All right, coming up on this very special episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball? We've got the Winchester Mystery House Walking Dead Remastered. Goran joins us on the podcast. Everybody's been waiting at least 10 years for this. Star Wars Impressions Plus. If you stick around to the end, Kevin and I will review Tron Ares, the movie. We both saw it. Stick around for that. All that and more coming right up. I need a ramp. I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super jetpack in my life. That's right. Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka. Boom shakalaka. What's going on, everybody? I'm Kevin. That's Nick. Nick, big news this month. Big news. Big news is that Gorin is joining us for the podcast. There's bigger news than that. There is bigger news than that. But that is big news. Gorin, you want to say hi? Yeah. Let me switch over to the Gorin shot here. I don't have it on my quick. There he is. There he is. Oh, there we go. It's me, Nick. I'll change that later. Don't worry about it. This is stream stuff. We're new to this. You might have thought that Goran, because he uses caps locks, would just come on and be screaming the entire time, but that's not how he communicates. No, we just turned my mic down to 40%. Yeah, that's right. We turned him down to 40%. We get him around 11 a.m. where he's not totally cranked up for the day. Correct. All right. So you guys should know Goran from Topper Talk. now he's moved into the big seat for this episode Goran, when did you start watching the Brody Even Pinball and Brody Even Talk Pinball? I remember the stream where Martha accidentally let it leak early that you made Twitch Partner It's going way back Those were early ones, so I've been here for a long time that was probably like maybe maybe 2016 so were you like were you like 15 16 at the time correct all right well dreams come true look where you are now you've done it you know all the life accomplishments we did it all right all right well and again if if um anybody hasn't seen goran's show that he did it's uh carl right he archived it on youtube or he captured the video yeah there's yeah there's a he did a screen recording if anyone wants to see that reach out to me, I can send it to you. I did a fun one-man cabaret in New York a few weeks ago, and it was a lot of fun. There was a loose pinball theme to it, and it was a blast. All right. Martha and I watched it on the big screen, and I couldn't turn away. Thank you. There you go. It was a fun ride. Thank you. It had a nod to us, too, because at the end, his outro music was Double Super Jackpot, so we appreciate that. Loved it. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk about We got an update, right, Kevin? Why don't you take over for that part? Sure. Yeah, so this is my news. So you may have heard that I am now officially connected, working with Multimorphic. Let's see. We can put this one. So I'm officially working with Multimorphic, helping with their communications, social media, community building, all sorts of good stuff like that. So basically, you know, the stuff I do, but doing it with Multimorphic in an official capacity. You know, we've worked with them indirectly. They've been a partner on the show for a number of years. I've been going down there doing their reveals and showing off their new games for a long time and showing off all the stuff in my collection, too. Obviously, I'm a big P3 fan, have been for a long time, and I love Portal. And it was like the perfect time for me to jump on board and connect with them. and was like, let's take this to the next level. I love what you guys are doing. This machine's amazing. Let's do it. So in thinking about that, it was like, it doesn't make sense for me to continue on as like a talking head on a podcast while I'm working directly with a pinball company. Like I don't, it wouldn't be fair to the listeners. It wouldn't be fair to Nick or myself to come on here and be either just not say anything the whole show because I can't. It's like not right for me to like talk trash about another company or anything or say say things that might not be favorable about another company when I'm working with another one. So I was like, here's what we're going to do. So for the next two episodes, so we have, you know, the shows through the end of the year, this month and next month, it's going to be me acting as producer on the show. Nick's going to have a guest host. It's it's going this month. different one next month. And then beyond that, Nick's going to take the show and run with it. He's going to do amazing things. I'm going to focus a hundred percent on multimorphic when I'm not a hundred percent of my day job. It's like, there's something wrong with us. We, we, we like do our work and then we're like, we need more work. Let's make it pinball work. Um, but yeah, so that's kind of how we're going to approach it. Uh, so Nick's going to run with it. There's no saying I never come back to the show. It could, it could, we could come back around eventually, but for the time being, that's how it's going to go. Nick, any thoughts? No, the storyline is that Kevin's going to be in a coma, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll see if Kevin comes out of the coma. The very special episode, yeah. Yeah. Caffeine pills or something, yeah. Yeah, well, listen, I love doing this every month with Kevin. The whole genesis of the show was, I mean, obviously we had the stream, but Kevin and I for years and years would get together once a week and grab tacos and we would talk pinball. and it was just like, well, why don't we just put a mic in front of us because we have kind of a good back and forth. And I think it worked out very well because I always just enjoy talking to my good friend Kevin, making stupid jokes that other people find funny, and I'll definitely miss that part. And I do hope that maybe one day Kevin comes back to the show. We'll see. It's my intent to keep the stream going. Obviously, it's going to be altered. So, you know, it's all subject to change, but the thought process is, and Kevin and I talked about this a little bit, is probably reduce the show to maybe once a quarter just because I've got a lot going on in my life. It's going to be a little bit harder to produce it all on my own. But the goal always is and always has been to do a high-quality show, right? Like there might – it's not like it's always high production quality, but just to be interesting for all the amount of time that we're talking. And then what I envision the show to be, you know, in that point is bringing on some guest hosts. I have some in mind. I'll be reaching out to them. And I think that will just introduce some nice variety of the show. And I think it will be fun. And I think the important thing is that I can go forward doing a show like that where I look forward to it. And if I'm looking forward to it and having fun, then it's going to be a good show. And that's always the most important thing, right? So there we go. And we thought, who better to have on these last two shows when we're going to bring somebody else in to kick it off is Goran. So super excited to have Goran on the show. He's been such a good fan, viewer, follower, contributor to Buffalo Pinball for so many years now. And it's like every time we do a podcast or stream, the chat's always kind of the third person in the room. And that's what's made this fun over the years. So I'm happy to do that. Kev, let's move on. Before I part ways for the show, you'll see me back at the end for the Tron Ares discussion. I can still talk about that. Oh, yeah. I want to give a quick plug. Shout out to the Multimorphic. So if you're not following the Multimorphic social media channels, check them out. This is where you're going to see a lot of what I'm doing. This reel I put up earlier today. Yesterday? No, Friday. It topped 100,000 views. So this is like the most... um, it's like the most successful content I've ever produced work or otherwise it's, it's, it's just blown up. It's, it's, it's like mini viral, I would say. Um, so it's gotten tons of engagement. It kind of reinforces my beliefs on what we could do with this brand, this, this license with portal. Um, it's, it's a really cool, check it out. We've been doing giveaways. We've been doing crazy like memes and stuff like that. So if you want some fun stuff, this is where you're going to find me. Check out their games. Obviously, I love them. And you guys are going to too. So with that, I'll hand it over to my good friends, Goran and Nick. All right. Well, we got to do some partner things, don't we? That's super important. Let's get that up there. All right. Shout out to our premier partner, Flip N Out Pinball. Flip N Out Pinball. Flip, N as in Nick, outpinball.com. that is where you go folks if you're going to buy a pinball machine just go there make your life easy Zach and his team they'll take care of you if you have any problems with your game they have the nice white glove customer service they'll help you get it resolved it's been an absolute pleasure working with Zach for a number of years now that's where I buy all my games so flipping out pinball.com and then shout out to our other partners many are long standing we've got pinball life you go for pinball parts. I've been buying parts from them since 2011. We've got Comet pinball for LEDs and lighting for your pinball machines. Titan Pinball, titanpinball.com They've got silicone rings, so that's something that you're going to need to replace. They've got pinballs, not machines, pinballs, so if you've got to replace those every once in a while, use coupon code BUFFALO, save 10%. We've got pinside.com, the go-to place to talk all things pinball, buy and sell games, rate games, throw opinions that are unsubstantiated out there, whatever you want to do. That's pinside.com. Multimorphic, Kevin is the official shill. He's made it official. He is now Win Schilling for Multimorphic. Kevin, obviously, a huge fan of the P3. We might even get a P3 at the club, so we'll see. Maybe I will be a convert one day. That's multimorphic.com. And then last but not least, our friend Rob from Hall & Oates, Hall & Oates Moving. So he's got a new website. This makes it easy. Look up. Here we go, guys. You can actually find Rob now. Go to northeastpinballmoving.com. So if you are in the Northeast, I love that name, makes it easy, and you want a pinball machine moved from point A to point B, Rob is your guy. He'll go wrap it up, get it to you, bring it. If you've got stairs, that's the worst thing in the world. He'll take it down the stairs and set it up for you. White Glove Service. That's northeastpinballmoving.com. All right. I don't know where you guys are. There you are. There you are. All right. And rumor has it that Rob will be the host next month. He's got a top ten list he's working on, which I won't say anything more on that, but I'm looking forward to having Rob on the podcast next month. Okay. All right, let's go to news. Now, the funny thing is Kevin and I did a podcast not long ago. It feels like just yesterday. And a lot has happened because, of course, there was Pinball Expo. So a lot of news to get through. We'll start off with what was announced, I think, within just a few days of our last podcast, which is the Winchester Mystery House. The Winchester Mystery House is another game, surprisingly, from Barrels of Fun. I say surprisingly because they had just released Dune back in, what, May? And they're pulling out another game right now, which was, I don't think, on anybody's radar. So Kev's got a nice video showing on the screen of this. This is a quasi-original theme. It's actually based on a house that's in California. I think it's in San Diego. I could be wrong. and interesting theme choice, but it's basically got like kind of this haunted mansion vibe to it. It's made by Carl D'Python Anghelo, which many people know as an amazing competitive player, runs some great tournaments, is a streamer for a number of years. Carl's very well known and respected in this space. And this is his first pinball machine. They know he's making one, and it looks pretty damn good, I've got to say. They're only going to make 525 units. The MSRP is $11,600, and apparently they sold out basically in one day, which is amazing for, again, a quasi-original theme. I had no idea what Winchester Mystery House is. I guess the technicality is that they sold out to distributors. Maybe all games have been sold and accounted for. right now i haven't kept up on that they they sold out they sold out very quickly in terms of to distributors but then i want to say within a day a day and a half can't find it anywhere i mean it was a true sellout rapidly yeah it's it's it's kind of amazing i mean um i wouldn't have predicted another game from barrels of fun so soon um i wouldn't have predicted that they would make a a quasi-original theme that would sell out in one day. So a lot of surprise with this, but I think it's just a testament to them looking like they knocked it out of the park. I mean, I saw this game, and I was thinking about buying it, and I never buy a game that I don't play, right? And I think that says a lot. Ultimately, I didn't buy it. It's a lot of money for pinball, even these days. Again, I think barrels of fun still need to prove themselves in this space, right? this is only their third game. But man, that's good on them. That's impressive. And congrats to Carl. So, Goren, let's go to you. What do you think about this game? So I have one on order. I'm very excited. I'm extremely excited for a variety of reasons. One, Carl is a close friend of mine. We have played tons of things in VR. We went to Epic Universe here in Orlando. So, but on top of that, it does have a Haunted Mansion vibe to it. It really does. And I don't think we're going to see a Haunted Mansion pin anytime soon. And this really captures that haunted feeling to it. I think the theme is super fun. And then on top of that, I have a lot of faith in Carl. Eric put geese on software. I know Carl's working on a lot of the rules, but Eric is implementing. I have a lot of faith in him. I got to tour the Barrels factory the day after Dune was released. and I'm super excited and, you know, a close friend's debut game really helped sweeten the pot there too. So I am in and I am very, very excited. Yeah, I'm jealous. Do you know when you're getting your game any indication? I think there's some are on location. They're starting with like locations first and then they're going to go out to collectors. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure right now. That's okay. I'm not in a huge rush to be honest. I have 19 games and I need to figure out where this is actually fitting. It's going to go here in Orlando, but I still need to rearrange things in the garage. So not in a huge rush right now. I've got a suggestion. I think you should also get a place in Buffalo in addition, and you can hang out at the club, come here a few months out of the year, win-win. I'll make a note of that. Great. Write it down. Got it. You got it, Nick. What else? So you were sold on the game. That's impressive. It makes all the sense of what you're saying. The theme is really, really interesting. I was not familiar with the theme or the Winchester Mystery House at all, but I did some research and learned a bit about it. And I believe it is, you know, I'm not an expert on it, but if I remember correctly, it has to do with the Winchester family and like as in the Winchester gun. and it's the wife or the widow, the Winchesters, and she went to the fortune teller or something along the lines of that and felt she was being haunted by all the ghosts that the Winchester rifles killed, and she was told to build a house and never stop building, and that will keep the spirits away. So, you know, it's a really interesting and odd theme, and, you know, I was not familiar with it prior to this. But I also know that Carl's mentioned, you know, on different podcasts and things that has a very deep rule set. There are 13 rooms to explore there. The game can change depending on what order you explore the different rooms. It seems like it will be a great game to explore at home. I think it's going to be a tough game. I don't think it'll be a miserably tough game, but I think it's going to be a tough game and something that you can truly take time exploring at home in a home environment. But also knowing Carl being a tournament player, I'm sure it's going to be great for tournaments as well. Yeah, I don't know how far along the code and software is. I mean, I watched kind of a short gameplay video a few weeks ago. There was like a percentage. I'm looking forward to making that. I forget what that was. I think as of now, there is a lot there, but there's so much to go in terms of depth. But, you know, there's... I believe he's mentioned he has a giant rule document and everything, and they're plugging away on it. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. Like, we'll talk about Star Wars impressions later, because Kevin and I both played it. I guess Kevin can't talk about it, but... It's just night and day seeing a game like Star Wars. And then Winchester Mystery House. And it's just, you know, when somebody calls Stern soulless, that is maybe the best example that I can give to anybody. It's just full of passion, full of art and creativity. We'll see how it is in the final product. I guess I'm bummed that they only have 525 units. I think clearly they're probably surprised by that. They didn't make enough, right, if they sold out in a day. Well, and there's a few things there. one, the 525 I believe is based off of the address of the house it's 525 something, so that's where that number came from and then, you know, they when this game came out of the blue, literally out of nowhere, no one expected them to release anything there were a few pieces of media that came out and if I remember correctly, the thought is they're starting a smaller line, more of a boutique line where they can do more interesting, risky themes because they didn't necessarily know that this was going to be a day one hit or sell out, right? So I think as still a newer business, they're being cautious and this other line is they're going to have their dunes and their labyrinths and kind of those bigger names, but then they can have this smaller line to really explore some other interesting ideas that could be a hit like this or potentially a miss, but it not entirely harm the business. Yeah. Yeah. So bummer. I would have, I would have been on this game. I don't think I'll have access to it. Who knows? Maybe they come up for sale, but if the game's good, it's not really going to drop in price and it's going to be hard to get one. So congrats on them. I wish there was more out there cause I would love to add it to my collection. But it is, it is what it is. I should have, I should have probably just grabbed it when it came up, but I, I, I think that, as a rule of thumb, that's a generally terrible idea. The other thing that I look at this, and I've heard rumors that Barrels of Fun is not doing well. This is unsubstantiated. This is what somebody's told me, right? And I think that the fact that they brought this out so soon after Dune, which could obviously cut into Dune sales, kind of lends some credibility to that statement, right? But now that they're selling out, that's very good for the company. So it looks like that move certainly paid off, which is good because I think Barrels of Fun can be a nice competitor in the space. I mean, we need more than just Jersey Jack or Stern or Spooky. I don't even say American Pinball because we'll talk about them later. When I toured the factory and getting a tour with David, their CEO, I was very pleased with what I saw. I had a great time and I feel that they are in a good spot and have good plans and are heading in a great direction. I'm, you know, this is their first game that I've owned. I've only, I played Dune the day after it came out. It was a lot of fun and I've only played Labyrinth once at Allentown Pinfest, but I'm very pleased with what I've seen and what I've played and just the overall direction of the company. And, you know, this game looks great. The Brad Brad Albright's art looks great. the mechs look amazing and uh you know you can tell you can tell it wasn't a situation they they really let carl run with this game i feel like it doesn't look you can tell when a designer designed something and then they come in and start cutting a bunch of the cool things um this is and i feel like barrels is kind of starting to get known for building the games how they want them to be built and i'm very excited all right look at that we're all positive on the first thing on the news this is amazing it's a totally different day i guess kevin was a negative one geez all right let's let's let's move on we'll see if we can keep the positive train rolling i think it's going to progressively get less positive yeah i think so too but you know all right and we've got we got some uh live talk top topper talk coming up eventually okay all right the next uh next announcement not in necessarily any kind of Order of announcement, but in recency. So we had The Walking Dead remastered. This had been long rumored to be happening, so this rumor has proven to be true. I used to own Walking Dead Premium. I sold it. I mean, I thought it was a great game, but I just ended up selling it so I can buy a big Buckhunter arcade game and to fund that. So for better or for worse, I don't own one anymore. I was curious to see what this would be like. I don't know if I would buy this game again, but let's talk about that. Kevin, let's throw it on the screen if you can. Let's get some visuals on it. There we go. All right. Perfect. Okay, so we've got The Walking Dead remastered. Stern has kept the pricing the same, which is good and a little surprising for now, but I think it's a good move. So we've got LE 500 units of that worldwide. Interesting. that's $12,999 so basically $13,000 for the LE and then the premium which will be the same premium pricing as it has been for numerous other releases is $9,699 this is a Spike 3 game so this is their second Spike 3 game and it's still based on the AMC series and not the comic book I think some people thought it might be the comic book but they've kept the AMC series I don't know There's some improvements on this that I'll highlight, like the Well Walker now kind of jiggles around and moves a little bit more. He moves independently. There's a smoother bicycle girl ramp, improved crossbow functionality. The LE has the expression lighting kit, which I like, and it also has lighting on the outside. Like if you guys remember the Star Wars machine or Star Trek machine that Stern did well over 10 years ago, how that lit up on the LE. So it's got that. The biggest, I guess, some other changes is that they've added two of the voice actors. So I think that a good move The original voice actor was just a generic kind of hillbilly kind of voice So that a good move as well Let talk about the art because that obviously maybe that this change that is going to be most noticeable and people were talking about Goran, what was your reaction when you saw this? It's not my – knowing what was there previously, it's not necessarily a direction. I probably would have wanted to move in. I think it's very bright for the theme. And there's a lot going on. So personally, not my not my favorite for the theme and kind of, you know, having a standard of what was there previously. I think the art is is is is well done. Right. I agree. Maybe this – I think maybe it's like what I pick up on comments online is like the vividness, the brightness of it. They probably wanted it a little more muted. Although I think the art, you take that away, in my opinion, is better. I really hated the premium artwork. I thought it was really just an ugly machine in my collection. And you can have something that, like, is like a horror theme, right, and there is something that could be like a horror aesthetic but, like, looks good, right? And I don't think Walking Dead Premium ever looked good. So I was – no one's ever going to me for thoughts on art and art advice, but I thought the art was definitely an improvement. I understand the criticisms of it being too bright. I think everything's oversaturated, too, when Stern releases it. So I'm guessing, once again, when people see it in person, it's going to be better. but I personally like the art package on this better than the other one any kind of flaws or criticisms aside to it I think it's the brightness is a huge part for me it's just a lot it's a lot on the eyes for the theme for me but overall I mean I think you look at the art in general and the artist did a great job. But it's also an adjustment. It's always an adjustment, especially when you have something different and something to work off of, right? Yeah. Walking Dead is a great game. It was at one point in time my favorite game in my collection. So it's good to see maybe a remaster of it and more of it out there. With that said, do I see myself buying it? I don't know. Probably not. Maybe if this game plummets in price, right? The premiums get down to like 7,000-some. It would be something that I would consider. I really like the layout of it. I like Lyman's rules. They're going to tweak and adjust the rules. I don't think that they need to do that in this game. Like that's never really been a complaint that I've heard or had. So we'll see what they do with it. This is kind of like a wait-and-see thing. I wonder how well this game is going to sell. There's so many games right now out in the space. And this is a nice anecdote. I was talking to Zach about this. Kevin, I don't know if I told you this. You're welcome to comment on it. But Zach said this is the best year that they've had. I thought this year would be bad when I see a lot of games plummeting in price. But I guess games are plummeting in price because so many used games are flooding the market so people can buy all the new games. So this is the best year. I'm shocked to hear that. especially when you see a lot of like, you know, Stern games get bought and sold in six months on the used market for, you know, $1,000, $2,000 less. I'd be curious, you know, I don't know if you can get this information, but just as a, I'd be curious to see if it's the best year, but also if there is a shift more towards everyone but Stern with the price drops. Is he seeing better success with barrels and with Potter and JJP and, and whatever else, you know, I'd be curious that also what the shift looks like from manufacturer to manufacturer from last year or the year prior and how that all shifts. But that's, that's great to hear overall that it's, that it's been a good year. You know, that's good for pinball. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I love talking to Zach. Maybe, maybe he'll be a future guest. So Zach, if you're here, we'll talk because I do like the business aspect of, of pinball and hearing that. So again, that was a surprise. I would have, I would have guessed that things were bad, but there have been a lot of good games. And then like you mentioned, Goran Potter is, is a, you know, it's, it's a good game. I played it. We probably should talk about it. I haven't, I haven't played it yet. So that's great. If you're listening to anybody who's a powder fan, um, yeah, your day has been made. It's a great game. I'm highly impressed with it. I'll play it at IAPA. Um, in a few weeks, it sounds, it looks like, um, uh, Walking Dead will have its public debut at IAAPA as well. So I'll be there, and I'm looking forward to that. Okay. Well, all right. That's not enough. So we've had two games revealed. Now we've got another game. We'll move on. We've got Beetlejuice by Spooky. So as soon as Winchester was announced, Spooky basically said, no, no, we've got Save Your Money. We've got Beetlejuice coming as well. So it didn't seem to have much of an impact because Winchester sold out. But, yes, Beetlejuice is coming from Spooky. I guess people are excited about that. There's nothing for me personally. There's 999 units, and the price is 9,999. Everybody's getting so cute with the pricing of the units with all that. But, all right, so, Goren, I'm just going to go to you because I don't have strong opinions on Beetlejuice. Yeah, so I have a few different thoughts overall on the, you know, I can add my two cents about the theme and then also just on the overall release of it. So on the theme aspect, you know, I had never. There's Martha. Hi, Martha. As you know, I don't watch movies So I hadn't seen Beetlejuice, the movie, until probably, what was the year, 2018, 2019 Because there was a Broadway musical and my business partner was starring in it So I finally got to watch the movie once I think Beetlejuice is a fun theme in general I very much enjoy the Broadway show and I enjoyed the movie but you know I'm curious with what they'll do with the game I really have no idea nothing the game has been announced the pricing has been announced it it's sold out question mark the whole thing's been weird we know nothing about this game we really know nothing about this game what happened was Winchester came out there have always been rumors about Beetlejuice Stern allegedly had it at one point. I think Franchi did that artwork for it. I don't know. But then what happened was, I think some distributors like Flip N Out Pinball said, hey, just get on our list. If you're on our list, you'll be able to get one. But then other distributors, I think Pinball Star started accepting deposits, but Spooky never confirmed anything. So it was a really, well, eventually, yes, a teaser trailer did come out, but this was even prior to the teaser trailer. I think a few distributors started accepting deposits and basically announced the theme before spooky ever officially announced the theme they just posted a gif that was more of like a you know a joke but it was really weird and then there were also uh deposits on the topper as well before anything was ever announced so it was a very weird rollout um well i mean i i think it's it's it's understandable that was a weird rollout because the winchester thing came out of nowhere I mean I don't know if Spooky knew about it or anybody but it came out of nowhere so I think it left them scrambling and panicking like hey don't spend all the money we've got this coming so it kind of forced their hands just the deposit thing was weird because Spooky didn't make the announcement a distributor did and started accepting deposits and then I think Zach made a post about like hey there's a rumor this and that just get on our list for the next game and you'll get one But another distributor was like, all right, it's Beetlejuice, Topper Deposits and Game Deposits, which is fine. If they were allowed to do that, that's great. I'm just confused about there seemed to be a miscommunication between everyone, which makes sense because that's what happens when you scramble. But I was just sitting there, and I was very confused as to what was happening. And then once again, I had to laugh as the, you know, Topper Talk person of also deposits on the Topper separately as well. Well, let's listen. Let's speak into Topper. Let's move on from Beetlejuice. Right. Let's go to what everybody's here for. We've got the Kong Topper. We've got Goran Live, live tape. We're here. Kevin's going to show it on the screen. There we go. All right. 100%. Goran, this is all. I mean, I've got opinions on it. I'm not a Topper guy. I've never bought a Topper in my life. I've had a few special guests on Topper Talk, but usually it's just me in my three- to five-minute allotment. In your office. Yeah, in the office, in the study, in the garage. It depends where I am. But, yeah, so it'll be fun to have a brief conversation about it. Three to five minutes. Three to five minutes. Yeah, of course. um so yeah it's uh fourteen hundred dollars which you know is toppers are expensive um there it is i you know why i appreciate that there is stern puts out a lot of toppers where it's really only meant to be looked at from the front and then there are these side pieces that are usually 2d and yes in a lineup you're not gonna see the game from the side, but if it's on an N, you can see from the side and there's a lot of times a disconnect between the front and the side. I do appreciate that the marquee extends with those lights out to the side. I don't know if those lights on the side light up, but it at least gives a little bit of design. It's a bit boxy. Recently, toppers have been very like, here is the box that you work in. So, you know, not my favorite. You know, I do, I love the Black Knight Topper Foo Fighters I think as well I love moving components or more of like the animatronic components of it all so it was cool to have a Kong on top but I believe it is the exact same Kong that is on the premium so that's a little bizarre we've moved away from now putting the name of the game in the name of the game we now have toy and same toy on top of the Topper so you know I think it's cool to look at and it's fun but you know I think on a it's a little weird to look at to see the exact same thing down low the the word board on the front is cool I didn't you know I don't know if I think I think it was El Rocco maybe who pointed this out I don't know if it's canon that Kong knows English and can spell. But, you know, that's there. I also, if I'm not mistaken, I'm not 100% sure, I'm pretty sure what's written on it is configurable, which is cool. Could also get a little interesting with people, but, you know, that's a that's an interesting thought as well. I don't one thing that has driven me crazy are the two black screws or pieces to hold the front to the topper. it looks like with the little dot above the B and the exclamation point I just wish they figured out a different way to adhere that hardware because when you're looking at writing that's black and then having two black pieces of hardware where the writing is it just looks really bizarre so that's been a weird thing that I've been fixated on $1,400 it's expensive I would have expected it to be two grand though so you know the bargain. You like this. You like this topper. You know, I have my gripes with it, but I like the movement of it all. I enjoy the movement. Okay, well, here's the deal. This topper is such a garbage thing that they put together. They took the toy that's already in the game and put the toy again on top of the game. It's so fucking lazy. This is like any other company. Again, how do you talk about Stern? okay talk about stern versus like another company like jersey jack or even like barrels are starting to demonstrate that they're gonna do more or spooky right like none of those companies would have just taken a toy that's in the game and then like slap on the topper and sold it for 1400 bucks they would have done something different the kong toy is cool but you don't need it twice in the game what is the it's just lazy garbage it's just $1,400 i haven't played kong yet either so that's the thing i do know that it's in the game but i'm sure when if once you see it on top it's kind of weird to see it repeated lazy garbage lazy garbage oh yeah thank you nick i'm glad kevin because you still hear kevin laughing i want to get like uh i want to get my mic off to the camera to the audience but you can hear me i i just turned it back on i'll turn it back off you can hear me laugh no no no you can laugh laughter is is not uh rational it's it's just an emotional thing that you cannot control that's perfectly fine there's nothing that says you cannot laugh at something that's funny kevin i appreciated it it felt like i was doing a job i was like great okay keep going i just had an i just had enough like gore was too positive about this this is the fucking toy that's in the game it's on top of this topper and people lap it up you want to call it twice was there two conks in the game he's gonna be moving up and down like that's too much i would argue that that was probably one of my most negative topper talks nick oh wow okay all right i didn't i hear like okay all right all right you know fair fair enough fair enough all right let's uh let's let's move it let's move it along all right what do we got next okay oh oh boy here we go i didn't see this coming so dutch pinball announces retro atomic zombie land adventure like this company will not let the other company die so this is our our our friend um what what the hell is his name he's got it oh robert mueller which you know from from this failed company this guy cheated out elderly people from their retirement you know which is the most one of the most despicable things you can do so he could just never produce a pinball machine but they had like games that they were working on that never got released so dutch pinball game that just will not let J-Pop go or any of this stuff go. It's going to bring this out to the market and see the light of day. Now, on the positive side of things, look, people put a lot of time and energy and work into this, so it is good that it's not totally wasted. It's going to come out for people to buy it. It's going to have the weird cabinet design that Deep Root came out with, which, again, I don't think that people ever ask for cabinets to be redesigned. It looks weird in the lineup, especially for people with OCD. Is it going to have the weird cabinet design? Yes, it's going to have the weird design. No, no. So, yeah, there we go. I mean, allegedly they're going to make it and it's going to come out. They're going to plan to produce 333 Raza units, which shows a lot of confidence in this game. I mean, you talk about production numbers. That's less than the 500 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. So even they're like, okay, we'll make it, but it's not going to be a lot of them. So, I don't know I mean, I Can't believe we're talking about Raza again Some things won't stay buried in the past And they get dug up Again, the positive side of it is like Look, there's work that's put into this There's probably 333 people that want to see this And have it at the light of day So it will exist And there we go I don't know if I'll ever play one Maybe one day I think you were being too positive, Nick Am I? Go ahead, shit all over it, please One up me I don't think it's possible, but go ahead No, let's go This game I hear you on people who put work into it That's one thing But this game is the kiss of death It is the continued kiss of death For Pinball It started with J-Pop And, you know, with And Magic Girl was part of the kiss of death there. But then we go over to Deep Root. And everyone knows the Deep Root saga. And now it's here. And I don't know why. Like, who thought this? There are so many other themes that need to be tackled and accomplished. I don't know why this is happening. I think it's a massive slap in the face to people who lost all this money in Deep Root. Which, once again, should they have put money into Deep Root in the first place? Probably not. But I think it is something that needs to disappear. And even though, yes, they're going to make tweaks to it and other things, I don't trust that it's going to shoot well either. I think it is a novelty thing that people are just going to throw their money at and say, look, I own a Raza. I did it. But I think it is a kiss of death for manufacturers, and we need to move on from it. The pinball community needs to move on from Raza. I think we had moved on from it, and then it's back. It's back. Is Dutch Pinball better than Pinball Brothers? I don't know. It's a real Sophie's Choice. Okay. Would you rather have a game made by Dutch Pinball or Pinball Brothers? You want Abba or you want a Raza? That's a... All right, all right, we broke, Goran. We can... The internet never forgets, Goran. a Raza. Okay, wow, wow, wow, wow. That says it all. I think I agree with you, Goran, I agree with you. I would pick that too over an ABBA and anything made by Pinball Brothers. But I would, you know, if I win a pinball raffle, I'd have to choose one. I'll choose a Raza, but I don't need one. If someone gives me one, great. Okay. All right. That's a ringing endorsement. Okay. All right, all right. Speaking of, you can just see how this is ordered. We're really moving down. Was that a good, by the way, were you happy with my negativity, Nick? That's my favorite question, were you happy with my negativity, Nick? Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good. Could use a lot more swearing, but we'll work on that. Got it. We'll work on it. Okay. All right, well, here we go. We've got another upstart pinball company. They're moving on to their second game. I don't even know if they sold any of their first game, but here we go. Game number two. Hex the Pinball, the ones who did the – what's that robot game called? Is that Space Hunt? Space Hunt, yeah, Space Hunt. I actually played it a month ago. I already forgot about it. Okay, so they're making their next game. It's called the Three Musketeers game, which I got to say, I think that's a good move for a small company is to use something that's like a free license to use, but everybody knows the Three Musketeers. Maybe not in-depth stories, but they understand what the Three Musketeers are. So that's what we got. They've announced that they put a trailer out. The animation looks pretty good, like the drawings on it. Did you see it, Corin? Yeah, I did. If we're just looking at the animation and such, I think it looks great. It's kind of exciting. As a company, I don't really know anything about them, and we don't know what the layout is. But, you know, this is a positive, a positive. Yeah. All right. There's something nice about that. Okay. So I'll never probably own this game. Who knows if I'll ever play this game. It's going to come out in spring 2026. And let's move on. That's it. That's it. That's all you're getting, Hexa. That's the news. Yeah. All right. That's the news. That's something nice. Okay. Not a huge news point, but interesting enough. So Pokemon, you know, people have been rumored that's coming along, that CERN's putting out a Pokemon game. That is, according to NAP Arcade, back on track for Q1. I think Gomez must have revealed that at Pinball Expo. So it's on track for Q1 2026. Apparently Jack Danger was making it. Jack Danger is no longer making games. So George Gomez is going to finish it. I almost had a slip, a Freudian slip called, and I almost said fix it, but it's going to finish it. So I don't understand why Jack Danger has been yanked from games. I know that there was issues kind of production issues and just the shootability of X-Men there's some frustrating things but I mean I think like um Foo Fighters shot great so I don't know why he got yanked I don't know why Gomez is finishing it but that's Pokemon I can really give two shits about Pokemon it's a kids thing for me and I guess I may be too old for that or maybe I never had a childhood there's that too but But kind of going back to the designer aspect at Stern right now, something that's kind of always amazed me is this is kind of, I think, a bigger discussion that we don't necessarily need to have. But in my opinion, I think Stern is releasing way too many games too frequently. Especially when you see how low the prices get frequently. I just don't know how they can sustain that many designers and that many different teams working on so many games all at once. It feels like I just play the newest game and two weeks later there's an announcement of either a remaster or a boutique game or a cornerstone. We hear things like Zach saying it's their best year yet in general, but I don't know. There are the people who buy every Stern game, but there's only so much space. There are only so many people in the pinball community. there's going to be a top that's hit at some point so I also wonder if there's a personnel issue of just having too many designers and too many teams working on things they've got that huge facility that they've built they're operating as if it's the good times of a few years ago when there was so much money in the space and they're flooding the market now the good times don't last forever so we'll see how they operate when things are tightened up And, again, that's why I thought that things were bad. When you see Stern release games, you can just look on Pinside and see that there's not a lot of owners. And then, again, I've said this multiple times, but they've trained their customers not to buy games when they're new just to wait until they hit the secondary market. Just look at Kong. You can pick that up. No need to go out and buy an LE. There's plenty of them in the used market. And I don't see any reason for that not to continue. I don't know if Pokemon moves the needle. I know that. I think it's a theme. I'm not a huge Pokemon person, but I think that it is a theme that a fair amount of people will be excited about. I know, you know, there are a lot of Pokemon Go was a huge thing that kind of, I think, reinvigorated the brand of Pokemon. And once again, I don't know a lot about it, but the trading cards were in value. You know, there's a lot of value there recently and those have kind of boomed again. So, you know, I don't know how that correlates to pinball, but I think it's a decent theme for many people. It might do well on location. I suspect it to be a good location game for the general public. Okay. All right. Well, let's move on to Star Wars Impressions. This is not a review. Kevin, can you just come on and say it's not a review just to give that disclaimer? Yeah, not a review. Can't confirm. Thank you, Kevin. Can't confirm. Kevin's played it, can't weigh in on it Goren have you played this game Nope I play it at IAPA Unless Disney gotten a few They have the old Star Wars and none of them ever work here But unless Disney gotten a few I know we talked about, like, on the last podcast, just, you know, what we saw in the trailer and the visuals and some gameplay. You know, so I played it. I was down in Virginia at Ocelot Brewery of Brewing. Great place, by the way. They had a premium and a pro, which they usually do on new releases, I believe. And the premium was broken. I don't think that's a Stern's fault. I think it was like the key card reader wasn't working. So I played only the pro, and it is a Stern. I mean, it's a Stern Star Wars. It doesn't do anything particularly interesting. doesn't do anything mind-blowing it's a John Borg game like these are like coded things where like everybody who's been the space long enough knows exactly what I'm saying it shoots fine there's not really anything interesting in the gameplay except for like I do enjoy that the pop bumpers have been moved down there's two of them you know this is the trend in pinball now like taking the pop bumpers out from the traditional space and moving around the play field so I like that. That's probably the thing that I like the most about it, just because it does something to just kind of this generic fan layout. Again, I thought it shot well. The shots are tight but findable. Definitely got the rejects, which were super annoying, and everybody's been talking about this from the Death Star. Now, there's times when the Death Star's not open and you're going to get a reject. That's not the real reject. The real reject is when it's open and should go in there. And that's where you lock balls for multiball. So just very, very annoying, became dangerous, and I was just starting to avoid it because it's not functioning properly. The best way to describe this game is, well, it's a stern, but I found myself, because I was there and it was new, I wanted to play it more just to try to really get a feel for the game. But it wasn't like this one more game addiction, right? So I was playing it more because it was there, but I wasn't addicted to it. I didn't walk away like this is a game I would consider getting. Star Wars is always a negative. In my book, I don't really care about Star Wars. But it's just very middling. It's like, if I had to rate it today, it'd be like a 5 out of 10. Like 6 out of 10. It's just kind of there. Nothing particularly interesting about it. I went back and played Potter a lot more. Martha was there with me. She cared less about playing this game. Didn't gravitate towards it. So it's just nothing special nothing special star wars um not terrible not terrible i'm not i'm not shitting on it per se it's just unremarkable soulless i guess i am shitting on it but it's stern right like stern's just like make game here's here's a game buy game slap star wars on it move on next make game and and do that that's what this is um i feel bad for people who really like Star Wars because, my god, if only Jersey Jack made the game, right? Like, it'd be amazing. And Star Wars is just never going to be anything impressive as long as it's in Stern's hands. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for me, I haven't, I can't speak to the gameplay. I haven't played it. I was surprised to see another Star Wars because even though I guess it's not that new, previous Stern Spike 2 Star Wars still feels new to me. I know it's not that new but I was just surprised to see it uh rehashed again um and yeah for me it just felt like toys thrown on the play field and it just it did I I'm fine with without it I don't I don't I will play it but I don't have an urge to play it um yeah it was an interesting choice yeah I think the question in my mind, do I like this new one versus the old one? I was never a huge fan of the old one. I'm still on the fence about that. It's almost like a coin flip to me. This is new, so I'd rather spend more time and play it, but give me a year of playing this and all the experience I've had with the old one. I've played a little bit of the old one. Once again, I don't mind it. I enjoy flipping it, but yeah, I'm not going crazy over it at all. Okay. All right. Kev, I just added this to the show notes. I don't know if you saw my message, but I just wanted to give a shout out to Michael. There we go. Michael Tomasin. He's a local guy. He splits his time, Buffalo and some other undisclosed place. but Michael Tomasin is he's an author amongst I guess many things kind of like a historian in terms of video games and I think his primary thing is more like video games but he's also into pinball so he wrote a pinball pinup book and he was at the club he was signing autographs on it and selling the book, I picked up the book Kevin picked up the book. And, um, if you like, uh, pinball art, horny pinball art, this is the book for you. And, uh, I, I certainly celebrate it. So it's, uh, probably displayed in my home and, uh, can definitely recommend it. I think pinball art is, is cool. And it's to see like, um, all, like all the hand-drawn art from decades past when you can actually put, um, attractive women on a pinball back glass. Those days are done, unfortunately, but great book. Shout out to Michael Tomasin. I recommend checking it out. It's definitely worth the money. Okay. All right. Here we go. We've got an update from American Pinball. You guys were worried. There'd be nothing from American Pinball, but here we go. We've got some update. I think, Kev, this was something that they posted either on their page or... I don't know where this came from. Someone sent me a screenshot out of it. I had no idea this was a thing until I saw it yesterday in the show notes. I know it's real, but I really struggled to believe it was real. So you think, okay, what is going on in American Pinball? Well, they've got an update for you folks. Dayfix has been out for almost a year now. They've been pretty quiet. You see a post here and there, but just kind of written them off to an extent. So here we go. I don't know who wrote this or who is the person who's commandeering their social media, but I'm going to read it out loud. Please read a word for word. Word for word is very important here. I think I will. I will do that. Right. Okay. Game plan has never changed. So I, I'm assuming that they're responding to something. I don't know what generated this, but I assume they respond. I think this is a comment because there's a reply button below it. So this isn't a comment. Yes. All right. Game plan has never changed. Dot dot. Or two periods. Okay. This punctuation issue is going on. We plan to build games, period. No, we plan to keep build games. Oh, my God. See, my mind didn't – you're right, Goran. I got to slow down. Yeah, yeah. Yes, because my mind doesn't accept that this is so fucking bad. Okay. Right, yes. We plan to keep build games. Thank you, Goran. You're welcome. We don't talk about individuals that aren't here anymore, but no one was fired, period. Okay. All right, whatever. You fire, let go, whatever you want to call it. Like, we can play games. All right. I'm going to continue on. Quote, as a company, we have had times that we have laid off workers. And if you wonder why I'm reading this weird, it's just so I can just get it right, okay? I can't assume that they're going to use proper grammar. We have heard of ex-employees going around telling people we are out of business, dot, dot, dot. We understand they want others to believe it, dot, dot, but it doesn't make it true. Okay. You can pause there. All right. They're responding to what other people are saying. Personally, again, Kevin can't weigh in on this because this is his jam. He's probably on mute, like, dying right now. This is not good. Okay. When you're trying to clarify what's going on with the company, you want to get this really dialed in. Okay. You don't even have to talk about what other people are doing. Just say that, hey, American Pinball is excited to continue producing games. We've got a lot of things coming down the pipeline. Stay tuned. That's all I'm going to say. You don't have to say people aren't there talking about this or that. I know you want to, but you just don't fucking do it. Okay. I'm going to continue on. Great. Good. All right. Goran's happy. Okay. He doesn't like the commentary. I got it, Goran. All right. Let's go. Go. Go on. I'm kidding. At no time have we ever shut down our line and stopped making pinball, which is capital of there for no reason, machines or other amusement machines. for our American pinball brand we plan one and it's written out as one not spelled one you don't do that by the way one new game per year we didn't cancel the plan game seven for this year but due to licensing issues it won't be released I'm going to continue reading it unfortunately that left us with no new game for AP for 2025 sad face But we are excited for our 2026 AP game, Happy Face Along with other products In the Amusements Capitalized, Amusements Capitalized for some reason Space, dot dot, home and commercial Alright Here's the interesting thing Um So everybody was saying Cuphead's their next game I don't think American Pinball ever said Cuphead's their next game, I can't remember I really can't remember, this is like black hole memory but it was always understood that it was cuphead and dave fix would in podcasts say that the license holder was very involved in the process like he was bragging about how exciting it was to have a license holder that was so supportive and so involved with like decision making on the game so now it's a licensing issue like what the fuck is going on this game is like people have played it. I'm not saying it was done, but it was certainly a playable state. It sounded like it was almost ready. The Cuphead indie development team was supportive of it, behind it, helping them. Now there's a licensing issue. So is this a classic? What is Dave talking about? Was that all fictional? What happened after that? I don't know. There's more drama from this company. What a fucking mess. I don't know who's running the company, And that felt like I was reading a wish.com product description. Yeah. I will say, though, that this press release is one of their best press releases I've ever seen. It's not a press release to comment, but this is some of their best that they've done. So they're getting better there. They're getting better there. I think the grammar's improved. Really? Yeah, we've talked about on other shows how some stuff wasn't great. It's at least on par, if not better. So, last show, did you all talk about Orbit Games? They're like a new brand. No, no, I don't think so, no. Oh, okay. Well, here's the deal. There's a new brand. I think it's called Orbit Games. Yes, orbitgames.fun. And American Pinball falls under that. There's also Polycade, which American was helping build. there is a new product called flip it which is digital pinball we have whirl a ball which was at expo i believe which is like a skeeball thing but not skeeball they're apparently collabing with the rockafire explosion in 26 or 27 which is the animatronic show that predates munch's make-believe band at chucky cheese it was a chobe's pizza What the fuck? You just said a bunch of words, and believe it or not, I kind of understood it. I understand the Chuck E. Cheese. Okay, rock and play. I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening. Neither do they, Goran, so it's okay. Let's not all forget how American Pinball started. All roads lead back to one person, J-Pop. It's J-Pop and Magic Girl. So he basically convinced the circuit board company to say, hey, make pinball machines. So they fell in love with J-Pop, bet all their money on that, and they were stuck trying to figure it out themselves. And I think it's just been a cascading effect since then. And now we are where we are, and I still have no idea what's going on. No, neither do they. But I'm glad they're still in the mix. We've got to make sure we've got some of our best reporters on the street to give us updates. I don't know who's there anymore. Orbate Games. I'm watching this right now. They just announced their new service support manager, Ben. I did see that. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have to give them another look. They're popping out. I thought we moved on. But they're still. We're in 3.0 now. We're in version 3.0. We had the J-pop era, the past era, and now. So all that work on Cuphead out the door. They can't even – Oh, that really – that's really a bummer. Yeah. I would love the story. So, listen, if somebody who's no longer there – oh, Jesus, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm sure Dayfix will never come on the show. But if Dayfix wants to come on the show, it might be the most listened show ever, and we can talk about Cuphead and all that. He's got to be past his NDA at some point. Yeah. All right. All right. That is that. I don't know what else to say. Okay, so we're now on to mods you don't need. Here we go. I guess I got to break this down. This is not how it usually works. Usually, like, I'm adjusting this. I don't even know what the fuck this is. Kevin, can you tell me what this is? Just, like, an objective description. You're not shitting on it, okay? For all we know, you fucking love this thing, and you're buying one. Objectively, what is this? It's a little screen you put in your coin door, and I'll leave it at that. What does this screen do, Kevin? Read the description. Okay. It's a three-and-a-half-inch touch display. It's designed to enhance your pinball machine. Well, that's debatable. It's a touch display? It's got... Oh, shit, Gorn. I missed that. It's a touch display. Yeah, you're right. This is why I'm glad you're here. Yeah. It's a touch screen? Yeah, with a crisp 320x40 resolution and a wide 170-degree viewing angle, it offers a clear, vibrant picture from almost any angle. Yeah, your crotch, your crotch. If your eyeball's where your crotch is, because that's where the Coindorb thing is, then, yeah, you can fucking see that. That's great. Okay, it's really easy to set up. You can easily display your own images by saving in JPEG, a GIF. It's a GIF, not GIF. Stop saying that. Bounce to Mike Rusty I don't know You put GIFs in there So it just annoys you Oh here we go we've got a video Kevin's playing it let me see it I gotta go Okay so yeah you put Harry Potter in there And you touch it and it switches to Harry Potter Okay It's like okay if you want like to put an elaborate Imagine you wanted to think like I'd really love like a sticker on the coin door But I don't want to be committed to that sticker For life like no no this is like a sticker that you can just change a still image and it shows up so i don't know somebody's gonna buy this and how much is it 155 a reasonable 155 dollars you know what that's amazing chucking brody's 300 i it's really sad that we're at a point now where we're like wow what a steal would you like this or the luma legs if you had to pick one luma legs you really want the luma legs i want luma legs you don't want like uh like a little thing in the coin door a little light of thing that you can't see but maybe other people can see and which is gonna act as a better nightlight think about that that's true yeah that's true it really does i mean you know it's here's what i'll say about coin door mods um i do have on my pirates and i think my wonka i there was a a while back i don't even know if they're still around Measel mods, Mezzle mods. They had like a Coindor thing where it was a little like Shadowbox and they could put in your game number in there. And it looked nice when you were far back. It just like added to the overall aesthetic of the game. So I had two of those. But this, especially being a touchscreen, that feels like an unnecessary expense. Who's going to sit there tapping to see the different pictures? It's so – I can't – Would you say it's a mod you don't need? Yeah, you've broken my brain again. All right. Again. Whoever found that and put that on there, thank you. We need more. We need more. This was incredible. All right. Keep on feeding us. This is the best segment of the entire podcast, hands down. Okay, let's go to game room updates. Gordon, you got any game room updates that you want to share with the people so they get to know you better? You're getting Winchester Mystery House. I'm super excited for you. That's on order. I just installed the Cactus Canyon remake Lyman code upgrade. Oh, cool. I have not had time to play it. I installed it, and then the streamers of Pinball Mafia got into town, and I immediately had to leave my house. Yeah. But it's in. I'd love to come down and visit you, but it's Martha. She's holding me back. She's not a Disney person, so I might have to just leave her at home. I'll come down. Please, let's come visit. Oh, what games are in my game room? Games in the game room. So here it's Cactus Canyon Remake, Pirates, Funhouse, Bally on Beam, like a third-party fix of Felix Jr. because I'm at Disney, a Golden Tee, a Pachinko machine, a Pachizlo machine, and a 61 Multicade, and a skee-ball machine that is from the arcade that I grew up in. And then I have a, let's see, I sleep next to a dialed in, because why not? A Wizard of Oz, a Godzilla Premium, Cactus Jacks, which was my first game, or Vent from Mars, a Beatles, another Multikade, and another Pachislo machine, and a weird kinetic gumball machine. and then a, let's see, we're almost there, a TNA, a Spanish Eyes, an Old Chicago, of course. I got to have Old Chicago. Guns N' Roses, Wonka, Sega South Park, Hobbit, a pitch and bat called Heavy Hitter, Monster Bash, a Nintendo Red Tent, a Big Buck Hunter, one of those coin-op dart boards, and a Mega Touch. You got a big Buck Hunter? Which one do you have? Sorry. Oh, yeah. It's the older one. It's the full version, the most complete version of the older one, but I got it for a deal. I think that's everything, and I can't believe I just did that from memory. Alright, pretty good. My update, I don't have a good update. My Godfather's down. This needs to be a more Hall of Shame. I'm getting kicked in the junk once again with Godfather. I went to play the game. It doesn't even turn on. It doesn't even turn on. Kevin or somebody told me, the battery's out. The game's only a couple years old. I guess it's come about three years old, but the battery shouldn't be out already. So now I've got to jump the game. I've got to stick fucking paper clips into some wires in the backbox. Well, you should jump the game. Yeah. I have not had time to deal with this fucking nightmare. I don't want to... This is terrible. This is just so stupid and so bad. Have you had to jump a game, Goran? I have not. I have not. And I think it happens like when the battery dies maybe, and I am not as great at changing the batteries in my games. I'm surprised I haven't had to yet, but they will come. I'm probably going to walk in the garage and see that Pirates needs to be jumped now. So thanks. No, I have the worst luck. Okay, so I've got to do that at one point. We'll see maybe in a future update how did it go and what kind of fresh hell was I in store for. Okay, all right, here's what's going to happen. So I'm going to ask Kevin, because I've got to go around the bathrooms, okay, and I want to be fresh for this. Great. We're going to have Kevin wrap up, like, the show of his usual, like, call to action and all that stuff, and he's going to buy me, like, a good minute. And then the show's going to be, quote, unquote, over, and then Kevin's going to come back in because this is not pinball related. We're going to talk about Tron Aries because Kevin and I saw Tron Aries. We'll talk about that in a second. If you don't want to hear spoilers, then this is the time to hop off the podcast after Kevin goes through the call to action. So, Kevin, I'm going to step away. You do that, and then we'll jump into it. Hey, I'm back. What's up? Yeah, so if you haven't yet, be sure to check out the Buffalo Pinball website. While Nick's running to the bathroom, go to buffalopinball.com and get yourself some merch. We got cool shirts. I think I can show it here maybe I can, nope, it's not going to work never mind yeah, buffalopinball.com, we got shirts swag, all sorts of cool stuff follow us on our social media channels, you can see them all down below me here, twitter instagram, youtube for archives of old shows, podcasts and streams, we got hundreds and hundreds of gameplay streams of different pinball machines with tutorials, all sorts of cool stuff on there. Buffalo Pinball Group, if you want to chat with us on Facebook. And then Discord, if you want to do some real-time chatting when you should be working, you can do that right in our Discord. Email us, talkpinball at gmail.com. And that way, if you got feedback, if you got a mod you don't need, so mod you don't need, send them to Nick now. Everybody likes to send them to me because that used to be my segment, but send them to Nick, either on his Facebook Messenger or send it to talkpinball at gmail.com. Follow us on Twitch and subscribe to the channel if you want to support us. You can also support us by sending a donation to PayPal, buffalopinball at gmail.com for that. And, of course, you can always drop a review at the podcast platform of your choice, wherever pods are cast and they accept reviews, you can review us there. So, and Nick is back. Look at that. Okay. First of all, I want to thank Goran for joining us. What a treat. Goran, you crushed it. Good job. Round of applause for Goran. This was fun. This was really fun. We're not done seeing Goran because he'll have Topper Talk. You're not leaving us with Topper Talk, Goran. You're going to have more in the future, right? There's more Topper to talk about. You know, I know there's an argument of I should just have them pre-filmed. But, you know, if I could get more than 10 hours notice, that'd be fun. Okay. Okay. We do one of these every month. I was very nice to you. It's not hard. You just said what you had to do. And you tried to blame us for not having a Topper Talk. I hope everybody heard and saw that. I like how Kevin didn't let that go. That's a very Jay Fairbrother thing to do. Yeah, that's a fucking Jay comment. Who do you want from me? I was being so nice too, Goran. Alright. We did Topper. Topper Talk was live. It was in the middle of the show. You're going to have to go back and listen to it. this was so much fun thank you so Gordon going to just hang out and listen to Nick talk shit about Tron and me tell you about you can ask questions Goran but Goran has not seen the movie Just to reiterate I don watch movies I haven't seen any Tron. I haven't seen anything. But you're a theater kid. Is that why you don't watch movies? I would think that you watch acting and performances. No, I don't. I'm a pop culture idiot. Huh. Interesting. You're an enigma, Goran. You're a enigma wrapped in a riddle. You're a murder for more. Okay. All right. Well, let's set the stage. So everybody knows that Kevin is a huge Tron fan. All right? All right. Hang on. Okay. He's going to go. In case you need evidence, in case you don't believe, look at it. He's bringing his Tron light cycle. Where is it? Look at that. It's a popcorn bucket. How much was that popcorn bucket? Don't worry about it. Okay. It was less than that little screen door that goes into your coin door on your pinball machine. I mean, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Like, do you eat it out of his ass? Oh, I can't believe I said that. Okay. Well, I was wondering where that goes. Oh, so you can share it with somebody. You can, like, sit on the couch and, like... All right. All right. And it goes pew pew. Okay. All right. So, Kevin... I got that one too, Arlo. yeah he's got the other popcorn popcorn buckets this one turns on to you yeah look at that okay all right super super fan cabin if it wasn't evidenced by the arcade machine and the pinball machine behind me so kev went to see the movie and i hadn't seen it and he was very nice and he's like i want to go see it again um so that was cool i'm really happy i got to see in the theaters with Kevin. I saw Tron Legacy in the theater when it came out. I've got the 3D version. I watch it every once in a while. I don't watch a lot of movies again, so I'm a fan of Tron Legacy. I don't think it's a brilliant, amazing movie, but I really enjoy it. So Kevin, not only did we go see it, but we went and see it in 4DX. 4DX! I've never seen a movie in 4DX. Tell the people what the 4DX is like for those who haven't experienced it. Yeah, so 4DX is like there's a lot of key jangling right like so like you sit in these seats and the seats kind of like vibrate and move around and it sprays like air in your face and like water shoots in your face in certain moments so like if they're like on like a car chase the thing's gonna be like rumbling and kind of shifting you around in your seat it's not like you have to buckle up where it's like a roller coaster like you're probably not gonna fall out um but that happens and if they're like in a water scene or if it's raining it will like shoot water at you there's smoke there's smoke that comes off the screen yeah so it's it's gimmicky but there's certain movies where I can see that worth doing and I'm glad we saw Tron that way if anything it helps with my experience that's funny I was going to say I feel like it was a distraction so I saw it twice I saw it first in IMAX 3D which when we got out of the 40X version, you're like, which was better? I was like, the IMAX 3D was better. So my rule is, so I learned my lesson when we went to see Lord of the Rings when it came out, and we saw it in IMAX, and we sat down in, like, the front corner, and all we could see is, like, Hobbit feet the whole time. So if you've never been to IMAX, it's this, like, massive two-story screen. And I was like, I'll only go to an IMAX movie if I can sit in the last row right in the middle. And that's what we did. And so, like, as soon as the tickets went on sale, I got IMAX 3D ticket center, Dead Center back row was amazing especially that the moment the opening moment when it's just like remember the Nine Inch Nails music hits and there's like the psychedelic stuff on the screen I was like oh yeah I'm just like soaking it in at this point right and the other thing about Tron is like so the first one came out in 82 and then like 30 years later Legacy came out and now 15 years later we're getting a we're getting to see the third movie and it's like so like when a Tron movie comes out it's like for me somebody's a fan it's like that's the anticipation has been building up for a while so it's just like all right finally we're back and then where would you rank this out of the three it's tough it's like i like them all for different reasons so you should we should also put a on the record that you do not like the original tron right i mean i i i think i've seen bits and pieces over the years or I've tried to watch it maybe as recently as 15 years ago I try to watch it and it's just it doesn't do anything for me it's very kind of boring um so I just I kind of don't care about the first one yeah well and that's the thing like the entire Tron series I feel like is a little boring I feel like Legacy is the most straightforward like action sort of movie like it's very fast-paced it keeps you going they've gotten progressively less boring I think along the way, but you know, as like a, a kid who is into technology and video games and like the whole concept of like somebody going into a video game and seeing what the inside of a computer might look like, especially in the eighties when a lot of people didn't understand how computers worked. It was like, and like there was, you know, they talked about right. And one of the characters name was Ram. And like, there was all these, this terminology that everybody knows now, but back then was like super inside nerdy stuff. of it was just like as soon as i saw it i was like this is really cool so okay uh yeah so as far as like where i'd rank legacy or uh aries um i think i don't know if i can rank them i don't i wouldn't even like rank the original tron and legacy like i just like them for two different reasons i like this so my my my cop out from from actually ranking them is going to be like i like the original it's like amazing technologically what they were able to do so it was one of the first feature-length movies with cgi and the whole like where they made them black and they filmed it in black and white and then like colored them all in with the laser grid kind of stuff on their suits it was awesome cool like practical tech mixed with uh the the cgi and then obviously legacy took that to the next level with you know the early 2010s aside from jeff bridges's de-aging looking like a robot. That was bad. But the rest of the effects were really cool in that movie. And then Ares kind of steps it up even more. More fast-paced, more action-packed, and cool next-level cool visual stuff. Okay. Do you want to say anything more about Ares or your review? Or are you good with that? As far as the movie itself, like I said, I think it was a fast-paced. I liked how it so for somebody who likes the original Tron, I like that it tied back to the original and spoilers. There's going to be spoilers throughout this. So there's an awesome scene where it really ties back to the original grid and he gets to see Flynn again. And it's like total nostalgia trip out moment. I'm like, this is awesome. We get to go back to the original grid and there's cool attention to detail. Like where Ares drives through the wall off of the light cycle grid is like where Flynn crashed through the wall back in the original movie. So there's all these cool tiebacks. So that to me tells me like the people that made this under this movie understood the property and did it justice. And, uh, it wasn't just like, okay, we're going to do another Tron movie for doing the, the sake of doing a Tron movie. Um, so yeah, there was, it was a, I didn't, I saw a comment about, um, Jared Leto in chat and yeah, he's, it's, he's, uh, allegedly this super creepy culty guy. I like, I don't really know anything about Leto. Personally, I don't follow, like, celebrity stuff, but because I'm into Tron, I heard some of this stuff, and I'm like, well, that's awful. That sucks. Maybe it's terrible. But I also heard that the only reason this movie got made is because he was a super big Tron fan, and he pushed, and maybe even, I don't know if this is true or not, that he helped Fun make the movie. So without him, the movie wouldn't exist. And I think his performance, I don't follow his career at all, but he seemed good as the Ares character. He was like a good mix of robotic expressions and, you know, slowly coming to more life and showing more human sides of him throughout the length of the story. But yeah, and then at the end, again, as a huge Tron fan, there's tiebacks to the original with Sark and, you know, the legacy movies with Sam and Korra. they hinted that so i do hope that we're able to get another one out of here out of the out of the series that uh kind of brings all that to light too i heard i heard that originally there was supposed to be a movie tron ascension and like aries would have been like the bad guy in it and it was probably going to be a continuation of um what is it sam sam flim right the kid and then quora is that what your understanding was like originally they had planned yeah and then apparently leto was like i like this aries character let's explore him more because he was going to be aries and he's probably a total narcissist and wanted to make the movie about him you know what i mean a fucking course a fucking course okay so that would have been the better i i said that would have been the better movie right yeah um where aries was the bad guy but okay all right anything else kev let's let's hear the dick lane take all right i mean i thought this movie was fucking terrible there it is yeah why why why was it terrible nick it has nothing it has almost like nothing to do with jared laudo first of all just to be fair it's like he was neither a positive or negative in in the movie um i i guess like what is this fucking movie why i don't care about anybody in the movie right like this is the fundamental problem what the movie should do like i feel like i've got to care about the characters in the movie i don't care about and i don't like any of them that's just like that's the biggest problem so the main character what's the main character's name kev oh which um so oh eve kim the woman eve kim all right all right so kevin kevin knew it so this is good so eve kim i've already forgot her um she fucking like if i can name one problem with the movie it's eve kim this is a terrible character a terrible actress like you could have replaced her with like a cardboard cut out of her and you would have gotten the same effect like she's no emotion no nothing do not like this person don't care about like she's not even acting i think she's like just showed up and was like a stand-in or something i have no idea that's a that's a problem right like she is she is the replacement for sam flynn all right so if you've watched legacy she like sam flynn's not in this i don't know why but now eve kim is suddenly this uh ceo of mcom right so it's gonna okay she's the new person that you're supposed to care about in in the thing and uh i don't care about her don't care about her at all nothing likable about her just no acting range no emotion kevin she has less emotion than jared leto who's the ai okay think about that though it's fucking true she's less emotion than that so the story is this is like i guess the the story you can correct me if you see a different perspective but like it's like they even say this in the movie like you're supposed to there's a thing in movies where you're supposed to like show not tell they even like call like pinocchio so like okay so jared leto's the ai jared leto becomes like a real person that's what the kind of story is right that's that's that's that's a theme in there but they literally tell you that at one point the villain who actually the the guy who's the villain does a pretty good job, I thought. Yeah. And probably the best, the best. The, um, Dillinger character? Yeah, the Dillinger character. Julian Dillinger, yeah, he was awesome. He does a good job, right? He emotes. He's an actor versus Eve Kim, who, again, I do not know why she wasn't fired. I do not know why she was picked. It's very bizarre. She fucking ruins the movie. Um, and then Gillian Anderson, who's, um, Dillinger's mom, does a great job. She's a great actress. So, they, they definitely helped carry the acting part of the movie. but the bad guy Dillinger says at one point he calls you know Ares Pinocchio right okay right around the nose so it's tough to care about any of the characters that are happening I don't care about anything that's happening on the screen because I don't care about that contrast that with Tron Legacy and you know I didn't it's not like the acting or anything was incredible or Sam Flynn character is incredible but like what is that movie about that movie is about a father and son relationship You know, Sam Flynn grows up without a father, thinks his father abandoned him. They they they reunite. Right. And like at first when he meets Clue, he thinks it's his dad. And like, you know, it's this awkward thing. And then he meets Flynn, his dad. They reunite. They solve the problem. There's almost like a religious element to where, you know, like the idea of son of Flynn and Flynn is like the God in the in the Tron universe and all that. But it definitely, like, I care about those characters. I care about Korra. I care about Sam Flynn. I care about Flynn and what's happened to him. And it gets a little bit emotional at the end with his father and something, and it's nice. Okay, that's how I would describe that story. And that is the story arc. That's the context of the story. And then you have this cool thing in Tron Legacy where they're in the Tron world, and most of the story is in the Tron world where that's where you want to be. Most people want to be in the Tron world and see that. So I thought that was well. Now, contrast this where most of the story is not in the Tron world. You've got characters that I absolutely do not care about. The main character, Ares, like, again, I don't really care about Ares, but he transforms from, like, a killing machine. He's the god of war, right? Ares is a killing machine. He's supposed to go out and kill Eve, who is this 30-year-old Asian woman CEO who they try to insert some drama of her sister die, but they don't really even show that. It's just kind of mentioned, talked about in memories. Spent zero time on it. So first of all, Kev, when he goes into the real world, Ares goes into the real world to kill Eve Kim, he's like the best killing machine. They send two of their best killing machines from the Tron world, and somehow Eve Kim bests them. She bests them. She's better than them. That's fucking stupid, all right, when they're having the battle. Well, Sam does that shit in Legacy, and, like, Flynn did that in the original one. So it's like the characters that go into the grid always end up winning. You know what I mean? Who do you think is better, Sam Flynn or Eve Kim? I mean, they're all like company CEOs hired for nepotism reasons. It's like, okay, they both magically knew how to ride light cycles as soon as they came across them because they knew how to ride a motorcycle. You know what I mean? There's a lot of parallels with the old movies. Okay. So then at the end. Sam jumped off a building. Yeah, exactly. So Eve Kim bests them in the light cycle thing. like you know super easy to do but they catch up with her in the end and then this is the whole thing this is like the moment where like fucking broke me um this is like the um show don't tell so like the whole story is that you know um the the ai who's designed to kill becomes like human right he gets human feelings and emotions and all that he becomes a better person And when he captures Eve, he sees in his visor that it says empathy on it. Because she asks him something. She's like, oh, you're a programmer or something. And he reads and says the words empathy. It's like, what the fuck is this writing garbage? This is so stupid. In that moment, suddenly he goes back and he's like, I can't be a bad person. Now I've got to be a good person. And then, like, he goes in five minutes from trying to kill Eve to then suddenly, nope, I've got to disobey my programming and I've got to save her. It is the dumbest fucking writing I've ever seen. And, like, look, I go into a movie and, like, you suspend disbelief, right? Like, it's like an agreement. Like, I'm going to suspend my disbelief, but, like, you can't insult me, right? You've got to, like, put good actors on the screen. You've got to do all this. You have the basic level threshold writing. Like, I feel like they've just really failed at that in this movie where Tron Legacy did it a lot better. So that's my main issues with it. Yeah. So a couple things. It's funny to hear you say that you thought there was more Tron world in Legacy because I remember one of the big critiques about that movie being like, oh, it takes so long to get into the grid. It's like, and this was like, all we want to do is the whole first part of the movie is outside the grid and blah, blah, blah. so it's like i don't and i in aries he got in there a lot quicker but then there was a lot more time outside of it later so it was like back and forth i i didn't feel i felt like there was a good balance of grid and like real world stuff and that's kind of like the nature of the movies but um the ai story so that the storyline to me is like it does feel like it doesn't have the emotional punch that Legacy had. But I feel like it's relevant, particularly now with the development of AI and what the implications are of that. For the current world, you know, looking back at the original Tron, it was like predicting what the future of computers and computing in general was going to be. And now we're kind of like at this other inflection point with technology. So I feel like it was a good time to jump back in and kind of harness that angle for the Tron storyline. As far as it being hard to follow, or not being hard to follow. So, like, one of the critiques of the older movies was that it was hard to follow. It's boring. It's like, I don't understand what's going on. The original one or the second one? Both of them. Yeah, I think the storyline is a little convoluted in Legacy, and it takes a couple of viewings to get through it and understand it. Whereas Ares, I feel like, is a lot more straightforward. And I feel like they were making a play to make it more wide-ranging appeal so they could keep it going. It's also, I see that the show-don't-tell thing as definitely a trend with stuff like streaming and Netflix. Because the idea is, like, people just put it on and then they do other stuff. So it's like, just say what you're doing versus, you know, showing it. So I don't know if it's like an attention span thing or just general bad writing in general. But, yeah, I do agree that it was a little more on the nose, but that also made the storyline easier to digest and more of a straight-up popcorn action movie kind of thing. I mean, the whole story where he becomes human, he's interacting with Eva, who's the least human person I've ever seen on a screen, right? That was just such a mess up. They could have had an emotional impact where him as the AI really understands what being human is and emotion. This big thing is like, oh, it's raining. Like, this is like, oh, rain. All the characters are like, oh, it's rain. Like, what is this? I'm a human. Like, rain. Or like when they're in the building when the sprinklers come out and she's like, oh, I'm all distracted. And then she dies. It's so stupid. Yeah, it's so bad. It's just such bad writing. I thought the one good thing I would say is the pacing was good. The pacing was good. Like, you're right. Like, Tron Legacy is slow going in the beginning. This pacing was good, but I just didn't care about anything that was happening. Things are happening on the screen. Constantly it's moving along. It's easy to follow because it's kind of so stupid. But I just didn't care about any of it. That's the problem. I mean, the music was good, of course. I don't think it was as good as Daft Punk. It was kind of like highs and lows in terms of the music. But certainly a good decision on having Nine Inch Nails in there. Again, not as good as Legacy, but that's a high bar, so I'm not going to rag on that. I think Legacy had also better action sequences. I like the light cycle battle in Legacy better than the light cycle sequence when they're in the real world. I like it way better in Legacy. I like the disc battle better in Legacy than when they went from one... Remember when they were attacking, one corporation was attacking the other corporation, and they just kind of ran in there? That was not very exciting. I do like we got to see a little bit of the Encon grid a little bit and then they went back to the 82 grid so you got some touch points for the other ones I can nitpick on the 29 minute thing how at the end they just threw out that made no sense when that slow moving what is it called the recognizer comes and it just drives like this that's supposed to take a couple hours to get there well they don't go very fast you know the recognizers don't go fast right so the 29 minutes makes no sense right like yeah that's like they just but like that's like nitpicking like that shit was so good though like when the recognizer is like oh shit here comes the recognizer i was like i'm for me it's like i'm just such a tron nerd i'm like i love when all that shit happens i'll like give me more light cycle battles uh some disc wars some recognizers make it cool make it a visual spectacle make it crazy and like i'm all in you know i mean i just wanted like writing that and acting that just didn't insult my intelligence like right like i'm willing i'm not asking for a lot i think in fairness i'm not but like it's bad eve kim is like the worst fucking character so you got hang-ups with eve but that's fair i i didn't think she was that bad problem he's just whatever i mean he's just whatever he's kind of like nothing in the movie right yeah he's just kind of there like it would have been cooler if he was like this menacing bad guy or something chasing you know everybody that was his counterpart there the one that was kind of like the Terminator she was pretty awesome when she was chasing Eve Kim on the motorcycles and like coming up that parking ramp after that was pretty cool yeah that's okay that's okay that's alright that's alright alright well that's there you go I will say Ares got better viewer reviews than Legacy and the original Tron. I'm surprised. Yeah, that's, I mean, good for Tron fans, right? Like, I was shocked to see that. What did reviewers like in the middle? Yeah, it was kind of around the same place where Legacy was, I think. Legacy and the original. Yeah, which I was shocked. About the same, yeah. Yeah, so people kept being like, oh, that's such a bomb. But it was still the number one movie in the country. it didn't make as much money as they wanted but people just i feel like people aren't going to the movies like the way they used to yeah uh you know because in reality it's like if it's not a movie you love you just wait a couple months and you just watch it on your couch you know it's it's wild so and i also feel like that's a result of social media because social media it's like here's the negative thing that happened versus like oh it's actually doing pretty good with viewers and it's the top movie in the world but it's like oh no it it is bombing based on its budget you know what i mean so it's like well i mean that's true though i mean if you don't make money but so did so did legacy and so did uh the original they all bombed they were all bombed yeah yeah they all bombed yep i think no more tron movies i think that well yeah we'll see you in 15 years time exactly maybe we'll get one more when somebody else is dumb enough to to try it again i don't know why they keep trying but i'm happy they do every every couple decades i think the speaking of ai that script was probably written by ai or i i don't know like ai acting it's just i don't know all right i'm done i'm done i said i said my piece i wanted it to be good and i'm gonna i'm gonna buy i'm gonna watch it again um you know but it it was uh we so we nick and i saw it on a tuesday and i didn't realize tuesday was like bargain nights but there's quite a few people in that theater and that was the Tuesday after it came out. It was 10 people, I think. Yeah. Maybe 10 people in the theater. Not bad for a Tuesday night. And we saw it at the Tinseltown in Rochester and that was the Saturday it opened and it was a pretty good turnout there. There's more people watching us talk nonsense than there was in the theater. That's enough Toronto talk. Alright. Thanks for doing that. We'll see you guys. Take care. Bye.