Hey, howdy, hey, what's up, everybody? It's Don's Pinball Podcast, episode 113 from you. Are you enjoying your spring break? Well, Monday's here again, but we got some news and some things to talk about. I'm talking about Spooky Pinball, Pinball Brothers, and DPX. Let's hit it. Now. Oh, how much fun is it to come back from vacation? I was out in Florida for a week. Sorry for anybody that missed the daunt tent coming every two days or so. I had full intentions on recording something while I was down there. I had all of my equipment, but you know what? I was just having too much fun with the fam. But now we're back. I'm back from Florida here in Wisconsin. It is snowy outside. It's a bit frightening. But do you want to know what's truly scary? Not protecting and securing your online privacy and your online activities. Well, new sponsor of the show, NordVPN, is here to change all that. And they are happy to extend an offer to you. Safeguard your internet surfing and save 60% off a new three-month subscription. Build recurrently by using code DON60 at checkout. Don't be out there surfing without protection for yourself, for your family, and for your online privacy. NordVPN is here for you. And you know what else really needs protection? My wallet from the Pinball Brothers. Have you seen this? It turns out I think we're actually going to do it. These people are going to come through with this and bring us an ABBA-themed pinball machine for our spending pleasure. Stop my wallet from opening right now. I mean, come on. This is ABBA, okay? We're talking about 70s music. If I'm thinking of 70s bands, I want to play a pinball machine. I would much rather play a Journey or a Scorpions than I would play a dancing queen. We all know ABBA's music. Mamma Mia was a movie that people enjoy, a stage show. And I love production. I love spectacle. What I want to see is a spectacular game. And maybe we're going to see that, but I don't think it's actually going to come from the pinball brothers because they done skipped town. Did you hear about this? All right. uh pinball brothers was founded by a consortium of dudes i guess it was like five of them all together it out there in sweden somewhere and uh two of them have straight up ganked got out of there my boy rudy my contact over there at pinball brothers he up and left two weeks ago just he put up a social media post hey guys i'm out and bounced and we heard not one thing from like pinball brothers officially which is a little weird especially on the eve of a brand new game about to drop. Now, these two guys said that they have had nothing to do with decision-making with the Pinball Brothers company for at least two years. And their expectation was that the company itself was going to acknowledge that publicly, and they just hadn't done it. So they felt compelled for some reason, two weeks before the launch of a brand new title, of which they've only had two so far. And this is the one that they designed. This isn't the holdover from Andrew Highway. It wasn't that Barry Osler designed Queen. This is like their big game. And they came out early like, hey, don't look at us about this. So this may be the greatest pinball machine ever made. Well, they could be. Nothing's been revealed about it. The helicopter lock looks cool, right? And, you know, people know that have a license and theme. But, you know, it definitely puts it in a weird light, right? Especially like your social media guy, the dude that was very active and up until recently was really promoting, like, hey, this game's coming out, drumming up support and filling me in, keeping me updated when things came out. He's just gone now, like solid gone. It's super weird. And it wasn't like, hey, we're pinball brothers. For immediate release, our boy Rudy, he's served us great for years. We wish him and his family well. And here's Kirsten, our new interim social media maven. None of that. We didn't get any of that. What the heck is going on in Sweden? We're going to find out April 6th. That's this Saturday. The Saturday of MGC is when they're supposed to be announcing this thing. So it coincides with the 50th anniversary of ABBA being on Eurovision, which is like a huge show in Europe. Lordi won it one year. Look up Lordi. L-O-R-D-I. Awesome band from Finland. Please, somebody make that pinball machine. It's like playing Monster Madness, Monster Jam, Monsters of Rock. What the heck is that remake that Chicago Gaming made? It could totally lift my brain right now. But look at them, dude. It's like a gang of monsters making music in a more family-friendly way than Gwar does. Anyway, Mr. Lordy, all praise to be to him. But we're going to see more about this game. What we don't know is how much this game is going to cost, when's it coming out. We know they're announcing it on Saturday, so hopefully we get some more information. I don't know who's distributing this yet. I don't know what's going on with the shake-up with Pinball Brothers. Is Pendretti making this and also making Funhaus, Rudy's Funhaus? Who really, really knows? I will say that it looks like Alien, their last good game, $10,600 is what it was MSRPing for. And then we got Ripley Edition now, stripped down a little bit for $79.95. They came in under that $8,000 range. I think that was probably a way to kind of boost sales for their game in this interim period where ABBA wasn't quite ready to release. Maybe the contract had something tied in with April 6th for 50th anniversary. I want to see a golden spectacle. I want to see something that got drugged straight off the disco floor. And then I want to see amazing shots like Elton John made us all believers that, you know, this kind of classic music theme that no one was really asking for came out and was really done amazingly well. So who's designing this? I have no idea. Who's doing the music? Who's doing the code? Who's doing the art? No clue, man. And my dude over there is gone. So just like without a notice, boom, just peaced out. Now, I had approached them earlier, a couple months ago. I'm like, hey, we know you got a game coming out. You know, are there going to be any in the U.S.? And then he's like, Don, Don, none of them are going to get there, you know, before April. We can't get it at TPF. And I'm like, okay, but, you know, when can I play this? And he's like, well, there's not going to be any ABBAs in the U.S. anytime soon. And I'm like, yeah, okay, but that's not what I asked. Like, I will go to Malmo and play it. I love Sweden. Malmo's right across the bridge, across the Åresund, right? Right across from Copenhagen one of my favorite towns ever Shout out to Cengiz my boy out there you know so I fly out to cope dude No problem I hit up Tivoli while I there I get a bike I ride around We go check out the mermaid statue I'll play some of Cengiz' games. I'll pop over the bridge. I'll play some ABBA. You know, I can do it pre-release so I can have, like, you know, my first impressions ready to go. Like, let's do this. You know, and Rudy was getting back like, all right, let me work on that. You know, but it seemed like something that could have been possible. And then now just nothing. so I can't wait to see what happens Saturday. I'll be at MGC so I guess we'll all find out together and then you'll get to hear my first impressions then and I smell something cooking. What's for dinner? And how about this? When you come home to your family at night how about fresh delivery of prepared foods for you to cook to make a fresh nutritious meal for your family? Well I'm here to tell you that new sponsor HelloFresh has extended a discount to Don's Pinball Podcast members for a three-month subscription for only $65.99. Just use code DAWN65 at checkout and get yourself some savory deliciousness from HelloFresh delivered to your door from our new sponsor. Speaking of the Netherlands, let's talk about Dutch Pinball for a minute. The company that stood their ground and did what they say they were going to do, which was deliver all those big Lebowskis, finally happened. Thanks for doing that. Awesome. Met Barry in person at Expo. Solid dude. Great limousine skills. Love it. I love their whole vibe, and I dig Lebowski. I don't know if I would have been happy if I had paid for it 10 years ago and never got it until just now, but I got one on the aftermarket, on the gray market there. I love the game. Having fun with it. Waiting for my electric playground topper, which should be coming here in the next few months. and yeah everything's coming up Lebowski finally uh so they're going on to their next game very anticipated the rumors I've been hearing most often are back to the future no confirmation of that um somebody was wearing a Alice in Wonderland t-shirt and that group photo that they did somebody else had a Daft Punk shirt on which was also awesome what if Alice in Wonderland is going to have Daft Punk music in it yes give me that I don't need to have Disney's Alice in Wonderland Just give me Alice in Wonderland with a crazy March hair and an amazingly psychotic Mad Hatter, and I'm going to be into that game. And if you drop some Daft Punk music into it, none of this has been confirmed or really even rumored outside the photo. I'm just going off the photo. But maybe we'll see that from DPX. So what's this company doing now? They've got some fundage from somewhere because they've got a great production facility, and they now have a second one across the street. Maybe, you know, factories are going, factory space is going cheap in the Netherlands. But it sounds like they finally got themselves on financial footing. Or I don't know if that was a problem. Maybe it was just licensing, whatever. But they got the funds. They're making games. They're making Lebowskis. They've got the production space. That's all great. They've decided that they need even more space. They decided to go ahead and have, like, some private label or select limited edition label, DPX they're calling it, for this Alice in Wonderland game. they shared a photo underneath the play field i love the little teases like that like here we are we're working on a game here's the bottom of it so at least you can kind of like get an idea of what you're gonna gonna get it's a great way to reveal kind of like how impressive your game is going to be uh before release without really giving away what the theme of it actually is so i kind of dig it when companies do that it builds some hype and kind of the right way it gives us some time to sleuth through it or whatever so it looks like there's tons of magnets there's some spinning discs there's probably some magnets up on the upper play field for those magnetic flippers we have seen the paper craft model um of alice in wonderland from the zidware days that image is floating around online so we have kind of a sense on what this is going to be like the next evolution from circus voltaire so fine okay cool uh better theme i think than circus voltaire the uh the ringmaster kind of creeps me out a little bit um but you know this looks like it'll be fun and compelling and i was thinking okay you know are they going to sell these for 25 grand because there's only 500 of them and try to do like the stern call for price thing that they did with bond 60th and then we see the price come down to like 13.5 where they're sitting now um but from what it sounds like from people reporting back to me um it sounds like we're going to be under $15,000 for a target for this which is kind of where i'd expect lebowski to kind of be at right it's like that 13.5 14 level you know at least if you order from coin taker and then wait for it to come in. So yeah, that's impressive then for this limited run of this game and not trying to just go ahead and fleece as much cash as you can get out from that primary owner, the box opener. So yeah, I will wait and see here. I'm not running out and getting my information over to Cointaker to get on a list or anything. You know, anytime you go ahead and commit, it kind of takes you out of the running for what may be coming next. And I'm kind of waiting to see, you know, what else is coming. still have that pulp fiction somewhere in the pipeline you know uh cgc man i just don't understand it you know i've had a deposit in for six months now no word on anything i talked to my distributor he hasn't heard anything and then i hear other people that are like yeah we went to this distributor and we got their game in two weeks and we got it now we're playing it like you know i'm not salty that other people are getting it first like get this game anyway you can't if you want it but like it just doesn't make any sense to me um and uh the track record with the Dutch folks are that if you buy a game, leave a deposit, who knows when you're going to get it. Some people waited 10 years. So until we can see that games are getting out to people in a somewhat reasonable timeframe, I'm just a little gun shy on putting down deposits, even if this game is amazing. Now, if you're a high-end collector, you're like, yeah, I like to have all the new stuff. I like what I see. I want to go ahead and get this any way I can, even if it takes a couple of years, that's not money I'm going to miss. That's probably who they're marketing to here so yeah go ahead um just uh when you do get one invite me on over so i can come play it um hopefully this will be a game that'll be drug around to uh expos and shows and things you know so we get a chance to go you know get our cracks off at it um so when are we seeing more from this i don't know if they really announced a date or anything yet other than coming soon so let's wait and see um i know abba's gonna be unveiled on april 6th and then probably deposits will be available to be put down for that guy if you want it. I know companies like to try to beat other companies to the market. They're going after those early dollars. Once you get a couple grand that are tied up and waiting for a game, it's hard to put out another couple grand for somebody else's game. So that's why they try to rush a bit. So for this next new wave of games, I see Alice in Wonderland being in it I don see Back to the Future necessarily probably not till later in the year for the main thing but who knows Maybe they going to run these two production lines You know as an outside observer I not sure why they don just you know build these next 500 of these in house and then kind of launch back to the future towards the tail end once some, once some money's got in there, but I don't know. Maybe they figure that if they do have this back to the future license and it is completely bonzo, boffo, right. It's going to sell like hotcakes. They don't have to worry about like tying up anybody's money um you know that or money that may be tied up into an abba or something because you'll find a way to regurgitate the cash for a loaded back to the future dutch pinball game maybe that's where they're at with it uh so we'll wait and see um you could see from the reflections on the back glass that there was some of the art that matched the uh the back glass for alice in wonderland or the speaker panel or something one of the creepy looking flowers there i guess zombie yeti did the art so i mean this game's gonna look really nice uh hopefully it plays well and hopefully it's not playing like too dated um but we'll wait and see um i'm not putting my money down on one just yet until i see a full reveal and i'm compelled to and even then still not sure when i'd actually get it but they seem to be making games at a pretty good clip now so my expectation is that these games will be made in some sort of reasonable time frame now um definitely better than uh than cgc but not quite spooky if that kind of makes sense. And then we'll wait and see what the rest of Dutch pinball has to bring. Man, Europe is on fire for this middle part of the year, man. The other thing that is on fire would be the bedroom. Now, I'm no stranger to issues in the bedroom, hitting a dead end in your relationship, and having some performance anxiety issues. Well, I'm here to tell you that new sponsor of the show, Pure Romance is here to help you all that with some stimulating, titillating, desirable appendages for purchase. But that's not all. They're happy to extend a special discount straight to Dawn's Pinball Podcast listeners. This is why you listen. So if you use code DAWN69 at checkout, they will extend a discount to you. And your romantic escapades will be unmatched in the future, sir. or madam or groups of madams, whatever. Dawn 69, just remember that. And thank you to our new sponsor, Pure Romance. Fantastic. Oh, on to spooky pinball and the two games that just keep on giving. I swear, man, every time I go back to Looney Tunes, I'm liking the game even more. How is this game not game of the year? Come on, man. So it's holding up pretty well. The code is evolving pretty rapidly, in fact. So fast that it's hard to get out all of those bugs. So here's what we could do. We could sit here with launch code for six months, wait for every bug to be picked out of it, or we can get code updates a little more frequently, get those cool modes so we can play them, and just have to deal with occasional ball stoppage issues. So that's kind of what I'm seeing. The game mechanically holding up well. Everything's shooting out as it should. Launching just fine. Game's getting dialed in and everything. Occasionally I need to readjust a flipper, retighten it, you know, but the game was brand new out of box, but no game breaking issues at all. And just a couple little code bugs here and there actually talked a bug earlier today, and there's more code updates and fixes coming. So I, you know, I'm having fun getting these more frequent code updates so I can get more cool gameplay and more cool game modes out of it. And having to deal with bugs and reporting them back is just, I guess, par for the course. So if you want to still play that launch code, you can certainly happy to do that. But I've been having fun with these updates and you know every time i play it i'm like man this is just like the best game ever um i'm on team looney tunes now uh and then and then i go over and i play tcm and it's like i can't decide again that game's so fun too it's dark it's red for some reason like the shots feel like more is hanging on every shot that you make you know chainsaw noises that are going off man uh it's just it i still don't have i still don't have a favorite i still can't bring myself to say which of these games I like the most. I mean, they've been awesome. So update, the games are doing great. Bugs Stream, he just streamed Motorhead. Have you checked out this game? It was awesome playing this homebrew at Texas Pinball Festival. You've seen the images and things and some of the gameplay and now more of the stream. Man, what's going on in the homebrew market? I was playing games like Ghost in the Shell, which plays really well, but like you can tell somebody, you know, made it and it wasn't like a full team behind it. Now, you know, the homebrew games are just like, some of them are really leading the pack. Like they're putting together, you know, groups of people that, you know, you get a mechanical engineer, you get electrical engineers together who also like pinball and put things together in their spell or time. And you come out with, you know, Friday the 13th and Saw, the re-theme of Whirlwind. And now Motorhead, like these games look like production games. and in the case of Motorhead, it may actually end up into production somehow. All I'm saying is that if you want to get one of these Motorheads in your house, just email Spooky Pinball and tell him that you would be interested in what you would be interested in because, man, if there's a way, wouldn't that be awesome? And if anybody can get licensing, it's the Spooky guys. And what a freaking music pin. I'd like to see Spooky go back to music pins. Rob Zombie, I finally got a chance to play it. actually it's over at my homeboy's house who made ghost in the shell he had one um and so yeah i'm kind of like i think i'm going to go ahead and put that in my list to own at some point you know i like to cross pass with one i did last year um found one for around five thousand dollars and now the market's back up on them again uh maybe i should have jumped at it back then but you know at the time it was like did i really need another pin but do we ever really need another pin i mean come on. So that's my spooky update. Motorhead streamed and new codes coming out for the two big guys and they continue to sell, but they're still not sold out. If you want to get yourself one, email Jeff over at madpinball.com. He will hook it up or one of his contemporaries over there and get you your game. Friend of the show, Danny out in Virginia. Danny and Nicole, shout out to you guys. Thank you so much. They went ahead and got themselves a buttery butter Looney Tunes and it's going to be on its way to them. So I hope they enjoy it. The game is fun man lines at mgc i can't wait for um i mean tpf but i can't wait for mgc to see if like history is going to repeat itself again this is going to be the longest lines of the event we're going to find out it's this weekend uh fifth sixth seventh friday saturday sunday i'll be there for sure on saturday i may dip in for friday i may still be hanging around sunday all that kind of up in the air No booth for me this time not hiding any golden tickets anywhere But what I am hiding is start buttons in my pocket. So I already got one person that's interested in a Black Knight Sword of Rage. I'll have a couple of extra. If you want to get a handshake, a selfie, a like, and a follow and get yourself a button, I'm there, man. Just hook it up. The Jaws buttons have been great. This new promotion I did, when I started, I wanted to have a Patreon to be just a virtual tip jar out there. If you like what I do, want to kick a couple bucks, buy me a beer, buy me some games on Godfather. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted. There are so many people that are joining now and building this community on the Discord and other places that I feel the need to just reward them any way I can. So I got a 3D printer. I'm making start buttons for myself, but they're awesome. I got one now for Jaws. I got one for Black Knight Sword of Rage. more are in the works and if you want one i'm not selling them but if you're a patreon member you can get it for free so if you've ordered now i i just i got all the orders caught up today monday april 1st uh so those are coming out um if you've emailed me like like you were supposed to uh you got an email of a tracking number if you texted me um i'm pretty sure i've got you all caught up if it's a week and you haven't got your button just let me know i'll get it out to you now stern does an interesting thing with their the plastic device that they use that these buttons go on to and sometimes they're like a millimeter off they use like two different sizes so i've got these things sized for the bigger one but i also have one sized for the smaller so i've sent it both out um so give me some feedback when you get these and saw in your game which one fits the best let me know and then maybe i'll just kind of go with one skew going forward but for now get yourself an extra one, turn the other one into a nose ring if you want. But what I'm rewarding, I feel compelled to really reward the Patreon members. One other thing I'm doing is another series of podcast episodes. I'm going to call Don's Storytime. And I thought what would be fun is to go ahead and give the backstory of each game that I've owned as far as like how it went, you know, where did I find the game? Why did I buy it? What did I pay for it? How did I get it in the house? What problems did I have with it? How much did I enjoy it? And what ended up happening with it? Is it still here because it's so awesome? Or did it get sold somewhere else? And we'll kind of just do kind of a long-form episode for each game. The first one, I'm going to go ahead and record tonight. While I was down in Florida, I was being inundated with new Patreon members. That's amazing, dude. Like, it means a ton to me. And so now I'm giving it back. We're still doing the monthly Translight giveaways. As long as we're up above 50 members, we'll keep doing that. So the next one will be on April 15th. Oh, because I'm a giver, we've got another fun promotion. I'm tying this one in with Cab Custom on Facebook. Cab Custom, guy over there in Europe, he makes laser-cut side armor for your pinball machine, as well as he's doing hinges now, and he's dipping his toe into toppers. So what he did, awesome guy, I've been buying armor from him. I bought a set of the Jaws armor and some for Black Knight Sword of Rage. He sent me an extra set of Jaws side armor that's all cut, and it's got some sparkly graphics that go behind the woman that's laser cut in there and behind the Jaws logo. It's over at the powder coater right now getting that polar white powder coat. But I'm going to be giving away this extra set to one of you guys, not just a Patreon member. Anybody within listening range can win this. And so I want to give it away this month. I'm expecting to get these back from the powder coater later in the week. So I thought April 30th would be a great time to give these things away. So let's do that. So you need to enter to win and here's how we do it. We're going to do it by email. You know, it would make sense if these get won by somebody that has a game or has access to a game and isn't just going to throw them in their closet. But honestly, I can't control what you do with them. But what I would like to see is just send me a picture of yourself and a Jaws machine to my email at donspinballpodcast.gmail.com. If you can tag on an address too, it saves a whole lot of time. So if you're the lucky winner, I can just go ahead and put that in the post right out to you. I'm going to open this to U.S. members, and I'll ship you a free set of these rails. They'll be powder-coated white. They're going to look awesome. I'm getting myself a set powder-coated white. I'll be putting it on my JAWS machine. So if you want to get these, no purchase necessary. All you've got to do is send me a picture of yourself with a JAWS machine. Preferably it would be your machine, but, I mean, how do I know? How do I know? How do I know if it's even you in the picture? Just send a picture. That way I have an email and an address. We'll put it in there. you have until April 29th to send those to me. April 30th, I'll do a live stream and we'll pick a winner and that winner will be contacted. And as long as, well, check that winner, as long as they sent me an address, I'm going to mail it out to that address. So if you're moving in the next month, you know, send a little message. So if you're the winner, I can look back and cross reference that. But yeah, let's do that. Send me a picture of yourself with a machine. Also like and subscribe on the Facebook and follow the YouTube channel or whatever. Again, I have no way to verify that, but it'd be kind of cool to do that. But send me the emails. If 10 people email me, then that's a 10% chance you're going to get yourself some free powder-coated armor from Cab Custom and your homies here at Don's Pinball Podcast. Am I not the giver or what? I'm compelled to keep giving back. So we will need to go and record that episode for the Patreon members now that we're back in town. Anything else, that's the world of pinball for Monday, April 1st. All right, everybody. Be sure to email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. And get me on Patreon. You can send me information straight that way. Also, jump on the Discord. We're having fun there. If you need a link to it, just email me. Again, email is the best way. I know it's a grandma way to do things, but it's easy for me to sort through everything. Jump on the Facebook page. Give me live messages. We talk back and forth all day. And that's just kind of how it goes, man. In the world of Don's Pinball Podcast, man, enjoy yourselves. The Dodds Middle Podcast is here with natural male enhancement. I can't keep this up anymore. Well, if you've ever said that to yourself, then be sure to get yourself some Enzyme or some Vistens or some Orgasmatron. Wait, who wrote this? Are they really sponsoring us? I took a whole half bottle of that, and I can't even get a stiff upper lip. We're done Get the sponsors out of here Who sent me this? Franchi Get this crap off of my channel This isn't my brand at all I've never had a problem with this Where's the blue chewables?