their game. And a lot of operators don't see the return worth the risk. I have heard, I've not heard a confirmation, but it sounds like none of our area operators are going to give pirates a chance.
    82:33
    Dialed in, yes. Dialed in still on location. But it doesn't sound like they want to bother with pirates. And everything else is gone. Yeah. It makes whole sense to me. I mean, that's the thing is they want to be high end. They want to be for the collector. And then they choose the dumbest themes.
    82:52
    That's probably all they can afford to get. Look at what happened with pirates. You were like, well, it's Pirates of the Caribbean. But outside the play field art, you don't have the actors on the display. You don't have the actors doing call outs other than the one you brought in to do custom call-outs, which was a good move, but you don't have the original music. Yeah.
    83:11
    Everything does scream bargain basement. Yeah. You got a license with no assets, almost. You got... I mean, you got the shit. I mean, I get it, but it's like, there's so many other themes. I mean, Alien works better without the actors than this does. Right. Because at least you have the alien. You needed, what, royalties? That's what really mattered. He just wants to live in your tummy. I think that... I still think that they've probably got one more game in them. Post-Pirates, you mean? Post-Pirates. Yeah. Unless Pirates flops even bigger than I think it's going to. I don't think that they are, quote-unquote, going out of business. I think they're one bad game away from it. Right. And I don't know if Pirates will be that bad game or not. Yeah. I think from what limited, obviously now very modified prototype that I played, it's not their worst playing game. No. It might be their worst theme choice aside from Dialed In though. I don't know. I can see the argument. I don't know. What is your thought on actual production of Pirates? Do you see it by the end of the year? Do you see it by the end of quarter three?
    84:26
    Yes. They might start. I mean, we're going to be, end of June is the end of the second quarter. They might even make that. They might still make that. Now that they've already shown what the new versions will be with the discs and stuff, I think that they probably have a lot of the parts and such ready to go. I really do think, well, I don't think it's going to be delayed. I think they've learned that. I don't think they can afford to delay what happened with Hobbit and Woz ever again. Right. And that they know it's a black eye, that they're already slipping compared to how dialed in, which was so relative for them. Right. It was still like a six-month gap between reveal and release. Right. Whereas Stern is like, here's your dead flip gameplay. We're shipping at the end of the week. But Stern can afford to do that. Yes, but they're a professional manufacturer. Exactly. Jersey Jack is seen as the number two player in this industry. But when it comes to manufacturing, you see things like this and you're like, is this the Mickey Mouse manufacturing line? What's going on? It seems like they have everything else down. They've got a great coder. They have good designers. They have license acquisition setups. They're at the shows. They're really good at selling. But they just don't build well. Right. And also, one of the things that we have to remember, and I think everybody needs to remember, is Stern has enough depth in field and enough depth in finances that they can play stuff close to the chest. I mean, everybody knew about Iron Maiden for the last year and a half.
    86:00
    And Stern gets to go, I don't know what you're talking about. No. Titanium Man. No clue. I mean, we're working on a Titanium Man project, but I don't know what you're talking about. Nope. No idea. It's completely, and that doesn't hurt them in any way, shape, or form. They don't have to sit out there and pimp themselves out and say, hey, we're still here. We're working on stuff. Here's what we're working on. Look how awesome this is. Stern's like, yeah, yeah. You liking that, Aerosmith? Cool. You liking that, Guardians of the Galaxy? Cool. Yeah, Star Wars was kind of weak. We know. We acknowledge that. But, you know, there's stuff coming. We've got great people. You know what? Why not? Look, here's Iron Man. Oh, you guys aren't surprised that we had Iron Man? Or not Iron Man, but here's Iron Maiden. What, you guys aren't surprised that we had Iron Maiden? Well, I am shocked, but here it is. It looks lovely. If you want to buy one, you can have it next week. I mean, it just gives them so much power and so much muscle in the system that they can do stuff like that, where JZP has to go out and say, this is what we're doing. It's awesome. Look at us. I'm here. Mommy, mommy, pay attention to me. Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. I mean, that's what they have to do so they stay relevant. Yeah. I mean, they do have an issue with that their themes purportedly have leaked as well. And so that also causes a problem for them because I know there are people that are clearly holding out saying, where's Toy Story? Where's your good license? I want Toy Story. How long has the Toy Story leaked license? For years. How long do you think that license actually is going to last? I would think if that license was going to happen, we would have seen it by now. They're not playing that one in their vest. That is a license that somebody leaked and they don't actually have. Or it's a license that they were on the edge of having and it leaked and Disney went, whoop, no thank you, we're out.
    88:00
    We'll have to see. The last company to discuss that I wrote down. Apologies if I dropped any because sometimes I do. Dutch pinball.
    88:10
    Financial staff. Tony Schatz. You know, Big Levowski. Hey, it's a cult classic. I love that movie. White Russians. Dutch is dead.
    88:23
    It's seriously, I mean, at this point, it's random electrical impulses making the body flip, but they're dead.
    88:31
    Yeah. It's been interesting because this is the one that made me think about discussing all of these because it's come up in some of the Big Lebowski Dutch Pinball Discussion forums. Hey, look at what's happened with Highway. What's going on with Dutch? They're not giving – they got really good for a while with – I mean, the updates said nothing, but they were at least doing weekly updates. They haven't been doing that lately. Anytime there's an update, it's always, well, there's a delay with the prototypes now. We're getting ready to manufacture.
    89:03
    I agree with you that this company is dead. And it feels a lot like a less successful Highway. because at least while Highway was in the throes of failure, games did still go out. Terribly built, constantly problematic, with no instruction games, but they went out. Dutch hasn't shipped anything out for over a year, more like a year and a half at this point,
    89:31
    and all of the challenges that we were talking about with Highway Pinball before they announced liquidation are just as true for Dutch Pinball. What was the big, I don't know in your case, in my case, the big example when new investors came in where I thought you just miscalculated was where they said, okay, if people want a refund, we'll give a refund. and then they had to acknowledge they didn't have enough money to give everyone refunds as the refunds kept pouring in. And their strategy was to try and convince people to stay bought into their Alien by raising the price, what, $1,000 or $1,500 or so. We'll say $1,000. If you wanted to get back in, it's like, well, I'll give you your refund, but if you want to get Alien later, it's going to be $1,000 more to get Alien. And some people fell for it. And, yeah, I'm sure it worked on some people. Some people always go with a little mantra, well, I just want my game. I don't really want my money. I love the game. I love the theme. I just want my game. But it's the same thing with Big Lebowski, except the dollar amounts are even worse. It's like, if you pre-ordered in, we're not giving you any refunds at all. You paid, what, $8,000. It's $10,000 to buy the game now. See, that's the issue. When Highway raised the price by that much, I mean, by $1,000, you just took a lot of potential buyers off the table because you just priced out. Yep.
    91:00
    Big Lebowski is the JJP pricing tier. And maybe you think it's worth it. I know a lot of people think that of all these borderline games, the Full Throttles and the Aliens from the boutiques, the Rob Zombies and Alice Coopers, that Big Lebowski is the best playing of them all. And I've never played it. so I have no comment on that. That said,
    91:22
    that's a tall order for you to tell me that a game that old is a $10,000 game. And Dutch has acknowledged that the only way that we'll be able to satisfy the pre-orders is to sell new units. I just don't see how it works. It's not going to happen. It's math. I don't see how you get enough people to build out all the pre-orders as you've squandered the rest of the money sitting here. You're sitting and the money just goes down.
    91:46
    I love this. This is the Robotech Kickstarter. It's exactly what it is. Occasional news updates. We're still working on it. It's coming. We promise it's on the way. We swear it's going to happen. It's exactly what it is. There is no difference. No. It's the exact same thing. No. And, I mean, like anything else, you get burned. The difference is I got burned for, you know, a little bit. And other people got burned for tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah. And that's the thing that amazes me just overall in pinball is how many people, how many people keep getting burned for this kind of money? Got burned on the, I mean, and I want to know, I really, I have a deep-seated interest. I want to know how many people got burned on Magic Girl, got burned on Raza, got burned on Predator, got burned on Aliens, got burned on Big Lebowski. How many people got burned on multiple of these machines?
    92:46
    Or is there a certain group of people that just keeps walking into this like a moth to the flame? Or is it just that as some people learn, other people come into the hobby and are like, oh, sure, this sounds great.
    93:01
    Yeah, I don't know. I've seen some people who self-reported that they've been stuck in some of this multiple times. and the reasoning for it, I think it varies. There have been some, there are some people who are almost obsessive and they're not always the ones who buy in on this because there are others that meet this category and I don't approve of the tactic. I get the motivation, but they're almost shills for boutiques, that they want every boutique to succeed.
    93:33
    And there are a lot of people that have that stance. There are other podcasts that have that stance of, We want every manufacturer to succeed. We're hoping and cheering for every manufacturer to succeed, which is fine. That's not my stance. Right. I don't care if you succeed or fail. I like to think that I'm on the consumer side. If I have to pick a side, all I'm doing is responding whether or not you're succeeding or failing in my view. Yeah. If you do well, I'll say you do well. If you do poorly, I'll say you do poorly. I'm not really vested, though, in whether you do succeed or not, if that makes sense.
    94:12
    I just don't. I don't understand. The sound is so callous for me to say I don't care, but I kind of don't care. Is it cool to have multiple manufacturers? Yeah, they can produce, but only then. Right. And then, you know, it is what it is. But there have been others that I think, a lot of this, like the pre-order stuff, I think, for some people, that really came out of that whole Big Bang Bar when they made the 200 units and all that and so you looked and you saw what happened with Stern's Kron limited edition and stuff and some people were playing the lotto here where they're like we're going to try and get this boutique game and then I'll be able to flip it and make a lot of money we saw it with the Magic Girls the box of rights that came out initially they were selling for 10 to 20,000 above sticker that didn't last long No. There were a couple people who got real lucky. Because in most cases, other than the really, truly highly, highly rare items, and even sometimes with those, gameplay still tends to factor in more than rarity. Yeah. That's why it's always funny when you go on Craigslist and you see something that had less than 1,000 units and the person's like, super, ultra rare game. And it's like, dude, that doesn't make that game worth $2,500. You're lucky to get $500 for it because it plays like crap. Yeah. And most of the people who want it want it because of how it plays. They don't want your original theme that didn't sell. There's nothing special about it. Do you know how many less than 1,000 pins there are? Hundreds. Plenty to choose from. You'd have to find the right person who just wanted that one concept. So that's what I kind of think is going on. But, yeah, there are some people that have walked into the prop multiple times.
    95:53
    Let's go ahead and punch through the last two pinball things here real quick. slam the top 101 to 200. It's the game. The game we played one time. And now it's dead. Never play again. Probably not. We played it again. It was so hard. For those that didn't listen. Why'd you get a good game at a frickin' fair? None of the games were good. That's why we did the top 101 to 200. Look, you take it up with random.org and ask about their algorithms if you have a problem with it. But for those that didn't listen, on the last episode, we played a game based off of head-to-head podcasts, slam the top 100, except we did it way better with way harder games. And Ryan had Capcom's Airborne. Tony had William's Pharah. Pharaoh. Sorry. I got my Overwatch on my brain. And I had Starship Troopers. And so because it was a poll of three, I ended up using Google Forms to let people go do the vote. And the vote results came in, and I won. Yay. I had 60% of the vote. Ryan had 40%. And Tony had 0%. I didn't even vote for myself.
    97:03
    So that was Slam the Top 101 to 200. And we already put those results on Facebook. So the last thing in the pinball segment is the other game, our real game that we've been playing. Tony's brainchild, the worst of the fall of the pinball machines of 1994 to 1999.
    97:22
    So, Tony, what's going on with this? Round three results are really not overly surprising. We'll just go ahead and just start at the top and go down.
    97:35
    Popeye saves the earth. Beat Guns N' Roses. No surprise there. Freddie Nightmare on Elm Street beat Rescue 911. That one was pretty tight. That one was like 53%. Shack Attack beat Strikes N' Spares, for which we thank all of you. And Strikes N' Spares is apparently not a pinball game. Yep. I mean, follow through on our request.
    97:56
    Barb Wire beat Mario Andretti because, yeah, sure, Barb Wire's a terrible game. Lost in Space beat South Park, which I think is how we voted last time. It was, yeah.
    98:10
    Star Wars Trilogy tied with Space Jam. Yeah, our first tie of this tournament. I've not really been overly surprised because a lot of this stuff has been pretty obvious, But we went ahead, we broke the tie. Dennis tallied everything up and just sent me a random message in the middle of the day. Evens or odds?
    98:31
    Yeah. So I was just like, okay. I didn't even know what it was about, so I picked evens. So Space Jam wins and moves on. Yep. Viper Knight Drive-In beat Star Wars Episode I, no surprise to me. Nope. And World Challenge Soccer beat Harley Davidson, which also wasn't really a surprise. No, I don't think so. So we're going into round four. We're getting down into the real nitty-gritty here. So first part of round four, our choices are Popeye Saves the Earth versus Freddy. Dennis, what do you think? I have now finally watched actual gameplay of all the games still in that I had not yet had familiarity with or could remember well. and so I've now spent some time reviewing how Freddy plays and what his geometry is. I understand that it's pretty easy to exploit that you attack the furnace repeatedly that's the scoring strategy. Layout wise, both of these games have some pretty unique features. Popeye also has exploits in terms of being able to get into the multi-ball and exploiting the skill shot and such. Popeye moves on for me because it's awful.
    99:40
    It's awful. It's wide. It's slow. Most of the stuff doesn't work. The arc is not a good concept. It hurt William so bad. I like anyone with the arc is not a good concept as opposed to saying you can't see the ball. That's why it's not a good concept. I understand, but I appreciate the way you hit it. The stupid animal thing on the left, it's not fun. No one wants to be playing that game. There are a few people who pretend it good because they want to be contrarian That fine Whatever you get enjoyment out of from pinball Freddy is probably one of the better D games from Gottlieb from what I seen
    100:23
    Popeye is my vote. I agree. I think Popeye is the worst game of the two. Okay. I don't need to go into reasons because you covered it pretty well. I tried. Alright, number two. The Shack Attack versus Barbed Wire. I'm actually going to go Barbed Wire. I felt bad about this because I heard from other players that Shack Attack is a terrible game. So I watched it and I can kind of see why people some of that is there's a call out with an announcer. You can turn that way, I don't know if you can turn it off, but you can turn it so it's much less sporadic than it was. By default, apparently, it's telling you where to shoot constantly. It's just like, hey, listen! Navi-style annoyance.
    101:07
    Setting that aside, geometrically, I think it's a better game than barbed wire and I had unfortunately I've played barbed wire and had an absolute terrible experience I tried not to judge it too harshly off of that but I just think there's more interesting things going on with Shack Attack so I'm voting barbed wire to move on yeah I am too I have done as you have because I knew we were getting down to the point where some of these games we hadn't played were going to be important choices in it but at the same time barbed wire is so terrible it is it's so sad next is Lost in Space versus Space Jam we have a space battle we do gosh these two are so dull as near as I could tell and my brother-in-law sent us a note because he's pretty sure at least one of us had played Space Jam before I didn't remember it so I went and I watched Brody You Even Pinball had a whole huge stream they recorded, like two hours on it. So I watched all two hours because... You could have watched the movie on that. I could have. And so I looked at that, and it's sort of like a six of one, half dozen of another. I'm picking Lost in Space. I still think it's pedestrian, repetitive multi-balls.
    102:30
    There's nothing creative going on. Lost in Space is actually listed as a higher sale value on Pinside, and that's just because I'm sure they made so many fewer Lost in Space games. And when I played it, I understood why.
    102:47
    Yeah. I'm going to go with Lost in Space as well. It's, I think it's going to be a toss-up. I think this is going to be one of the close ones next time. It could be. Maybe tied again. It could be. But I think Lost in Space is definitely the worst of these games.
    103:05
    No, that's it. The new Lost in Space series that came out on Netflix, that show's actually really good. Okay. So, I quite enjoyed that. Maybe someone will re-theme this game. To make it, yeah, that'll be...
    103:21
    They won. The game would still suck, is the problem. Even if the art was nice. There's a completely, I mean, it's off topic of pinball and this and that, But there's turned into this entire meme going around about the new Lost in Space show. And it's something I had not noticed, but apparently other people have noticed. The big thing with the new Lost in Space show is apparently the robot has a really nice butt.
    103:49
    That's just like this running meme that I started seeing when I looked a lot of stuff up on Lost in Space lately. It's just pictures of the robot's butt going, wow, alien robots have better butts than most people. It's alien robot science And Our final one this round Is Viper Knight Drivin' Versus World Challenge Soccer Viper is not good Viper is terrible It's so bad It's really bad We had it on location It was bad, it did not last long It lasted too long as it did I guess it was a worthy experiment And the experiment showed that it needed to be euthanized as a game. The experiment failed. It did. Sometimes experiments fail. That's how we learn. Yep. We learn the science that Viper's a terrible game, and I'm voting for Viper. Yep. So we agreed on all four. We did. Nice. Okay, well, a link in the show notes for people to vote. Let's go ahead and move out of the pinball segment and into video games. Yay! Tony, I'm going to let you kick off here. start telling us about BattleTech because that's definitely been the game that got the most time put in on it this week. You could say so. BattleTech came out on April 24th, so last Tuesday.
    105:09
    And since the day it came out, I have put 41 hours into this game. I do understand I'm an insane person, but this game is actually quite enjoyable. It's even better than I thought it would be, and it's been getting really good reviews online with a few caveats, and the caveats are to be expected. I know from an AMA that they're up over a half million units sold, which would mean that this is a pretty good-sized success for a game all in all. It's a big enough success that there is definitely DLC coming. There's definitely going to still be heavy patch support coming, And they've even already talked about some, how do they put it, free LC coming. So this game is definitely not bad. It has picked up a lot of supporters from like the XCOM and XCOM 2 community because of being the turn-based, squad-ish combat. Now, this game is very different from XCOM. And I put a video of the beta up last year sometime on our YouTube channel. But it is still a, while it's very different than XCOM, the overall feel of the game, it still kind of scratches that similar itch. Except for in XCOM, it's like, oh, I need to put my guy into cover to avoid so hopefully he doesn't get shot because he's got poor health. In BattleTech Your mechs have You get evasion so the more you move The farther you move the more evasion Hatches you get they're like little chevrons That appear next to the battle mech's name And then if you're like in trees you get cover And there's abilities you can use That will give you you know Guarded or entrenched So you take less damage because that Kind of damage mitigation is very Important because Otherwise you just get smashed and because of how they've got this stuff set up in this game, like I lost, oh, I've lost multiple pilots killed.
    107:27
    One of the pilots I lost killed was simply because of bad timing. They were the last pilot I moved in my turn and the enemy had several mechs that were slower than me so they got to attack next. And their very first attack knocked my pilot down. Because I wasn't paying close enough attention, I didn't put them in guarded to reduce their unstable.
    107:52
    Instead of putting them in guarded so they'd reduce their instability, I moved and attacked with her. And they knocked her down. And the next two mechs after her, and the two mechs that they had that were faster than any mechs I had, all just wailed on her and just blew her apart. There was no way for me to stop it. Others would be sitting there going, no, no, no, please no. So, I mean, it's got some harsh levels. Now, there are some issues, like I said earlier. When it originally launched, they had not built it around the concept of the ultra-wide monitor, which doesn't affect me, but it affects some people, and they were pretty much unable to play because they couldn't play in any ultra-wide monitor settings. That's being fixed in patches Some people have had some crash issues I know I had some issues that I thought was the game at first And it turns out that I just When I updated my video drivers I borked my system Because I was upset because I couldn't play So I went to play something else And I couldn't play any other games And I got to looking into things I had to do a complete delete And completely get rid of all of my video drivers And do a fresh clean video driver install before I could play any games because I just probably messed my video drivers up somehow with the installation. I don't know how. But the game itself is, it has a much larger depth than just the battlefield tactical combat like we saw when I posted the video out of the beta. It has an entire mercenary, since you're a mercenary, you're doing an entire mercenary support. and you take contracts that are not just story contracts. You can take other contracts. You can build up your money. You need to build up your money. You need to build up your mechs. You need to build up your spare parts to keep all of your stuff in working order. And it's got an actually fairly deep management system for maintaining your pilots and your mechs. And it's like anything in Battletech or MechWarrior or anything like that, of course, through the mech lab so you can go through and make modifications to your mechs. I drive almost all of my mechs are heavily modified. There's a couple mechs that I think are perfect the way they are, so I drive them stock.
    110:19
    But most of the mechs I put pretty decent modifications onto just to build them into the exact role that I want for them. Because I like to roll with a couple of brawlers. I mean, full-on close-quarters combat, lots and lots of heavy armor, get right up in your face and dump as many high-damage short-range weapons into somebody as I can, going for quick kills. So I like to roll with a couple brawlers. I like to roll with what I typically call a scout sniper.
    110:51
    They're armed primarily with long-range weapons. They tend to have jump jets. They tend to be faster mechs. Their whole purpose is to kind of run the flanks and do long-range combat. And I always run with a missile boat because nothing gives more joy than just watching a continuous stream of missiles fall on top of a target until it falls down.
    111:17
    So you can only run four mechs, just like in the beta, and from the sounds of the AMAs, they're not going to increase it to where you can run more lances. Because in the Battletech universe, without getting huge deep into this, because I could go into the lore for the next 15 hours without a problem.
    111:35
    The standard battle, in the year this takes place, 3025, the standard unit of battle mechs is a lance. A lance is four mechs.
    111:45
    Three lances is a company. Three companies is a battalion. Your standard kind of ascension for setups. So in this case, you just operate a single lance, and that's all you can operate.
    112:01
    The way they've set the game up is it gives you lots of options to roll kind of the way that they just kind of push you. Because they'll give you a priority mission. If you're playing a single player, you get a priority mission. And that priority mission is a storyline mission. And even though it says priority mission, you don't ever have to do it. I have a priority mission that spent almost two years up as my next priority mission to play. I just didn't do it because I was running other missions. I was building my characters up. I was building my mechs up because the game currently, though it sounds like they might be changing this, currently there is no difficulty slider or difficulty choice. There's no I can't put it on easy mode. I can't put it on nightmare mode. There's just the mode it is. And if you want the priority missions to be easier, You spend more time doing other missions To build yourself up before you do a priority mission Or if you Want to have a bigger challenge You don't do as many of those And you just bonsai through the priority missions As quickly as you can And I don't know I'm not doing that I'm a builder just like on any open world game How I'm always massively over leveled By the time I get to the main storylines Because I get really distracted by Oh shiny So I've gone off and done a lot of other things. But in addition, they give you a lot of flexibility because you can move anywhere in the sector of space they let you have. So if there's no contracts at the planet you want, there might be a couple contracts you can get where they'll let you, where they will pay for your transport to some other system. But if you don't want that, you can just pick a system nearby, and you'll have to pay for your transport to get there. But once you're there, you can pick up contracts for those planets. You pick up contracts for different factions, build up your faction standing, build up your... I mean, it gives you a lot of depth in the actual running of your mercenary unit.
    114:10
    You mentioned sort of a comparison early on regarding XCOM. And so I don't know if that's the fairest comparison, but it's the one I'm going to go with because of that. It's the one I hear the most commonly. Right. I just, I guess, I mean, obviously there are differentials like the inability to, at least at this present time, control your difficulty. Right. A default setting. But I was wondering, I guess, which do you think is harder?
    114:37
    And maybe more interestingly, like, what does Battletech do better than XCOM does and vice versa? I think that if you – I think XCOM is probably harder, but I have to put the caveat out there. I'm saying that as somebody who's very steeped in the Battletech lore. I'm very steeped in the Battletech universe, and I'm very steeped in what works and doesn't work. So I'm not learning on the fly, oh, well, that's a bad weapon that's not worth the energy. I already know that that weapon is honestly nowhere near as efficient as something else. I'm not learning that that's a weapon I don't want. I already know I don't want to waste my time on that, so I don't have to go through those growing pains. I can stick to what I already know works. A lot of the mechs you drive, because these are the classic mechs, these are the mechs I'm used to, the mechs from the 3025 era, I already have in my mind Before I even Get the mech to make modifications The kind of modifications I'm going to make To the mech just because I know the mech already So that gives me a leg up For this it makes the game easier To me Where somebody coming in who doesn't Know anything about Battletech Or all of the stuff they have Is from like some of the older Like the Xbox mech warrior games Which are a very different animal might have some issues with. It also doesn't help that a lot of the people who are coming in from the MechWarrior era, those games are all set in the post-3049 era, which in the lore of Battletech is the coming of the clans, which is the return of humans with an extremely advanced weaponry compared to what everybody in the Inner Sphere had. and a lot of people it's their boogeyman type thing but they're basically, they're one trick ponies, they've got really good equipment but they're like terribly, terrible people but so for those people it's a little different because they're used to looking for weapons that don't even exist in this timeline they're lost tech in this timeline, now there is they did do a wonderful job because they knew going in that a lot of people playing this game aren't going to be the Battletech-type people that I am who are steeped in the lore. And so as you're playing and they do, all the comments are up on screens, you're reading all the dialogue and text. When there's something that is something that someone in the universe would just know, but you as a player might not know that will actually be highlighted and underlined and if you click on it it'll pop you a little Wikipedia like article that pops up to tell you about you know oh here oh yeah it's like opposite this planet and so and so at the battle of whatever and you don't know what that is but if you click on it it'll pop up and it'll tell you about it it'll tell you about certain it'll tell you about certain factions and stuff like that. So it gives you kind of a feel. Now, they are weak on... I think their tutorial is weak. They did a good job putting out video tutorials, but the in-game hand holding at the very beginning is not the greatest.
    118:17
    And a lot of this stuff that... I mean, again, for somebody steeped in the lore and somebody who played the beta and has followed things and watched, you can pick it up, but for someone who's more of a new player coming in, there's things that will be a little bit more difficult or might come as a surprise or very much turns up to the oh, hey, I just figured this out 15 hours into the game, just figured this thing out that would be very, have been very useful when you first started playing type stuff. So, I've read a lot of stuff online about people who basically, they started playing, they put 5 to 10 hours into the game, and then they restarted because they learned so much more and they knew so much. They're like, yeah, you know what? I'm just going to start fresh with the knowledge I have, so I'm not being pulled back by mistakes and screw-ups I did so early in the game when I didn't know better. That makes sense. Yeah.
    119:13
    As I said, it's a more enjoyable game than I thought. Their sales numbers have been really good. I know they did a huge social media push. I've seen a lot of that. In the days leading up to it. It's turned out so well. I've been having so much fun with it. And I'm very happy. This is, compared to, as I referred to earlier, what happened with my Robotech thing, this has been an amazing turnout. And like I said, before the game even came out, it's like, you know, if this game's terrible, I'm still ahead because, yeah, I put a lot of money into it, but I got all the physical rewards that are the reasons I put money into it is because I wanted the physical rewards. A jacket. And a whole bunch of other stuff. And if I couldn't wear, or not wear, if I couldn't, or if I didn't like the game, I figured I would have still been ahead, and the thing is, I love the game.
    120:09
    It's not just the fact that I've been waiting so long for this game that is the reason I have not played a game that wasn't this one since it came out. I mean, the new season of Overwatch just started, and I had originally made the decision that I haven't played competitively on Overwatch in a while, and I was going to try, I was going to get my entry games out of the way right away, and I was going to play competitive Overwatch this season, this and that. I haven't even booted Overwatch. I haven't booted any game except for when I was testing games, when I was trying to see if my drivers, why my drivers were messed up. And I come home, and the nice thing is just like XCOM being a turn-based game, I can walk away from this game in the middle of doing something without it being a huge deal, and I can go and, you know, take care of the kids or grab some dinner or do whatever, and I'm not feeling like I'm losing a whole bunch.
    121:07
    There have been, like I said earlier, and I talked about most of the major issues, almost every issue that this game seems to be having, almost all of them are directly come from the fact that it's a Unity engine game. and Unity Engine has its share of flaws and it has its share of little things that the developers have to create workarounds around to make work and in some cases they work and in some cases they don't I know most of it's being patched quickly I haven't had any of the major issues that people have had but it's not oh and the DOM because there's always got to be a DOM There has been While the game has been extremely popular It has sold a lot of stuff There has been a concentrated Um Outpouring of Like one star votes On the game That have nothing to do with The gameplay Or the game or anything else It has everything to do For the fact that Part of the character generation Of the game when you're generating your character you are given the choice of multiple genders and you get to choose your pronouns and that has created a massive backlash because at one point I saw right after I mean shortly after it came out like within the first couple days it was down to mixed and I'm like what's wrong with this, and I started looking at it, and all these one-star reviews are about, oh, you can choose the pronoun they, or it's, oh, this game promotes the homosexual agenda, and this game promotes... I just... Because of the character generation. You can choose your pronoun as they or whatever. Stick of Truth makes fun of that. Yeah. I don't get a lot of those choices. Yeah, and you can, you can, you can, you know, your gender choices are male, female, or other. And you, and it upsets people, apparently. At least enough to make a little vote. Yeah. I guess it probably got shared somewhere. Right. On some subreddit. Right. Okay, well. So, I mean, there's that going on. That was an interesting little poll when I first saw that popping up. I'm like, seriously? Okay. Who cares? I mean, if that bothers you, just don't choose your pronoun as they or choose your sex as other. They would rather give it a one star. Tony, one star.
    123:53
    Bad game, one star. Yeah. But I'm happy. I'm real happy with it. Good. We'll see. I'm hoping for DLC. The DLC just makes it better. And the nice thing about the game is, like I said, with the priority missions and the storyline, I could ignore it for as long as I want to go do the stuff I want to do.
    124:15
    And that's what I've been doing. it's been awesome good well I did this morning wrap up my competitive placements in Overwatch but I've mostly been working on a couple of games well first I finally finished up Mad Max so I thought I should probably touch on that the uh I was stuck when last we talked about Mad Max here on this race where I was trying to win the V8 for the car which is like the main I thought I figured I must be right near the end of the game and I finally won that race well you have to defeat the other vehicles it's not really a race per se they're really really fast and what happened was I read this happened to other people he must have gone forward and hit something off my screen and been destroyed I was nowhere near it when all of a sudden I won because I thought I was about to have my own vehicle I was almost ready to restart the race again and all of a sudden you won yeah because if I take too much damage I realized I'm going to hit too many, I'll hit the wall too many times. It's just not safe. I'm not going to finish. Right. I'm not going to be able to catch back up before I destroy my club.
    125:23
    And after that, I had at least two more hours of content. So that wasn't the very end of the game. There was still actually quite a bit more. I just punched through it. I wasn't, you know, there are a lot of regions in that game where you're just doing the same stuff over and over. And at the time, I was then. It's the open world grind. Yeah, I was well past it. you don't need to do remotely that amount of stuff to get almost all the major upgrades. So after finishing Mad Max, I've moved on to Prey, the 2017 version of Prey. I played the original Prey, which was an odd, not, it wasn't a great game. It was a first-person shooter that was sort of known for, they had you able to walk on ceilings and stuff at certain points, so there was a little bit of this, it wasn't gravity manipulation, but it was a sort of a there were these perspective manipulations based off of how the alien vessel was laid out. And the other thing was it was, you were playing a Native American and so as you went along, they used that as the way to work with some spirit power stuff to go in. This prey has nothing to do with any of that, except it involves aliens. That's the tie-in. That's the only tie-in. It's not the same aliens, I'm not on an alien ship. I'm not Native American. I don't have any spirit powers.
    126:48
    You're apparently a part of some sort of experiment. You find out very early on that what you think is going on isn't really what's going on. You're on a space station, and something bad has happened, and it's like pretty much everyone's dead, and there are these little black sludge aliens running around everywhere.
    127:05
    It's been frustrating. it's like because it's a space station it's like you're in a hub so there's a lot of ways to go and it doesn't give you the best of advice it's gotten better as I've gone along but there are like the little aliens which aren't a problem and then anything that is bipedal I play for hours now and I don't want to fight any of them so I'm almost required that this is a stealth game I'm stealthing through it's not designed as a stealth game It gives you a lot of stealth tools, but I have a shotgun. I shouldn't need to say anything else. I have a shotgun. I should be fine. Pump or double barrel? Pump. Well, see, there's part of the problem. Well, I haven't found the double barrel schematic yet. So there are powers and stuff, and so I'm unlocking things, use synthesizers to make ammo and all that. It's got some interesting ideas. I don't think it's all come together. The game looks great. Visually, they did a really good job. It's very shiny. Shiny and chrome. but yeah I'm just, I'm like okay it's just, it's, I get where they're going for, it's not scary though, so it's not really a horror game but they're going with a sort of atmospheric, you're by yourself, it's like it doesn't do Dead Space as well as Dead Space does and it doesn't do Resident Evil at all but I'm still thinking so much it's not pulling off the first person shooter in a really comfortable way, I just feel woefully underpowered and I'm guessing I'm supposed to, but I have an awful lot of crap in my inventory. It's not like, that's my Resident Evil reference, it's not like I'm running around with four bullets. I've got plenty of ammo, but I feel like I have to use all of it to defeat one alien. So, it's just dumb. But they're relatively easy to avoid. It's one of those things where there's a, are you just having the issue that you haven't found the shoot it here for massive damage type point, or is it just that they're just that tank? They're just sludge monsters. I mean, I think what I'm supposed to do is freeze them with bio-goo and then shoot them while they're frozen so they can't hurt me and rinse and repeat. I don't like rinse and repeat for regular monsters. I think it's stupid. The very few games that have made me do something and then shoot them and it worked out, like Alan Wake accomplished it really well. I almost didn't play Alan Wake because I thought, I'm going to hate this stupid mechanic where you have to shine the flashlight on them to be able to hurt them. But it actually works really well. Yeah, it always does. Prey, it doesn't work awful. I heard originally when Prey first came out, before they patched it, on consoles it was a disaster because the monsters moved so quickly, people couldn't aim fast enough with controllers to fight them. And that they patched it so it got better. so that may be part of it is that it's more of a mouse and keyboard type thing and I feel like, because they are pretty quick I try and just club them with wrenches it just doesn't do much damage it's okay I didn't know what to expect with it so far I feel it's relatively pedestrian it's go and turn this on and then go and do something and oh now you have another fetch quest and then go do that and I'm getting talked to by a mysterious robot and it's just really isolated. There's no real interactions. You go and you clear out a place and then later there are more monsters because the plot says there will be more monsters now.
    130:32
    There are a lot of little story elements and stuff. They tried to flesh out the world and stuff. It just, it didn't, I don't think it is whatever they had hoped it would be. That's okay. But, so I'm currently planning on going ahead and getting through. It's not like, there seem to be a few side quests. I don't see the point in doing them. Maybe that gets you the good gun. Maybe it gets you the double barrel. I don't know. But at this point, you're at the, I'm just going to finish this game and get it done. Yeah, I think so. If I get tired of it, I'll give up on it and move on. Because I've got other stuff to play. Yeah. But it's all right. It's just, I enjoyed Mad Max more.
    131:09
    Considerably more. Yeah. But even that started to get on my nerves after a while. After Region 4 of the same, oh, well, I need to go find all these balloons to spot everything. Go do these races. The land field, landmine fields. Oh, God. I just quit doing those. I was like, this is stupid. The landmines were the stupidest thing of Mad Max. Because you had to have the dog in a different vehicle. Right. A vehicle you never wanted to be in. I actually started using that vehicle a lot in Mad Max. No. For the very simple fact that that vehicle is, like, indestructible.
    131:42
    Oh, loser. Well, that's all I had. Yeah, no, I mean. yeah, that's all I've got. I mean, Battletech's the only thing I've played.
    131:53
    Battletech does have this one really scary thing. The first time I ran into it was when I lost one of my pilots. And it's called an SRM carrier. And it looks like a vehicle. And up until this point, you don't care about vehicles because in Battletech, vehicles are stupid.
    132:09
    If it's not a mech, you step on it and it dies or you shoot it and it dies. It's not a big deal. So I didn't worry about it. And then I saw the SRM carrier. And it carries more short-range missiles, obviously the SRM, than any mech I could ever possibly build could possibly carry.
    132:29
    And if it gets a chance to shoot at you, you die. So it requires you to have a very, it makes you be more circumspect playing with vehicles. Right, you actually have to consider them Yeah, I don't get to go, I have some vehicles And since I first saw them There's some other vehicles that are That scary I want to stay away from that as far as I can But, yeah Nope, that's been about everything A lot of pinball A lot of drama That's what I meant, a lot of pinball drama Maybe in the next couple weeks There'll be less drama, don't know Maybe we'll have a guest, we have a few pending options for more guests to come on. So we'll see what schedules do. But I guess until next time, I should point out that you can always reach us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast or via email eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com We're available on Twitter and Instagram at eclectic underscore gamers. And as Highway Pinball would often say, you'll get our next episode in two weeks. See ya. Nice.