Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast March 2025 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 53m·analyzed·Apr 2, 2025
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

March 2025 TPF recap: Portal, Merlin's Arcade, Medieval Madness LE, and Harry Potter officially confirmed.

Summary

Jonathan Houston (Pinball Magazine) and Martin (Pinball News) recap March 2025's Texas Pinball Festival, covering major announcements including Multimorphic's Portal game reveal, Turner Pinball's Merlin's Arcade debut, Chicago Gaming's Medieval Madness Merlin Edition, and Jersey Jack Pinball's surprise confirmation of Harry Potter as their next title. The episode includes exclusive interviews with Jack Guarnieri and other JJP executives discussing the Harry Potter announcement and industry developments.

Key Claims

  • Jack Guarnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball publicly confirmed Harry Potter as their next game at Texas Pinball Festival

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri confirmed in seminar and interview that Harry Potter is Jersey Jack's next title; they've been working on the license for ten years and have full assets from all movies.

  • Multimorphic's Portal is the most packed playfield module they've ever produced

    high confidence · Jonathan states 'it's the most packed playfield module ever' and Portal includes 11+ portals, extended playfield with lift ramp and spinner, marking first time Multimorphic extended playfield beyond standard module.

  • Portal pricing: $3,900 standard kit, $4,500 extended kit, $11,160 complete standard machine, $12,500 complete extended

    high confidence · Martin states precise pricing for both kit and complete machine options, with optional $750 acrylic topper with lighting.

  • Turner Pinball's Merlin's Arcade is a John Norris design that was previously voted as an upcoming title for Deep Root Pinball

    high confidence · Jonathan states John Norris 'has been pitching the Merlin's Arcade or Wizard Arcade on his social media for quite a while' and 'it was voted as an upcoming title for Deep Root Pinball as well, before they went belly up.'

  • Merlin's Arcade has two versions: Legendary Edition (500 units, £8,995) and unlimited Arcade Edition (£6,995)

    high confidence · Jonathan specifies limited edition count and exact pricing in GBP, with 1,000 USD deposit required for orders.

  • Medieval Madness Merlin Edition is priced at just under US$12,000 with features including King of Pain topper, XL color display, interactive RGB illumination, and dark blue powder coat

    high confidence · Martin provides detailed feature list and pricing; Chicago Gaming targeting North American production Q3-Q4 2025 before international orders.

  • Cactus Canyon Lyman Sheets Complete Upgrade Kit includes 10 entirely new modes, hardware mods, and costs US$1,249

    high confidence · Martin clarifies software was completed by Sam Zaha and Josh Sharp after Lyman's notes; kit includes Saloon Door mod, new spinner, and takes approximately 2 hours to install.

Notable Quotes

  • “He said, you know, it's Harry Potter. And he said that they had, in that seminar, he mentioned that they had full assets from all the movies and they'd been working on getting the license for ten years, or Jack has.”

    Jonathan Houston @ Texas Pinball Festival seminar segment — Official public confirmation of Jersey Jack's next game title and licensing achievement

  • “Jack must be getting old, he's slipping because when you ask Jack what your next game is, Jack usually says next game is a pinball machine he doesn't just come out and say yeah by the way it's harry potter”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Interview segment — Reveals surprising nature of the announcement and Jack's deliberate strategy to generate publicity

  • “I saw that ball make do things I've never seen a pinball do in a pinball machine before.”

    Jonathan Houston @ Portal game discussion — Emphasizes innovative mechanics in Portal, particularly portal entry/exit mechanics

  • “it's the most packed playfield module ever. And they've produced some pretty packed ones in the past, but there's a lot in this game.”

    Jonathan Houston @ Portal reveal discussion — Highlights Portal's density and complexity compared to previous Multimorphic modules

  • “I figured like okay now I get it it doesn't have to take that long to put this together it's an attractive looking package though I have to say the artwork looks very fun”

    Martin @ Merlin's Arcade discussion — Addresses initial surprise about Turner Pinball's rapid scaling from 100 to 500 units via modern manufacturing efficiency

  • “There are two flipper buttons on either side, the regular one, and also if the ball is rolling down the flipper, you can press the upper one. It does a little mini flip and just tap passes the ball over to the other side”

    Jonathan Houston @ Merlin's Arcade mechanics discussion — Details innovative dual-flipper-button mechanic designed by John Norris

  • “I don't have a game to show people have said Jack must be getting old, he's slipping because when you ask Jack what your next game is, Jack usually says next game is a pinball machine”

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonMartinpersonJack GuarnieripersonPortalgameMerlin's ArcadegameMedieval Madness Merlin EditiongameHarry Pottergame

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Negative reception to Pulp Fiction topper design with obscured/greyed-out faces of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta

    high · Jonathan notes 'biggest comment immediately was, why are the two faces of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta blurred or dark?' and 'didn't sit well with quite a few people'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Merlin's Arcade features dual flipper button mechanic (John Norris innovation) enabling tap passes between flippers

    high · Jonathan describes 'two flipper buttons on either side, the regular one, and also if the ball is rolling down the flipper, you can press the upper one' for tap passes

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival March 2025 served as major announcement venue with multiple new game reveals

    high · Portal, Merlin's Arcade, Medieval Madness Merlin Edition, and Harry Potter all announced at or around TPF; described as 'exciting month' with 'lot of new game announcements'

  • $

    market_signal: Chicago Gaming restricting international orders until later 2025 to avoid long lead times between deposits and delivery

    high · Jonathan notes 'Chicago Gaming has scheduled North American games to be produced first, most likely the third and fourth quarter of 2025. In an effort to avoid long lead times between deposits and delivery, they are not taking international orders until later this year'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Multimorphic expanded design team with new talent additions including Ian Harrow (game design) and Brad Albright (art)

    high · Ian Harrow described as 'new name to Multimorphic game design' but previously produced P3 add-on games; Brad Albright joins from Texas Pinball Festival vendor booth

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.522

0:00
portal revealed merlin's arcade revealed medieval madness merlin edition revealed harry potter officially confirmed hi my name is jonathan houston and i'm the editor of pinball magazine i'm joined by Hi, I'm Martin, the editor of Pinball News, and Jonathan and I are here to bring you the very latest edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast, covering March 2025, and all the exciting things that took place in the pinball industry in that month. Right, and what an exciting month it has been. And we say that every month, or well, almost every month, but in this case, well, March is Texas Pinball Festival month. And well we're sort of spoiled in the past couple of years With a lot of new game announcements and reveals at that show This year a few, less than previous editions but still Yeah So we talk about the show of course We were both present And let's start with thanking the sponsors to our So you think you know pinball quiz which were basically all the main manufacturers who generously donated all sorts of prizes that could be won by our contestants, and there were very many of those. There were, and we managed to give away nearly all of them, although we did have to overrun a little. We had a one-hour time slot, so apologies to the seminar that was following us in the seminar room, but we took about an hour and 20, 25 minutes to give away nearly all our prizes. But we had a couple that we carried over to the next edition of the quiz. But some of the prizes too big to carry over were still not won by our participants, so we had to continue. That's true, yeah. We had a lovely labyrinth play field, which we couldn't bring back, so we kept going until we gave another away. And we've anyway made lots of prizes. Yes. Same for the back glass as well from them. Right. But as you say, thank you very much to all our sponsors and to those of you who took part. And we hope you enjoyed the quiz and we look forward to doing it again fairly soon. But anyway. Yeah. Onward to the news. Onward. Well, adding to the headlines that we just mentioned, we also have special guest interviews.
2:43
That's true. Yes. including one we've been waiting to do for a long, long time. Yes, indeed. And, yes, so, well, in short, we'll be talking to Jack Guarnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball and Steve Ritchie and Bill Grubb, also of Jersey Jack Pinball. Yes, indeed. So more about that a bit later, but we'll start with our first headline, which is about the reveal of a new game from Multimorphic. Right. shortly before Texas Fimble Festival, they announced that Portal was their next game, which was available both as a playful module and an entire game. Based on the video game, a pair of video games, actually, produced by Steam. I don't know if you're familiar with Portal or not. I wasn't. If you're not familiar. No, I wasn't before, but then I did research and found it a very entertaining and interesting game. and also the fact that you can buy both games, Portal and Portal 2, through Steam for just a few euros, basically. I think it's about, I think I paid three pounds for the two of them. So I should be playing those two once I've actually got a moment to sit down and work my way through them. But anyway, it's available as a Playful module and as an entire game, but also, unusually, and for the first time, Monty Morphic have extended the play field beyond just the module, and they've added an extension, which brings a lift ramp, I should say, a spinner, and some more targets, stand-up targets, further down the play field, and so it starts covering the LCD area, which was never previously done. So it's, although this is an add-on, which you don't have to have the game played perfectly well without those, but it's available as an extra if you want to and then it takes advantage of those features in the game too. Right.

  • Multimorphic launched PinGlass Plus anti-reflective glass at lower cost than competitors

    medium confidence · Jonathan mentions Multimorphic introduced PinGlass Plus as competitively priced alternative; Martin notes reports suggest quality matches competitors.

    • Jack Guarnieri @ Interview segment — Acknowledges deliberate mystique and humor in announcement strategy

  • “Merlin's Arcade is a design by veteran pinball designer John Norris, who lives in Henderson, Nevada... John has been pitching the Merlin's Arcade or Wizard Arcade on his social media for quite a while, or at least some years ago.”

    Jonathan Houston @ Merlin's Arcade reveal discussion — Establishes John Norris's long development history for the game concept

    • Multimorphic
    company
    Turner Pinballcompany
    Chicago Gamingcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    John Norrisperson
    Chris Turnerperson
    Brad Albrightperson
    Ian Harrowperson
    Stephen Silverperson
    Michael Oceanperson
    Scott Benissiperson
    Mark Seidenperson
    Stefan Riedlerperson
    Lyman Sheetsperson
    Sam Zahaperson
    Josh Sharpperson
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
  • ?

    announcement: Chicago Gaming announced Medieval Madness Merlin Edition with new interactive features including King of Pain topper and RGB illumination

    high · Surprise announcement at TPF; detailed feature list including XL color display, interactive lighting, dark blue powder coat; US$12,000 pricing

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball officially confirmed Harry Potter as next game title with full movie assets and 10-year licensing process

    high · Jack Guarnieri public confirmation at TPF seminar; stated 'we had full assets from all the movies and they'd been working on getting the license for ten years'

  • ?

    announcement: Turner Pinball announced Merlin's Arcade as second game after Ninja Eclipse, scaling from 100 to 500 units

    high · Chris Turner surprised everyone by revealing game was ready; John Norris design; two versions (Legendary 500 units, unlimited Arcade Edition)

  • ?

    announcement: Multimorphic Portal officially announced as P3 module and full machine with innovative portal mechanic and extended playfield

    high · Portal revealed before TPF; described as 'most packed playfield module ever' with 11+ portals; featured at show with three playable units

  • ?

    product_strategy: Medieval Madness Merlin Edition positions as premium re-release with interactive features unavailable in previous versions

    medium · Features include first RGB general illumination for MM, King of Pain topper with interactive lighting, upgraded audio system; Chicago Gaming targeting North American production first

  • ?

    product_strategy: Chicago Gaming released Cactus Canyon Lyman Sheets Complete Upgrade Kit with 10 new modes and hardware modifications

    high · US$1,249 kit includes Saloon Door mod, new spinner, ~2 hour installation; software completed by Sam Zaha and Josh Sharp based on Lyman's notes

  • ?

    technology_signal: Merlin's Arcade uses modern PCB-based design with minimal wiring, representing manufacturing efficiency improvement over traditional approaches

    high · Jonathan notes 'underside of the Playfield basically two big large PCBs and hardly any wiring, which other manufacturers have been so proud of to mention how many miles of wire there used to be'

    • 4:48
    And having played the game, I have to say, I saw that ball make do things I've never seen a pinball do in a pinball machine before. Yes, well, being Portal, if you're not familiar with Portal, the idea is that you have a Portal gun which allows you to fire a portal onto two different surfaces, go in one entrance and come out the other. So if you imagine a sort of platform game where you need to get to a particular point, you can shoot your portal near you and then shoot the other portal near where you want to be, jump in and you come out, and you jump out of the other end of the portal to your destination. with the caveat that, as it says in the instructions, momentum in equals momentum out. So if you go running through the portal into it, you come out of it at the same speed. Right. Which is actually relevant for some parts of the game because there are a couple of jumps in it, one of which is a plate at the back where you shoot the ball up a lane and it gets launched into the air and lands. And the other one is as an upper inner orbit, where you can shoot the ball round and round and then into a portal. And the faster you shoot it in, the faster it comes out of a completely different part of the playfield. There are portals all over the playfield module. I think there's something like a total of 11,
    6:26
    which can, most can, well, actually, probably half of them can be in or out, and some of them are just unidirectional. But you're right, the ball can go in one place and come out somewhere completely different, which is, as Multimorphic say, ideal for the P3, which has that ability to launch balls from multiple different places from its ball trough. Right, yeah, so, and also not importantly, if you want to find out more about the game, you had the exclusive on pinballnews.com to cover the reveal of the game, so all the ins and outs are discussed in your article. Yes, there's a lot more to it than I was able to glean from that. I did have information in advance, that's true. Gerry and co. were very generous with that, as we were able to launch at the same time the game was launched, with the Pimble News article. But once you get to play it and see the game in action, you realise there's a lot more to it. And it certainly has a lot to it. and it's, as they say, it's the most packed playfield module ever. And they've produced some pretty packed ones in the past, but there's a lot in this game. And I think if you haven't played it, then at least watch some gameplay videos, see how it works. And Jerry, I think, released a video fairly recently showing all the different portals and how they operate within the game. So have a look on the Multimorphic website and social media for the latest videos. Right. So, and there will be gameplay review videos other than what people shot at TPF on their cell phones. I think early April, the first reveal stream or gameplay stream has been announced. Right, which is where we are now. So, hopefully in a couple of days. Probably worth mentioning who's involved in this game. Right. It's a multimorphic team, but they've added some new talent this time as well. So Stephen Silver, veteran game designer there, is co-creative director and in charge of video stuff. Michael Ocean, also a well-known name at Multimorphic, another co-creative director and handling the software side.
    8:58
    But Ian Harrow is a new name to, well, in a way it's a new name for Multimorphic, game design, although he has produced a couple of games of his own as add-on games for the P3. Yes. Bird Watcher being one of them, and the other one, which I can't remember the name of, but... Oh, yeah, that one. Yeah, that one, yeah. So he's done a couple of add-on games, and also Brad Albright is new at the company doing the art for the game. If you've been to the Texas Trimble Festival before, you would have seen Brad's stand, where he does a lot of 3D artwork, but also does regular pieces as well. And he's been brought on board to do the art for Portal as well. So he was at the show as well, doing a lot of Portal stuff as well as his own. And so it was good to see those two joining the Multimorphic team. I should also mention Price Vision for the game as well, if you're interested in buying one. Yeah, well, I was going to mention Scott Benisi. who is in charge of the music again. Ah, good point, yeah. Yeah, so if you're a fan of Scott and Easy music in your pinball machines, then this is definitely a game to consider. Yes, I actually heard some games that happened. Someone was listening to the music and going, oh, there's Scott and Easy music in this. And for some of you, you didn't know that he was involved. So that was identifiable and a welcome bonus for them. Yes. And then pricing, pricing indeed, yeah. Well, the kit is $3,900 for the standard version, but if you want to add the extended bits, it's another $1,600 on top of that.
    10:41
    You can get an entire machine for $1,160 for the standard or $12,500 for the extended. And there is a multi-layered Perspex or acrylic topper available with lighting effects, which is available for $750 if you'd like to add that to your, either to your complete game or to your kit. Right. And at the Texas Pinball Festival, three Portal games were present next to each other, one with a camera on top of it and a display next to it so people could watch what was happening on the play field. Other multimorphic titles were also present.
    11:29
    And that's not all from multimorphic. They also launched PinGlass or PinGlass Plus, which is their own brand of anti-reflective pinball glass, the glass for your playfield, so to speak.
    11:48
    And more importantly, at a lower cost than many of the other companies that are offering similar invisible glass type or anti-reflective glass or whatever, or infinity glass, whatever you call it. Yes, and reports suggest that it's just as good as any of those. So nice to see a little competition, or more competition, I guess, in the anti-reflective glass for playfields. And, yeah, it was available at the show if you wanted to buy it. Obviously it costs a lot more if you have to ship it. So a little more cost there. But, yeah, it seemed to look pretty good from what I saw.
    12:33
    It's one of those moments where I was looking at the game and didn't realize it actually had the glass on it. Well, then it served its purpose. It certainly did, yeah. Yeah, until I thought I was going to stub my hand into it trying to access the playfield. Yeah.
    12:47
    Well, oh, well. That rounds it up for Multimorphic. congratulations on the Portal game review, and we're looking forward to the gameplay video soon. A busy time for them, and also a busy time for another company also based in Texas, not too far away. And that's Turn Up In Ball. Yes. Now, you remember their first game, Ninja Eclipse? Yes. They ended up only making 100 of those, so a fairly small run for them, but it was their launch title, and they were very happy to sell that out, and it generally got good reviews, I think. Yeah. People were happy with that. Yeah. Well, it's time for Game 2. Yeah, which came as a surprise for many, because nobody was expecting them to reveal Game 2 already.
    13:40
    No, that's right. When I spoke to Chris Turner at the show, he said they weren't sure if the game would be ready for the Texas Pinball Festival, so they didn't sort of do any teasing or pre-announcement But when they decided it was going to be ready, they just kind of rushed straight out into the launch of it. And that game is Merlin's Arcade. Yes, and interestingly, Merlin's Arcade is a design by veteran pinball designer John Norris, who lives in Henderson, Nevada. Nevada, so he's not local to or anywhere near San Antonio, Texas, where Turner Pinball is based.
    14:21
    If I recall correctly, John has been pitching the Merlin's Arcade or Wizard Arcade on his social media for quite a while, or at least some years ago. Yeah, and of course it was voted as an upcoming title for Deep Root Pinball as well, before they went belly up. Right. So, and of course Turner Pinball acquired the assets of Deep Root Pinball as well, which I guess included Merlin's Arcade. Right, so, and I guess congrats to John Norris for finally finding a company who would be willing to take this into production. And I have to say, it's a fun game. It was fun, yes. There's some good call-outs in it, a light-hearted theme, sort of medieval, but with a series of characters, a series of knights, and all of which are kind of associated with one particular type of arcade game, be it pool, foosball, pinball, air hockey or whatever, and each having their own shots on the play field. So it's a bit like medieval madness in that way in that you make the shot over and over until you start their mode. And then when you've done that, then you can combine that with other shots to add their mode in as well. Right. And yeah, and there's quite a lot of quotes, a lot of different voices in the game.
    15:57
    Made us laugh a few times, didn't it? Yeah. When we were playing the game. Well, we have to say we were lucky enough to play the game before the show started because I think when the show was on its way, it might have been a little bit more difficult to actually hit a call out as it was with Portal that we just mentioned. because it was very, very noisy with all the machines being turned on and people talking and so on. But, yes, indeed, funny call-outs that made me laugh out loud a couple of times. And, well, Chris Turner, of course, was present. John Norris wasn't. But Chris was very open for suggestions for improvements, if necessary, to the game or the call-outs or what have you.
    16:52
    Yes, on the software, I think the Playfield is locked down now, so I don't think anything's going to change there. No, that's not true. But, yeah, for improving the modes or adding extra features to it in the software, yes, definitely open to that. Yes, and I must say I was very surprised when I saw the underside of the Playfield, basically two big large PCBs and hardly any wiring, which other manufacturers have been so proud of to mention how many miles of wire there used to be in Piml machines. Well, those days are definitely over now.
    17:31
    Yeah, absolutely. There will be two versions of this. There will be the legendary edition, which is limited to, I think, 500 machines. I think that's right. and there's an arcade edition which is unlimited. Right. The legendary edition is priced at £8,995 and includes a whole bunch of exclusive features including anti-reflective glasses, as we've just been talking about, illuminated topper, includes yellow powder coating, premium sound, RGB speakers and lots more besides, and two extra spinners. The arcade edition is priced at 6,995. And it has black powder coating for the edges, for the metalwork. And virtual locks rather than physical locks. And black plastics rather than sculps. But both of those require a 1,000 US dollar deposit, if you want to order it now. Through either from Turner or from their distributor. Right. But it looks a very nice-looking game. Sort of fairly simple as far as the play field goes. But there's a lot on there. And I think quite a few people looked at it first and went, oh, look, it's an updated 8-ball deluxe. Because it's got that big target bank along the right-hand side of seven stepping-up targets, I think. And a flip, a flip around on it. Yes, absolutely. yeah so but that's not really fair there's a lot more to it than that yes so and I have to admit when I read the announcement for the game I was like whoa that's quite a step up I mean 500 limited editions if you just manage to finish 100 games that's a giant leap it seems and then I saw the underside of the playfield and I figured like okay now I get it doesn't have to take that long to put this together it's an attractive looking package though I have to say the artwork looks very fun and even the yellow powder coating actually looks quite good because that can be notoriously difficult to make look anything other than a bit tacky but in this game I think it works well given the cover theme and the logo which is also bright yellow And the artwork, the animations, I should say, on the display look pretty good. Yeah. Considering it's only just been made available and isn't going into production just yet. Right. But fairly soon. Right. So I guess congratulations are in order to Chris Turner and his team.
    20:24
    Yes, and also mentioned, the one thing we forgot is, of course, Another thing, you talk about how John Norris has been pushing this idea for a little while now, but also another feature he's been pushing is the use of extra flipper buttons to form tap passes from one flipper to the other. And that's implemented in this game. So there are two flipper buttons on either side, the regular one, and also if the ball is rolling down the flipper, you can press the upper one. It does a little mini flip and just tap passes the ball over to the other side, make it easy to get the ball on the appropriate side. Yes. So that's a nice little feature, just an extra button and a bit of software, really, just to pulse the flipper. Yes. And it seemed very reliable once people knew what it was meant to do. Right. So a nice feature. And you can even do a side game where you only use the upper flipper buttons. Oh, no.
    21:19
    Yeah, that sounds exciting. Yeah, well, you won't get the ball up the playfield very far, but it could still be an interesting side game. So, oh well. Yeah. Like I said, congratulations to Chris Turner and his team. And, well, I look forward to playing the game again and also how the software will further develop. I might even drop in a few suggestions myself. Well, I think you already have, haven't you? Well, yeah, and a few more. Yeah. So, some ideas. Okay. Well, thank you for Turnip and Ball for bringing Merlin's Arcade to the Texas Fibble Festival for us to enjoy.
    22:00
    Another game that was also there, that was announced just before, was from Chicago Gaming, which is not a new game, but it's a remake of one of their existing games. So it's a remake of a remake? A remake, yes. It's a new edition of a remake.
    22:19
    Right. Yes. So, yeah, Medieval Badness Merlin Edition. We've been talking about how they're going to be remaking Medieval Madness, or doing another run of Medieval Madness games at some time. Yes. And that's probably for about two years, I think. Yeah. And the past couple of months it became more and more clear that they were definitely planning on making another, or producing another run of Medieval Madness. I did not know this Merlin edition was actually coming up. So that was kind of a surprise to me. And please do enlighten us. What is so special about this Medieval Madness Merlin edition? Well, for a start, it comes with the King of Pain topper, which is, I don't think it's an animated topper, but it has interactive lighting effects on it that tie in with the gameplay. There's also interactive RGB general illumination in the game, which is a first, I think, for medieval madness. I think it's always been green-white illumination before. It also has a dark blue powder coat on the metal parts. The XL color display, which is the big dot matrix display in color with high-definition graphics. and it includes inner cabinet side mirrors, a shaker motor, illuminated bottom arch and has an upgraded audio system over previous models. So quite a lot in it. If you were thinking of buying a medieval Magnus and you hadn't got one yet, it would seem a bit of a no-brainer to get this one. It is priced at just shy of US$12,000, so not exactly cheap, but you do seem to get quite a lot for your money. It does require a US$1,000 deposit when you order it. Right. Now, Jekyll. Well, I was going to say there was a quick note to add to this edition. As Chicago Gaming has scheduled North American games to be produced first, most likely the third and fourth quarter of 2025. In an effort to avoid long lead times between deposits and delivery, they are not taking international orders until later this year.
    24:53
    And they appreciate your patience. Well, okay, so if you're in Europe or Australia, you can't order the game yet, so you're waiting anyway, but at least you don't have the game on order yet. So whenever you are able to order it, then the lead time should be less. But in the meantime, you're still waiting.
    25:12
    That's not to say you can't order it through your distributor in advance. It does become available for international purchases. Your distributor will be the one who puts the order in for you. And you're still waiting. Yes, exactly. But you might be higher up the list of production if you get your pre-order in early. Right, so, and that's not all for Chicago Game. Far from it, because we talked about it many times, the Lyman Sheets new code set for Capture's Canyon. Right. Capture's Canyon remake. And it's only fair to say, which was developed together with Josh Sharp, who is not mentioned that often in the press release about this game, but Lyman is.
    26:03
    Yeah. Even a bit too much to my taste, but... Yeah. So... They actually called it the Cactus Canyon Lyman Sheet Complete Upgrade Kit, which, yeah, I think that's probably... It's a nice tribute, but it does seem to be... In the press release, it seemed to be overplaying the Lyman's angle quite a lot. but the software was actually completed by Sam Zaha and Josh Sharp after Lyman passed some time ago Lyman came up with all these ideas of what he wanted to do it was Sam and Josh then implemented that from Lyman's notes and added quite a lot to the game it includes ten entirely new modes and some enhancements to two of the other modes that's in the software side of things So there are whole new modes in there to play, but there's also some hardware that goes into this kit, which is the Saloon Door mod, which you've seen before, I think. Yeah. Last year, Pinball XO was installed in a couple of games that we saw at the Chicago Gaming Factory. Yeah. But the software was, at that point, not as far developed as it is now. No. And with that, Salim, there's also a spinner, which is new and part of the kit. Right. So you can get this entire kit of software and hardware for US$1,249 from Chicago Gaming or those jubilators. Right. And then there is instructions how to install the hardware into your own game. Yes, which Chicago Gaming say would take about two hours to complete the upgrade. Right. So you do need to have a Texas Gaming game, a Chicago game. Yeah. A remake. Yeah. So it's not like you get the full game for the price you just mentioned, if only. Yes. But very interesting to see how these new modes integrate and what people think of them. Yes. And most of the modes are, I think, I don't know the playfield completely out of my head, but many of the modes actually have an insert that lights up on the playfield. And with these new modes, that's obviously not the case. That's true. Yeah.
    28:34
    Well, if you want to see what these new modes are, I suggest going to sicario-gaming.com, where if you click on the Cactus Canyon image at the top, it takes you into details of the upgrade kit. And so there's a little complicated to get to, but there is a way. And all the new modes are spelled out and the instructions for achieving them are there as well. Right. So, yeah, lots more to read up on. Right. And it's also nice to mention that Chicago Gaming actually made a mini booklet, which you can consider to be a flyer of some sort for this upgrade kit, which was available at the Texas Pinball Festival.
    29:18
    And I have no idea whether these will be available at other shows as well, but as a collector of flyers, I thought this was rather special and they will be around everywhere. No, I didn't see that. Probably highly collectible. Yeah, I have to admit, I did kind of skip the Chicago gaming area When I was going around taking pictures So I'll have to go and add that into my report from the show But it is on the video, so we've got that Right, so, well, slightly related to Chicago gaming Although not Chicago gaming itself But obviously they are the manufacturer of the Pulp Fiction game. And as it turns out, I think it was the Electric Playground that announced a topper of their own for Pulp Fiction.
    30:16
    They did? Yes, which was displayed at the Texas Primal Festival as well. The announcement came just before that. And I think the biggest comment immediately was, why are the two faces of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta blurred or dark? Or skewed. Yes, exactly. Yes, period. Yes, that didn't sit well with quite a few people, from what I could tell. Yes, I haven't seen an explanation as to why they did that, because it didn't seem to make a lot of sense having them on there and then blowing them because you can still kind of see who they are if you look at the topper itself. I'm just scrolling through my list of pictures so I can see it for myself.
    31:07
    Let me see it somewhere. I'll get there in a minute. It's always fun surprising Martin with a topic that we didn't include too much.
    31:16
    Oh, there we are. Yes, I've got it. Yeah, the double tap edition of the Pulp Fiction topper, which is priced at $1,479.
    31:29
    It's a bit like the Twilight Zone one I think they had before, where a ball runs along a wire form along the top of the topper, but with a couple of gunshots and light flashes from both Travolta and Jackson.
    31:47
    But, yeah, very strange, because it's kind of greyed out, their faces, but they're kind of recognisable, but not really. Right.
    31:58
    Is it not the right thing? I suppose that avoids a lawsuit, but is that what you want on your game? And is it better than the original topper with the two dancing figures, so to speak? No. No, I don't think so. But, okay, if you've got the standard edition, you don't have that topper, and if you want one, then this is an alternative. It is, yeah. Yeah, but I want to replace those plastics with non-obscured ones, even if they're not officially available, before somebody will make them. Oh, well, so. Anyway, I figured I'd throw that in as well, because I just realized we forgot to list that. Anyway, that rounds it up for Chicago Gaming and the Electric Playground, for that matter, as well. And then it's on to Jersey Jack Pinball. Yes, indeed.
    32:52
    A big stand at the Texas Pinball Festival, leading heavily on Avatar, of course, but also plenty of Elton John and earlier games there as well. What was there? Toy Story 4 was there?
    33:04
    Yes, there were some long lines to play Avatar, which is good to see. Mark Seiden was there talking to people who were waiting to play it and telling them about the game. And he held a seminar along with Jack Guarneri at the show to talk about, well, essentially talk about the making of Avatar.
    33:28
    But the seminar took a bit of a skew, I'd say, which was, I guess, sort of Q&A before Mark got into his presentation. and one of the questions from the audience came from Stefan Riedler of RS Pinball in Austria who asked Jack what the next game is going to be and of course, you know, that's one of those questions that's normally asked by newbies, I suppose, in the industry or in the hobby and not knowing that no company head will ever confirm what their next game is going to be except Jack did to everyone's surprise and confirmed. He said, you know, it's Harry Potter.
    34:16
    And he said that they had, in that seminar, he mentioned that they had full assets from all the movies and they'd been working on getting the license for ten years, or Jack has. And he advised everybody who was thinking of buying, they told on to their money until they seen what Jersey Jack and more have got with the Harry Potter game. Right. So, well, that was indeed quite a surprise. I hope it didn't overshadow Mark's presentation that much. Although it was a good way to basically steal the attention of the show with no game. Yes. Yeah, I think all the buzz was about Jack announcing it, but did he intend to say it? And, you know, obviously Jack knows what he's doing and managed to get, as you say, managed to get a huge amount of publicity for an upcoming title without actually having it or giving any details very much about it. So, the big question was, you know, what else can we find out about this Harry Potter game that's now officially confirmed as the next Jersey Jack pinball game? Actually, I don't find that that much interesting, to be honest. But hold on, hold on. I am interested in What's Cooking with Jack Guarnieri. Hi, Jack, how are you? I'm well. How are you guys doing? Very good, thanks. Good to see you and good to hear from you. We're doing good. Still a little jet lag from the Texas Pinball Festival.
    35:55
    Yep. But, no, all is good. So, yeah. and well what nobody expected happened at the Texas Pinball Festival, you confirmed Harry Potter as an upcoming game for Jersey Jack I did, I did in a very nonchalant low key way because I don't have a game to show people have said Jack must be getting old, he's slipping because when you ask Jack what your next game is, Jack usually says next game is a pinball machine he doesn't just come out and say yeah by the way it's harry potter because you know people think i'm going to kill sales of avatar or elton john or guns and roses or toy story and that's not the case at all you know those games they sold last week they sold the week before they're selling this week every week we sell games okay excellent but that's not why we're calling you we're calling you to hear what's cooking with Jack Ranieri. So any good recipes for us?
    36:55
    So I have to admit that I don't cook. Joanne is an amazing cook, and I just eat. And all my brother-in-law, my son-in-law, all the men in the family cook. But me, I'm like the only one that's not the cook.
    37:13
    You know, I'll barbecue, but to throw a steak on, a hamburger, a sausage, whatever, that's not really cooking. So we're getting an empty for a boiled egg? That's grilling, I guess. Breakfast, I'll make you breakfast if you come over. I can make pancakes and flip them with flapjacks like I do when I used to go camping as a Boy Scout and all of that stuff. Breakfast, you can't screw up. But I picked a dish that I like to eat instead of what I like to cook. I picked a dish I like to eat.
    37:46
    And if you eat it, you'll smell like garlic for three days. So keep all the vampires away. It's called aglio e olio. And what is that? That's pasta with oil and garlic.
    38:00
    And, you know, in a lot of cultures, Italian culture especially, a lot of the peasant food, what they call peasant food, has become a delicacy. And a dish of aglio e olio at a restaurant these days is about $30. and it's really nothing but linguine and oil and garlic cooked in a pan. Olive oil, by the way.
    38:27
    Yep. Olive oil. Spaghetti as well. You need, I gave you a recipe. Yeah, I got it here. The pasta, you know, I like linguine better than spaghetti or capolini. It's angel hair pasta. It's even thinner. It's very good. Five cloves of fresh garlic, chopped, crushed, and sliced. You can even get them in a jar there. It's already done for you. Quarter cup EVOO, extra virgin olive oil. Quarter cup parsley. Parsley, it's there for the color, but parsley takes away a little bit of the garlic sting. some nice cheese parmesan romano pecorino romano is good some salt some black pepper if you like some red pepper if you like and then it tells you how to cook pasta i could cook pasta i cook pasta you put it in the water and you taste it and when it's al dente it's a little hard still that's the best time it's not soft it's not squishy don't leave it in the pot too long some people put a little olive oil in the pot of water so the macaroni as you call it or pasta doesn't stick to itself but either way it works okay you have to salt the water because otherwise you know it's not going to taste so good and what they what they say to do is they want you to mix the pasta in the pan with the oil and garlic and mix in some of the water from the pasta, too, to get the flavor. Yeah, that's the second pan that they can put on while the pasta is cooking in which you are then frying the garlic and the crushed pepper. You add the pasta to it when it's all done.
    40:24
    Yeah, I mean, listen, it's not as complicated as putting three chicken legs in a plate and throwing them in the microwave.
    40:31
    But, you know, in my mind, I can make this recipe because I've seen it done by my wife a million times. You know, I think I can make meatballs. I think I can make bread sauce. I think I can make that. I don't know. Maybe I could. I don't want to have to go to the test to do it.
    40:53
    Well, hopefully some of our listeners will follow your recipe here and make it for themselves. and they'll report back and tell us exactly how delicious it was. Yeah. Okay, so there are three more steps that we, because Jack sent me the recipe, I'm looking at it right now, so there's three more steps. Once the pasta is al dente, add garlic and crushed pepper to the heated fry pan, toss around for 30 seconds, and then add pasta directly from the water to the pan, carefully toss until coated with oil of oil, add more if needed, season with salt, pepper, and a quarter of fresh basil, taste and add more seasoning if needed, add reserved pasta water, two tablespoons at a time, until all ingredients are combined, moist, and steaming hot.
    41:42
    To serve, add to additional plates with plenty of grated cheese and additional red pepper flakes if desired, garnish with fresh basil.
    41:51
    And a big glass of red wine. A big glass of red wine, a white wine you can have, you can have either one. You know, one thing we typically don't do when we have a fish dish, we don't put cheese on the pasta if it has fish. Some people like cheese on everything. Some people mix red wine or white wine. They drink what they want to drink. That's fine. I don't think the wine police are going to come to your table and tell you you're having fish and you're having red wine. but um if you go to an italian restaurant and you ask for all your all your you know the guy look at you like like you actually know what you're talking about um i i haven't ordered it in a restaurant i don't think because i try to order things in the restaurant that i don't normally get at home and so i get a lot of good things at home so i would order like Like osso bucco, you know, some kind of dish that I don't get too often. But aglio e olio is one of those things that it's easy to make. It's quick to make. It's take a half hour to make it, and it's all fresh, and it's very good. Like I said, your house and your mouth are going to smell like garlic for about three days. So, uh... So, I'm not going to... You know how you know how uh you solved the problem of eating garlic and kissing somebody You know how you solved that problem Yeah you ate it both That exactly right You both eat it So I not sure whether the recipe describes what to do with the linguine but I'll take a look and I might add that later. Anyway, thank you. It's all mixed together. Right. Okay, well, thank you, Jack, for your time. It was very welcome. And we look forward to hearing from you soon. Or is there anything you want to add about Harry Potter?
    43:53
    Yeah, sure. I had something about Harry Potter. I mean, you know, it's a holy grail title. It's a magical theme. I mean, what's better than a pinball machine about a wizard? I mean, we all want to be pinball wizards.
    44:09
    It's been really, for me, I don't want to say it's a long time, but it's more than a decade of anticipation to try to make this game. And seeing it come together has been really special. I feel that Warner Brothers chose us to do this game, and they're entrusting us.
    44:32
    Eric is an amazing die-hard fan of Harry Potter, having read all the books and living and breathing his dream theme. He gets an opportunity to make a game. It was just two years ago that we went to Warner Brothers and had one of our licensing meetings to cap it off.
    44:56
    It was great. It's been a great ride so far. Can you give us a little insight into why it's taken 10 years to get the license secured and bring the game to market?
    45:13
    Sure. You know, I would say this. A lot of people were chasing this license. And from what I could tell, the report that J.K. Rowling or her staff or her people don't like pinball and everything like that, nobody ever told me that. They told me no many, many times. And I wouldn't take Mo for an answer. And I kept going back and back and back every few months or every year or every whatever it was, time period. And a couple times I was, I don't want to say I got yelled at, but I was told, you know, we told, we gave you an answer already. Why are you asking us again?
    46:06
    You know, and I said, well, it's a different time now. Maybe you want to ask the powers that be if they won the game. And what happened was, this is what I was told.
    46:22
    You know, they saw, they were on a trip, the people that work for J.K. Rollins were on a trip to Warner Brothers in California, and they were playing, they were actually playing the Hobbit game that's there. And there are some other various pinball machines there. and when I asked, they were in the office, and my rep went and asked them, and they point blank said, well, if Jersey Jack can make a game half as good as this Hobbit that we're playing, we're interested in talking to him. And they said, well, that is a Jersey Jack game. So that cracked the door open for the conversation.
    47:04
    Nice. I don't know how much of the story about the we don't like pinball, we don't like gambling and we don't like, I really didn't get into all of that stuff, it was not really pertinent to what I was doing to license the game Yeah, that's always been the sort of excuse as to why my pinball would never be allowed to make a Harry Potter theme or use the Harry Potter theme, but it could just be, you know, rumor or supposition rather than actually a fact. Sometimes when you, what was it, the wolf and the sour grapes, what was that?
    47:46
    When you can't get the grapes, you just say they're sour, I guess, right? Oh, right, yeah, so. Well, that could be the case for other manufacturers, I guess.
    47:59
    Well, if you can't get something, you know, you might as well say it's not worth getting. or we can't get it, we're not going to get it. I mean, I just put it up as, and I just don't want to give up. Right. Now, you mentioned that this was a license that a lot of people were after.
    48:23
    I'm not sure whether we should mention any names, but there was one of the persons who was after it that eventually spoiled that you got the license instead of another pinball company. Right.
    48:36
    Now that the cat is out of the bag, do you want to comment on that? I, you know, I don't know the person. I never really had a conversation with him. I know what you're talking about. I think everybody knows what you're talking about.
    48:51
    I don't know. You know, when he put that post up, I got a phone call, and the phone call was, why am I posting about a game that I just have a license for? Why am I promoting this game right now when the game's not ready? And I had to say, that's not me that put that post up.
    49:17
    Take a look who put the post up. So whoever put the post up, somebody else working in concert with them probably sent the post to somebody at Warner Brothers to see what happened, you know, if that news got out or whatever it was. But I don't know. You know, the truth is a great thing.
    49:41
    A lot of times it needs time to catch up to the lie. So what are you going to do? Right, so one of the things you did confirm during the JJP seminar at the Texas Film Festival was that you had assets from, or access to all the movies and assets from them. Now, I think everybody, we hoped that would be the case. So it was a huge bonus to hear that that is true. But the flip side of that is that people also think there's a massive content in there. How on earth can you get all of that into one single game, and is it going to be split across two or more games?
    50:26
    Yeah, I guess there's a few different ways you could have done this. I guess with James Bond, they broke it up into a few different pieces,
    50:35
    and maybe it was good, maybe it wasn't so good. Our design team and the people in the company wanted to do one game, And, yes, all the movie assets and everything is there.
    50:51
    The theme song, Hedwig's theme, is in the game, too. There's a lot. I mean, I remember with Hobbit, it was three movies with, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, we take on these projects that are massive, and I think the more difficult they are, I think the team likes them better. The more difficult they are. I mean, doing a one-movie title at this point is like, one movie? Wow.
    51:33
    Walk in the park. One movie, what are we going to do with that? You know, get us something that has eight movies, nine movies, ten movies. Who the hell, what franchise has eight movies, seven or eight movies? It's got to be an amazing franchise. Lost in the Furious? Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's another one I should be looking at, right, Martin?
    51:56
    Well, you heard it here first. Yeah, you may not be alone, you know. So, no. but indeed it's going to be well there's multiple ways you can address this many movies I mean of course we're not in the seat of Eric and his team but in theory you could basically allow the player like which movie do you want to play and you just focus within that game on one particular movie still using the same playfield that is suitable for all of the movies. Right. That could be one way to go with it. Right. Well, you'll have to see what they did.
    52:42
    You know, I feel, with this game, I feel the same way I felt with Wizard of Oz. Because there were a lot of expectations and there were a lot of dreams and high hopes. And it's very hard to, it's very hard to exceed somebody's imagination.
    53:02
    or their dreams or what you can do in this box of mechanics and lights and, you know. But that's what we do. That's what we do.
    53:18
    Is that in any way related to the homebrew Harry Potter game, which was exhibited at Bill Expo last year? I didn't see it. You know, I saw pictures of it. I didn't see it in person. I don't know where it was Yeah it was a fairly early version But it had an awful lot of mechanics in there And Yeah I'm told it was It was shut down Given a cease and desist Not to show it any further Do you know anything about that?
    53:53
    Do I know about what? Do I know about the game or the cease and desist? The cease and desist No I have nothing to do with that Okay so okay I mean if somebody's making a one off game and they're just making it you know I mean yeah you see them all over the place right I guess if you're not selling anything or trying to sell it as a commercial item I don't really I'm not familiar with that you know a lot of times these shows that's an incoming call for Jack yeah a lot of times at the shows people say to me come over here, come over there, look at this, look at that and I'll get to see something but I didn't get to see that game I think it was at Expo right, wasn't it at Timberwall Expo in October in the O'Roo section well look, God bless those people that spend all their time, the whole community gets behind a theme, an idea, and they make something great, you know, that probably sometimes it could be replicated commercially. Sometimes it can't, you know.
    55:09
    You throw the kitchen sink in there and you get the whole plumbing department you have to pay for. When you make a one-off and it takes you X amount of time and X amount of money to do it, you know, it's hard to make, it's hard to convert it to be a commercial product sometimes. Yeah, because the homebrew section is where Mark came from. Of course, Mark Seiden. Yeah, I remember I visited, like, in 2010, I visited um, um,
    55:39
    what's his name, um, uh, Ben, wasn't it Ben? Ben Heck? Ben Heck made a Tom Patson game. yes right yeah yeah and uh and um it took him five years at that time you know to put it all together and he had everything all you know it was a labor of love he didn't even know i said to him i was at his house and i said how much did he spend on this and he had he had no clue you know no clue what he spent on it because it was endless hours of blood, sweat, and tears to make the game. So you have to admire these people that are trying to create games on their own. And some of them, obviously, try to get my attention and other people's attention, you know, to get on the radar to say, hey, you made a great game. Let's make that into a real game, you know. And I know American did that with, I guess, a couple of games, right? Yeah, he did the Riot game, the Valhalla, and of course Ryan McQuaid joined them to design the next title. Right, right. And, you know, we had Mark join us after he did Metroid. Yeah, right. So, you know, there was an entryway. Right. But basically, so what I get from what you were saying earlier, homebrew Pimble designers basically have all the time in the world but for Eric in this case this is a project with a certain date when it has to go on the line so to speak and it's not that flexible as when you're a homebrew designer and you can add easily another year to add more stuff to the game you're working on.
    57:34
    That's true. You know, but we've had, you know, I don't want to say this, but we've had a history of not meeting our deadlines. We have a history of not meeting our bill of materials that were over it. So I don't want to say it's the habit of the company, but in a lot of ways the game's not done until the game's done. I mean when it plays the right way when it shoots the right way when the rules are at a certain point you know when the pie is done it's time to take it out of the oven not before then because it's not going to be as good as it could be so on that point do you have a date when you're going to ink it in mind even if you can't tell us I have a date in mind I'm not sure if the rest of the company has the same date but you know we'll see how it goes I mean, you know, at Texas Pinball Festival, I hate being at that show especially and not having a new product. I mean, I didn't go to the show in Italy in Rimini because I didn't have a new game, so I didn't go. I'm not going to Le Trappolo where we drank champagne and ate chocolate. I'm not going because they don't have a new game right now. By May, June, I should be somewhere with a new game. and that's what's exciting for me. It's not that I'm not excited standing next to Godfather and Avatar and Elton John and all the games we've done before, but there's nothing like having a new game, especially a game like Harry Potter.
    59:17
    I mean, that opportunity is not going to happen again. This is a one-time opportunity. I'm very optimistic about the game. so with such a one time opportunity how do you create a big splash I mean title itself and the content is enough but are you going to do are you going to launch it as a show or are you going to hold a show for it well you'll be part of whatever we do we'll include you guys when we get closer to that and every day we're getting closer to that you know we'll do a nice video as we've done the videos before, and we'll have games that people are in the public available to play and see.
    60:09
    And, you know, I think everybody's going to be happy with what they see. I mean, it's hard to say everybody's going to be happy with what they see, because how do you make everybody happy? With a theme like this Expectations may be very high And people might be disappointed But then again Expectations may not be realistic Well it's okay It's alright I go back to Wizard of Oz one more time When I did that game I knew that the game had to be really good Because if the first 100 games went out and they weren't good The other 900 people waiting For their games would all want their money back so you know we're in a different time today uh we're not in we're not in that situation but um you know it's never it's never a bad time to launch a great game and whenever the game is ready that's when we launch it and um we expect we expect a good response from the community you know they were we didn't ask our distributors to start taking orders yet or anything like that. But when I was at the show on Saturday,
    61:21
    when I was at Texas Pinball Festival Saturday, a lot of people walked up to me and said, I ordered the game. I ordered the game two months ago. I ordered the game six months ago. I ordered the game yesterday. I ordered it.
    61:35
    So I got to laugh. Pinball people are the best. Right. So, now, I don't know whether this has been a licensing nightmare, other than that it may have taken 10 years and finally you got around to it. But part of the licensing is also at least trying to involve some of the actors in the cast to record some custom voice calls and so on. Is that the case? Is there anything you can already announce about that?
    62:10
    We have a professional voice actor that has done many voices for Harry Potter franchise of the amusement park. And he's part of the group of the audio team.
    62:27
    I would say that I don't know if anybody said it, but David Beal is the sound is doing the sound for the game. So he's back with us again. We're thrilled about that. and um i guess yeah i think i think in a lot of ways you know we brought some of the team back together uh the old team but you know it's nice to bring new people in as well so uh like we did with avatar you know so uh we're trying to expand the market and the uh the base not just the player base but the people working in the industry the base for those people right right is there anything you can already reveal about who is doing the artwork for the game?
    63:16
    I'm going to hold that off on that because the Collector Edition has a special artwork package and the Wizard Edition, which is limited. This game does not have limited. There's no LE. It's the Wizard Edition instead of the LE. And then there's a game called the Arcade Edition which is also an amazing game but all the play fields are the same all the toys are the same nothing is removed from any of the versions of the game no toys, no features no rules, nothing's changed the artwork is the same on the wizard edition and the arcade edition ok do all three models have toppers and is that the same topper?
    64:08
    Different toppers. The Arcade Edition does not have a topper. But the Wizard Edition and the CE certainly has a topper.
    64:20
    I'm interested in what made you go back to doing three editions again, having started that way and then gone back to two. Captain Martin, so many people, the whole idea of the standard was to get the operator in me, you know, to get them a lower-cost game so they could put on the route. But they were putting out LEs and they were putting out CEs, and the most rare number of games that we had were standard games. I mean, we made 130 standard Guns N' Roses. We made, like, 150 standard, you know, Pirates. So those are the real collectibles? Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of funny. You know, if a collectible was based on how many you made, you know, those would be, the pirate standard would be going for like 100 grand. So I don't buy into all that. It's not about how many were made. It's about what model it was and what title it was and the demand for it. So what's going to be different this time that the arcade edition will be bought by operators to put on location?
    65:36
    You know, frankly, what it is, I get tired of hearing that I don't have a game for less than $10,000.
    65:43
    So I'm pulling your bluff. Now there's a game for less than $10,000. It might not have radcals. It doesn't have arc blades. It doesn't have a shaker motor. It doesn't have a topper. but it has everything else really you know so now you have a game buy it, there it is ok I didn't want anybody that wanted a Harry Potter game to not be able to buy a Harry Potter game ok and this was a let's go back to the licensing part This was another license deal with Warner Brothers, who you had quite a long relationship with. Did that help in securing the license?
    66:33
    Is what? Say that again, Martin? Did your long relationship working with Warner, did that help in securing the license for Harry Potter? Yes, undoubtedly, yes.
    66:47
    We cut our teeth on Warner Brothers, obviously, with Wizard of Oz. We did Harry, we did The Hobbit, you know, Willy Wonka, you know. So, I mean, they're a great partner to work with. They understand what we do and how we do it.
    67:06
    With this license, it had to pass three different hurdles for everything to get approved, which we've gone through before with games like Willy Wonka. you know you have to deal with different people and different committees it's hard it's a hard thing but I have no complaint you know they were all great they were really great to work with I kind of think that the era of the Harry Potter movies movie studios were a little more savvy a little more knowing about how to secure the rights for the actors the likenesses the voices and that kind of thing as part of the movie production so they can then license it out so you don't have to go back and get Daniel Radcliffe voiced separately and Rupert Grint voiced separately and Emma Watson voiced separately they're all come with the license whereas some older movies that wasn't the case yeah I mean you remember the munchkins with the Wizard of Oz I mean it wasn't even a thing to say get the rights to these people They didn't have the rights and we had to use different faces and that kind of thing. So I think you're right. As time has gone on, you look to capture as many rights to different assets as you possibly can. And we know I've passed on licenses in the past that I couldn't get sufficient assets to make a great game. We can probably make a good game, but I can't make a great game, you know, because I don't have this, I don't have that, I don't have the other. and other people made games for licenses that I passed on. So it worked out for them.
    68:51
    Right. Now, this is just an assumption, but my guess is the Harry Potter license is probably the most expensive license for Jersey Jack so far.
    69:07
    And you don't have to comment on that, but what I'm curious about, okay, So the design team wanted to put all eight or seven, eight movies, I mean, in that one game. But if you have a long-term agreement with Warner to exploit these movies, is there a chance that at some point you might say, you know what, we're going to do a second Harry Potter game. Why not? We got the rights. So see if we can please those who are not pleased yet.
    69:46
    Is that theoretically an option, or we could say, like, no, this is it, and once it's out there, that's it?
    69:54
    I think the latter. I think we did it, and we're done, and we move on, and that's it. I think if you go back and make the game, it's not being loyal to the customer base. If you think of those things, for me personally, I think you say them up front. I think you say up front, we're going to do this, and so prepare your wallet or prepare your mind, because this is what we're going to do.
    70:29
    You know, I'll tell a story for the old-timers that remember. I used to sell games for another company and they had a Spider-Man game they were working on and I was selling red Spider-Man games and I sold a whole bunch of them and then I was told there was going to be a special edition black game that's going to come out and there's only 500 of them and I said, well, how long do you know that? Oh, we know that for months and months but you didn't tell anybody about it. Yeah, so what? We don't really care. Well, I care because the people that bought red ones are going to want black ones now. no they're not going to want that and everything and I took back games on full credit and lost money on freight and lost money on all kinds of things and that really solidified my belief that if you're going to do something special or you're going to do something different that you tell the customer in the beginning and you don't tell them later on especially when you have knowledge of it for a long time you know you put it out there trust the customer and let them make the decision. They don't have to play the game twice.
    71:38
    Right, okay. Well, I haven't got any other questions. I'm doing this to open the house. Well, anything for dessert?
    71:47
    Cannolis. Leave the gun, take the cannolis. You know. Always a cannoli. You know. Okay. Well, I guess that rounds up What's Cooking with Jack Warnieri for this episode of our March 2025 recap. Thank you very much, Jack. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it very much. Enjoy your dinner. Well, thank you, Jack Warnieri. There you have it. A wonderful recipe for aglio e olio.
    72:15
    That's what you used to say. Yeah, exactly. And with linguine, let's not forget that. And also lots of new details on the upcoming Harry Potter game. Yeah. Well, you wanted the details, and there we are. I think we now know a lot more about the game than we did last seminar. And remember where you heard it first. Yeah, it's going to be a fascinating game to see.
    72:45
    Not really much more we can say about it at this stage until we actually get some pictures or some confirmed playfield mechanisms. Right. But I don't think we'll have to wait all that much longer. maybe a month or two yeah something like that seems from what I only guess would be right but enough about that Harry Potter game because as interesting as that may be we have been waiting and waiting and begging to talk to Steve Ritchie about his Elton John game and we have announced earlier well, basically when the game came out we did record an interview with Steve Ritchie which was pure gold, trust me it was absolute gold you can't say that it was and not publish it but well, we have marketing people that we respect too and they were like, listen guys and we have to admit this is true Yeah.
    73:56
    What we did was at Pimble Expo 2023, I, well, we were upstairs in our room. I ran down. I found Steve at 3 a.m. at the fire pit singing along with whoever, the Dutch friends and other people. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. so it's in all fairness Steve was not exactly sober another movie probably not but Steve agreed yeah let's do it now so we did record that interview and so we got Steve unfiltered uncensored yeah and that was just too good to publish so we didn't and And then we, I think we even tried it again.
    74:52
    And that was still not good enough. Well, it was gold again, but we couldn't publish that. So finally now, at the Texas Pimple Festival 2025,
    75:04
    we found Bill Grupp available to sit next to Steve and sort of make sure that the conversation would not go anywhere that it shouldn't go. And we're going to take a listen to what we recorded with Steve and Bill Grubb. Yes, so we're talking about the development of the Elton John game. We did hold the conversation in a dining area of the hotel in the Embassy Suite, so maybe a little bit of background noise from other people,
    75:41
    but hopefully it went in to support your enjoyment of it. and I think we had a really good insight into that game and the next game they're working on as well. Yeah, exactly. So let's hear it. We're joined by Mr. Steve Ritchie, pinball designer, and Mr. Bill Druck, lead programmer of their latest game, Elton John.
    76:04
    Welcome. Thank you. Well, we're here at the Texas Pinball Festival. 2025. Exactly. Probably worth adding that. Good point. So have you two had a great time? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we always have a great time here.
    76:21
    Lots of people we know, we see every year, and it's always a lot of fun. Right. So, and, well, we didn't get the chance to publicly discuss the Elton John game.
    76:34
    While it's still your latest title, it's not the newest game on the market, but it has been a game which, at least me, completely surprised me, took me off guard because I didn't expect it to be this much fun.
    76:52
    Fun's what it's about. We, our whole team, Duncan Brown, Joe Katz worked on the game, mechanical engineers, you know, we just, we said, we want to make the best game that was ever made. That was our goal. It seems to me that a huge number of people have said, I'm not interested in the theme, or I don't particularly like the music, but they play the game, and it completely turns them around, and they say, despite that, I love this game. Is that a reaction that you hear? Yes. I mean, we hear that a lot. We hear, I don't know, it's like I hear this. Oh, I didn't know that was an Elton John song. Yeah, that's the big thing. There's so many of those songs that are intertwined with what we do every day. It's on the TV in commercials. You hear it in the grocery stores. And it's surprising to me, even working on the game, how well those songs go with playing pinball. I mean, you wouldn't necessarily... Obviously, we have Pinball Wizard, right? But you wouldn't think of some of the other songs working so well while you're playing that game. Well, on that point, with such a huge catalogue of tracks and songs, how do you narrow that down to the ones that go into the game? I always go to Billboard and any other, you know, Wikipedia often to find out data on what the most popular songs are, and we try to get those.
    78:23
    I think that's the best way. You look for ones that have, I mean, we want mostly the upbeat tempo ones because you want that energy. But you also need a selection of ones that are slower and faster because you want the excitement to build up as you're playing the game. So if the song starts off a little slower and gets faster, that's the kind of thing we're looking for.
    78:45
    Or the Signature State multiball, it's got four parts to it, and we actually use one song cut up for those four different parts. So each one sounds different, but it's really good. And the name of the song is Sympathy for the Devil. No, it's not. No, it's funeral for a friend, yeah. Love, Lies, Bleeding. Love, Lies, Bleeding, yeah. But taking different parts of that song, we also use that for Singerspace because it has the least amount of vocals in it, so you kind of can focus on playing the game and don't hear the vocals. But it has different parts where we can cut that up and have different levels of excitement across the different areas of the multiple. Yes, I was wondering how you were going to use that song because it does start very slowly. Oh yeah. And, well, it's Funeral for a Friend, so... Yeah. Now the Funeral for a Friend part's not actually in the gameplay. You can play the song with jukebox if you want. Okay. But Love, Lies, Bleeding is cut up into many different parts throughout that rule for the signature stage multiple. Yeah, it goes segways into that. Yep. Yeah, right. So, it's been a while since you designed the game, but what do you remember from the design process? I mean, it's Elton John. You came up with the piano. Was it tough? Was it easy? No. Nothing is easy in pinball, I think. I mean, back to the beginning when we started talking about what was going to be in the game, he was adamant there was going to be a piano and Elton was going to be sitting at it and he would turn and look at you. These are all things he said from the beginning. and everybody on the team was like, okay, Steve, are you sure that's all going to happen? Yeah, whatever you say. And it was a long wait for all those things to actually happen, but I think we just about made them all happen. I mean, maybe you talked about him standing up at one point, and that didn't happen. No, it was minor. I mean, it was something else. It was going beyond probably the complexity we wanted to. Or he's flying.
    80:47
    I'm sorry? Where he's flying, where his legs are in the air and he's... Yeah. Just like on the cabinet art. Or having the piano lid hinge up and down. We talked about a bunch of little stuff like that. But overall, I mean, he literally said what you see is in there at the start of the game. And the hard part was for the mechanical guys to figure out how to make all those things happen. Yeah, I think it's an amazing job. But given the theme, where do you kind of start with the rules?
    81:17
    What's the player? in this, because you're not going to be Elton, because Elton is Elton, so you have to be part of the story. So where are you positioned in that? Honestly, I started looking at it as, this is our second music band, and it had to be different than Guns N' Roses. So, you know, Guns N' Roses I think is different than a lot of the other music bands, different than Metallica, ACDC, Aerosmith. So I wanted to make sure this one was different too. And the big thing for me, I know Steve too, is he wanted you to pick your song at the start of the game. Which is totally different than Guns N' Roses. In Guns N' Roses you don't pick your song until you actually start that mode. And the other thing he was really adamant about was that the song plays all the way through. You don't restart the song when you get to the next ball, you don't restart the song after you play multi-ball. You start your song, you hear that song all the way through. Even if you're interrupted by another player, it comes right back to where you were when you were on your song.
    82:22
    And so... In a one-player game, it just plays straight through, even during bonus countdown and everything else. And so, I don't know. It makes it fun. So, starting with that, we had to figure out how to make it interesting to play each song, knowing you're going to get from the start of the song to the end. And they're all different lengths. The first one's two minutes, the longest one's seven and a half, something like that. So we had to build a rule around something you could do in the song, no matter how long it was, or what goes on in the song. And that was the basis of the way the game plays. Right. So many may not remember, but this is your first game with Jersey Jack.
    83:05
    Yes. First game? I mean, what are you saying? I want to make sure I heard that correctly. So, we're talking about this design process, but you just got in at QSJ at that point. Yeah, but I was, you know... I know you're a veteran people designer, but you're working with a team of people that you have to get familiar with. Well, we were pretty much familiar. I mean, we used to work together at Williams, Duncan Brown. I mean, he didn't work at Williams. Did he ever? Yeah, he did. Okay, he did for a while, but I had no interaction with him. But, you know, Duncan Brown's been a friend for a long time, and he's a very good software guy.
    83:46
    He's got, he has. He knows how to antagonize Steve. It makes it a lot of fun. I don't care about that. He can say whatever he wants.
    83:56
    He always brings up Hyperball, you know. I think Steve had a lot of stuff to kind of acclimate to, like the parts that we use and the way we, you know, the way we lay out the mounting system for the play field and, you know, stuff that's standardized for us but is different from what he has done at previous. And some of it we just, you know, I said I got to have this. So, you know, now we're using parts that are different. I don't think anybody ever used fin-shank screws. No, I don't think so. Other than like one or two in some weird places. Fin-shank screws go up from the bottom and they have threads. you pound it in like a nail, but it's got threads, and then you can put a post on it or anything. It's a really cost-effective way to mount things on the playfield.
    84:43
    We have done a lot of T-nuts from the bottom side where you can screw down from the top. Pinchang's the opposite, where the screw sticks up and then you can put the nut on the top. Okay. Jersey Jack had not done a lot of that. No. Of course, you've got there. Were there any things in the design of the game which, because it was your first game and because you were new and they'd worked hard to bring you to the company, you could get away with in Elton John, but you may not be able to get away with it in future games. I don't think that's going to be the case at all. I think, what is it? Management likes a game. It's like, it seems like it just gets made. I mean, that's what's happening. Yeah, it does seem that way. And you can't imagine, first of all, how, I don't know, I was really elated to go to work at Guernsey Jack because I was just, you know, the former company, I didn't have enough freedom, and it was just becoming more and more, I don't know, it's a drag on me because I can't do what I want to do, what I think I need to do to make a successful pinball machine. I think the other thing he was really happy about coming to work for us is our budget for our play field, you know, the cost of the play field. was higher than what he was used to. Yeah, much higher. And it gave him a lot of freedom to do. I mean, it's not insanely high. It's in a reasonable range, but it's enough above where he was at the previous employer that it gave him a little freedom to do some really cool stuff. Yeah, I mean, you're always going to be limited to some extent. Sorry? You're always going to be limited. Your budget, your bill of materials is always going to have a limit to it to some extent. Yeah, I probably can't do everything you want to do. Yeah. And you have tongue constraints. Yeah. Actually, I'm amazed at the freedom that we had. Yeah. But doing things like the display on the piano,
    86:39
    you know, we had the budget for that. That's the expensive part, and it's something we hadn't done before because it's a flexible strip. Yeah. But he never would have had the budget at the previous time. No way I would have had a piano Or if I did have a piano just be a piano and him sitting there and nothing No animation Right So now the game is out already In fact, there's already a new Jersey Jack game. How did the game do for Jersey Jack? It did very well. It's just, I don't know. I'm hearing that we still get orders every day.
    87:18
    Yeah. That's the same thing I've heard, too. There's consistent orders every week, they're still coming in, which is surprising to me. I actually hear that people are still talking about it. I mean, it's not a new game. We were here last year, and it wasn't brand new then, because we announced in October and we're here in March. So, yeah, it's been really good. I got the feeling it's sort of a bit of a sleeper game. Everybody had an opinion and then they played it and they completely changed their mind. It was only a sleeper game before anybody saw it. Right. Then it was hated by everybody. I mean, they had a stupid poll on Pinside. All the answers, all the possibilities were negative, everything. If it's Elton John, I'm not buying it. What are some of the other things they saw? Yeah, there was a lot of people that, you know. For fun reasons. Hard pass for me, hard pass for me. When you haven't even seen it or played it, yeah. So in that game, you've got an insane number of LEDs.
    88:28
    Yeah, 1600. How on earth do you go about programming all that many? You must have some pretty custom and dedicated software It allows you to feed in, I don't know, images or patterns into it. And particularly on that flexible screen around the piano, okay, it works like a screen, but it is an individual OED. So how do you drive that? So on the piano, and this is one of the things I really worried about early in the project because it's such a big piece of the game that I wanted to make sure we could really make it easy to develop stuff to go on there.
    89:14
    And, you know, the initial thought was just, you know, use it as, it's 500 LEDs, 570 LEDs. And just treat it as every other light in the system and work around trying to, like you said, load images on it. And it was, you know, as I'm starting to put some of these together, it's really difficult to make it work. And it's just not doing what we want. So it's like one of these things, I go home for the weekend, and that's all I think about is, how can I make this, because it's, you know, when we get to the end of the project, it's just chaos trying to get everything done, and I can't deal with this thing that's 500 LEDs at the end of a project. So I actually figured out how to treat those 500 LEDs as just another display in our system. So it took a chunk of work, and I probably spent a bit over a week on it, you know, trying to get it all done and working. But now, all the tools that we have for showing stuff on a big display work on there. So I can, you know, the same tools that show static images, the same tools that show movies, the same tools that print fonts, that all works. And it's so, everybody who walks up to the system, you know, it's the same coding as going on the big display. It's just, it's 57 by 11 instead. And that really helped. It really helped. The other LEDs, the inserts, the big ones are the stars. There's nine stars that spell out the letters Elton John. And each of those have 11 LEDs in them. So there's the points, and there's an inner circle, and one in the middle. And we used to get some help from Keith, who's our manager, and he came up with a way to treat those as an object. So each insert is one object. And it makes it really easy to specify where the lamps are laid out and what you want to do with them. So if you want to have them sweep up from bottom to top or left to right or go in circles, he made it really easy to define that star shape. And then they're all the same. There's nine stars in the same. So you just say this one's here and it's at this position. and here, and it's, you know, this angle. So nine stars, and it's not simple, but it makes it easy to essentially treat one star as one object instead of having to deal with 11 LEDs at a time. All right. So, again, a little bit of work up front, and it makes it so much easier, you know, in the game where you're trying to do all these shows that have to, you know, all the multiballs have shows, all the songs have shows. That really helped. Right. So when it came time to, well, was there a set time when you had to have this game done by so it would launch? Or was there some flexibility of that? Were you trying to hit a particular event? Were you trying to get it there in time for an Oscar party? What happens at Jersey Jack with, you know, project order and all that is based a lot on what's going on with the game online now. So it's kind of nebulous. It's like, I mean, we wanted to go to Pinball Expo. That was the big thing. So we were driven by that, not by any management thing, really. They didn't say it has to be done now.
    92:44
    So a self-imposed pinball. Yeah, I mean, you know, to get the biggest bang for the buck, we've got to be at a show with a new game.
    92:54
    How did that work out? It worked out great. All the bad comments sort of went away in a month or so after that. I get these things, Steve, I hated the game. I can't even look at it. I don't like Elton John. I'm never buying it. And then they come back to me and go, I bought it. And I go, look what you wrote inside. I know.
    93:15
    Nothing you can do about it. Yeah. And I was just talking to a friend of ours from this area in Texas. and the same thing is like I bought the game, people come over to our house to play pinball and it's their favorite game I hear that over and over I couldn't have planned that this is a whole bunch of people that worked on this project that came together to make it really cool So what was it that was so good about this team that was able to produce that game that ended up being so Everybody was dedicated Trying to make the best game we could make. That's it. It's a little different than the former employer. There we go. The people he keeps saying, the ones that really work closely, I mean, me and Duncan and Joe, we're really excited about this game. Especially Duncan. Duncan has been an Elton John fan for years. He brought in all of the albums, and we went through the records, not the CDs. Went through all the albums, looking at the artwork, because he has the original albums that have the inserts or the double albums got the artwork on the inside. We insert all that stuff looking for pieces that we could use here and there for rules and ideas for graphics.
    94:33
    So, I mean, there's really those people who are excited about actually doing Elton John game. I think that's what we could have. I didn't really want to do it in the beginning. I didn't because I didn't know that he had a billion fans with a beat and I didn't know that, I don't know, we went to a concert and people in our age range, let's say, it seemed like there was an equal amount of young people there. I mean, he's still got a big following. Ooh, yes. There's still 50, I think, number one. Right. But I'm amazed that young people know the songs and all that because, man, it was a long time ago. even now I mean just last month he had another one with Franny Carlow yeah with a great video based around pinball yeah I don't think he wants to quit maybe not touring but he is a showman I know he loves audiences he loves it yeah so when the game got out there were the two different occasions Sotheby's was auctioning off a game which sold for $55,000.
    95:48
    And about a week later, Elton John had his Academy Awards viewing party as a fundraiser. Yeah. Two games ago are being sold at $200,000 each. Yeah. It was awesome. So, okay.
    96:03
    What does that do with you guys when you hear that? We get big heads. Yeah. Everything we know is right. I'm just kidding. you know that's really on Jack I mean Jack had this idea of making our game support Elton John's charities when he envisioned the license it's really on Jack he was more surprised than anyone that the prices that those games went for I mean we've seen some charity auctions you know 10,000 20,000 but nobody could predict something like the $200,000 sale. It's just, you know, he says it makes our heads really big. No, it makes us really proud that we planned to do that kind of work for his charities.
    96:56
    And it worked out way better than we could have expected. So what about Jack? Jack's like, Jack was great for us. He just got the things we wanted. There were a couple songs that we didn't get to choose or anything. but they still work, and it's okay. I mean, it was all right, but we, you know, at one point we asked him for another song, and he got it. I mean, he basically got the agreement of everything.
    97:22
    Alton's husband is the guy we went through besides our contact at... Roboto. Yeah, management. Roboto. Yeah, but I'm thinking about what is the name of that kind of thing? They handle tons of bands, you know, and it's from England, and that's what this guy worked in. And the guy was great. I mean, we just, we didn't, there weren't many arguments or anything else. They just about gave us everything, you know. Can we get some speech lines from Elton John? And we got them.
    97:59
    His husband kind of coached him on some stuff. Yeah, yeah. They were one of the best licensors I've ever worked with. I mean, they were easy to work with, they were responsive, but they let us do a lot of the things that I never would have imagined.
    98:21
    There's only one thing that I was terribly insulted by. When are you going to submit to creative? Like, nothing we do is creative. We need the creative. And they were talking about the artwork, you know, and that's what they wanted to see. And they had rules about that. Yeah, Elton doesn't want piano keys all over the game. He doesn't want this. He doesn't want that and
    98:45
    But then we started sending in the images of our concepts and stuff Franchi, Franchi broke all the rules. He broke all the rules and they loved it. They go, oh this is it. They can't believe it broke down.
    99:00
    Yeah, they didn't know how good it could look. Yeah, it done right. He is a great artist he was easy to work with too who's John Youssef PJP John Paul also fantastic you know yeah I mean what's his name Olaf yeah Olaf Grummey spectacular work I mean I can say that there's nothing I don't like nothing's ugly or I mean he's just got sort of a like you look at the very beginning of the game and shit's spinning around you know and then all of a sudden the rock is kind of going off and I don't know it's just a really cool thing that expresses Elton's music very nicely and it's full of energy as well yeah and also all the cartoons that we used there's a lot of them and they're all what Elton runs behind his show on a big giant screen you know and I love those things. After I saw them in the show, I had seen some of them before a long time ago, but not the quantity and not the quality that these were. So we asked for those too and they gave them to us. So are you, as a team now, are you a team? Yes. We are working on the next game together. We'll go all together. Yeah.
    100:32
    Right now it's just me. because those people are allocated for other things right now. Duncan's going to be done soon.
    100:42
    Is it getting a bit like Williams with the tribal thing where one team? Williams? That's not true. It's like some people that worked at Williams, I'm not going to mention any names, allowed no outside input. Just adamant about you will do this exactly the way I say. So it's not a universal thing. I mean, we... Yeah, we're not as adversarial as Williams. When I'm drawing something on my game, I call everybody on the team in. Hey, look at this. What do you think? Okay. And they show me what they're doing, you know, and it's like, it was great.
    101:20
    I get working with this team was a completely different experience than working with previous teams at the other company. I'm not going to say that all experiences at the previous company were bad. I mean, come on, I got to work with Wyman on a bunch of games. And, you know, all the people there are pretty talented, too, you know. But my problems came from management. Right. And not teams. I mean, that's a different company than us. They're much bigger.
    101:54
    They do many more titles per year. And that's difficult, right, to keep on that schedule, keep that factory running. it's difficult. We're a little bit more laid back in terms of the design process. And really more, I think more focused on the end quality of the game. Right. So does that benefit the creative process? It definitely does. Because even in programming you have to be creative sometimes. Oh yeah. And that takes time. A lot. It takes time and it's literally trying something to see if it's fun. If it's not, sometimes you have to throw it away and start again.
    102:35
    So tell me about the topper on the game. The topper is... Yeah. Is that something that you designed as well, or was there somebody else who got the topper? I did specify what we wanted, but we go to this Mexican restaurant now and then, and they had this... Taco Tuesday. Yeah. They have really good tacos. Yeah. Anyway, they had this big rotating light. It was about this big, and it had two turrets on the end, You might have seen these before. They spin like this and they spin like this. And there are also lasers and strobe lights. So it's like we walked in. It's in a Mexican restaurant. Yeah. And we'll have a bar and like a little dance floor area. And it's like we walked in and we had forgot to turn that stuff off from the night before. So it was still going. It's like, you know, going on the ceiling. And we've been talking about the topper for like two, three weeks. just no good ideas. You know, it was like, oh, let's put a piano on top. And we're like, well, there's already a piano in the game. And we walked into this Mexican restaurant and it was like, that is what we need right there. And I've got a picture of it. I'll show you later. But then he ordered one of these, like the exact model. And we stuck it on the back box. It's huge. It wouldn't fit in the box. It was dangerous, too.
    103:57
    There's motors in there with good power. It would have It never worked. But that's the idea. We had to scale it down.
    104:06
    But the other thing that was cool is we were able to find a company that would manufacture that little laser disc in it to get our custom images into it.
    104:15
    And that, I think, is what really made it work, where it's got the whole logo and the star and the Jersey Jack logo in it. And that's, yeah, that was cool.
    104:25
    Okay. So, for now, Bill is mainly working on the next game. Yes. Tell us all about it. Oh, I have to tell you. I have been letting out one teaser. It doesn't have the Star Trek side ramp. Yeah. So. Yes. No, it will not. It doesn't need it. So that's the only thing I can tell you. But that means there is a first layout by Steve as well. Oh, yeah. It's been well underway for a while. Not that it's anywhere close to being done, but it's been underway. There are more shots on the game.
    105:05
    Okay. Like quite a few more than others I've made. Okay. Like the old ones. Okay. Are we talking white, buddy? We aren't talking anything.
    105:18
    We're talking, the name of the game right now is None of Your Beeswax. That's what I tell people now. None of your beeswax.
    105:30
    And there's going to be a lot of LEDs, too. Okay, cool. That worked so well in Elton. I really love the display pulling you in from across the room. So a lot of LEDs in this game, too. Do you have a timeline for a release? I think it will be around the 35th day of the festival of Kunagoga.
    105:57
    Again, that's a new release to the Arsenal. Right. Okay, now we know. Eric is coming first, and that's likely to be a huge title for J.J.P. So that gives you a lot of time, I suppose. And apparently we can talk about that one now. Yeah. As of yesterday. Yeah.
    106:17
    Yeah, we'll be after that, we think. I can't tell you when after is. No. We don't know. We do not know. Okay, so that's... They wouldn't do it. Right.
    106:29
    Okay. I'm sort of... I have a question for you two. I am very happy to... Well, I love the game. I'm happy to see that it's still being built. And it's a great game for something, I think.
    106:45
    And to do me there is no... Well, there will be a limit to how long that you have the license. Yeah, there will be. Well, I say that, but I assume you will. I assume you have it for a number of years. and then that's it. Honestly, we knew it. I don't know how many years our license is for. I don't know how many years it was for. I never saw those details, but I'm pretty sure that they were so easy to work with it wouldn't be a problem. If we wanted to build more games they'd allow it. Can you imagine doing another version? A different model?
    107:20
    I... It's crossed our minds. I'll just say that. I mean, I get it, Rick Road. There's a lot of people who have asked about adding more songs. And it's a lot of work. It's not just like, you know, okay, here's three more audio tracks and here you go.
    107:41
    That is a lot of engineering work. And also it's like, how much bang for the buck are you going to get? I mean, are you going to, you know, if you add more songs, I don't know. How many more games are you going to play? Right, how many more, I don't know how much that will affect how many we sell.
    107:59
    And right now, we don't have resources available. I'm working on his game. There's other people working on Eric's game.
    108:09
    Mark's game is done. So we don't have people available to go back and add stuff to help. It's a lot of work. Yeah, sure. Okay, well I'm question two So thank you very much Bill Grupp Thank you very much Steve Ritchie For joining us on this special Spincast interview Great to talk to you guys Well thank you Steve Ritchie And thank you Bill Grupp Yeah, thanks guys Very entertaining and interesting talk And glad we finally got that one In the can And as a heads up Steve will be back next month to join us for What's Cooking with Steve Ritchie, where he will share, I think, even two of his favorite recipes. Ooh, okay. So we'll save that. We already recorded it, but we'll save that for next month. And, yeah. This could be turning into a feature. It is.
    109:13
    Okay. Well, thank you. I think that's the news and quite a lot of news from Jersey Jet Pinball for this month. So we can probably move on to their neighbours in Elk Grove Village, which is Stern Temple. Right. And it's been a busy month for them, although no new game released just yet.
    109:32
    No, they were exhibiting at the Amusement Expo show in Las Vegas, which is the trade show that's held there every single year. And they normally have a big stand exhibiting their most recent games, which is exactly what they're doing this time. and there to represent them was Gary Stern, Seth Davis, John Buscaglia, Roper Fuentes, Alex Eddy, Tyler Carlson, Pat Powers and Pablo Badilla. So a big team from Stern there and also a special guest as well. Yeah, Matthew Geyer was also present and we'll get back to him in just a second because you might think like, who's that? Yeah, indeed. Other than that, well, let's get on to that now then, because who is this Matthew Guy guy? Well, this Matthew Guy was someone I ran into actually in the elevator at the Texas Pinball Festival, and he was introduced to me as the new vice president of marketing at Stern Pinball. So my question was, are you working under Zack Sharp? And he was like, no, Zack is working under me.
    110:47
    Yes. So obviously they're kicking their marketing team up a notch by appointing a vice president. Yes. And, well, so Matthew Geyer used to be working for WWE, the Wrestling Federation, or whatever you want to call it. I don't know how to do it. No? Oh, well. But they have a gaming division with the, I think it's WWE 2K22 or 24 or 25. Every year there's a new game with the current roster of talent being immortalized in a video game, and you can play your own match and what have you. But he used to work on them And well, those are obviously console, PC and mobile products And well, I just received a press release Although it seems rather late But the news apparently got out earlier this week Although we already knew about it And Stern says that Matthew will drive the organization's marketing strategies, driving brand awareness, consumer acquisition, and revenue growth through effective marketing initiatives and cross-functional collaboration. At last. We're waiting for the cross-functional collaboration. Yes. But reading where Matthew is coming from, I'm kind of curious. I mean, I'm not going to take anything away from his capabilities, but the WWE gaming products is a totally different target audience and pricing point as well than pinball machines. yes true but it doesn't mean they can't expand the gaming side of it, the pinball side into more online stuff through the insider connected and associated mobile products as well and of course they need to as one of the key factors in his description there also have to grow their revenue as well so it's all about marketing and bringing pinball to new markets, which is obviously something that they've been trying to do a lot of.
    113:32
    And because we obviously tried the home version of it, but it seems that there's plenty of growth out there, or possible, if you can get pinball into new markets, which haven't previously considered purchasing one. Right, and it must have been a very busy inauguration period for Matthew, I should say. As he basically, first day on the job, he's off to Las Vegas for Amusement Expo.
    114:09
    And before you know it, he's in Texas for the Texas Pimple Festival, hardly seeing the inner walls of his office. Yes, it's interesting. I think he said he lives in Las Vegas. Ah, so as well. I wonder whether he's actually going to be at the factory in Elk Grove Village or whether he's going to be working from Vegas or not. It'll be difficult to find out. But yeah, definitely a baptism of fire going straight into two big shows like that. one trade-based and one more hobbyist-based. So it's a good way to learn the business very quickly. I was going to say, he got his taste fairly soon, I suppose. Yeah, and we're talking about growing revenue, and one of those ways of growing revenue is through add-ons to the games that Stern make. And on that theme, there's a whole range of Venom accessories, accessories for your Venom game that have been released this month, which are speaker lights, the expression speaker lights, a Venom shooter knob, some art blades for the inside of the cabinet, a new Venom topper, which actually looked quite interesting when I saw it at JPF, and some new Venom themed side armour. but the topper I'm not sure whether it was always meant to be that way but it has an LCD panel in the middle which shows the I don't know what you call the Venom symbiotype animation in the middle of the thing floating around as if it's in a tank which look quite nice and two side panels either side of it so it looked quite nice I don't know what the cost of that is. I'm guessing 1,500 as a guess.
    116:11
    Well, it could easily be 2,000. I don't know. It could be, but, yeah, it didn't seem that interactive. I didn't see anything moving on it. Right. Not to say it doesn't, but, yeah, so that's one way of growing your revenue from your titles. Right.
    116:29
    But that was at the Texas Pinball Festival, and Stern had a big display at that show, courtesy of Marco Specialties and Fun Superstore, who I represent. Stern aren't there themselves. They are represented by Marco and Fun. But they had a big display of Dungeons & Dragons there. And quite a few Stern staff, I have to say, as well. Seth Degas was there. George Gomez was present. Dwight Sullivan and Brian Eddy were there. hosting a seminar as well. Yes, indeed. So, Stern Management, and of course, our new best friend, Matthew Geyer, the new VIP of Stern Marketing. Marketing, yeah. So, you've met, and I haven't met because I was busy elsewhere. Yeah, so, well, the interesting thing is, on a little fun side note,
    117:27
    Matthew looks actually quite a bit like Zombie Effie. So there were quite a few people actually mistaking him for somebody else. Oh, really? Yeah. So I thought, okay, Jeremy's here. And it turns out Jeremy was not. Yeah. Okay. That's marketing for you. Get yourself instant recognition, even if it's somebody else. Right. So, yes, you mentioned Brian and Dwight did a seminar at Texas Film Festival on the making of Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, at some point fairly technical, I would say. Yeah, it showed the depth of the game and the number of different permutations and possibilities within it. It showed the development pictures, or Brian did, showing the playfield from the earliest ideas all the way up to the finished product and how the dragon on it was initially under the ramp and then the pallet was too big for that and they ended up moving it above the ramp and then getting it to spit out the pinballs at the same time. Getting a cave and all that kind of stuff. Yes, that's right, because it would have been huge otherwise so they put it coming out of a cave to make it smaller. Yes, yes. Very interesting, I thought, but it did go on a bit as far as the rules go.
    118:54
    But it's definitely worth watching. you can watch all the seminars from the Texas Pinball Festival on their Twitch channel. No, that's not true anymore. No? Has it moved? It has moved, because on Twitch the seminars were only available for two weeks, and that period has expired now. But they are on YouTube. Simply type in the search phrase Texas Pinball Seminar, and it will straight take you there. Very good. Thank you for the update. I shall watch, well actually I don't need to watch because I think I saw them all but if you haven't seen them all I haven't seen none of them well you saw that one at least so well I did a bit of my own work anyway so the most interesting question of course is Martin is there any new code yes there is you'll be pleased to hear on the two games we've just been talking about on Venom and Dungeons and Dragons. Do tell, do tell. Yes, well, Venom had a new update on the 19th of March, a version 1.04, which added a new Ghost Rider host, which is only available with a topper installed. Although, interestingly, you don't actually have to have the topper installed on the game you're playing. If you've played another Venom machine that does have the topper installed, then you can play this Ghost Rider host for three months after that. So, because you remember that Venom keeps track of your progress throughout the game. So, it gets a bit complicated if you were playing a host which is then not available anymore on the game. You've got three months after playing a game with a topper. But you have to be playing with Insider Connected, or else the game would not know. That's correct, yes, it needs to be logged in. Yeah, and that will then make that Ghost Rider host available to you. Otherwise, it won't be available. Yeah. So, speaking on a slight side note, here's a suggestion for Stern. I mean, I get it that at the Stern booth, all the games are connected to Insider Connector. But there's more Stern games at the show. why not make the Wi-Fi code available for all these other games to connect to that system as well?
    121:25
    Because I found a Stern machine somewhere in another booth, and I tried to scan my inside and connect it, and it turns out the game is not connected to the Internet at that point. Ah, right. Okay. Good point. I mean, I guess they may not know how many other machines are going to be there which could connect to it, and they want to have a guaranteed quality of Internet available. They don't want to have lots of people. And, of course, once the code's known that that's a Wi-Fi code, then people will connect their phones to it, and they'll connect all kinds of things to it, won't they?
    122:02
    Oh, that could be interesting. Anyway, moving on with a more new code from Stern Pinball. Yes, Dungeons & Dragons we were just talking about. Actually, two updates, one very shortly after the other. 18th of March came version 0.87, which added day and night cycles, which allowed you to travel at night until the next day starts, and an extensive Darkhold bonus round set of rules. Don't know anything about what that is, so I can't talk any more about it. However, that version did introduce a couple of crashes which could occur, so three days later version 0.88 came out on 21st, which hopefully has fixed those crashes. So I wouldn't install version 0.87, but do install version 0.88. And that's all the code, I think, this month from Stern Pinball. Right, okay, well thank you for that. So in the meantime, I'm quickly moving a topic around. Oh, okay, right. Right. And, well, since we're talking about the Texas Pinball Festival, we had quite the road trip this year. We were both present at the festival, but our journey, once in America, I would say, started actually in Houston,
    123:26
    where we visited the Barrels of Fun facility. And, well, David N.S., the... Chief Mischief Maker. Yeah, exactly, I was looking for that title.
    123:41
    Well, he was kind enough to have us visit the factory, have us sign NDAs as soon as we entered the building,
    123:54
    and then took us around for, he took quite a lot of time out of his busy schedule, I have to say, yeah. Yeah, almost an entire day. Yeah, took us around the factory Which was very clean And efficient looking I have to say And Well Since we signed the NDA He also showed us what he's working on And what we can't talk about Yes, that's right We showed us the next game, but we can't say any more Than that But we played it We did, or can't we say that either no let's not say that oh too late you said that ok so yes they were finishing up the last Labyrinth games in the factory over there and getting ready to start working on the next title right so and we immediately learned that that title would not be shown at Texas Pinball Festival show and we also heard learned why which makes a lot of sense so yeah Well, it's a title to look forward for and, well, I'd say give it a couple of weeks, a couple of months. Give them time to further develop the code and get acquainted with building this new game.
    125:22
    Anyway, so talking about the new game, although we're not talking about the new game, There has just been an announcement From Bowser Fun About a new shaker motor Called Thunder Down Under Which they say will be included As standard in the next game And it can be retrofitted To Glamorous And there was another announcement From Bowser Fun as well Which is a Rather interesting one I would say Yeah Basically, if you own a Barrels of Fun Labyrinth game, then basically Barrels of Fun is calling you, even if you didn't buy it as a first buyer, but you bought it from someone else, although we understand there's very little games being sold second hand. But if you own a Labyrinth game, then you're asked to register to enter a draw where you can win game number two for free. Yeah. And this will increase further on. So let's say that you own a Labyrinth game and game number two, and you register both games before game number three is announced, then you get two entries to win game number three, and so on, and so on, and so on. So that's quite an interesting approach, I would say. yes, there was a pain and stress that they want to reward owners of their game and make them feel part of the BowserCon family and this promotion keeps everybody engaged and involved in not just their current game but what's coming up next as well so that's a nice free promotion really isn't it? yep Yeah, and then, of course, well, at the Texas Pinball Festival, Butch Peel did a seminar on the making of the manual for Labyrinth, which is sort of his expertise.
    127:46
    Yeah, indeed, and, of course, they had a stand on the show floor as well, where they had four Labyrinth games set up, which looked very nice, but, of course, they're pretty much done, well, almost done in making those, So only a certain amount of marketing going on. There's only a few left available. Yeah.
    128:07
    Well, I think there's probably by now less than 100 still available. That's right. Yeah, definitely less than 100 now. Yeah.
    128:17
    But I think they made a very good impression at the Texas Pimple Festival. So well done, Barrows of Fun and David Garnett and his team. and we look forward on the review or announcements of game number two but as I said earlier don't hold your breath yet no it's going to be a busy review schedule over the next few weeks shall we say yeah we're already talking about JDP it's certainly going to be announcing their next game as well and Bowser's Bond going to be announcing their next game Right, so, yeah, lots of new titles up in the air, and, well, there's still more to cover, so let's just move down the list of topics to this year. Yeah, well, one more game we're hoping to see revealed before too much longer will be from American Pimple, because we know that they've been working a long time on their next release, which is rumoured to be Cuphead. Which is really true, I'll let you say that, because I don't have anything. But there's no sign of it being announced just yet, although it is still being worked on, despite all the layoffs and the downsizing of the factory staff. They still hope to get the game out. No actual federal announcements when that's going to be, but the timing's up to them to an extent, but they want to avoid all these big titles that are going to be coming out, I suppose, because no one wants to be crushed by that, so they can either go first or give it a little breathing space once all those big titles are out and people might have some more money to spend. Well, there's plenty of people who can buy multiple games if they want to, and if the game is good, it will sell anyway. Yeah, but a lot of people have a finite amount of pinball resources, to spend and if Not everybody a millionaire Well and not everyone got the space problem either Oh that might be the problem yes Yeah. Well, American Bimble were due to have a booth at Texas Bimble Festival. They had a space marked out on the floor plan but weren't there themselves. They were represented by Bimble Traders and Planetary Bimble Supply. Bimble Traders being the retail side of Parachute Pinball, and they had a bunch of form machines, I think. They had two galactic tank forces, which were apparently running new codes. I remember David Fix in his interview with us telling us about how they had been working on improving the code of a galactic tank force. Well, that was happening in those games, but it wasn't without some issues.
    131:13
    So it may not be the final version. Right On a side note It's rather interesting How many people actually mentioned The David Six interview that we did a couple of months ago And everybody having an opinion about that interview Yeah So That interview Like it or not Gave a lot of Interest I would say Yeah and of course still available to listen to in the same place that you got this particular recording. Right. So, that's as far as the side note goes. Yes, right. Going back to Collective Tank Force, what was quite surprising was that the signature edition of that machine, which is the top-end version, that was available at the show for just $8,000. and when it was launched it had an MRSP of $15,000. So $7,000 off that, so virtually half price.
    132:21
    So interesting to see that. And Hot Wheels is also available for $6,395 and the Barrios BBQ Can was $5,995. So some good prices on those games if you were after them. Right, so it still seems like a clear-out sale from American Pimble, basically selling whatever is still in boxes, get it out.
    132:48
    Nothing wrong with that, of course, although I'm not quite sure how those people feel they've bought, actually, the signature Egyptian optoelectic tank for $15,000, because this is basically a giant devaluation of your game.
    133:07
    Yeah. These were, I think, the prices of the games that were on the show floor, so they weren't brand new in box. They had been played across the weekend, so there's that, I suppose. But I don't know whether they come with the lunchbox, though, either. You know? Yeah. That's going to be worth, well, a lot.
    133:26
    Yeah, so I think, anyway, that's all you have to say, pretty much, about American Pinball for this month. There's no further developments in what's going to be happening with the company or their plays up contract manufacturing division, which we haven't heard anything more about yet, but has a number of possibilities given potential trade tariffs being imposed on imports in the US. Well, if I were American Pinball, I would anticipate that, and at least make sure that there is enough assembly line workers and so on that if you're able to do assembly work for a third party, at least you don't have to start sourcing for people once you get such a party to collaborate with you. Yeah, absolutely. Because right now it doesn't look like they have the capacity or the people to actually start building machines. And it would help a lot, I think, if at least such a team would be available. Yeah. Well, we don't know what's going on in the background, whether they've got these people available or lined up or got a deal with an agency to have the staff ready on demand. Let's hope so. All right. Okay. so let's move on we'll move across to Europe now and talk about what's going on in your country with Dutch Pinball and Dutch Pinball Exclusive because pictures from there show Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is now in production yes do you have any further insights into that? the game is in production that's not a further insight that's a great insight No, well, basically that's all I know. I did talk to Barry Griesen, the CEO of the company, and I asked whether he was attending the Texas Pimple Festival, and his answer was very short, no, because we have nothing to sell. Which makes sense, because Alice in Wonderland is sold out.
    135:44
    And Barry basically figured, like, oh, well, there's other things I need to prioritize, instead of attending a pinball show. Right. Now, that doesn't mean that there was no representation for Dutch pinball at the Texas Pinball Festival,
    136:01
    albeit in a rather, well, let's say, interesting way. Because we got to see a one-of-a-kind Big Lebowski pinball machine with artwork provided by Christopher Frenchy, and this was supposed to be a special edition, 30th anniversary edition or 40th anniversary edition, I lost count.
    136:28
    But apparently, while there was a request sent out for approval of such artwork, eventually I think the movie studio said like, nah, let's not do that. Let's just stick with whatever version we have right now. and let's not do any changes to the artwork. So that's a unique one-of-a-kind machine that was on display. You couldn't play it for obvious reasons because if it's one-of-a-kind, you want to keep it in pristine condition, I suppose.
    137:10
    Yes, that's right, yeah. It certainly looked attractive. It never came to be. Yeah. Hey. Oh, well. So, well, it's a pity for Christopher Frenchy putting in all this time and effort in his artwork, and then one machine gets made, and that's it. And there were posters with the artwork of that game, but they were not available. They had a few small prints, but not like flyers or anything that you could take with you. At least I couldn't.
    137:44
    So. and well that's all the news I can share because obviously I know a lot more that's what's going on but you know I'm under NDA and I respect that right okay just going to go back for a moment to one of our previous companies and Stone Pimble in this case just as a recording this just had an email through from them the next title is going to be called Ed, and it's the ape-themed game you've been waiting for. Right. Yeah, so it's time to go bananas for the ape-themed pinball the world has been waiting for, the first primate of Hollywood, the king of the great apes, Ed,
    138:30
    featuring moments you love and treasure from the beloved 1996 classic. I've never heard of this, but I'm sure it's a classic. and I'm sure that the fact that it's April 1st today has absolutely nothing to do with the timing of this announcement of course not so if Stern wants to pass on pranks like this at least give us a playfield picture too instead of just a mock-up cabinet yeah that might fool us the next time I'm trying to zoom in on it but I can't actually get to see what it is so oh well yes so carry on then with news from other pinball companies and this time rather than going from the great apes let's go to slightly smaller pinball and Wonderland Amusements you remember were doing their Alice Goes to Wonderland game they launched a Kickstarter which we announced they would we trailed it on the 12th of March it went live and they had an initial target of that of 100,000 US dollars, which was reached in just two minutes. And when I checked yesterday, they had raised over $640,000 in a Kickstarter from 641 backers. So over six times their initial target.
    140:04
    Which basically means that they are building over 600 games. Yes, indeed, yes, that's right. Some of them may have brought more than one. So there was no shortage of support there. I mean, 100,000 targets seemed pretty easy to achieve, but it seems to have gone down very well. And additionally, they just announced an offer. They said it would guarantee that all orders will ship within 12 months of the campaign's close. Well, if you never close the campaign, then... Oh, the campaign doesn't close in eight days' time or nine days' time. So that's definitely going to close. And it says if we don't deliver, you may request a full refund. Doesn't mean you'll get it. It's just you can request it. You can feed me to it.
    140:53
    Yeah. And to my surprise, they were not present at the Texas Pinball Festival. No. Although if they've already got all their funding, they don't really need to be there. but it would have been nice to see the game there and have a chance to play it as well. Exactly. Well, they were at Pinball Expo. They were, but that was pre-Kickstarter, so they were still generating interest at that stage, but they've probably got enough interest for now, and they've proven it as a working concept. Now we have to see what the game looks like. Right. So now we just have to see whether they can actually set up manufacturing. Yeah, exactly. Which has been a bottleneck problem for others in the past, So we wish them all the best of luck in doing so. And hope they're not impacted by terrorists, because they are manufacturing in China, of course. Right. And also there's challenges there. And might just set up another Kickstarter for the terrorists.
    141:56
    Yes. Okay. Well, that's one of them. So congratulations to them on easily achieving their target. and we'll look forward to seeing that game coming out. Pedretti, meanwhile.
    142:09
    In Italy. In Italy, yes. Pedretti Gaming, Pedretti Pinball, Euro Pinball Corp, whatever. They weren't at the Texas Pinball Festival themselves as such, but both versions of their Funhouse remake game were there, I should say. Again, on the Pinball Traders and Plantry Pinball stand had a nice little marquee with both those games set up. And they looked very nice, very attractive. Predatory Pinball being, through their pinball traders company, being a distributor in the US for that game. Right. And, well, from Predatory, it's a small step to Pinball Brothers, as they are collaborating together on the Euro Pinball Corps. I have to say, I get the feeling there are a lot more Funhaus games being shipped than EBA games, which is the most recent title for pinball pro-less. But that's just an impression that I'm getting, so don't take that as a fact. It's just an impression.
    143:22
    But speaking of the EBA pinball machine, Yeah, finally, the Wizard Mode for that game has been announced. And I quote, Today is the arrival of the all-new ABBA Wizard Mode update.
    143:39
    The Ultimate ABBA Pinball Machine Challenge. Now the world's ABBA players can elevate their gameplay and immerse themselves in the full ABBA experience, complete the Wizard Mode, unlock the Ultimate ABBA Journey, and complete the game. Well, that's basically what a wizard does. Yes. Well, you'd hope you could beat the game, yes. Yes. If you're, well, if you manage to get there, then you're really quite a good player, so then I have no doubt that you might as well finish it. Unless you are not under pressure playing pinball. Well, we already heard last month from Daniel Jansen that the Pinball Brothers wouldn't be at the Texas Pinball Festival, which is true. They weren't there. although pinball traders, apparently pinball, again, did have another Voyage edition on their stand alongside the four American pinball titles we talked about earlier.
    144:35
    And then there's rumors that we don't talk about, but we can report there is a rumor. We can confirm there is a rumor about the next time the four predict you, but we have, well, one of the reasons, sorry, pinball rumors indeed, one of the reasons that Daniel and his team were not pregnant at Texas Pimple Festival is because they are working very hard on that upcoming title for which we have no timeline yet yeah and there is well there is speculation about what it could be and there was an image shared on LinkedIn I believe where people seem to read into what that title might be. Should I mention that title, or should we leave it as a rumor? Well, I think we've been talking about it for long enough now. You might as well just tell us. Okay, well, the rumor apparently suggests that the next title for Pinball Brothers will be Predator.
    145:39
    That's nice. Well, that's a title that previously Skid B Pinball have been working on, apparently without actually having the license for the game. and that caused already quite a shitstorm pardon my French but it sort of would make sense in the sense that well, Pimple Brothers already have produced an alien pimple machine and I think there's an alien versus predator movie as well in that sense Predator would sort of tie in with Pinball Brothers and it might be interesting for alien owners to also own a Predator pinball machine well they might bring out a Predator game they might bring out an alien Mrs. Predator game that could also be the case yes so you have the trilogy right so well I think well there's plenty of people waiting for a pinball machine that would say with Arnold Schwarzenegger quote Yes, or something like that, yes. Yes.
    146:52
    Yes, okay. Well, that's just a rumour, so we won't dwell on that too long. And I think that's about it for Pinball Brothers for this month. So let's move on to Back to America and to Spooky Pinball. And their current title, Evil Dead, and they went big on that game at Texas Pinball Festival. I think they had eight machines on their own stand. another on the Nitro Pinball stand, might be another one somewhere else as well. But, yeah, they've created a big post about it. Yeah, oh, yeah, definitely. So the interesting story, I think, here is, so I was talking to Buck, who is sort of running the company with Spooky Luke. I was at the stand, and I'm like,
    147:41
    I told him, like, I think you're going to sell out of this game this weekend. And he's like, no, we have, it's probably at the end of this month, or the end of April, they were aiming for, he was like, we have like 48 games left to sell, and it would be nice, but no, he didn't think so. Well, one day later I got the pleasure of telling him, I told you so. so because they announced that all 888 Evil Dead pinball machines have indeed been sold with Pinball Store one of their distributors buying their last 25 remaining games on the Saturday of the Texas Pinball Festival yeah well I think it went down the storm at the show probably the game that got the most attention I think and a lot of people were surprised both by the quality of the gameplay and the quality of the artwork on the game as well. I think Christopher Ritchie's package on that really stood out and surprised a lot of people.
    148:55
    And I'm not at all surprised that they sold out once people got a chance to see it and play it because the gameplay was fun as well. It was surprising. Yeah, especially for a horror thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fan of horror films. I don't know anything about the Evil Dead movie, or movie series, I should say. Yeah. But we played it together, and we had fun doing it. Yeah. And it's a packed play field, and it's a wide body, and there's a huge amount on the game. And I think it's a good value game. If you think the play field is a bag, you should see the other side. Yeah. Seriously, I mean... It's almost the opposite of the eternal pinball game isn't it? Yeah exactly, I mean the underside of that playfield is so packed you wonder how on earth are they making money on that game? There's a lot of hardware in there that's for sure, but it's put to good use and there's a lot of little features in there that you know if you first start playing it you don't even know where all the shots are and what all the features do and then all of a sudden you shoot the ball somewhere and it does something you weren't expecting. So I think that's great. Yeah, there's a lot of surprising elements in that game.
    150:13
    Yeah. So congratulations to Spooky Pinball for selling... I was just going to say, one of the things I did see was a little bit weird, and I got a picture of it in the Pinball News report, is there's kids who are like, you know, three, four, five-year-olds playing this game on stepstools. and I'm thinking, is this really the best thing for the kids at that age, but hey I don't know and Christopher Frenchy was selling Evil Dead art posters at the show even though I'm absolutely not into horror or the Evil Dead for that matter I got one couldn't resist it's a limited print of I think only 100 signed copies so and who knows what they might do for Midwest Gaming Classic they might do something similar I don't know but job well done to Christopher Frenchy Midwest Gaming Classic this weekend by the way is coming up so we'll be reporting on any news from that show in the next month's broadcast.
    151:32
    Right. And then moving on to Taiwan, where our good friend Mike Kaminowski is manufacturing the Blues Brothers. And we had the pleasure of playing the Blues Brothers at the Nitro Pinball Stand at the Texas Pinball Show. The game was specifically flown in to be at the show.
    151:58
    I don't think it was working all the time, and it had to do with the... Once you got to the third ball, for some reason, the ball could not be launched, or it would not be launched into the shooter lane. Yeah. So if you saw the game and were not able to play it, at times it was turned off, but at times it was also turned on after it had been turned off so I have no idea what's up with that and I had the, well I'm not sure whether it was a pleasure I was able to take a photo of a very outspoken well member of the pinball universe well not pinball universe but pinball community so to speak who is absolutely not happy with what HomePing did with this dream thing of this person.
    153:04
    But I wasn't able to take a photo of this person playing the game. In all fairness, I have to admit, when he was playing the game, the left slipper was a little, was not tight enough, screwed down, which meant that it went further up and up and up and up during gameplay, so that's not helping. So that might have blurred his reception of the game, I would say, or his point of view. But I posted that online And well that caused a shit storm Again pardon my French My apologies for that to Mike Kalinowski Others find it Rather entertaining I think Right That was basically That one game of theirs On the show floor And I don't think we have any other news from hoping. I don't think we have any further developments on that game or any future titles. Well, I do have some news in the sense that I did talk to Mike Kalinowski before the Texas Pinball Festival and we might see an alternative back class for the Blues Brothers.
    154:36
    At some point in the, well, near future, I would say, but give it a couple of months. Well, they'll probably need to get some more games up there first before they start thinking about that.
    154:50
    Right. So, well, that's up to them. Still, I'd say it's not a bad game. Yeah, it was entertaining enough. Yeah. Especially for the price point. Yeah. and of course open source so there's a lot of opportunity there for the gameplay to be developed yes further so that's it from Homepin Hexapimble over in France not a lot of news from them except they are looking to recruit a new game assembler they say as part of our expansion we are recruiting an assembler in our workshop in Martillac near Bordeaux your mission should you choose to accept it will be to assemble our pinball machines by assembling the various parts.
    155:41
    That sounds like pre-assembly. That sounds, well, sounds like assembling a pinball machine. So its proficiency in electronics and soldering would be a plus, but basically it's not essential because they'll train you in the techniques. If you're interested, if you're there or want to be there, send your CV and a cover letter to recruitment at hexafinball.com And good luck if that's your chosen vocation, making pinball machines. I'm guessing there's potential there to develop that into maybe, you know, moving up the chain and can we evolve into a pinball designer. Yeah.
    156:20
    Then all the way back down under, we have Vector Pinball, who took four of their titles to the Hoey Moey Pinball Festival in Cuffs Harbor. They brought two times the Peter Brook pinball machine, I think both models. Yes. One Holman pinball machine, which is the Australian car brand. Yes. And an 8-ball Fury game.
    156:50
    Yes, that's right. I mean, there's not a huge number of machines at Howie Moly. There's something like 25 or 30. So they had a good presentation there of four vector pinball games amongst that. So, well done to them. Hope the game stood up and hope people got to enjoy them. Right.
    157:10
    So, yeah. And then, let's move back to Europe for now. We have a big comic from France. Spain. Sorry, yeah, Spain. I was completely confused. I had to do two things at the same time. I should not do that. I'm a man. We know better than that. Yeah, we can't multitask. Yeah. No. Yeah. Well, what can we do? Well, BitConnect was supposed to be, well, we thought they were going to have a booth at the Texas Fumble Festival. They were on the floor plans as having a booth, but for reasons unknown, weren't there. But you've been trying to find out what's going on. Exactly. Well, I mentioned last month on our episode that I reached out to Antonio Ortuno, who is actually the owner of Quetzal Pinball, but also the designer of the two games that Bitronic currently has in production, being Super Hoop and Tokyo Perfect Drift. Right. And basically my question was like, it's great that you have these games in production, but how come we don't see them on location, or where are they going? I didn't get an answer to that, but Antonio did respond with the following. He said, at the end of last year, Medtronic asked me to make the Tokyo Perfect Drift Playfield PCBs larger, so the switch connectors would be closer to the targets, and they would not have to install insert lights as they are integrated into the PCB, which makes assembly simpler, so to speak.
    159:04
    On top of that, Bitronik has had several complaints about the lack of flipper power to games that have been either on location or at pinball shows. You might remember the two games at the Dutch Pingwall Open last year.
    159:22
    And in order to address this, they placed an order for flipper assemblies with a new supplier to address this.
    159:40
    And those came in a couple of weeks ago, which is when I heard from him. And I think by last week they would begin replacing the flippers in a Batchelor SuperHoop machine that they currently have in the factory.
    159:57
    So on top of that, I had a good friend of mine and also very well known to you, Mr. Ed Yonkers. Ooh, yeah. who was on a trip in Spain, and while he was there, he figured I might as well visit Bitronic together with Antonio Ortuno. Talked to him this afternoon as well. He visited the factory, and you have to understand that Bitronic is doing a lot more than pinball. They are actually making casino equipment and other types of arcade machines as well. So a pinball is just a small portion for them. Yes. That being said, there were plenty of Super Hoop cabinets on legs waiting for play boots to be installed. And so they're definitely working on getting those Super Hoop orders out. And I assume that they will be addressing The flipper mechanisms For the games that they already shipped out as well Although I have not heard anything about them But I can imagine So, and I believe that Once they're done with the Super Hoop Current batch Then they will move on to Tokyo Perfect Drift Right, okay Good, well I hope so because I want to see that game. I play Super Hoop quite a bit, but I want to get my hands on Tokyo Perfect Drift because it's been a long time coming.
    161:36
    Right. And then we get to, well, the most popular section of the show. Well, aside from, of course, who's cooking, what's cooking with. And the code updates. Yes, and that's the no news section. Yes, so we can go through a number of companies. Haggis Pinball, ex-company, I suppose. No more news from them, from down under.
    162:04
    People with advantages in Canada, not taking advantage of any potential tariffs and by promoting much of their upcoming games. They did share a single picture on Instagram of some various different types of gates for an upcoming game. I'm guessing Element, but I don't know. but no information about what they are or any suggestion they're going to start producing games anytime soon. Cardona Pinball Design do the 2.0 mod kits. No news from them. STR Pinball. Also, usually Planetary Pinball is showcasing those 2.0 games, but not at the Texas Pinball Show last month. No, that's right, no. SBR Pinball in Spain, no news from them. Circus Max was nothing there either that we can talk about, that we know anything about. Ramps Pinball, who were their road trip game, were expected to be at the Texas Pinball Festival. Again, there was a space marked out on the floor plan for them, but they weren't there, and their space was taken over by another company. so I don't know whether that was a change of plan or they were never going to be there and it was just a holding name to put in there.
    163:32
    I think that's pretty much all the companies that we've covered. There is some other news going back to Deep Root, remember them? We talked about them earlier and in relation to Merlin's Arcade. Well, the bigger deep root family bankruptcy, family companies, bankruptcy proceedings, remember they all went into liquidation. Well, one reseller of deep roots life insurance, well, investment policies, I would say, which are based on life insurance, for example, somebody called Mark Zavinsky, he has agreed to repay $85,000 of the $229,000 he received as commission for selling deep root investments. So that's to the liquidator who's trying to recover any kind of money to pay out to the people who lost money in the deep root failure. So a little bit of cash back from them, small fry, but it's something at least, and maybe there'd be a whole bunch of other similar repayments agreed. But that was put before the court and was up for the judge to approve it. So there's a little bit of money back, but in the scheme of things, nothing very much. That's the only deep-rooted news we've got at the moment. Everything else has been spoke about before, on hold, while lawyers get up to speed with Robert Mueller's criminal case and then the SEC case is on hold for pending the end of that. Right. No more news on Deep Root at the moment.
    165:12
    Okay. And then, well, not listed on our schedule, but of course we did attend the Texas Pinball Festival. What are your thoughts on the show so far? For some reason it seemed to be an awful lot busier this time than it was last time. Even though I wasn't actually involved in the seminars, I seem to end up being at nearly all of them, so that took a big chunk of time up, and didn't get to see as much of the show as I'd like. So that's all down to me, I think, and also trying to write a report at the same time, rather than wait until after the show. Lots and lots of vendors on the show floor this time. I'm not sure although there was even several not showing up resulting in open space especially in the I'd say the half near the loading dock quite some space unused but there were lots more in the corridor outside this time as well so I think it may just be people who didn't change their mind at the last minute but I'm trying to remember I got the feeling there were fewer free play machines this year because there were more vendors in the hall and outside the hall as well. And Rob Anthony, of course, as well, across the corridor in this little room. Oh, great to see Rob. Yeah, good.
    166:44
    Tournaments, didn't get to see any of those very much because there's so much else going on. Right, yeah, and it's a completely, well, separate area upstairs, nowhere near the main hall, so to speak. No, it's one of those areas, if you know it's there, then you can go and see it, but I think most people were unaware there were even any tournaments. Unless you were coming from the hotel side of things, you wouldn't even see any signs indicating where they were. And I don't think there was much about them in the show guide either. But it's kind of a shame. I do miss that aspect of the integration of tournaments into the show. They used to be on the show floor. Okay, it took up a big chunk of space. But at least people got to see the tournaments and they made it more of a spectacle. Now it seems to be it's just for the tournament players only and nobody else even knows it's happening.
    167:41
    Right. But other than that, I thought it was a great show. We had a great time there. What about you? Well, definitely a great show. I thought it was very nice to see some of the homebrew games at the show. The greatest showman, or snowman, as I pronounce it, rightfully won the award for best homebrew machine. Yes. Beautiful game, that is. And, yeah, I was happy to see, well, Turner, of course, showing up with Merlin's Arcade. I finally got the chance to play Evil Dead because I had not before. We haven't both been to any pinball shows where that game was present first, or earlier on.
    168:30
    It was great to see, well, the Chicago Gaming Booth with newer versions of Cactus Canyon and Medieval Methods. Although I did play the Cactus Canyon game, and I had no idea how to get to the modes that are added to the game. So for me, it felt like a regular Cactus Canyon game. Right. That also means that I just was not aware I was playing any of the new modes, and they are very well integrated. Mm-hmm.
    169:04
    And what was the other new game that I currently can't think of? we covered the portal I suppose oh yeah right portal yeah I got to play that and the theme itself and it might have to do with a lot of noise in the booth and not hearing not being able to hear the audio very well like I said earlier I've seen I saw that ball do things that I never seen in a pinball machine before, especially the jump when you jump across a couple of portals into a lock area at the back panel, which I found very interesting and surprising.
    169:51
    But I still have to get used to the theme, I think. So, I will definitely give that some more plays whenever I get the chance.
    170:03
    I was happy to play it. But this one At this point, I couldn't get a fair opinion on that game, I would say. Yes. Yeah, it was a long line to play that game, so there was not much chance to play it. And then you had to go and join the queue and wait another 10, 15 minutes to have another go. Yeah. But that's generally the case at shows for the newest games, though. So that's fair enough. And they had three, so at least you had in with a chance. Yeah. So I actually was able to play some pinball during the show and also up front. I had a very good game on Tilt of the Arabian Nights. I believe that was Kerry Hardy's game or the person that he traveled with. Beautiful game, I have to admit. And I think I put down my highest score ever, which was nowhere near the grand champion score on that game, but still gave me a good feeling. Yeah, that was a runner-up for Best Restoration, I think. Yeah. For Carrie. So, I think, actually, Carrie... Oh, no, it was Last Action Hero, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, well, Last Action Hero won, but I think that game also won a couple of years ago. Ah, right. I have seen that on a TPS before, so... Ah. I have no idea what the rules are on bringing the same game and winning again, But, oh well, it was still a very nice looking game, I have to admit that. And, well, it's always nice to run into, well, let's call it the pinball family. Yes. I know so many familiar faces and it's always nice to see them, even if you only see them once or twice a year. So, yeah, that's always a highlight for me personally. Yeah, I think that's the key thing about these shows. Not so much playing the games, playing the new ones, of course. early hands on on those but yeah just catching up with so many people that you know and you get to see it a couple of times a year at these big shows so that's great fun and we look forward to going back next year we've already got our invitation from Paul to return in 2025 the dates have already been announced for that show I think the 20th to 22nd I think of April sorry March 2025 in the same location right and it was also very fun to host our quiz again many thanks to the technical staff who helps make it possible I think the number of participants is growing every year on our quiz and the number of prizes is too and so we end up with well, not enough time to give away everything but again we started the show with thanking our sponsors and I'd like to repeat that without them we would not well we could have lost the quiz but you could win yeah it might be a little lacking in something yeah anyway so I think that wraps it up for our pin cast of covering March 2025 we'll be back at the start of May when we look back at all the events in the pinball world throughout this exciting month of April. So until then, from me, Martin Eyre of Pinball News,
    173:31
    and from me, Jonathan Houston from Pinball Magazine, we hope you have an absolutely awesome April, and look forward to joining you again next month for the very next edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast. Bye for now. Bye.