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DPP #245 "Monday Fish Fry"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·33m 29s·analyzed·Jun 16, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Pokemon topper leak, Tales of Arabian Nights pricing analysis, limited edition strategy debate.

Summary

Don discusses a leaked Pokemon accessory trailer featuring a Magikarp topper with progressive multiball mechanics, then pivots to analyzing Pedretti's new Tales of the Arabian Nights remake—examining pricing ($11-12k MSRP), European import logistics, and limited edition strategy. He reflects on production limits vs. time-based scarcity, Jersey Jack's Harry Potter model, and why Stern's launch-game positioning opens opportunities for competitors like Spooky and Barrels of Fun.

Key Claims

  • Stern's complete Pokemon accessory trailer was uploaded to YouTube, edited and polished, then removed after 1-3 hours but spread widely before deletion

    high confidence · Don Pinball, direct observation of event as it happened

  • The Magikarp topper is a plastic toy with lights and wave-motion mechanics, not a motorized fish as rumored

    high confidence · Don Pinball, describing the leaked trailer content

  • Magikarp topper will include progressive multiball that carries over between players at arcade locations

    high confidence · Don Pinball, from leaked trailer details

  • Tales of the Arabian Nights (Pedretti) costs $11-12k USD MSRP with additional $1k+ air freight required from Europe, totaling $12-13k+

    high confidence · Don Pinball, citing distributor pricing and freight quotes reviewed

  • Tales of the Arabian Nights has code version 1.5 (updated original), not a full 2.0 rewrite like Funhaus

    high confidence · Don Pinball, from product specifications

  • Funhouse remake used CP Pinball parts with Alien targets instead of original Williams components

    high confidence · Don Pinball, critiquing Funhaus design choices

  • Jersey Jack Sonic (arcade version) will cost $10k and ships domestically with minimal shipping costs, making it competitive with Tales of Arabian Nights

    medium confidence · Don Pinball, comparing pricing of upcoming releases

  • Transformers topper placeholder page found showing $1,499 price point

    high confidence · Don Pinball, citing discovery of online placeholder

  • Stern has polished code ready for Pokemon but faces approval delays from Japanese licensors who critique details to justify their positions

    medium confidence · Don Pinball, speculating on bureaucratic approval delays based on industry knowledge

Notable Quotes

  • “There's nowhere you can go and not see this entire trailer. They're in its entirety of all the accessories and things from Stern... it was everywhere, man. From Kanada to Clown Town.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:03:00 — Captures the viral spread of the leaked Stern accessory trailer across the community

  • “The Magikarp's smaller than I was thinking. It's just got plastics in the back and lights. Like, perfect. This is, yeah, of course this is what it is... and now I kind of dig it, man. This thing's kind of cool.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:05:00 — Shows reaction arc from disappointment to acceptance of the topper design

  • “Stern Pinball really has now marketed themselves as the company that you don't buy their launch game new in box... Just don't get a new in-box launch game from Stern. Let the game come out, have its weird orbit problem, its weird shooter problem. Let it get fixed and then get one of the later ones.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:40:00 — Articulates Stern's market positioning and how this opens opportunities for competitors at launch

  • “They can't say anything. They probably, they're sitting on cool code. I bet the prototype machine... It's probably super fun to play... and it probably really sucks for them to hear all this.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:31:00 — Empathy for Stern's situation dealing with Pokemon licensing approval delays

  • “If you were to limit it to 600, maybe you sell 550... If you make that artificial scarcity, maybe you could goose the numbers by like an extra 50 or 80 or 10%.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:49:00 — Core economic analysis of how production limits affect demand through scarcity psychology

  • “They ended up killing FOMO... when a game releases there a certain scalper or opportunist portion of the market. If you announcing that your game is then unlimited like Sonic the Hedgehog will be... the games will never go for more than MSRP.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:54:00 — Explains how unlimited production announcements eliminate secondary market speculation

Entities

[name withheld pending review]personStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyPedretti/Euro Pinball CorpcompanyPinball BrotherscompanySpooky PinballcompanyBarrels of FuncompanyFlip N Out Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    leak_detection: Stern accidentally uploaded complete, polished Pokemon accessory trailer to YouTube; video was live for 1-3 hours before removal but spread rapidly across community forums and social media

    high · Don witnessed video download/capture and verified footage showing Magikarp topper, pricing, and accessory suite before official announcement window

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern Pokemon Magikarp topper with progressive multiball feature confirmed; plastic construction with LED lighting and wave-motion mechanics; integrates location-based multiball carryover system

    high · Leaked trailer showed fully edited, complete product demonstration with pricing and functionality details

  • ?

    product_concern: Pokemon game continues facing criticism for limited rule depth and replayability despite Stern having additional polished code ready; licensing approval bottleneck from Japanese licensor

    high · Don notes community consensus that game has 'five things to do' played 100 times; speculates on bureaucratic approval delays and Stern's internal frustration

  • ?

    product_launch: Tales of the Arabian Nights remake officially released by Pedretti/Euro Pinball Corp; $11-12k USD MSRP; 399-unit limited 30th anniversary Brian Allen art edition; code v1.5 (updated original, not full rewrite)

    high · Don reviews official pricing, edition tiers, and specifications; notes lack of topper and partial code update

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: European-manufactured games face 6-12+ week sea freight delays or $1k+ air freight costs; port delays, customs clearance, and domestic trucking add substantial time/cost to import purchases

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.100

0:00
Are you ready for a podcast? Well, that's great because Don Pinball Podcast, that's me, is back with some information. I've been reeling up a magic carp from the pond. I hope you like fish toppers because it ain't even Friday. It ain't even the fish fry. We're doing it tonight. Magic carp.
0:30
I mean, it had to be intentional, right? It could just be like another self-owned. When you upload videos onto YouTube, you can set, is this private? Is this public? Is this going out today? Is it just going out in a year? I don't know how this got posted, but it had to be intentional. It had to be, right? But that doesn't make sense. So today I'm sitting watching a softball game, and a little text comes across my screen of the freaking Magikarp topper. The thing that's been rumored to be coming out as the top peak accessory in terms of height from your game floor for Stern's Pokemon Ride the Adventure, or whatever the tagline was. You know that game that we've all sold by now because there's no code in it at all. But I like the idea of a big mouth Billy Bass Magikarp up there talking to me. And that's what the rumors were. And we knew it was going to come out at some point. And then the entire accessory trailer, cut, complete, edited, boom. Showed up on YouTube for like, I don't know, like an hour, two hours, three hours, three minutes. All I know is it was down. I completely missed the whole thing. And then it was just, it was everywhere, man. You know, from Canada to Clown Town. There's nowhere you can go and not see this entire trailer. They're in its entirety of all the accessories and things from Stern. And, like, I'm sitting there, right? I'm eating a pretzel. I'm watching the game. And then I'm looking down at my screen occasionally because it's buzzing in my pocket like crazy. And then I see the freaking magic carpet. I'm like, that's, I was laughing out loud when I saw this thing. Because, like, in my head, I'm thinking, like, a big fish up there that flops around made out of rubber. This thing's a plastic toy. This looks like one of those fish monsters that was in Mega Man 2 for the NES in the Bubble Man stage. You know what I'm talking about? It was like mechanical. So I laughed out loud when I saw this thing. Like, perfect. Absolutely, that's it. The Magikarp's smaller than I was thinking. It's just got plastics in the back and lights. Like, perfect. This is, yeah, of course this is what it is. And then I sat and watched, you know, the ending took a break. So I watched it through again, and I saw the movement of the plastic waves and things, so it warmed up to me, and now I kind of dig it, man. This thing's kind of cool. It's going to come with extra mode. There's going to be some progressive multiball that you can do as you light the magic harp letters. They'll carry over from game to game. Like if you're at the arcade and you light four of the letters, and then the next person up can claim the multiball. That's fun. That's kind of cool. I like the progressive jackpots, you know, similar to what we see in the other dopamine elucidating machines, the jackpots on, what do you call them, slot machines, you know, where like as you play, like the progress you're making is added to a jackpot that'll pay out at some point. We saw this with the $2,000 topper from Mandalorian, and I don't think we've seen anything like this since. So I like that that's back. To round up the accessories, you get a Pokeball shooter, makes total sense, like I dig it. But you get the armor from the LE. You just have to go and powder coat it yourself. I get it. Really doesn't make a lot of sense to get this armor if you don't have the exterior lights because that's the whole point of it. But to sell the LE armor in a black wrinkle powder coat, take it down to your local powder coater with your lockdown bar. Have them all done. Be a cool guy and take the hinges too. And be a completist and take apart the coin door. Get that powder coated. And then be insane like me and do the cash box lid too because, come on, that's hilarious. That's hilarious and unnecessary. I think that rounds out the accessories. Of course, you can get all the lights and everything, and those are the same across the Spike 3 trend line. But man, I wasn't expected to see that today. I was about to talk about the other game that was released today, Tales of the Arabian Nights. This game has been talked about, bantied around. I mean, when I was new into the pinball hobby at this level, the thing to get was the Royal Edition of Medieval Madness, man. Like that's what I wanted to get. I was like on the hunt for it. It was unobtainable. It was 2020. Like there's no way you could get it. And at that time, if you told me I could get a Tales of the Arabian Nights, a Cactus Canyon, a Medieval Madness, a Twilight Zone or Adam's Family, I would have bought them immediately on the spot. $20,000. I don't care. Like I would have bought it in 2020, but it ain't 2020. It ain't even 2025. It's 2026 now. Now, Pedretti brought this game out after the lackluster debut of their Funhaus machine. Like, I dig that they made an old game new again. Like, that's super fun if you're in that Venn diagram of I want this game, but I don't want a game that smells like an old closet. I don't want a game with, like, old solder joints and boards with smoke damage on them. Like, I want something brand new and pristine, but I don't want to pay, like, huge prices for one from antiquity. Like that's how you can get it. So I like that the product exists. But of course, the problem that I had with Funhaus was twofold. I like the fact that it had new code in it. The new code was silly, but at least it was like a whole other game in there. I didn't like the fact that you had to like pick which one you wanted to play before you quarter up because, you know, you walk up, you want to play a machine, you want to load it up with money and then pick which mode to play. But that's not how it worked. You had to pick if you wanted OG Funhaus or new Funhaus before you put your money in. And if you put your money in and switch to the other one, you lost it. Or it would only stay in that old game. That was just clunky. We shouldn't do that. The other thing is this was made at Euro Pinball Corp. using Pinball Brothers parts. So some of the stand-up targets were just like the ones from Alien, which they work just fine. And you can light them up and stuff. But it's not the Bally Williams original. So they've rectified that, but they haven't rectified the damage I suffered from playing Funhouse's remake. So I'm totally out on this new game. Taking it as it is, like the games look fine. There's only a thousand dollar difference between the two trim levels. I went over and tried to use that Loserkid discount code that Flippin' Out was offering and then just it disappeared. Like I haven't seen it. What happened? I went and put one on my card and then put the code in just to verify that it was working. And then, yeah, no, that didn't work. I tried Loserkid as two words. That didn't work. I didn't put an apostrophe. Maybe it works if you put the apostrophe in there. I did try Don's Pinball Podcast, all one word as a discount code on the Flippin' Out site. That didn't work either. I thought it would be kind of funny if you added a 10% service charge for being stupid.

  • Jersey Jack shifted Harry Potter to time-limited (rather than numerically-limited) CE orders to avoid leaving money on table while maintaining FOMO

    medium confidence · Don Pinball, analyzing JJP's production strategy shift

  • “Don't look for an unlisted J.J.P. I doubt at this point that J.J.P. would walk into the same mistake that we saw today with the Magikarp. But it'll be fun to see the full release trailer... and just bask in it and let it hit you.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:43:00 — Anticipation for Jersey Jack Sonic reveal with hope they avoid accidental leaks

  • “I think that'd get me interested. If it's Ruby Rod all the time and some Bruce Willis on a big screen and the layout has got to look better than ABBA... I'm going to need something a little more complex and interesting.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:19:00 — Reveals Fifth Element wishlist and willingness to consider Pinball Brothers' rumored next title if executed well

  • “Shout out to the U.S. distributors that do have a USD price because at least then you're not going to get hit with a surprise tariff of 20% or something.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:22:00 — Acknowledges tariff concerns impacting import pricing for European-made games

  • “I want to say, Stern, we hear you. We see you. I get what's going on. It's not fun for us. This isn't fun for you. But it is financial for me.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~00:33:00 — Acknowledges why he sold his Pokemon machine despite enjoying it, citing financial constraints

    • Multimorphic
    company
    Turner Pinballcompany
    Retro Ralphperson
    Elizabeth Gieskeperson
    K-Manperson
    [name withheld pending review]game
    Tales of the Arabian Nightsgame
    Sonic the Hedgehoggame
    Transformersgame
    Godzillagame
    Harry Pottergame
    Funhousegame
    Fifth Elementgame
    ABBAgame
    John Wickgame

    high · Don details shipping quotes received, port logistics, and 8-week delivery estimates from distributors for European imports

  • $

    market_signal: Tales of Arabian Nights ($11-12k + $1k+ shipping) faces price pressure from Jersey Jack Sonic ($10k domestic, minimal shipping) and Stern machines; import cost disadvantage limits appeal

    high · Don directly compares MSRP, shipping costs, and final customer prices across competing releases

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball manufacturers use artificial scarcity (numbered limits or time-based windows) to boost demand, but data suggests unlimited production with time cutoffs may achieve same sales with larger total units; Jersey Jack shifted Harry Potter to time-limited model

    medium · Don proposes economic model where arbitrary production caps may leave money on table; cites JJP's Harry Potter time-limited CE strategy as superior to traditional numbered limits

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community perception shift: Stern now positioned as 'don't buy launch games new in box' company due to quality issues at release; buyers wait for later revisions; opens opportunity for competitors' launch titles

    high · Don articulates this as established market behavior: Pokemon, Jaws, Godzilla all had launch issues requiring fixes; buyers now plan wait-and-see strategy

  • ?

    product_strategy: Unlimited production announcements (like Sonic Hedgehog) eliminate secondary market speculation and scalper demand, killing FOMO; games normalize to MSRP rather than premium pricing

    medium · Don credits K-Man for insight that unlimited models remove scalper incentive and prevent short-term premium pricing

  • ?

    machine_intel: Jersey Jack Sonic arcade reveal scheduled for ~1 week; design details protected by NDA; upper playfield (plexiglass/clear), four flippers, and LCD screens expected but unconfirmed

    high · Don notes NDA 'burning a hole in people's pockets' with NDAs being held tight; speculates on design iterations using quantum mechanics metaphor

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Fifth Element highly rumored as Pinball Brothers' next title after Tales of Arabian Nights production completes; Don expresses conditional interest if layout exceeds ABBA complexity with full code

    medium · Don states 'highly rumored to be Fifth Element' based on industry gossip; expresses design requirements (Ruby Rod, Bruce Willis, complex layout, Elizabeth Gieske code)

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Japanese Pokemon licensor delaying Stern code approvals through bureaucratic critiques (changing letters, shot counts); approval cycles measured in weeks; justification-based gatekeeping typical of licensor behavior

    medium · Don speculates on licensor approval psychology but acknowledges this is inference based on typical corporate hierarchy dynamics

    • 7:10
    So be on the lookout for that. What's the opposite of a discount code? That's what I want my name to be, just for funsies.
    7:19
    Totan, right? So it looks fine. It looks like they added some lights to some ramps. They got there's a purple sparkly powder coat on the 30th anniversary Brian Allen artwork edition. There's a legacy edition. They should have said like a standard and a good one because it's hard to tell like the difference between the names, whether it's a legacy or whether it's 30th anniversary. But even the legacy version, the cheaper one with the OG art, it still has a black sparkle powder coat. So I can appreciate that. On the other hand, I know six powder coat guys in town I can take any arm or two and go on to Prismatic Powders, pick out whatever I want. There's thousands of colors you can pick and just bring your stuff down there and within a week you got it back. But, I mean, it's fun that it comes from the factory too, you know, and I like the fact that it's got the sparkle in it. So essentially what they're doing is they're spraying a powder on it, they're baking it for a little bit, bringing it out, putting a clear coat with sparkles over that, and then putting it through for the full bake. And then it comes out with that nice sparkle flake. I still haven found a color that looks as good as that blue sparkle that you see on speedboats at the lake in the lake you know in the sun where it just like glistening that blue with just tons of glitter in it I love that look, man. If I could find that for a pinball machine powder coat, I would be there. I think I would like that. I think I would like that very much, sir.
    8:35
    Toten, it's brand new. They're used Bally Williams parts this time. So I'm sure build quality is going to be fine. I mean, it wasn't terrible and funhouse from like my limited interactions with it. I just didn't like that they were using Alien parts in it. But now that they're using the Bally Williams parts, that's fine.
    8:53
    Price, though. Price. It comes down to, in the U.S., 11,000 and 12,000. 12 or 13? 11 and 12? Yeah, I think it was 11 and 12.
    9:03
    Landed, well, not landed. That's MSRP in the U.S., which is one thing. And then everywhere I've seen that's selling this, it says plus shipping. Now, I'm in the U.S., you know, I'm in North America, So my game's got to come over on a ship. It's going to take weeks and weeks to transit. Right now with international boat shipping, what I'm hearing with quotes that I'm seeing is that you may have your game picked up from your site, wherever it is, a terminal, and it might go down to the port and it might sit on the port for a number of weeks before it gets on a ship. And then these ships aren't just necessarily point to point. I mean, this thing may take a tour of the Atlantic before, you know, sail down to Cape Horn or whatever before it makes its way up. And then you've got to have it landed. It's got to clear customs. Who knows how long that's going to take. Then it's got to get loaded to a truck and then it's got to get to your terminal. And then you get a call about setting up home shipping. So it could be months, even when the game is done. Your other better option is air freight. Air freight runs around $1,000 from quotes that I've seen. And essentially a truck goes and picks up your game from a terminal in Europe, takes it to an airport, puts it on a plane. It's in North America later that day. So that's the way to do it if you want to get one of these and not have to wait like months and months. But like at that price, okay, we're going to see Sonic here in a week. And the arcade version of Sonic is going to be $10,000. And if you go pick it up at the factory, there's no shipping cost. And even if you have it shipped domestically in the U.S., it's going to be a couple hundred of dollars. So you could pay at minimum an extra $1,000 plus shipping just to end up with a Tales of the Arabian Nights that doesn't even have the Brian Allen artwork on it.
    10:40
    Or you could have Sonic, which is going to be modern and full of code. So Totan, as cool as it is, as much as I wanted it back in the day, when I was playing the PlayStation's Pinball Arcade, the free pack-in game, just downloading it, was Tales of the Arabian Nights. So that's kind of what reawoken the fire of Pinball in me was this game. So like I dig it, but everybody I know that I've talked to that has had this game or has this game says this game, it's fun. There's a lot of things in it. It's fun to shoot. The code, though, it gets old and then it just gets not played, even if it's the best of games, you know. So for me right now, like I'm not in on this, but I'll tell you who this game is for. This game is for the person that, you know, has, you know, is on the other side of retirement, has their money, and can just pick up a phone, call the distributor and say, hey, that new thing, just send it to me when you get it. Yeah, and just, you know, invoice me, my secretary will take care of it. Those people will buy this for sure. They'll get the good one, the Brian Allen art, they're going to have fun with it. People are going to come over, you know, they'll have sips and nibbles and they'll play some Totan. And it's going to be like the best version of a Totan you can find because it's all modern, it's all brand new as long as it breaks in, okay? As long as there's not some unforeseen circumstances. I haven't flipped this game. I can't vouch for its quality. But ready if you're listening, give me an invite, man. I'll come over to Euro Pinball Corp. I was in Milan a couple years ago. Like, I can be there, dude. I can be there and come by and flip it, and then I can give my honest opinion on it and also hang out in Italy. Italy's awesome, guys. Summer trips are coming up. I'm getting excited. The other person this game's for is if you wanted Tales of the Arabian Nights and you don't want to buy a junk one, Something that's got 60,000 plays and the scoops are all beat to hell and your play field's chipped all over the place. You don't want that one. You want a good one. You're going to have to pay for it. They're about $10,000 or $11,000 or $12,000 if you want a pristine, nice playing, tails of the Rabean Ice. From what I've been looking, I haven't looked the last couple of months, but that's kind of where they were going for. So if you're the kind of person that would get one of those, if it showed up nearby, you could pick it up, you knew the seller or something, cash on glass. Like you would be interested in getting one of these. So when it comes down to the numbers of 399 of the 30th anniversary Brian Allen Art Edition, Purple Pink Powder Coat, Tales of Ribby Nights, maybe they'll have a chance on actually selling them out. The Standard Edition, the Legacy Edition, the Black Edition, maybe they sell 50 of them, you know, and then life goes on. I heard that they want to get these built so that Pinball Brothers can get their next game on the line. So I'm going to keep an eye out to see who's getting these things, who's unboxing them, how many are getting out there. Certainly if they sell out all $3.99, we'll notice they'll drop off of the online distributors. So we can track that way. And then we'll just watch the numbers. And once we're seeing 350 of these things have been shipped, I think it'll be getting close to reveal time for whatever Pinball Brothers has next. Highly rumored to be Fifth Element. Holy crap. If they can nail it, if they can nail it, that's what would get me interested. If it's Ruby Rod all the time and some Bruce Willis on a big screen and the layout has got to look better than ABBA. ABBA, I love you for how absurd of a game you are. And I love to play you so much because you never have a line at Expo. But I'm going to need something a little more complex and interesting and layout than ABBA. Paired with some awesome code and full assets. And then I think I'd consider it. I think even with the prices of imports and all that business, I think I would. Shout out to the U.S. distributors that do have a USD price because at least then you're not going to get hit with a surprise tariff of 20% or something. So that's nice. The game looks like the top end edition is 11,000 euros in the EU. That converts, no, no, 10,000 euros in the EU, which converts about $11,600. $500. So, okay, plus or minus, you know, as long as you can get a guaranteed USD price, it would be nice if when you make that deposit, you know what the shipping is. And so far, when I was perusing different dealer websites, I saw the cash price. I saw it said plus shipping. They were all taking $2,000 deposits. I didn't see any mention of that shipping cost. I did hear back from somebody that ordered one and they were told eight weeks they would have it. Great, if so, you know, for a game that's, you know, being developed, shipped from Europe. Maybe that's with air shipping, air freight. I don't know. I would air freight it. I would just pay the extra money and I would just have the thing air freighted. What you're not getting is a topper. Kind of weird. And then the code says 1.5. It says updated original code. So to me, that's not like a full 2.0 like we saw with Funhaus or with Suey and the Grannies on Whirlwind. And I really think that's what would put this over the top for a lot of people as far as buying it, is if it had a fully fleshed out code. Somebody in my chat mentioned, hire Elizabeth Gieske to do like a full code treatment for Toten. I would buy that in an instant. Oh my God.
    15:49
    Some of the best things that are coming out of Stern are like from her hands or mind or brain or whatever. I love it. So that happened today. Like I was going to get kind of excited and see that today. And then I had no idea Magic Carp was going to drop on us. We also got one little other tidbit today. Somebody found a placeholder page for the Transformers topper, the one that was revealed at the Northwest Pinball show just recently. Optimus Prime is a giant head turning back and forth and flashing or at least flapping his gums. $14.99, so $1,500. That's better than I was thinking. I thought that would be more of a $16.99 or something. So $100 cheaper. Not too bad. Not too bad. If I still had Pokemon, I think I'd get that Magikarp topper. So dang it there my FOMO I missing out on the topper I not missing out on doing the Squirtle mode over and over though Gosh when that game Alright so we saw this trailer Everybody seen it The full trailer was totally complete for all the accessories Very polished I think Stern has very polished code at this point for Pokemon with a lot of fun modes in there And they got to be tearing their hair out over there We getting all this crap online and we cannot say anything about it And all the criticism is valid. Like, everybody's complaining about, you know, Pokemon, I got it. There's five things to do. I've done them 100 times. I'm not playing the game anymore. They're like, we know that really sucks. It sucks for us too because we have all this great code that's just waiting for approvals. But, you know, maybe the Japanese holidays are coming up and it's, like, going to be weeks until they're even going to revisit it again. And then maybe they'll have a comment, you know, change this letter to this letter. Make this mode four shots instead of three and then it's got these delays. Sometimes when you have someone over you like a project manager, you may be doing a stellar job as a creative in what you're doing and then if the higher up that approves it just says, man, I'm recognizing you're doing great work. Keep it up. We'll put this through. People are going to look at them like, well, then what's your job? You're not doing anything. You're just like passing everything through. So they have to come back with some kind of criticism. That way that justifies their position. That's just how bureaucracies work. And I'm afraid it's like something like that. You know, like everything can be ready to go, but they can't just accept it. They have to critique something. Otherwise, what do you need them for? And exactly, exactly, what do you need them for? So Stern's probably tearing their hair out. They can't say anything. They probably, they're sitting on cool code. I bet the prototype machine that they're beta testing all this code on over at Stern headquarters It's probably super fun to play because they've got the Magikarp Topper up there. They're playing Magikarp Topper modes. They're playing all the other Capture Pokemon modes. They've got the Pokedex in there on their proprietary locked-in intranet version of Insider Connected. They're probably having an internal blast with this game, and it probably really sucks for them to hear all this. So from the fan community, I want to say, Stern, we hear you. We see you. I get what's going on. It's not fun for us. This isn't fun for you. But it is financial for me. And so for that reason, I had to let the game go. Maybe I'll catch it back again. Maybe I'll catch it down the road. Maybe it'll probably have a second resurgence like John Wick's having a moment right now. And I think that's fine. Stern Pinball really has now marketed themselves as the company that you don't buy their launch game new in box. The launch game comes out. We go play it on location. We will let it marinate, you know, and then maybe a year down the road, then we can go around and pick them up. Now, Stern does have the luxury of having a rotating line of products. I mean, they're still making Jaws, still making Godzilla. They just made some rushes a couple of weeks ago. So you can still get a new in-box game from Stern. Just don't get a new in-box launch game from Stern. Let the game come out, have its weird orbit problem, its weird shooter problem. Let it get fixed and then get one of the later ones. I think that's kind of where they position themselves kind of in the market. And that really opens the door to everybody else for their launch games when they come out. Like Jersey Jack's new Sonic is coming out in about a week. Getting excited for it, man. I think people are starting to loosen their lips a little bit. You know, they got the NDA burning a hole in their pocket. But they're holding tight. And we're going to have a good reveal because I haven't seen the upper play field that's all plexiglass and clear. I haven't seen the four flippers. I haven't seen the little LCD screens. So, like, in my mind, I'm coming up with, like, 90 different iterations of what this game could look like. But what's going to be magical is the wave function is going to collapse at the time that this is released, and Schroden or Sonic is going to become, like, whatever our reality, you know, Earth G927 or whatever we're living in. We're going to see what our version of Sonic is, and it's all going to happen, like, on the next Tuesday, a week from now, a week and a day, a week and a day. And as long as it's not leaked, please stay out for the YouTube. Don't look for an unlisted J.J.P. I doubt at this point that J.J.P. would walk into the same mistake that we saw today with the Magikarp. But it'll be fun to see the full release trailer that Retro Ralph or whoever did it and just bask in it and let it hit you. And then your dealers that you've been talking to, like keep me on the list. We can sit, calmly watch the trailer release, and then we can text our friends over at Mad Pinball and say, Yep, I'm in. This is my trim level. Let's go. Invoice me.
    21:29
    Or Joe at Pinball Star. I bought games for him before, too. He doesn't keep interest lists. He keeps interest email lists, and he'll send an email blast out. So if you waited until this long and you're going to be 100 places down the list, that is one other place you could try. That's just a little Don tip for you. So I want to talk about – this is what the show is going to be about before all this stuff happened. I want to talk about limited numbers in games and does it make sense? Because I was thinking the other day, as I do a lot of this, I live inside my own head, we've seen Jersey Jack go from making 1,000 collector's editions and 5,000 limited edition numbers and then unlimited arcade versions or special editions or standard editions and whatever, and they've been playing with this. And then when it came to Harry Potter, they're like, we'll do a wizard edition, we'll call it. And I don't even know if that's limited to 5,000 or not. The collectors, they said, we're going to limit these, but we're going to do it for time. We're just going to take as many orders as we can. And at that time, I'm thinking, what a freaking great idea, man. Like, you're only going to make 1,000 of these anyway, given your track record. So, you know, raise that limit and sell 1,200, 1,500, 1,700. Like, your goal is to sell a product. Why are you arbitrarily limiting yourself? And so they said, well, we'll limit it by time. And I think that's how they addressed it. So here's a concept I came up with in my head also. When it comes to picking, you know, how many editions of your game are you going to make? Why did Pedretti settle on $399? Why not $499? And so I think the concept is such that you could release your game and you could limit it to 800 and you'll sell 400 of them, let's say. But if you were to limit it to 600, maybe you sell 550. You know, if there's got to be, you know, a certain number, we'll call it X, of what the game's going to sell no matter what. You know, if it was unlimited or if you made the limit 5,000, you know, it's going to sell like X, whatever X is. And then if you make that artificial scarcity, maybe you could goose the numbers by like an extra 50 or 80 or 10%, you know, X plus 10% or, you know, 110% X. You know, maybe that's something that's real. And so when it comes to what Jersey Jack is doing, if they want to sell 1,000 games, do they make that number 1,000? I'm sure they could sell that out, but I'm sure they want more. But if they made the limit of 5,000 CEs, maybe they would only sell 1,500. But if they made the limit 2,000, maybe they sell more. So I think they controlled this variable by introducing that time limit because that way, while the numbers are unlimited, You're not leaving any money on the table if there's people standing there with cash in their hand that want it, but you're still manufacturing in that scarcity by saying at some unannounced period of time we're going to cut them off and then these will truly be limited.
    24:22
    So it seems they probably looked at that method and are like, listen, Harry Potters are still selling. Harry Potter's to ease they're still selling. We didn't announce that it was only going to be a six-month build window or purchase window. So why not close it when sales slow down? Then we'll announce that it's coming and then get a flurry of last-minute sales. That's probably what they're going to do there. But they've probably learned, look, let's just keep these open. We'll sell who we sell to. And they ended up killing FOMO. And this is something that I hadn't realized until just recently. Shout out to K-Man for bringing this up. So when a game releases there a certain scalper or opportunist portion of the market You know can I buy this game that be limited get one or two and then maybe see if I can flip them for a profit Now if you announcing that your game is then unlimited like Sonic the Hedgehog will be there no speculation there Like, the games will never go for more than MSRP. The only time they may do that is very slightly at first. Like, if you get one of the first ones and somebody is knowing it's going to take six months until they get their game, They may pay a little premium to take yours from you just to skip the line. But, you know, over six, eight months, everything's going to normalize, and I don't think that'll be the case. So does it make sense for them to have these limits? I mean, they had a limited edition of $5,000. That was never realistically a real tight limit anyway. I'm sure there's games that they still even haven't built all of those. So, like, what sense does it make anymore? I wonder for other companies, and these are the companies that are in the column of I would buy their game launch new in box because they do sell out. Talking about Spooky, Barrels of Fun, Jersey Jack Pinball, although they don't sell out, you will wait a while. Turner Pinball, you might want to jump in on one depending if you like the theme or not. You can't yet, you can't wait for it. You know, the multimorphics and such. So I'm trying to decide, like, for a company like Spooky, does it make sense to limit your game numbers by, like, a particular number? Or should you just limit them by time? Like, should it be that every year Spooky says, listen, we'll sell as many games of this year as possible, and then after a year we'll cut that off and we're moving into the next one? Although I think the way that they're set up, they want to have, like, some production numbers, like, inked in. Plus they do have other games that rotate on the basis. I don't know what the right answer is to this. I don't know what the right answer is. But I know that if you have, you know, if you pick your number, like we're only making 800 and you sell 300. If you picked your number at 500, you would probably sell 400. You know, you probably would have got like a couple of extra ones there. I don't know. Let me know what you think. Am I crazy? Am I just spending too much time in my own head? Am I gazing into the camera lens on my JJP machine and trying to see directly into the factory retro Ralph? I'm not sure. What else was I going to talk about today? What else was I going to talk about? Mods of the, oh Masters of the Universe, my god, alright this is like, this is pinball adjacent right now. We heard of Grown Up Adjacent, this is pinball adjacent. I've seen the Masters of the Universe film, the one that's currently in the theaters, the one that nobody's essentially going to see. And it is so phenomenal that I went back, I brought friends back and went and saw it again the same weekend. And now I went back and watched the original Masters of the Universe movie just now. It holds up a lot better than I remembered. And, like, I'm all in on, like, some He-Man nostalgia. Like, call me a man, baby. But I got a little nostalgic tear a time or two watching Masters of the Universe. If you haven't seen it yet, please go see this movie. I really want there to be a sequel. Amazon's making it or distributing it. They own MGM now. When the hell did that happen? Amazon bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film production studio? Jeez-mus. This is crazy. Go see this movie if you have any kind of nostalgia for He-Man or if you like movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel movies and stuff. It's legitimately a good film. It's a good action summer adventure film and it brings in a lot of nostalgia. There are Easter eggs all through this movie. Easter eggs from the original film back in the day. I'll give you an example of one. This is great. So in the original Masters of the Universe film, they ran a contest. The studio had a contest that the production wasn't aware of where you sent in your box tops or your cards from the action figures and you got into a drawing. You could win a spot to be an extra in the Masters of the Universe movie. And this kid, I think it's Scott something or other, won, right? Like some nine-year-old kid. And so he showed up to the shoot, and I guess the production team was like, what are you even here for? Like what's going on? So they threw this pig costume on this kid real quick and had him stand in a corner. He did actually make it into the cut. There towards the end of the movie, there's a quick little pan and Skeletor taps him on the shoulder or something. And he got credited as pig boy. This nine-year-old kid that showed up to the set and apparently they didn't even know he was coming or something. Okay, guy, we got this kid who won a contest. Throw a pig costume on him and put him in the background. Action! When's lunch? Craft services table, let's go. So poor kid, right? But he got to tell all his friends he's in literally half a second of film. They could have dwelled on him a little bit, I think, in the cut. But whatever, Pig Boy is a legend, right? So they created that character and put him into the New Masters of the Universe movie in a longer role and credited him as Pig Boy. And it's just because of something stupid that happened in this Dolph Lundgren movie from the 80s. I love it. Courtney Cox is in the original film, but there's all kinds of call-outs to that original cheesy canon release in the new film. And then the new movie plays with a lot of gags that wouldn't be out of place in a Guardians of the Galaxy type film too. So it's super fun. It's funny when it needs to be. It's dramatic when it needs to be. It's all about the toys, and the toys are in there, man. Ram Man is in there. Fisto is in there. And it's not just a cameo, man. They ham up the point that Fisto is a real name for a character. Oh, it's great. I've seen it twice. I'm going to see it again. If DVDs were still a thing, I would buy it. I want to see a Masters of the Universe pinball machine. I don't care who does it, honestly. Like, as long as I live in a universe that it can happen. I know people have been playing with this license. I think we're hitting perfect. 80s nostalgia right now. Jaws really hit really hard. Transformers are super fun. I know it was G1. Needs to have a better optimist, but whatever. I'll buy it down the road. Like, from what I'm hearing, the fallout from the licensing expo that just happened in Vegas. Like, everybody's going after classic 80s themes, classic 90s themes, television movies, and video games. We're seeing Sonic right now. Sonic is poised that if it delivers on at least 80% of the hype that I've been feeling, it's going to be a certified hit, and everybody else is going to be chasing that dragon, buddy. So I think Masters of the Universe, man. Somebody go get it. And, you know, you can have multiple, you know, I would love the original Filmation TV. I would love it as the toy version. I would love it as the new Masters of the Universe movie. This movie could make a game that would play a lot like Gardens of the Galaxy because there's so many different characters in there. It's action. It's campy. It's fun. There's jokes in it. There's music in it. Like, it would really work as, like, do the live action license. If you get the live action license, I'm talking to companies that may not even be listening to this. If you get the live action license, see if you could also license a couple of aspects of the original film. Because one of the best parts of Black Knight Sword of Rage are these throwback modes that are in there that I didn't even realize until I got the game at home and really dug into it. But there's classic game modes based around Black Knight 2000 and the original Black Knight where like the screen changes so it looks like the old dot matrix display or just the alphanumerics. And it's playing the original sound effects and stuff like it's super fun. It would be fun in a Masters of the Universe modern movie film machine if there could also be maybe like an Easter egg mode where you play the original Dolph Lundgren movie as a mode. Let me know. Is that a cool idea? Like, should we make it happen? Would you buy one? I tell you what, instead of buying a Magikarp topper, instead of buying a Tales of the Arabian Nights, I would love to buy me some Masters of the Universe with a Sick topper and Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain and Cringer and Skeletor Staff of Havoc as a bash toy. Ram man has to kick the ball back at it, G-Man. Let me know what you think. Don Spinball Podcast. We out.
    33:05
    Doing my best to bring the energy like no other. I love you guys on Patreon.com backslash Don Spinball Podcast. Thank you so much for filling up my tip cup. If you enjoy it, why don't you go ahead and kick some ducats over there. Really appreciate it. Don't have to, but it's awesome. Don't spinballpodcast.gmail.com is how you can get at me. Do you want a mod for your machine? No way for me to post it on Pinsite. Just email me and ask. I'll send it out to you, man. Talk to you later. Be cool.