What's going on everybody? Don's Pinball Podcast episode 41 coming through to you midweek to save you from those doldrums. I've got the news, reviews, and views that you can't afford to lose. I'm back on the road coming to you from the Midwest state of Ohio just underneath Lake Erie. Don't get your socks wet ladies and gentlemen. I've got a lot of things to go over tonight. We had our first successful event last night at Collision Band. I'm going to get to that. Review Do the Holiday Inn Express in Vermillion and why you should think twice about staying there. I've got analogies, there's new bond code, and I'll get to all that and more. Right, I guess now? Hit the button. Ladies and gentlemen, what's going on? I am in the home and land of Drew Carey. Man, I have to say, the city of Cleveland is growing on me a little bit after last night. Now, all the times that I've come here, I've either been jumping in the lake, sitting in traffic, or going to Cedar Point. So I haven't spent a whole lot of time in Cleveland proper, but, bruh, there was some flavor downtown there. It felt like seven steps above Detroit, which is still like three steps above Baltimore. So I was feeling it. I cruised on in there at the invite of 216 Pinball. And, Rob, my new boy, forget about it, man. This is a master of promotion on the Instagram. He's an operator there at Collision Bend Brewing, which sits right on the Cuyahoga River, you may imagine that. Or remember, as the river that was at several points along its course on fire due to pollution. But that's all cleaned up now. There's people out there paddle boarding. There's tugboats going up and down the river. And you can just sit there and chill at this place right downtown, which is now becoming a hub for pinball in the downtown Cleveland area. So I went down there to check it out, and I've been meaning to go out there. I was coming through the area for work anyway, and I reached out to Rob with 216 Pinball and said, Hey, I'm going to come by and play. Just, you know, FYI, are you guys open? Are there any events going on? I don't want to show up there and there's a big wedding I'm not invited to, and then I got to crash the thing and eat the stuff and date some people. And, you know, it's a whole mess that I want to be prepped for going into that. And he was like, brother, why don't you come in? Check out the Insta channel. Check out this events we're doing. In fact, let's throw an IFPA-sanctioned event while you're here. And, oh, my God, that happened. So that guy is one mad lad. And so I was there for three hours yesterday. I was selling T-shirts, giving out stickers, showing people the magnets and everything, playing a ton of pinball. They had Bond Pro. They had Foo Fighters Pro was on site. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, bro. I'm spending some more time with that, and I think I'm learning to appreciate it more than I have in the past. There was a smattering of some old classic games, too. Blackout was there, and Sharky's Shootout and all those other games that I have only played really virtual because I don't see them on site so much. There was Jungle Lord in the house. It was madness. It was madness all night. But brews were flowing, and bros were playing. So what's up to everybody out there? Got to run into my pal, fishy brewer, Walter Jim Weisz. How you doing, sir? The chocolatier extraordinaire and also a mighty yeast tester was there with the fermentation tanks. But we managed to wrangle him away from there for a little bit to play some good episodes of pinball. And, man, what a great time and a great space. And, like, the vibe in Cleveland is popping off. So, for sure, whenever I'm on my way through the area, I'm going to Antonio Cruz back down downtown. There's, like, a food scene down there. There's an east bank of the river, a west bank. There's bridges up in the air. There's several sports stadiums. Cleveland's coming up from what I remember in the past. So thanks to everybody I met out there. Rob Wally, you guys are awesome. Peter and Paul, everybody else that was going nuts there, especially that drunk that was kicked out on the funny bus. I've got more photos to put up on the Insta. Go check that out at the Don's Pinball Podcast Instagram page and join if you have not already. So news covered. What else happened this morning? Did you guys see the factory tour of Dutch Pinball, the big Lebowski assembly process extraordinaire site with my new homie through the internet, Barry. He went around with his camera and he shut off the entire factory. Now, so this is a company in the Netherlands that has made one game and then some sort of Bride of Pinbot upgrade. And, you know, it's had a storied history. Everybody knows it. It's, you know, we're a decade into production now. And there was an eight-year little hiatus, a little mini hiatus where people's deposits were banked somewhere in the Netherlands while some licensing court battles were going out. But we're all through that now. Big Lebowski's are out. They're coming on site. You can order them from CoinTaker, and this is the second company that's taken up the Kaneda's Pinball Podcast Challenge of open your doors and show us what the heck are you guys doing while we're waiting for games. And nothing instills as much confidence in a pinball company as actually seeing the process. Now, Stern is transparent. They go live every Friday and show you what's on the line, and every Friday it's something else because they've made 1,000 games in the last week. Jersey Jack drops in and shows us production, so we know that they're making games. Other companies, though, like, you know, Haggis Pinball, I know fathoms are getting made. They're showing up. But who knows what numbers, what production, how fast they're making? You just don't know. So it's a huge leap of faith, you know, if you're going to tie up your money with a machine like this. You know, because what happens if, you know, you run into something like a Haggis situation or, you know, in the early days of Dutch Pinball where you send off your deposit and maybe you get a nicely worded email back saying, go ahead and pay in full. We're ready to put your game into production. You're going to have it in eight weeks. And then nothing happens. and then eight years go by and nothing happens meanwhile your money's been tied up new titles have been dropping and you haven't been able to go on those because you're tied up over here well uh dutch pinball they they showed their whole layout their production facility their staff they all in one big flat floor which is easy from a logistics standpoint And they cranking out 10 games a week they say 40 games a month I mean, they're hitting spooky numbers, which, yeah, that's fantastic. Spooky's been generally just going through and making clear, steady progress on their Scooby builds. So now it looks like Lebowski's finally got up to where if you order one, you can reasonably expect to get one within four to six months. So that's great. And they still have the rugs. That was one of the first things I thought that would get cut along the production line. Well, those are those, uh, you know, the rugs that really tie the room together. They come with them. They had a whole box of them. And then they went through and they showed every, uh, every nut bolt, um, assembly build, uh, wire harness, um, the, the assemblies for the, uh, the bowling alley that sits underneath the play field. Interestingly enough, it's not actually bolted to the play field. It sits in the cabinet. So that's a lot of complex machinery. So for a company's really like first big game, I think they hit it out of the park. So, you know, I've casually, you know, I have a list. I've got a list of some games that, you know, I'm not rushing out to buy this moment, but at some point along my pinball career, I wouldn't mind having things like Stranger Things Premium, things like Munsters Premium or LE. And I think Big Lebowski is for sure on that list. and you know watching the uh the video like i'm now like uh i have a lot of confidence that if i went ahead and called up melissa over at coin taker which apparently is the exclusive u.s distributor for dutch pinball i could get them a uh deposit and i could reasonably expect to get a game so i'm i'm considerate i'm thinking about it there's another deluge of games that are becoming in the last half of the the year here you know adults have this thing called money it's a thing resources are finite and scooby-doo is still committed and on its way so i can't jump at it right now, but I wouldn't feel that I was putting in a tremendous amount of risk at this point, having seen the factory tour. So that's great. Thanks, Kaneda, for pushing these people to do this. I love it. I want to see more. I've reached out to Pinball Adventures. They've mentioned that they've done some videos from the factory, and so they're not too keen on going live, or maybe there's some personality issues in there anyway. But if they want to do it as a personal favor to me, I really want to see the factories. I still in my mind kick around this idea, this fantasy idea that I'm going to build my own machine one day, and I'm going to convert a corner of the garage where the half pipe is now into my mini production facility. And seeing these videos really puts that scope of what I would be undertaking into clear complexion, so I can look through my plexiglass glasses, my rose-colored plexis, and see what I'd really be getting into. So please, any factories that are listening, anybody that's got inroads to these production facilities, encourage them to go live and do it periodically. You know, I love how Stern does it every Friday. You know, certainly you don't have to do that, you know, every week. But, you know, monthly, hey, here's our update. Here's what we're working on. Here's an issue that we ran into, and here's how we fixed it. Here's what we learned from it, and here's what we're going to do to increase production. I mean, I think all of those are good things. I would like to see what Multimorphic looks like. I'd love to see what Haggis looks like. I'd love to, you know, get eyes on, you know, Pinball Adventures. Is there assembling as well? Because they're making games and apparently have some close to shipping or at least sold. So that was fantastic. Watching that live stream today. It's still up on their Facebook site. So go ahead and check that for sure out. Filled me with the warm fuzzies. All right. So I left Collision Bend last night. I'm doing some work here in the greater Cleveland area. Part of how I get caught up on buying these machines. You know, I've got a side hustle. I've got a second job. And I'm not afraid to go and do the work necessary to generate the income that's going to end up with me having a new in-box game to unbox for all y'all and play and enjoy with my friends and neighbors. So while I was out here, I, you know, was able to set up an event at Collision Bend. And then afterwards, I stayed in a hotel. I found a Holiday Inn Express. I like the Holiday Inn Expresses. I like the Hamptons, you know, that kind of trim level. You know, instead of being a $79 Best Western or something, they're usually like $120 to $150. But the beds are comfy. And, you know, they tend to be a little bit cleaner because they miss that first pass, you know, on the budget traveler. So I stopped by the Holiday Inn Express at Vermillion. And y'all about to be put on blast. So I show up to this place at 11 o'clock last night. This is an aside, but it's pinball adjacent. Late at the counter was nice. You know, the neighborhood was clean and parking was no issue. I get my key, though, and I go up to my room, and I hear voices on the other side of the door, which is unconcerting when you are alone and it's 11 o'clock at night and you're in northern Ohio, you know, right? So, you know, I guess my better judgment, I went ahead and swiped the key. The door opened just fine, and then it's a dark room. The TV's on. I peek in. The bed's unmade, and I'm, like, noping right out of there. because I don't know either, probably what happened is they didn't clean the room and whoever was there just left the TV on and bolted, right? Probably what I would have done. Or there could have been something squatting there, right? Or my keys were miskeyed or some such thing, but I wasn't about to find and meet new friends at 11 o'clock at night in Vermilion, Ohio. So I noped back to the counter and I'm like, look, room's messed up or whatever. The lady kind of seemed to understand. And then she went to give me another room. So I go into this other room, it's ground floor. And I'm like, okay, fine. You know, this probably isn't going to mess up twice. I go in there, and there's no curtains on the window. And this is a ground floor level exterior facing window right into the parking lot. And I'm looking, and there's just nothing covering the window at all. There's a little sheer drape that you can easily see through. And then I could see the metal channel for where there were some retractable blinds on there And they just missing So I don know if whoever was in there just grabbed them and split or what was going on but get it together guys Come on figure it out as they say Vermillion Ohio Holiday Express I left your review with some constructive criticism. The grounds were nice. The neighborhood seemed safe. The lady at the counter was nice enough, but y'all's only job is to provide clean room for travelers late at night that book on orbits, and come on, guys. All right, I'm going to put that aside for a second. New Bond code just dropped. I was getting ready to put this show together, and then the email popped up there. It's a 9.4 or .94 code. So Bond, which is improving. I played it again last night, and there is a ton of modes in there or content that I haven't noticed before. So that code is marching along at a fairly good pace. And I thought this would have been a relatively minor update, given that they were at like 9.1 or .91. Now they're at .94. But yo, I read through the readme file, and there was like six pages of content in there, There are all sorts of little adjustments that have been added. So, you know, I'm sure if you've got a bond, it's already auto-updating because, you know, Stern is fantastic about their connectivity. But, yeah, go check it out. I didn't have time to really dig through all that and all those updates, but there's a bond update out there. If you've got a machine at home and it's on the Internet as it should be, it's probably already updated. Otherwise, location guys, get that code updated. I worry about some locations that aren't insider-connected or have it but aren't online, and their games just aren't getting the updated code. And when I see these in the wild, I don't have one at home, I want to play the new code. So y'all been put on notice. There's new bond code out there. So I've been thinking on themes and things. And I did a live stream a couple of days ago before I left to come out here. And I've been coming up with this analogy, this triple ball analogy that I have for how, you know, how well a game ranks and maybe something to embark on before you go down the path of creating a game. You know, nothing's worse than ending up with a product that is, you know, subpar. It doesn't meet your initial expectations. And it was because of initial decisions that were made as you were heading down that path into the woods. And then, you know, it's a long 18 month to two year process, you know, to get a game to market. And, you know, it would, it's just terrible to see people that go down and invest all this time and energy and talent into a path that's not really in the right direction. So here's what I'm talking about. So when you're playing pinball, right, you get three balls generally, you know, and you have those games where like the first ball, just nothing happens. It just drains house ball, right? And maybe that happens on the second ball too. Sometimes you're in a tournament and the nerves or it's just your time to have a bad, an early performance. So then the game that you're playing hinges all on that last ball, right? They really have to blow it up to recover. Now, if you were doing decent on your first two balls, you wouldn't have to overachieve on the third one to get a decent score or in this case, come out with a decent machine. So the three balls that I've come up with in this analogy ball one is theme ball two is uh uh code and colors yeah and third is layout and mechs and things right and like the gameplay part of it so if you start with a theme that just initially grabs somebody that's the that's the biggest gain you can make for the least amount of effort because it has nothing to do with your layout or your coding or all the other talent of the pinball people it's the strength of the license itself something like a ghostbuster something like a gremlin something like a guns and roses something like a theme that just instantly i'm drawn to mandalorian anything star wars anything marvel you know those big big themes that have a deep fan base and aren't completely obscure like you're already there then if you make a game that has you know maybe you know okay you know lighting show okay code and that layout is somewhat okay you're gonna end up with a game that's looked on fairly favorably even something like Star Wars Pro and Premium, the strength of that theme is so strong that the other two balls, they don't matter as much. And so you get a lot of leeway, you get a lot of good sales, and a lot of happy customers without having to put in as many, you know, huge mechanisms. Now, look at the games that really blow it up, like start with a killer theme like Guns and Roses, and then have a killer light show. That makes up for some of the other gameplay and some of the other layout issues, you know, like, you know, Guns and Roses doesn't flow. It's not a flow monster. That's an open secret, right? Nobody's going to argue that. It's a little multiball heavy with the code, but man, that theme is grade triple A, the light show, the music, and it all comes as a mixture of that license and the brilliance of the team at JJP, including Eric, the designer, and then this guy Slash, right? So I would give that game, strong first ball, pretty good second ball. The third one is 79% or so, but overall, then that game gets an A-. It's fantastic. And that's part of the reason why I owned it. When you look at something like, let's stick with Eric and beat him up a little bit, Godfather, right? This was a theme that, as soon as it was rumored, I just was not interested. The theme holds nothing for me. I appreciate the movie. I've seen it. It's great cinema. It's fantastic for what it is. I appreciate it at that level. But the second thing I thought of when I heard Godfather was how do you turn this into a game that's going to be interesting? And I'm talking interesting like Jersey Jacks Pirates of the Caribbean, you know, or Wizard of Oz or Hobbit or something where there's, you know, or Beautiful Madness for that matter. And so I think with Godfather, that first ball just drained, you know. And I think the way that you make a Godfather pinball game interesting is to make a mafia game and then you know kind of sprinkle on the sprinkles and the icing you know onto what you built underneath And I really think it what they did Now the game shoots really good So when it comes to layout it good It good It not full of mechs It not Big Lebowski right There's not theme integration just oozing out of the sides of the coin box in this game. But there are a lot of good shots. It flows well. So it gets a good score there on, you know, ball three. You know, the lighting, you know, and the code, I think, is there. I think, you know, we're going to see some more code development. But that first ball just drained. So really, the strength of Godfather as a complete package really hinges on the music and the layout and the light show. Because the theme just didn't hold it for me personally. Okay, so, you know, whereas if you take a game like, let's go with Foo Fighters, boom, instantly, great theme. You know, not as strong as Guns N' Roses, but Foo Fighters hasn't been around as long. But it's up there. It's up there. So it's on par. But when you get to, you know, the light show, particularly with the expression lighting, I mean, this thing's kicking off. The code is fantastic, even with the early code that we have. You know, the callouts that they've added to the New Orleans mode foreshadow what they're looking for as far as where to get the code to. So I think they get a stellar A for that second ball code. That third ball layout, this thing is flow monstering all over the place. It's so satisfying to hit every one of those ramps when they do, particularly if you get them at the right time. When you hit that captive ball, you know, the launcher that can go up and either hit the ramp or the captive ball is fantastic. It's great. It's great. action button integration is right where I need it to be. So this game's A-plus all day. And that's what makes a great, great game. Godzilla is another one where that theme for me personally didn't grab because I don't have that nostalgia for it, but it's a good, strong license. Certainly stronger than Godfather. I mean, when I hear Godzilla already, I have ideas floating around of how that can be implemented. But the lights, the music, the code, and the layout are just so fantastic with Godzilla that that's an A-plus game too. whereas you know godfather comes through as you know solid you know b i'd give it a b um and mainly that's if it was a stronger theme you know if that was gremlins um i think it'd be an a minus you know for sure even changing nothing else about really the uh the code lighting and the layout so that's kind of what i was kicking around in my head i think that's an interesting way to approach like you know how do you objectively judge this game versus this other one no it's all a little subjective anyway given you know themes are a very personal thing to begin with um but that's kind of my three ball analogy that I alluded to a little bit on my live stream. And I want to dedicate a little bit more time to it. And you know, kind of what I think about it. All right, Holiday Inn Express is on full blast. So another idea I kicked around today, I'm an ideas guy, you know, I do well with implementation, implementation, too. But you know, blue sky ideas, man, I love dreaming this stuff up. So I came up with this concept. Now, this is probably something that can't ever functionally work. But what if we had a pinball design contest where we could pit each one of these design manufacturers kind of against each other, almost like in the frame of like a food network show, right? So where we have, you know, like we pick a random theme, or like spooky pinballs there, sterns there, JJP, pinball adventures, you're invited. You know, we spit out something like, okay, Beetlejuice is the theme. Okay, and then you have to incorporate, then we pick some things, you know, this wonky ramp, this Vuck wire form, and an empty beer bottle. Okay, now you guys go out and like come up with your own interpretations for that because each one of these companies, you know, now the companies are made up with multiple designers, but they all seem to have their flavor. Like a Stern feels like a Stern, a JJP feels like a JJP, you know, a spooky pinball knocks around their shots like a spooky pinball, you know, but like they have, you know, spooky has got the best, uh, uh, playfields, you know, Stern's got the best overall package and delivery, you know, JJP has got the best, uh, fit and finishes, I think coming off the line. Um, so it would be fun to see, you know, one theme interpreted by five different companies, you know, and just see kind of what they get. Now, the cherry on this would be that the best theme or the best overall package would go ahead and win a contract to go ahead and build that. What if licensing was done like that? What if you went to the people that own the Sonic the Hedgehog license, you know, or Star Trek Voyager or what have you, and the licensee was like, okay, we've seen what you had to present, but now we're going to go talk to JGP. We're going to talk to Stern. We're going to talk to Pinball Adventures. We're We talked to Turner Broadcasting Network or whoever the other guy is, Ninja Eclipse dude. And then they had to compete at that level in order to get the machines out. I think that would be fantastically interesting, number one. Number two, it would generate a lot of awesome concept art that we could check out. So something to fill up the coffers in the attic of Stern Pinball for Jack Danger to dig through and then share with all of us. So I hope you guys are having a good week. I want to pop on here and just give my thoughts and things that I was having for the week. otherwise pinball wise plan I'm hanging out in around Lake Erie trolling for machines to play so if you're in the region hit up me hit hit up me hit get back at me hit me up at don's pinball podcast at gmail.com follow the Facebook page at Don Pinball Podcast go to the Instagram go to the Patreon and join the crew five dollars a month and you are baller status homie about to record some more Patreon information for my Patreon subscribers because I gotta give content for giving me five bucks to buy a beer or play some godfather yo that's what i do maybe i'll do some more freestyle raps on the patreon nothing generates content like that all right everybody be safe clean your underwear eat your vegetables later