All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of a pinball podcast. I appreciate you guys being here. Hopefully you guys have enjoyed the first few. If you've listened to them, if not, after this one, what are you doing? Like, go back and listen to them, please. Pretty please. Anyway, so I figured this episode, I kind of had on my mind that I've been wondering what Deep Root Pinball has been doing. Are they still a thing? Is something coming out soon? What's going on? Now, for those to jog everybody's memory, initially, Deep Root was planning on doing the five days of Deep Root back in, I believe it's already been since 2019. I'm pretty sure. Hopefully, I'm getting my timeline right. I'm going off the top of my head on this one. And that date was missed. so fast forward to this past march before texas pinball festival got canceled they were supposed to be showing raza there in its full entirety now unfortunately obviously everything was canceled it put things in disarray because of covid but since then it's been relative darkness in terms of knowing what's going on. And I'm not sure exactly what it could be. Hopefully, you know, they got all their ducks in order and things are going to come out pretty soon. I keep hearing that at any time now they're going to reveal something. To what extent, I don't know yet, but I keep hearing they're going to reveal something pretty soon. I'm just wondering what it could be and I'm hoping that it's true. Right now, I just take it as rumors until I see it. Now, I did get the opportunity to play the prototype version of Raza, or at least the one that Deep Root brought to the Houston Arcade Expo back in November. And after that, I ended up posting on Pinside about it for a little while. I talked to a lot of different people about it. I even went on Kaneda's podcast and we discussed it on there for a little while. And I think I probably even touched base on it on, uh, another podcast also. But, you know, when I played that game, it's, it brought out, it was one of those things where I was actually really excited to play it. It was an interesting theme. You're combining zombies and aliens. Like I love zombies and aliens. I love them both. Combine them together. I'm in. Why not? The nerdy side of myself is just coming out. But as soon as I started playing, my initial reaction of excitement just came to, as I described, an uh-oh feeling. And I'm sure everybody listening here knows what I'm talking about by now. And if you don't know, basically the right ramp was like nobody could hit it. and the way that the geometry was it was you know it and a lot of it could have been bad flippers could have been weak flippers i don't know the fact is is that it was at a show and nobody could hit the ramp there was a select few people that finally did i know i did finally towards the end but at one point i was legit over 40 something and we're not talking just hitting a post and missing we're talking hitting the ramp flush and the ball simply not having enough power enough juice to get to the top it would just simply exit out into the pop bumpers and you know i after doing that at one point i think i did it 12 times in a row and it became instantly not fun like believe it or not when you don't complete shots and you're hitting them and you're not getting rewarded for it, it's just, it's not a fun experience. It became very wood chopping filled, you know, and, and everything I'm talking about right now, I just, it has to do just strictly with the design and the gameplay. There was not really any code in it. It was super early. I can't judge that. I don't know. I know Bowden's on the code and I have to assume because he's such a great pinball player. He's a great pinball mind, tremendous knowledge that he's going to be able to do something with this pen. Now, me personally, I do wish that he would have been able to start on a project from the very beginning rather than trying to come in and you know make something out of this that he wasn there for the beginning of But at the same time I feel like he probably their best case scenario to try to drag this project into something that presentable for the consumer But I'm just I'm wondering what we're going to see. I know since then we've heard that they fixed the right ramp in terms of making it to where it's hittable. The other part that I'm still concerned on is that there was actually no way to have a shot to where you could get any type of momentum going to the ramp either. If you look back on the photos, you'll notice that there's a drop off from the left ramp that does come down or for whatever you want to call it, from the trail that comes back to the left flipper. But the drop is literally at the flipper. It's not in the in lane. so there was no way to actually generate any type of speed or any type of momentum to your left flipper in order to get it up the ramp your only choices were you would either have to hope for an in lane and then you're able to time it just right to go up the ramp or you would have to hit a combination shot of the right orbit all the way to your left flipper and then hit it on the fly into the ramp. And what made it even more frustrating, the ramp itself had a gap to where if you hit it hard enough, that's how you would get it to return back to, I believe it was your left flipper. If you didn't hit it hard enough, it would return back to your right. If you didn't hit it even hard enough for that, that's when it would just fall into the pops. And, you know, it somewhat made sense. There was some aspects of it looking back. Some of the design kind of makes sense, but then a lot of it is, you know, since we've had Jurassic Park come out, obviously Wonka was already out around that time. We've had Stranger Things. Now we've had Ninja Turtles. We've even had Hot Wheels. And to be quite honest with you, the Hot Wheels layout, it's more fun. It is a lot more fun. Ninja Turtles, definitely a lot more fun. I would even, I mean, I have less than 10 games on Stranger Things, but I'll tell you one thing. I was less frustrated with the Demogorgon than I was with that right ramp. So hopefully something's been done, but I am awfully curious to see what exactly it is. And I've been trying to think of different things that they could have done to really help this pen. And, you know, this isn't judging it from an artistic point of view. It's not judging it from, you know, what is the cabinet going to look like? Those are all things that, you know, it could be variable. It could be subjective for a lot of people, but gameplay is something that everybody will experience equally, and everybody will have different opinions on how that experience is. And to me, gameplay is one of the number one things that I'm looking for out of a new pinball machine. Now, granted, I'm willing to make some concessions on how the gameplay is if I really do love the theme. behind me, as you guys can see, Star Wars and even Avengers. Those are two layouts that I'm not crazy about, but I love the theme, and I've grown to appreciate it through its little nuances. So I often wonder, can Raza be something like that? And at this point, I don't know. Won't know until I get a chance to play it. Won't know until we see a lot of other people besides those of us that were down in Houston get a chance to play it. what I'm curious of is to see what exactly they've done with that right ramp to make it to where, quote unquote, I think this is what Robert said, who's, I think, I want to say he's the owner, manager, whatever it is of Deep Root. I think he's the owner. To where he said even a baby could hit it. I'm like, that's great because that's, I mean, you want your game to be accessible. And unfortunately for Raza, whenever I was playing it and when my wife was playing it, when other friends and other acquaintances were playing it, the number one thing that we all realized instantly is that the game did not feel accessible. And it wasn't necessarily because of the rule set, because the rule set wasn't there yet. It wasn't because of the theme, because like I said, theme's going to be subjective on whether you like it or not. It just simply didn't seem accessible because none of the shots really, at least for us, were fun. I mean that the bottom line And you know I think a lot of the times if you can judge a pinball machine by its bare bones without the sound without the code just simply does it shoot well And this pin did not do that. So, moving forward, I'm wondering, did they do anything else besides fixing the right ramp? Something I wish I would have saw on the right ramp or a fix that could be interesting is whether or not they would have put some type of accelerator. That would have been interesting to see. I don't think that's happening because they talked about adjustments to the ramp itself, so I'm going to assume that they're talking about the pitch of the ramp. But other parts that were equally as frustrating, I forget what it's called. I think it was called the spinning Uzi or dizzy Uzi or something like that. It was a spinner. It's not a spinner. It's one of those things with the two posts that can spin itself. And it was on the left-hand side, and it was actually in front of a spinner itself, I believe, and kind of another shot that was kind of like the orb shot. And this is all located on the left side of the play field. And again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, just bring up a photo of the play field, and this will all make sense as you're listening to this. But I found myself very, very frustrated with even that shot because a lot of times that shot would just simply get in the way of what I was trying to do. And it's not even a dangerous shot. It's just a shot that will hit it, that will stop the momentum of your ball, and your ball will simply just trickle around and eventually come back to your flippers. I mean, that's what it was. So I guess if you're a brand-new player or somebody that likes incredibly long game plays, you're going to have fun with that type of game. For my style and my preference of fun, it just wasn't getting anything out of it. And I don't know, you know, I could, it's fair to say that possibly just when it's coded in and there's a light show with it, a sound package with it, maybe that might make it feel a little bit better. But it was a shot that just, it wasn't, it didn't feel any type of satisfying. Like if I take Avengers, for instance, the tesseract cube that sucker is fun to hit it's up there in the middle of the play field but the light show that comes with it especially if you have the and i'll be honest i don't even remember what it used to be before but if you get the new tesseract mod on it i say new but the tesseract mod for it the light show on it's pretty incredible whenever that sucker does spin so I'm judging I'm judging the Raza little spinning thing the Uzi shot based on what I know and what I've seen and what looks fun and what's visually stimulating and nothing about this had that satisfying shot that visual stimulation that feeling of okay this is fun what's the next thing what's going to happen here and just it just didn't happen so I'm Curious to see maybe on that side, they might have made some adjustments. You know, it's the middle of the play field was actually the most intriguing. And I will say even the skill shot was a little bit intriguing as well. If I can remember right, it's been so long since it's been since November when I played it, that I believe the skill shot was able to go to the left side of the play field. And I think it was kind of like the Congo shot that if you got into the out lane, it would actually hit back up and snake back around to your left flipper. I know it's very hard what I'm describing right now, but if I remember right, that's kind of what happened. I need to look back on video and see exactly what it was. But the middle shot in terms of hitting, I think it was net or Zed or whatever the thing is in the back, that was a semi-satisfying shot because it's a movable target. and they had, of course, the little rollovers on the play field as well leading up to it. So there was little things like that that was interesting. It kind of brought back memories of World Cup soccer, which obviously is a J-pop game, and that's actually my favorite J-pop game out of all of them. I really enjoy some puppy soccer. That's a fun game. So having that, that brought back some good feels about the gameplay. That part I liked. I did like that you know apparently where the targets were whenever the ball was falling out of the ramp from the right from the right ramp whenever he didn make it up it would hit off these targets and that would act as a playful multiplier. I liked that touch. What I didn't like was, is that they obviously knew that the ball wasn't going to get up all the way. And obviously, you know, it's kind of a call back to some of those other games and other games, like even Hot Wheels has that as well. But, you know, it almost felt like a punishment every single time it did that too. So that was a little bit frustrating. Thus, I'm hoping maybe they put a target on that right ramp. That would be nice if somehow they could figure out how to put a target there. So that way, whenever we do hit it up the right ramp, you can still have that opening to where it falls down. And you're meaning to do that. And you're meaning to get your multipliers up. I would like something like that, you know, and it's, I mean, outside of that, I don't know really where else they could go. It seems like that this design kind of pigeonholed itself into a wood chopping design. And I think you tend to get like that too, especially when you only have one ramp and when that one ramp is not makeable. And then on the other side of the play field, you have something that's just flat out in the way with that Uzi or Dizzy Uzi shot, whatever it's called. You know, it's, it's gets a little frustrating. I'm not going to lie. So hopefully I'm curious to see what they brought out. I want to know. I don't know if anybody else even remembers that Deep Root and Roz is a thing. I mean, it's, I don't know. It's, it's so, it's so slow right now after TM, uh, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and after Hot Wheels coming out that it feels like right now, now's about the time. We have that lull before a certain game from Jersey Jack is coming out. So with that lull, maybe this is the right time to come out and say something. Because if they don't do it now, and I mean, to me, they are at, and I'm speaking about Deep Root, I feel like they are at the mercy of what Jersey Jack is going to do. And they're kind of in no man's land right now, because if they wait to announce and Jersey Jack goes ahead and rolls out their next pin within the next two to four weeks all of a sudden, then what do you do then if you're deep root? Do you just go ahead and announce against that? Do you wait? And now all of a sudden you're going against the next turn release? I mean, it's getting down to where, you know, at this point, Maybe you just need to go ahead and just say, hey, here's this game. We're putting it out there, and we're going to move on to the next thing. Who knows? Maybe we might be surprised, and Raza's not the first thing that they're coming out with. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Either way, I do feel like since that's been since November that they've had plenty of time to definitely make the package of Raza as accessible and as beautiful as it possibly can be. I'm counting on them to do something like that. And that's legitimately my expectations. My expectations, as I was telling somebody actually just a couple days ago about this, my expectations is that it's going to be a working game, and I would be happy with that. But I really do hope that it's done nice. I mean, I am. I'm expecting nothing short of a beautiful package. because I will admit the artwork, the colors, it did pop. And we were told that that wasn't the final artwork, which is fine. I mean, you're bound to have changes off a prototype, but that's something that this day and age, when you're competing against Stern and everybody else with great artwork, you have to come hard with that. You have to come hard with that. And we'll see. There's a lot of stuff going on right now And that's just kind of on my mind And I don't know What do you guys think? Are you excited about that? Excited about the possibility of Raza? I mean, I don't know Maybe for all we know Like I mentioned a second ago It might not be Raza It might be something else Because he did say or Robert did say Something about multiple games at one time But I don't know All this crazy stuff Anyhow, appreciate you guys listening, watching, doing whatever it is. You guys have a good evening, good morning, good afternoon, and I shall talk to you guys soon.