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Episode 102 - Gaming Thanks

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 29m·analyzed·Dec 2, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Holiday gaming recap, new pinball podcast debut, Star Wars topper pricing, and franchise appreciation discussion.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers episode 102 covers holiday gaming, a new pinball podcast launch (The Super Awesome Pinball Show), the Star Wars topper limited release at $750, and a discussion of pinball franchises the hosts are thankful for, including Black Knight, Pinbot, Star Trek, and Star Wars series across multiple manufacturers.

Key Claims

  • Star Wars topper is limited to 500 units at $750 plus $25 shipping

    high confidence · Stern has decided to limit the topper to 500 units with a plaque indicating unit number; priced at $750 + $25 shipping

  • Super Awesome Pinball Show launched with Christopher Franchi, Ed Vanderveen, and Christian Line as three hosts

    high confidence · New pinball podcast announced with high production value resembling morning radio show format, featuring pre-recorded segments and sound integrations

  • This Week in Pinball reached 75 market trend shirts threshold to warrant a serious real market trend segment

    high confidence · Host did extensive research-backed real market trend segment for TWIP after reaching sales milestone

  • Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro is the host's favorite of the three Black Knight games

    high confidence · Host states preference based on difficulty, story, and challenging shots despite lack of upper playfield

  • Star Trek across manufacturers (Bally, Data East, Williams, Stern) represents a strong pinball franchise

    high confidence · Host argues Star Trek has the most really good games despite different manufacturers, praising each iteration

  • WWE Limited Edition pinball machines still have unsold inventory

    medium confidence · Hosts discuss that Stern typically sells all LEs but WWE appears to still have available stock

  • Nick Schell, executive director of Roanoke Pinball Museum, will be guest on episode 103

    high confidence · Directly messaged host about doing episode on Friday; confirmed for regular numbered episode with improved audio setup

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't think most pinball people understand the word value. That could be the case. But they're very much a shiny, I like it, I want it.”

    Host (Dennis/Zach) @ ~27:30 — Reflects on pinball collector psychology regarding limited edition toppers and collectibles

  • “Star Wars wasn't the most loved pinball machine that's come out of Stern recently. Doesn't matter... They'll sell every single one of them, and it'll go fast. Because it's pinball people. Pinball people snap that stuff up.”

    Host (Dennis/Zach) @ ~26:00 — Commentary on FOMO-driven purchasing behavior in pinball collector community

  • “Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro is my favorite of the three Black Knight games in the trilogy... It's hard and it's about the Black Knight.”

    Host (Tony) @ ~42:00 — Franchise preference statement despite Pro version lacking premium playfield features

  • “I would say that Sword of Rage Pro is my favorite of the three Black Knight games... The shots are challenging. It's really brutal.”

    Host (Tony) @ ~42:30 — Values difficulty and thematic coherence over feature set

  • “I think Star Trek has the most games that are really good... all of them are fun.”

    Host (Dennis/Zach) @ ~60:00 — Endorses Star Trek as strong cross-manufacturer pinball franchise

Entities

Christopher FranchipersonEd VanderveenpersonChristian LinepersonNick SchellpersonSteve BowdenpersonSuper Awesome Pinball ShoworganizationThis Week in PinballorganizationRoanoke Pinball MuseumorganizationStar Wars

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: FOMO-driven purchasing behavior in pinball collector community regardless of game quality or topper mechanical integration

    high · Host states 'They'll sell every single one of them, and it'll go fast. Because it's pinball people. Pinball people snap that stuff up' despite acknowledging Star Wars wasn't most loved recent Stern game

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Host prefers difficult, thematically cohesive gameplay (Sword of Rage Pro) over feature-rich versions lacking upper playfield

    high · Host explicitly states Sword of Rage Pro favorite despite lacking premium playfield: 'It's hard and it's about the Black Knight. So it meets everything'

  • $

    market_signal: Super Awesome Pinball Show represents new production approach to pinball podcasting with morning radio show format rather than traditional podcast style

    medium · New podcast with high production value featuring pre-recorded segments, sound integrations, and morning show structure; deliberate stylistic choice noted by host as differentiation

  • $

    market_signal: WWE Limited Edition pinball machines have not sold through completely, indicating limits to collector demand even for major IP

    medium · Host and guest discuss WWE LEs still having inventory in contrast to typical Stern LE sell-through; suggests saturation point exists for limited editions

  • $

    market_signal: Star Wars topper priced at $750 ($250 above typical $500 topper MSRP) with 500-unit scarcity limit

    high · Stern has decided to limit the topper to 500 units with sequential numbering; $750 + $25 shipping; hosts acknowledge this as experimental high-end topper pricing

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.269

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 1st. It is episode 102. It is the first. Yes, it's the first. It is. It feels like the 31st, but there is no 31st of November. Exactly. Happy December. The year's almost over. Finally. What an interesting year. Yeah. It's actually been kind of... It's been really good overall. It's been good for you. It's been really good for me. It's been flying by. It's been different for me. I think I've got some bald patches starting to form in my head. Your hair is almost as good as mine. We carry a heavy burden.
0:54
I know I've got more gray than I had at the start of the year. I do every year. This adds to my class. Yeah. So it makes me look sophisticated.
1:02
Makes me look classy. Like, hello there. Hello. Shake it. Not sad. So, how are you doing? So, speaking of all right. So, Tony, I guess we should probably let the listeners know that we're going to put out episode 103 in a week. Yes. And that is because we just heard from our – I was directly messaged from Nick Schell, who is the executive director of the Roanoke Pinball Museum, and was our one exception, I believe, that we've ever had before when he was doing his EM repair tour back before he moved out to Roanoke, Virginia to work for the museum. So he was going to be in town and wanted to know if we would be up for doing an episode on Friday. And I said, let me check with Tony. And Tony's up for it. And I'm up for it. So we're going to do it as a regular. It's going to be a regular numbered episode as we do. We should have a better setup and rig than we did last time. Yes, last time. There's the end table with one microphone. Now we'll have the two microphones. Unfortunately, the virtual mixing board won't let me plug in a third. I checked. Oh. So, but with omnidirectional and placements and we may up the gains a little bit versus what they were, we should be pretty good to go. I just need to find out what our topic will be. So I've sent him a message this morning to find out what he'd like us to talk about. Maybe we need to get a physical USB mixing board. Well, maybe. If only there had been a Black Friday deal. I know. I looked, actually. I didn't see anything good. I saw a deal on a microphone. Yeah, but I actually looked for mixing boards on Friday. So anyway. And then the week after that, we'll have another episode. We will still have the same schedule. And part of that is with what I do over with This Week in Pinball podcast, I have certain – it's all balanced, like the force. We don't want the force to be awakened. We want it to stay balanced and sleepy. And so that's what we're trying to do. Don't want it awakened. So anyway, so FYI for people about that. But so since our last recording, though, what's happened? I know you had Thanksgiving. I had Thanksgiving. had a wonderful Thanksgiving with the family. My parents came over. So it was just me, my wife, my kids, and my parents.
game
Black Knight Sword of Ragegame
Black Knight 2000game
Black Knightgame
Pinbotgame
Jackbotgame
Bride of Pinbotgame
Star Trek (Stern)game
Star Trek: The Next Generationgame
Star Trek (Data East)game
Star Trek (Bally)game
Flippin' Out Pinballorganization
Elviragame
Kansas City Pinball Championshipevent
Nub's Puborganization
Stern Pinballcompany
  • ?

    product_concern: Black Knight Sword of Rage Premium/LE upper playfield criticized by high-end competitive players as too easy for tournament play

    medium · Host notes 'there are a lot of high-end players who have complained that it is not a good tournament game because it's too easy to stay up on that upper play field and shoot loops all day'

    • 3:17
    I've been eating leftovers because just like everybody else. I finished my last leftovers yesterday. And other than that, I've been playing lots and lots of video games because it's that time of year. So have I actually a lot. I put in more video game time in this last week alone than I probably have in the prior, any week in the prior six months would be my guess. I would say I have. I'm pretty darn sure I have. I've really upped my weekend play the last month, though. I've really been pushing again on some games. See, because I haven't up until about two weeks ago, just after our last episode, because I was, well, even just before that last episode, I've started picking up a lot of play because I was playing Outer Worlds, which I'm almost done with. Then I picked up Jedi Fallen Order, which I'm almost done with. Then the final expansion came out for Battletech, which is what I've been playing all weekend.
    4:21
    And that's about it. But I've been playing all those games pretty consistently. That's basically been what I've been doing. Okay. Well, I did pick up as part of the Black Friday sales Star Wars Battlefront II, which came out last year. Right. Last year or the year before? I'm not sure. I don't remember. Anyway, so I went and got that because it was half off. And so I've been playing some of that. And it's a dice game, and they make the Battlefield series. So I'm comfortable with a lot of the mechanics, even though it's a third person rather than a first-person shooter. But I've been enjoying that. I've only done the story. I've only done multiplayer.
    5:00
    Red Dead Redemption 2, when we get to the video game section, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. That was the hit game from last year. I finally finished it. yesterday, including the epilogue. So, which the epilogue was like six hours. And so playing straight through and just doing story missions. So that, uh, that was quite a bit of content. So I'm going to talk about that. Uh, otherwise the only thing else that I guess I would note, um, tied in obviously to the theme of this podcast was I mentioned this week in pinball earlier, as some of the cross listeners to that podcast and our podcast may know that thanks to some shenanigans involving pin quest they met their threshold of the 75 market trend shirts that i you know this is me trying to trying to help twip out i don't i don't get money from the shirts uh yeah so they reached their 75 threshold that i had established where i would do a a real market trend so real market trend segment that i do it seriously trying to boost sales market trend well By real, I meant like it wasn't just going to be me being there, sitting there, being sarcastic. Right. I would actually do it. You would actually research. I would do – well, that would be my style to doing it. That would be different than the normal real market trends. But that would be enthusiastic as I did it. So that when you were to play the segment in a vacuum, you would think that I believe all of this. That was the idea. Ah. Or what I wanted to try and do. I don't know. I still try to keep it kind of showmanship-y, if that's a word. Because that's sort of Zach's thing is just to take everything and let's just dial it to 11 and then that is quote-unquote entertainment.
    6:45
    But also I wanted to put my influence on it, which would be the, oh, yeah, it will actually be real trends. It will have actual research. From information from the market because why do it otherwise? It's just a bit. What good is an idea with no substance? That's my philosophy. So anyway, so I did that. I have had a lot of direct feedback. I'm surprised at how much, actually. It's the most I've ever received on a single episode of anything I've ever done.
    7:15
    And the most negative thing I have seen was someone indicate that they don't know if they would want something that lengthy every single time.
    7:25
    But can he come back now? Can he follow that up with the same old – Are you asking should he end the segment? Probably.
    7:33
    But this was the prior. Surely he knew what I would do. Maybe that was the plan. Maybe the plan was to end the segment. And this is the way he could do it gracefully. I don't know. That's an interesting idea. He could have been playing chess while I was playing checkers, which was me trying to do what he normally does tic-tac-toe for. Was that what it was? How meta of our board game are we going here?
    8:03
    I don't know. So anyway, that was the – I don't remember what episode number it was, but it was the last episode of Twip. So you guys can listen to it if you want, if you like market trends and see what you thought of my approach. But speaking of market trends, which is all about pinball, let's go ahead and go into the pinball segment. Pinball segment. Okay, so we're going to have a couple chats in this and video games because there is no news. It really is. No news is good news. You'd think. You would think. Except for, you know. So first, let me go ahead and do a plug for a new pinball podcast, the Super Awesome Pinball Show. If that sounds vaguely familiar to people, that was announced months ago, over a year ago. This was the – it had a different name. Right. It was like – I don't know. I couldn't say the name. I couldn't remember it. But that was the one that was going to happen with the pinball artist, Christopher Franchi, and the main person behind Texas Pinball Festival, Ed Vanderveen. Okay. We're going to do a podcast. Well, that's what this is, except Dr. Penn from Mrs. Penn's Pinball Podcast, our Christian line, he is also on the show. It's just three hosts set up. And they've just had their first episode. I do have a link in the show notes to it so people can go check it out. I got through it this morning. So I started it and finished it this morning. So I could say it's very different from a lot of the other podcasts. The production approach, it's like a high, it's like a, I was going to say like a high production value show. I think the better way to describe it is it reminds me of a morning radio show. Like there are lots of bits or a lot of sound integrations going on in between the discussions. There were a number apparently of pre-recorded items that were slotted in. So it flows like a morning show more than what we normally would associate with a traditional podcast, which is probably why they call it the pinball show and not the pinball podcast. I guess that could be okay. It's different.
    10:00
    I'm not a morning DJ shock jock type of enjoyer. Nor am I. It's not my typical style. But I'm willing to try just about any pinball podcast and see how it goes. And I don't know much about Ed Van Der Veen. Yeah. Obviously, I heard Christopher Franchi quite a bit when he had the podcast within a podcast on Slapsave. Right. And Christian, I've heard a number of times when his wife does her podcast. Correct. A lot of times he almost functions as a co-host with that.
    10:31
    So I don't really know Ed's personality. The way they present it on the show is obviously Franchi will probably be the most controversial voice. Obviously. And Christian will probably be the most calm voice. they're presenting him as the good guy. The, you know, let's get along person. He seems pretty nice. I mean, he's probably the third nicest person in pinball, maybe.
    10:57
    Steve Bowden being number one and me being number two. So that would leave him at number three. You would agree?
    11:06
    Sure. Yes. So anyway. I'd have to think about it to figure out who else might be number three. I mean I know it wouldn't be me well I'm down at the bottom of that list so anyway so there's a link if you guys want check it out if you're looking for some new content to listen to and see if you like the format of the show and we'll see where it goes from there they are planning to do it fortnightly is the plan like us so well fortnightly well you know what happens when you say bi-weekly it confuses people well it does have two meanings so I understand And it's very – in fact, Christopher Franchi touched on that at the end of the episode, which was funny because I had just the day before told someone that we were biweekly. And they corrected me saying, no, because we don't put out an episode twice a week, to which, of course, I had to link the Merriam-Webster definition. It said, actually, biologically, it's not that you're wrong other than – Actually, it means both every other week or twice a week. It doesn't mean either. I remember once I asked someone when I was in graduate school when they said something was due biweekly, what they meant exactly. And they didn't answer me. And I thought maybe they thought I was just trying to get smart with them. But I really didn't know what they meant. Yeah. Because I could have been – it was something that was easily – It could have been either or. I don't remember. On retrospective, it was something where we were supposed to turn something in twice a week or do it every other week. I don't know. Anyway, doesn't matter, I guess. So there's that. uh the only other real pinball news item and we could stretch this one out a little bit this is because it's an area we don't really normally ever touch on uh toppers so the star wars topper was officially revealed for sale it's the one with the r2d2 that spins around like he's you know the astromech as if he was in a x-wing yeah or something so stern has decided to limit the topper to 500 units. I guess there's a little plaque on the back of the topper that says what number you have. And as such, the price is $750 for the topper plus an additional $25 for shipping. And I'm sure they're all sold already. I don't know if they're all sold already. I saw Zach had listings from Flippin' Out Pinball to sell them on Facebook and I saw there were a lot of comments. I don't normally talk toppers because I'm not a quote unquote topper guy I have had two I was going to say I've had two toppers but it's more like I've had two quasi toppers like my dad at East Jurassic Park had the light bar for the topper the light bar was integrated I don't know if every game came with that or not but I did not actually have the physical topper I doubt that physical topper would fit in my lineup because where my games are in my game room the HVAC system goes under there. The ceiling's lower where I have all the back boxes. There's a Big Guns for sale in the area right now.
    14:07
    Big Guns I don't think will fit in my room. Yeah, you don't have enough. You don't have enough. I don't think I have that. Overhead. Jurassic Park barely fits. And then Total Nuclear Annihilation I have the topper for because it came with it. Right. It just came with it. So I'm not a topper. Just in general, what are your thoughts on toppers? Because I don't know if we've ever talked about them. They're fine. some of them are cool 90 of them are just existent okay i mean i mean i mean there was a white water the one white water topper is really cool the black knight topper is really cool yeah uh but most toppers are just kind of there well that's uh it's a fair point and a lot of manufacturers now are trying to better integrate where it's not just a topper that's just sits there or is always lit or whatnot, but it actually does, you know, they've got the wires going up so that it's tied to something that's happening in the game. Like the TNA topper goes off when the reactors are critical. Right. Or high speed to the getaways topper, you know, goes off when you're in the multi ball or certain other modes. So I like those toppers. Sure. The light, just the light, like the rotating light, all that, those kinds of toppers I like. most of the other toppers I can take or leave. I am not buying a machine because of the topper, and I'm not saying no to a machine because it does or does not have a topper. Okay. And so in this instance, I guess, regarding the Star Wars topper, I find this price extremely high. Extremely high. I'm not surprised. Given that it's limited, I get what they're going for. I don't know why they limited it, but I get what they're going for. I think it's an experiment. I don't fault Stern for trying to make money on the topper and deciding, let's go ahead and let's up price this $250 on top of what we usually cap our toppers at, $500, which is another price point I have often criticized. They'll sell them.
    16:14
    And I guess. I mean, Star Wars wasn't the most loved pinball machine that's come out of Stern recently. Doesn't matter. Granted, the comic art edition has also just hit, so this timing's pretty good. It's limited edition. They'll sell every single one of them, and it'll go fast. Okay. Because it's pinball people. Pinball people snap that stuff up. Yeah, but I mean, it's not like Willy Wonka has it sold out of the 500 collector editions. That's true. So there's some limit to the number of limiteds that get sold, it seems. I mean, I guess Stern typically sells all of their LEs. When was the last one that didn't completely sell? I guess WWE. I hear they still have some. Yeah, that would be my guess. I don't know on things like that. Considering the sheer number of Star Wars out there and with the new comic art one coming out and everything, they'll sell all 500 of these in a snap. Yeah, the only thing that makes me wonder is it doesn't mechanically look fancier than, say, the Black Knight sort of rage topper, which isn't $750. So I don't know if people will see the value there. And we're only hinging in on the fact that there are 500, which is a lot of typers.
    17:28
    I don't know that most pinball people understand the word value. That could be the case. But they're very much a shiny, I like it, I want it. yes but a lot of the stuff it's easier to convince yourself that it has some sort of impact on the game that you're playing like oh i i got it i gotta go star wars premium or le because i need the hyperloop i need the hyperspace ramp or i won't get it and then i won't have the full experience and i've seen people actually try and argue that the pro is not a good game and the premium is all because of that one toy. So while I don't agree with that, it's an argument that makes sense to me because it does change the gameplay. It does. And so, but a topper doesn't. Even if it's integrated, it doesn't change the gameplay. No. It's like a shaker motor. A shaker motor would even have more impact because how many people while they're playing can really experience the topper? Again, if you have like getaway or whatnot, Not the light going, you're aware. The fan on Whirlwind, you're aware. So there are varying degrees of integration. But I don't think R2 sticks out and tases you while you're playing. Oh, man. Like you're a Jawa.
    18:53
    It would, but the liability for, I mean, how many pinball people have pacemakers? That's true. Yeah, I mean, there could be a lot of debt. The liability would be real bad on that one. There'd be a lot of debt. You'd have to sign. I could just see people signing those limited liability waivers to buy the Star Wars topper. I bet it would be pretty cool. That would be pretty cool. It reaches out. When you get a house ball, it just reaches out and tases you.
    19:19
    I would want one where it was more like instead of him looking like he was in the X-Wing, I'd want him to be the upright R2. And then when you drain, I want it to go and fall over. Oh. If it was like the R2, the Jabba's Palace R2 that had the drink holder up top and it would lower itself down so you could put your drink on it, and then it would lift itself up while you played. It's a pin gulp. And when you drained, it dropped back down so you could get your drink back. These are such better toppers. That would be amazing. And imagine how much more we could charge for them. Oh, my gosh. It'd be insane. These ideas are free. You don't have to credit us. Take them. Do it. Be free. Be free topper makers. There you go. what they needed to do was work with those people we saw at uh the next tech the r2d2 astromech droid people i went to their web page yeah it's awesome i know i don't have the time money or skills to build one oh they look so cool i remember people asked there's someone in our chat when we So there were these full-sized fan-built astromech droids that were at the Kansas City Pinball Championship. They're in the background behind us while we were streaming. And we had people in chat even mention it from time to time. Someone had asked if the Star Wars topper was being unveiled behind us because they couldn't see the mechs, but they kept hearing R2 units because they were driving them around and they were beeping at people. They were pretty cool. I don't know where I would put one, but – Yeah, I don't know.
    20:58
    But anyway, okay. So, yeah, toppers. I just – I can't get excited about toppers, but that's the news of this week. So what could we do? And that is the news of this week. That's literally the news of the week. I don't have any other pinball news. The last thing I thought we would do for pinball, just because I cribbed it right out of your video game segment, so spoilers of what's to come, was given that we are in Thanksgiving weekend right now,
    21:23
    a discussion about pinball franchises that we are thankful for or franchises that we really appreciate or enjoy in pinball. And the way that we're going to do it is we're using a pretty loose definition of franchise. It doesn't matter if it's the same manufacturer or not. Because it's pinball. Right, right. It's too hard. There'd be nothing. nothing to pick from so it's games with the same theming essentially same theme concept and a minimum of three though we don't want to go so if there's like two as we had discussed high speed for example and I can see the argument in pinball because there's so few otherwise part of why I took it made it a limit of three in video games because if you do two games that's right. It's like, no, we don't need that. Or the Indiana Jones game Right The start you know we don need those in that there are enough where there are at least three that are in the same license realm to work with uh so do you have one you wanted to start with i would start with what i feel like would probably be the most obvious one to start with and the one that i think is one of the most iconic ones it's the black knight franchise Well, it's the most timely. It is timely. Well, to be fair. Not the most timely anymore, thanks to Elvira. But it is very timely. It was this year that we saw the third one hit. And it's the one that I probably enjoy the most that fall within the three game rules. Because I enjoy all three Black Knights. The original Black Knight game is the one I like the least. Okay. But I enjoy all three of those games. I, after having one in the house for a while, Black Knight was always a game that I didn't care much for. Right. I appreciate it a little bit more, though I am a big proponent of that the ball lock should be set to conservative.
    23:28
    And so, like, we have one at 403 right now. Right. It's, you can lock up top as soon as you plunge. That makes that game so much easier than what it could be. Right. You don't have to shoot the horseshoe down below first. And so I think that it's a far stronger game once you go into that. Most people don't put the game that way. I get it because they want to feel like they're accomplishing something. But Black Knight 2000 is actually my least favorite because I think it's – I like the music. But I think that that upper play field is way too easy to stay up on. And I have to disclose that on Black Knight Sword of Rage, I haven't played a premium or LE. I have several times. So because of that, I can't comment on what I think about the upper play field. I know there are a lot of high-end players who have complained that it is not a good tournament game because it's too easy to stay up on that upper play field and shoot loops all day as well.
    24:25
    But I like the Pro a lot. I would say that Sword of Rage Pro is my favorite of the three Black Knight games in the trilogy, in the franchise. Okay. And I do enjoy that one quite a bit. It's got a good story. The shots are challenging. It's really brutal. And it's still doing everything Black Knight. And I get why some people couldn't get past that it doesn't have the upper play field. But it's still what I think was the key thing, hard. And that's, to me, it's hard and it's about the Black Knight. So it meets everything. It meets everything, yeah.
    24:58
    I mean, I would be tempted to, let me go ahead and throw out, even though this one is almost a cheat. And that would be the Pinbot series. And it's really just because of Pinbot. Right. Because Jackbot's the exact same layout. You can debate whether or not you like the Jackbot rules better than Pinbot's rules. It's a more advanced game.
    25:19
    And let's face it, nobody likes Bride of Pinbot for anything other than art because the game plays not nearly as good as these two. Even if you set aside the billion-dollar shot, the layout is just not as good. Now, in addition to the art, I would say it's got the coolest ball lock mechanism where you go and you have to do her eyes, which was like, but also the mouth as well, and it was the rotating head. That's a pretty cool mech. Yes, that is a good mech. But yeah, Bride's easily my least favorite. I don't think the geometry is very fun. even if you go with the dutch pinball brighter pinbot 2.0 kit that layout still kind of a turd so but pinbot is great it's my favorite system 11 so i'm gonna go ahead and say that and if you don't like the rules on pinbot that you think it's too much of a right flipper only game jack bot's probably a good thing to get jack bot mixes it's still the same layout so i can't say it mixes up the flipper stuff too much but you know if you prefer a gambling theme over going and traveling the solar system it has some different stuff going on it's got the dmd and i know a lot of people are big fans of it i have a lot less time on jackpot so it's harder for me to really i don't like it as much but right that's probably due to limited time exposure given the geometry there's no logical reason i wouldn't like it but but you'd be surprised there could be but i sure do miss having pinbots around i've never owned a pinbot every time they're either too priced or they get scooped up before i can uh nab them myself so sad because everybody really likes pinbot well it's one of the system 11s that still generally stays under two thousand dollars because they made a lot of them and you know there are more people that they want diner they want taxi they want whirlwind which i get but i always liked pinbot i like the integration i like the sound i like the lights but most importantly I like how it plays it's a good center post game to keep it interesting I would do the same thing, I would go with Pinball's my favorite of those three of those three, Pinball's my favorite you got any other Pinball franchises that you want to talk about that you're thankful for? that I'm thankful for? what am I thankful for that exists?
    27:38
    you know I do have to say well at this point just throwing it out there the jurassic park counts as a franchise according to our rules it does point it does i would not debate that but i wouldn't throw it in there before say star trek star trek okay that's an interesting one because every single star trek game was made by a different manufacturer right and i'm aware of there's a there's the bally star trek from the late 70s. Data East. Data East has the Anniversary one. Then there's Star Trek Next Gen, which was Williams. And then there's the Stern version of Star Trek based around the newer film franchise. Right. So, why would you name Star Trek?
    28:23
    Because I think it has the most games that are really good. Stern Star Trek is amazing. One of my favorite of Stern's newer games. Okay. Star Trek The Next Generation is one of my favorite wide bodies.
    28:46
    I've got some issues with the game, but that's going to be any game. Star Trek Data East. Is it the Data East Star Trek? I'm thinking of the ballet. Let me look at the art real quick. The Data East one is the one where Scotty does the call-outs. It's a DMD game. Right. I've played it only a few times. Yeah. Data East is the one I've only played a few times. So it's the other one that is the one where it's the motion picture artwork. Right. Is yeah, that's ballets. Yeah. The ballet one. It is a lot of fun as well. Even if the artwork is a little weird, uh, but all of those games, all of them are fun.
    29:27
    I do. Um, yeah, I, I think it makes sense to name Star Trek though. I'm more polarized on some of them. I don't remember anything redeeming about the Data East game. Maybe it's because my ball times are super short every time I played it, that it's been really harsh. The Bally one as well, the theme, I get it, but I think it even has you on the play field spelled Bally instead of Star Trek. It's like there's no theme integration aside mostly from the back pass. Right, yeah, because it does have you spelled Bally. but what I do like about that, that game allowed was the creation of the mirror universe homebrew, which is a really cool interpretation of that game. So, and the ballet layout, it's really hard. So I give it hard in a, it's just an interesting, you know, it's one of those classic style games. So it's interesting in that regard. Next generation. It's my second favorite super pin that Williams made. And I think that to this day, it has the best call-out package ever because they got so many of Next Generation's cast to do it. So it really feels like, I mean, you hear Q, you have Picard, you've got Data, you've got Riker, Worf is doing call-outs as well. It's like, it just feels like you're in the show when you play that game. So I really like it for that. And then my favorite is the Stern iteration, which is very similar to the Star Trek Next Gen layout, but refined quite a bit. Like, you've still got the three-flipper layout, but the shots make more sense. It's a really deep game with a lot of modes. I mean, it's got 18 modes to it, so there's a lot to do in that game. They did get Carl Urban in eventually to do call-outs. So while it doesn't nearly rise to the level of Next Gen, you are having custom call-outs from McCoy from the movie. So, again, it helps with the immersion factor. So I really do like that quite a bit. But another franchise I would probably go ahead and point to is – you see, I don't want to name Elvira because I've not yet played the new one, which is at Nub's Pub now. Is it? Yeah. All right. It's on announcement. Going to have to make a trip up there at some point. I don't know when. Probably not until next – I guess this one will be an interesting one. Should I call this one – am I thankful for this? Sure, I'm glad to have played them, so I'll say it. This one could be a little controversial. It'll be Star Wars. I can see why that's controversial, because there's not really ever been a great Star Wars game. I think the problem with Star Wars is there's never been a Star Wars game that lived up to whatever the hopes and expectations have been of the fans. And maybe it never could. Maybe that's the issue. Maybe Star Trek avoids that because there's not the same level of demand there. Right. I don't know. But we have had a lot of diversity in terms of various Star Wars games and what they brought to the table. So there is the Hankin one, which I've never played or seen. They were sold in Australia, and they only made, I think, maybe 250 of them or so. But it's essentially a blend of Space Invaders and Firepower, I believe. The layout was crib, basically, from already existing games. But there was that. There's Data East Star Wars. I've played it a lot. And I think that that's an enjoyable game with the chat age code. I don't put it to the level of a Jurassic Park. But it's still creative.
    33:07
    There's a nice, tight little Death Star shot to try and go for. The multiball's fun and really anxiety-inducing, which is good. So it's interesting, and it's got some odd call-outs, which make it somewhat entertaining. So you got that. Then there's the weird one that I don't think people ever really talk about much, and that's Sega's one, the Star Wars trilogy. Yeah. It's got a giant hole, like a Gottlieb hole in the play field. It's a kick-out hole for the Sarlacc pit, and I think it's got a whole bunch of stand-up targets, if I remember. it's just it's a really odd one uh to just kind of run with it tried to capture that star wars mystique and then of course what we were talking about regarding the topper earlier the stern star wars which originally we have it we have the premium on location now and i had up until then only played the pro uh they shoot quite a bit differently than i would have thought i think you know there's more some things aren't backhandable on the premium because i believe of the steepness involving the hyper loop and stuff. But you do have the video asset integration. It's pretty heavy in that. So you get a lot of clips from the movie. And it's a very mode-driven pen, requiring you to go for a lot of pretty precise shots. So in regards to that, I'm glad to have gotten to play. Other than the Haken, I've played all of these. And they all feel different. Yeah, they don't feel like they're just cribbing from each other. No, no. And so because of that, it's like there's always been these different – like, okay, so the new one has the little Death Star egg thing and, of course, the infamous TIE fighter on a spring. Then you've got the Dead East one, which had the giant Death Star, and then the original code was just ramp all day. Ramp, ramp, ramp. And then a giant wannabe gobble hole for a Sarlacc pit out of the Sega one. So it's like they've all tried to do something different, and none of it really works quite the way you want it to. But there are some interesting things to go for on these games, and most of the older ones sell for a pretty penny because of the theme. And unless I completely missed it, we missed one. Which one did I forget about? Episode 1.
    35:26
    The only non-original trilogy Star Wars game. That's right. And I have played it several times, obviously. And then the Star Wars that killed Williams. So we got all. It's all there. That's right. The last full production game of John Papaduke.
    35:44
    Until Raza. Comes out. Right. Yeah. But again, that was interesting. The gimmick there was the kind of holographic effect that Pinball 2000 was going for. I think of the two Pinball 2000s, I preferred Revenge. Yeah, I agree. I think that's driven by the rules are better on Revenge. There was a lot on production with Episode 1 that was – I don't want to say it was rushed, but there was – they didn't have a lot of stuff initially because the film hadn't been out yet while they were working on the pen. And I think you just sort of end up in a lot of kind of samey feeling generic modes. Revenge did a better job trying to encourage you to do other shots, I think. I don't know. I find episode one exceedingly easy to play. Well, and it's interesting. It's a problem that wasn't a big deal in the older days of pinball. It's a larger deal now, especially now with LCD screens when you're talking about assets. because it used to be you wouldn't need a whole lot to prep a machine and have a machine drop around the time or within a short period of time of a movie coming out. And you really can't do that now between the need for assets and everything else. Yeah. But anyway, I put it on my list just because I'm glad someone tried to make Star Wars pinball machines. Right. It should have been done. In fact, it even makes sense that this mini were done, as big as that franchise is. It is one of the biggest franchises in the history of cinema. And obviously under the behemoth of Disney now, it will always remain big. When will Mandalorian pinball come out? Will there be a Baby Yoda topper? These are the questions we need answers to. It'll be $1,000 and it'll be limited to $750.
    37:35
    It's limited to $1,000 for $1,000 a piece. so otherwise I have a hard time of thinking of another major franchise that falls within the three game rule there was again like we said Jurassic Park which is you know Jurassic Park is fun the new Jurassic Park is fun Lost World exists I've not played Lost World I think I've played it once I have not I don't recall seeing it I think I played it in Texas once I think I'm not even 100% of that.
    38:11
    But other than that, I can't think of – I guess if you wanted to start playing real fast and loose, I'm pretty sure that around the Bicentennial there were like three or four games that came out that would have qualified.
    38:25
    But that's playing a little fast and loose for the rules, even for me. Because I know there was what? There was Freedom. There was Spirit of 76 or something or another, something like that. There were a bunch of those bicentennial, super patriotic-themed games that came out there. And then some of them, like the Adaball versions had different names and stuff like that. One we could discuss, it's not one I'm thankful for, but I'll bring it up, is, well, obviously, we could do Elvira. Obviously. That would be one. But I haven't played the newest one. It's hard to talk about. It's like, of the two I've played, I actually prefer Elvira and the Party Monsters. I think it's a more interesting layout. I don't enjoy all the, I don't hate Scared Stiff, but I don't really enjoy shooting it. It's super shallow. Do you hear fanboys? I hear torches and pitchforks. Well, no. I think most people would admit, even by 90s Williams standards, Scared Stiff was relatively easy to get to the first wizard mode.
    39:34
    It's fine. Let me tell you. All right. Here's the problem. Why are we even on this? All right. Here's my problem with Scared Stiff. I do not like that scoop in the back left that kind of fires towards the pops that you're constantly going into for the ball locks. The way that releases and then thus returns kind of straight down the middle is super unsatisfying. For a game that seems to want to be a flow game, that is a clunker of a return. Because you've got the bony ramp and the other ramp, and they're smooth and fun to shoot. But once you need to go up and start collecting your dead heads and everything, you're constantly going in the scoop. and the scoop fires back out in a really not fun way for me. I just don't like that part. And it's not, I don't know if it's that it disrupts the flow or I just don't like how it feeds. I think it just, it's like it fires off, doesn't really go in the pops, might hit one, comes back out kind of towards the middle. It's not like a drain monster or anything. It's just not fun. And you're in the scoop a lot. Kind of like my problem was with my Sharky shootout. You're in the scoop an awful lot. in the game. And that was my least favorite part of Sharky's was always being in the scoop. Because it was so easy to hit the scoop on Sharky's even when it was not. Yes. The problem with... Now, Skirt Stiff's scoop is a lot better. The problem with Sharky's scoop is the pops constantly keep refeeding it. Yes. And that's what makes it such a chore. When you come out and the pops will feed it back in the scoop five times before it ever comes anywhere near you. Well, on Sharky's, I mean, you only have the one ramp. Now we're talking about something that's not even franchise. Now it is... And the left orbit feeds the scoop. The right inner orbit feeds the scoop. So the ball lock. The right outer orbit feeds the scoop. You have to sometimes directly shoot the scoop. And then the pops inadvertently feed the scoop. Scoop central. So here's a franchise.
    41:36
    Well, that reminded me of one. There could be, there's the 8-Ball franchise, the actual trilogy of 8-Ball, 8-Ball Deluxe, and 8-Ball Champ. Oh, valid. That were all Bally games. Yeah. So that's not even stretching it to all billiards themes, but actually the ones that are seen as actually being sequentially designed. And 8-Ball Deluxe is my favorite of the class of 81s from Bally. And 8-Ball Champ is quite a different. The thing I like is all three of those layouts, dramatically different.
    42:07
    Even though it's all about you playing 8-Ball, what you shoot for on each one is laid out in a significantly different way. so they all feel very very different you know none of them rely on multi-ball they're all shooters games so and i'm while i am more of a flow design person i do like shooter i mean that's why i had sharkies is i wanted a shooters game and that is one of those sort of stop and shoot all three of them stop and shoot games and they're hard so that would be one that would be that would Another one that comes to mind that I know you have a lot of familiarity with is what a lot of people call the Party Trilogy. Dr. Dude, Party Zone, and whatever the other one is. There's a third one. Yeah, there's a third one. I'm forgetting which one is in the trilogy. Party Zone is the one I played probably the most. Yeah, we had it on location a lot. Dr. Dude really grew on me. I really like Dr. Dude. I wouldn't put it in a top 5 for System 11, but I would put it in a top 10.
    43:13
    Party Zone, I hated. Absolutely hated Party Zone. All right. And Party Animal. Party Animal was the other one. Yeah, I don't – I've played it, but I don't have a good memory of it. No. I recognize the Translight, but – anyway, of those, Doctor Dude. I really enjoy Doctor Dude. I like Doctor – I do not like Party Zone. I like Party Zone. I do not. Oh, oh, oh. I just remember getting ground to death on that in a tournament. And once I understood how that game's points worked, and I'd have to do the same thing to catch up. I never wanted to give up so bad in my life. I didn't because I figured, well, I need the practice. I better try. It didn't go well. It's like, I'll go ahead and keep trying, but I'm just not sold on it. I can't think of any others. That'd probably be enough, I figure. We came up with more than I thought we would. Yeah.
    44:14
    I can't. I can think of a couple that I wouldn't mind seeing have more, but I can't think of any other big ones that are out there. Well let's go ahead and transition To video games then Alright I mentioned at the start that I wrapped up Red Dead Redemption 2 I already played and won Red Dead Redemption Many years ago So I thought I'd take a little bit of time Just to talk a bit about it Because now that it a year later and no one cares It a great time to get my review Spoiler alert No no I don want to go into plot spoilers
    44:56
    But for those that don't know, Red Dead Redemption 2 is essentially – well, not essentially. It is a prequel to the events of Red Dead Redemption 1. So in a lot of ways, you may know what's going – you play as a different protagonist than you do in 2. 2 and 1 are different. Yeah. But the player that you are in Red Dead 1 is in the gang you are in in Red Dead 2. He's one of the gang members. So this goes about and kind of explains that part of that timeline that happens. You know, it kind of, oh gosh, I don't, I guess I'd say the game starts about 10 years before Red Dead Redemption 1 starts. and the game ends probably something on the order of three or four years before Red Dead 1 starts, that's the epilogue portion, which was long. This whole game was long. It's a rock star game. It's super polished. I did run into a few bugs, but nothing game-breaking. I had one instance where I gave a guy an item and he teleported on top of a chair standing that he had once been sitting on. I don't know if I recorded a clip of that, but that was sort of funny to see.
    46:06
    And, you know, the horse mechanics, when you get used to them and they're pretty nice. I never got used to it. The problem was I kept putting the game down and then I wouldn't remember the controls.
    46:17
    I liked Red Dead 1 a lot more overall. Though, the voice acting in Red Dead 2 is great. Okay. It's great. You know, Rockstar, AAA doing all that. It's great. The storyline, not as good. I thought it starts pretty good. I enjoyed the game. So let me say it like that. But as I'm going along in kind of the pre-epilogue portion, there is, I'm going to call it the illness. As soon as the illness sets in on the game, it's such a slog. It's such a slog because everything, you know what's going on. You know everything that's happening at this point, but it seems like everyone, all the characters are still going through these motions, even though you see where the ultimate conflict is going to. Because going into Red, you know from Red Dead 1, now this is spoilers, but people should know from the much older game, Red Dead 1, this gang no longer exists. So they had to break apart. So you know that's the end game, is that this gang can't stay together anymore. Right. That it's going to fragment a part because those pieces are in fragments in Red Dead 1. But while you're going to this inevitability of a Greek tragedy style thing where you know the outcome, you're supposed to know the outcome as you're playing it. They are putting in other things and I almost felt like they wanted – to me, there was a part involving the protagonist that reminded me of Red Dead 1. like they wanted a twist, but it wasn't going to be a surprise twist. So they're just marching everything in a way that just, it felt really slow. And I was like, why is all of this, there's no punch to this because it's all drawn out across these multiple chapters. And it's just so tedious right at the end. There's a part in the game where you relocate to what essentially is New Orleans. They call it Saint-Denis. That is like the last of the really strong chapters is the Saint-Denis chapter. And after that, it's all just kind of weird. Like there's a part where you end up just on an island off the coast of Cuba and it just gets weird. It just gets weird. And it's still mechanically a lot of fun and the performances are still really good, but it's a chore. It's more of a chore, I should say. Then there's the epilogue. I was really grateful. I was playing this on Xbox. I was really grateful when I had the achievement pop up saying that I had won Red Dead Redemption. I think that was the game kindly telling me, you do not need to play the epilogue. But I did. It took me over six hours.
    49:08
    Sim Ranch. That's what the epilogue is. It's Sim Ranch. You got a ranch? And here's the thing. This was spiteful on Rockstar's part. This was spite. because at the beginning of Red Dead Redemption 1, there is a part where you are working as a hand on a ranch. And people really made fun of that because aren't you supposed to be a gunslinger? You have this whole huge thing where you're like going and rounding up loose horses and stuff. And then here you go at the end of Red Dead 2 and they turned it to 11. I had to shovel horse manure. I had to build fences. fences they're actually having you like lift the left stick now push a to insert post into side of fence it was like that or now walk with horse poop over to wheelbarrow push button to dump poop in wheelbarrow help them break a horse help them go out and it was go run supplies from town in a wagon it was all of that it's awful it's just awful i'm and but they're interspersing some other stuff from your prior prior gang life stuff's going on this is the epilogues all post the gang breaks up right and so there's all this stuff from the gang life that like every couple of missions then there's something like oh here's someone that you used to know back from the gang days and doing stuff with the gang and so they just they string you along for a while like that you get to the points like do you even care it was trying to do some development to help explain why the character you play as in red dead one ends up where he is in red dead one so that all has to integrate with ranch ranching and all of that but it's just kind of like it just it gets a little rough it's like when you're waiting for the to get to the third ending of return of the king you know if you've ever watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Return of the King has three clear endings. And spoilers if you haven't read Tolkien, so shame on you, or seen those movies, shame on you also.
    51:19
    There are three endings to Return of the King. The destruction of the ring is a clear ending point for the story. It's an obvious ending point. Then there is the crowning of Aragorn as king of Gondor. That's a clear ending point, that celebration. And then there's Sailing into the West, which is the third and final ending point in the film. There's also the dealing with Sharky back at the base in the books, which thankfully Peter Jackson cut out because that whole thing is awful. Absolutely awful. But look, they aren't all winners, folks. Just look at the Hobbit movies. They aren't all winners. They can't all be winners. They can't. So anyway, my overall review, Red Dead Redemption, seven out of ten. I'd probably have given it an 8 if it wasn't so freaking long with the boring stuff but the epilogue pulled it down for you the epilogue pulls it down there's a lot to do but a lot of that open world content is exceedingly tedious remind me of Final Fantasy 15 tedium if you want to go and hunt you can if you want to go and do bounty hunter missions you can if you want their legendary fish to catch and animals to track there's a lot there but all that is going to appeal in total to very few people right and there's a lot to do in just the story so at this point the game's cheap enough you know go ahead and get it if you like western games uh and there's not a lot of them no there's not and while rockstar is pretty tight with their mechanics they kind of like valve love to do oddball button choices on stuff so not everything makes intrinsic sense to me and i didn't have a lot of or at least i was not aware of a lot of customization I could do to the control sticks for certain things. It would be periods like, well, how do you stop your horse? Going forward is A. It's tapping the A button. Is it tapping the B button? No, it's right bumper.
    53:19
    Normally, I stop my horse by crashing it into things because I couldn't remember that. Right. Because that's what he's there for, is to crash into stuff. Poor horse. Kill him! That was my review of Red Dead Redemption 2. I'm now moving back, I've moved back over, was playing just before you came over, in fact, Metro Exodus. I'm going to try and, because if I get stuff for Christmas, I need to free up time, so it's time to punch through some of this other stuff. But I'm not far enough in Metro Exodus to comment.
    53:48
    I have been, as I was saying earlier, I've been playing a fairly large number of games. The big one that I've been wasting all my time on right now, not really wasting but playing a bunch right now has been the third expansion to the Battletech game I've talked about Battletech many times I streamed one of the previous expansions this is no I don't know it's kind of slow paced for the type of stuff people want to see in a game I will say that they have definitely upped the difficulty the AI is making some very good decisions from the standpoint of tactical combat less good decisions from the standpoint of them fighting me because it's annoying it's not like there's like I don't know if it's actually in there or if it just seems that way but there seems to be a threshold of damage to one of your mechs now where the standard oh I'm going to beat on this guy so he changes targets to the guy who's actually attacking him as opposed to the guy running away.
    55:03
    I think once you hit a certain threshold of damage they don't care. Beat on them all you want. They will kill the guy who's running away because he's got enough damage that they think it's possible to do so it'll just keep hitting it. And it doesn't matter how much damage you pour onto that guy. He will not change off the target of the guy he's trying to kill. So I've lost some people because they made a decision that I, as a player, would have made and said, hey, I'm going to drop that guy. I'm not going to let him get resettled and stay in the fight. Your sacrifice is not in vain. Right. So I've also been playing The Jedi Fallen Order, which is crazy to me because it's so unexpected. And anybody who knows anything about it, I'm sure, heard this, but it is a Star Wars game from EA with no microtransactions, and it's enjoyable.
    56:02
    Interesting. I don't even know. I didn't even know EA could put a game out like this anymore. Maybe it was in development for so long, I just couldn't go back and get it. Maybe that's what, yeah. It's like, we're already over budget, just leave it. They couldn't force it in. Yeah. force it in the uh uh it's it's fun it is definitely difficult if you play it even on normal difficulty uh and i'm assuming the harder difficulties are going to be even worse but like a lot of games that are very single player story centric now it has a i want to I just want to know the story, which is basically don't hurt me. Don't hurt me, daddy mode. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Because it's like you can kill everything real easy and it doesn't. Or you can crank it up to like Dark Souls hard. I have not. Yeah, I remember with Force Unleashed, my problem that I had with the higher difficulty stuff, because I think I played that in part on maybe even the hardest. difficult i don't think i finished it yeah but i finished it in another mode but one of the things is it's really uh non-immersive when i'm having to wail on stormtroopers with a lightsaber like it's a nerf bat it's like what no this is a lightsaber this doesn't feel like star wars i'm supposed to cut through just about anything yeah i should be able to hit it and just end it yes that's why you send in a bunch of battle droids roger roger and that's how a lot of this i mean that's how this feels because things don't last beyond a hit or two. It's not like some of the old stuff. But once I – So I wonder on the harder difficulties, do those things – does your lightsaber become a nerf bat? I'm assuming it does. Or you just become a nerf ball and you just can't take damage, but you'll still be able to kill things in a couple hits. See, that would fit. That would be – That would make sense. That would be, quote, unquote, realistic. Right. Right, and it would require you to use the block, bounce back shots, all that stuff a lot. It's like you're just super duper squishy, but you still deal out just as much damage as you always did. With Force Unleashed, that was not what they did. They just gave everything more health.
    58:24
    They did. Just wail on it, whatever. Force Unleashed is not a good game. It was an interesting tech demo. I can't believe they made a second one. I never finished. That's not this. Fallen Order is different. Yeah, Fallen Order is different. Fallen Order is enjoyable. Um, and the outer worlds, which I'm almost done with, uh, I would have been done with it, but I got sidetracked by the other games. Uh, that's fun. I like that. It's open world ish while still keeping areas small enough and keeping everything tight enough that even when somebody who has a problem with open world games, uh, such as myself, you can get through the game pretty quickly because my problem with open world games is like take for example Fallout 4 before in Fallout 4 before I went to Diamond City you know one of your very very first goals one of your very first places you wanted to be I was 120 hours in the game before I got there because I was like ooh shiny oh that's shiny ooh what's over here well I mean they could have and in some Fallout games for various zones and stuff they have tried to control that a little bit by the level of the enemies and stuff in certain areas right that's never been I mean Fallout's been though very open about trying to let you go and explore and be open yeah as you wish versus Dark Souls you brought up earlier uh Dark Souls for example that was one of the things is you don't know where to go but you find out very quickly if you're going to the wrong area because you will basically do no damage to enemy. And the starting zone is almost a hub. So there is like go 30 feet this way. And then you find skeletons that you can't even, you can't even destroy that just keep coming back and they'll one shot you.
    60:17
    And eventually you find the path where it takes things three shots to kill you. And you're like, Oh, this is the right way. This is where I'm supposed to go. I have a chance. Their tactics are simple. They actually stay dead when I kill them until I stay at a bonfire. And then they come back. which is a mechanic that Fallen Order has. You can heal yourself to full when you go to a meditation point, but if you do, all the defeated enemies come back. That actually was a mechanic that I liked in Dark Souls. I thought it fit for what they were going for. Right. So we'll segue from that. Since we're talking about Star Wars, big video game franchise, fallout big video game franchise we will go ahead and segue into our video game franchises we are thankful for and since i started with pinball you'll start again i'll let you start with video games because i'm really interested on this one to see how we come together and diverge well there are so many more video game franchises to choose from than pinball so we could end up going all lower the place yes so one of the ones i'll name that i don't think you would name would be the battlefield franchise from dice oh you're right because i think i've played a little bit of one of those games i have played a lot of them they are the actually i suppose if i if i could only pick one first person shooter franchise for multiplayer to recommend it would be the battlefield series the not all created equal there are some i definitely put in less time than others I have not played them all either, but what I've always liked is that DICE has leaned very heavily into vehicular elements to the combat on the battlefield. And so, whereas for a long time, Call of Duty was rapid spawns, rapid respawns, going around as infantry, shooting each other on what I call proper battlefield maps. You would have your infantry class pick. You know, they usually do something like a four class system. The classes make sense. They ideally work together. Well, you have squads, you know, like a party of four. Ideally, people are doing different roles in that. And it's designed around that sort of communication and teamwork along with vehicular combat. So depending on the era, of course, what vehicles you have, but we're talking aircraft. We're talking about tanks, Jeeps, tut-tuts out in Vietnam, all that stuff. And so given that, it always to me felt more realistic than Call of Duty where it's just a bunch of troops running at each other. If I want just a bunch of troops running at each other, I'll play Halo. Now, to be fair, I have watched the videos of the guys who fly the jet up, jump out of the jet, fall down, shoot down two other jets with their rocket launcher, land back on their jet, climb back into their jet, aim it at a tank on the ground, and then bail out of the jet just before it lands on the tank on the ground.
    63:27
    Very realistic. Yes, well, DICE has made improvements over the years with the ability. But it's just the idea that there should be vehicles if you're actually in a war. You would think. And those vehicles should probably make a difference. I mean, it used to be like in Battlefield Bad Company 2, if the enemy team has a hind and the pilot actually knows how to fly it, you will probably lose because it's a hind. The best chopper ever made, at least in Battlefield Bad Company 2. It always was worse. It's like, oh, gosh, we're not on the Soviet side. They're going to have a hind.
    64:07
    They're going to have a hind. And we're going to have a bell. No, they give you something. But anyway, so that'd be one I would name for FPS. Yeah, that'd be the one I'd name. Okay. I'm going to flex old, real old. Flex and old on this one. I'm going to go with what was my first real kind of space flight sim and still one of the favorites.
    64:37
    Wing Commander. That's a good one. It had good storylines. It started out before voice acting was a thing, moved into voice acting, went beyond voice acting to full motion video, and they did it all very well.
    64:55
    They did not skimp on voice actors or actors for the full motion video. You really know Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, big name stars doing their voice acting. in addition to all of that it was a game in a time when games had a single path to completion that had continuous branching paths every single mission had a success or a failure and with some of those failures your game ended and with others you just moved farther down the chain and you could get back to the good side with another success or you could go farther down the bad line with a failure and there were all sorts of things that could trip whether a mission was a success or failure they had a huge branching campaign that had uh very deep uh changes to the actual game itself depending upon how you did on earlier missions and it was just so much fun and it became so iconic uh at least in my mind with games of that style and the ships and I mean they put out books that were really good. They put out a movie that was terrible. So terrible.
    66:14
    Poor Freddie Prinze Jr. But it was one of the original franchises out there that really, really went deep into me. And the only, I don't know that there's a Wing Commander game I've not played. I've even played the ones for like Super Nintendo and stuff like that and the weird things that were basically Wing Commander and name only type games that came out after like 4 and Prophecy and Prophecy wasn't that good but yeah the last one I think I played was Privateer or Privateer 2. Privateer 2 had Clive Owen as the main protagonist I think it was Privateer 1 for me. Yeah, it was better. Privateer 2 was one of those Wing Commander and name only games. Well you know that was the thing that probably where I started to lose interest with Wing Commander was it seemed that they just started to try more and more once they got the ability and the actors and stuff to be Star Wars instead of being Wing Commander Right. And even started – the sound effects started to sound like Star Wars. And I was like, I know – and I remember reading about how that's where it started was the creator wanted to do a Star Wars game and couldn't get the rights to do it and did Wing Commander. But it's just like, well, once you're bringing in Mark Hamill to play a major space fighter pilot and stuff, it's like, and now your shots look like the lasers out of X-Wings instead of the round orbs. Oh, I love the fact when all the shots were just around orbs, it didn't lasers. Yep. It's a little yellow ball. Oh, look, guys, 20,000 clicks out. I'm just using the mass driver holding down space bar.
    68:04
    So much fun. Yep. But here's one I know that would assuredly be on your list, and you already mentioned it in the context of another game, but that would be the Fallout franchise. Oh, yes. And that has gone through a major shift. I played the Fallout and Fallout 2, which were both turn-based strategy games. Yep, they were the isometric view games. Played them both. But what was interesting about those, and I put most of my time in on two. I didn't spend as much time on the first one, but I did play it, was that you had these dialogue choices. You could make very significant decisions that impacted the end kind of credit portion of the story. But they just changed their overall gameplay experience. Yes. There was a city in Fallout 2 you could talk your way into if your intelligence was high enough to pass their screening test, which would basically have required you to have committed all your points into intelligence to have qualified for that. Or you early on in the game had an opportunity to join a slaver guild, but they tattoo your forehead and then like everyone in the world hates you and will attack you. But you got some immediate perks by being with them that you could have chosen to do. And then I was super skeptical when Fallout 3 was announced and they said it was going to be an FPS slash third person shooter. You could choose how you wanted to play it, but it wasn't going to be turn based anymore. I was like, but that's not Fallout. That was my thought. But then it came out and it was Fallout because it still kept the ability to make meaningful changes, impactful changes. I mean, the most famous one on Fallout 3 is one of the very early things is you can go to a town and you can actually decide to set off a nuke in the town and take that town off the map. You can do that. You still had the traits, the power of the Pip-Boy determining what you could and couldn't accomplish. And you still have the massive open world that you can now explore in an easier way than it was. I actually think that Fallout got better with that change. I think so. And so I have not played every single Fallout game. I have not played 76. Or Brotherhood of Steel, probably. Or Brotherhood of Steel I did not play. But I have enjoyed all of the games I have played to varying degrees, but they've all been enjoyable. Yeah. And so while I haven't liked every single thing, say, that Thor did, I still really liked that Thor came out. I would say story-wise and world creation, New Vegas is probably the best. Yeah. And three is probably the least buggy. It would kind of be where I would land. I would go the same way. I'd say three is probably the least buggy. New Vegas is the best story-wise and interaction-wise with your skills and everything. Four has the best combat. they did make a number of changes to the combat I would really like to see 4 or a follow up game that returned to the point where your choices and your skills and all of that well A existed and B were important like they were in 3 in 1 2 3 New Vegas because that kind of went away in 4 but I want 4's combat system I liked in 4 that the power suits were huge, hulking, monstrous, like heavy battle suits. Yeah, yeah. You had to have power and all that. You couldn't just equip them like they were a new coat. Exactly. I enjoyed all that. But then I liked the ability to, if I wanted to roll a character with one intelligence point, every single chat would have a thing that was basically like, ooh, you're a dumb one, aren't you? Yeah. I mean, and it could be fun to play through the game with a character that was like that. Yeah, there's a lot of ability. I mean, I've replayed, I'm trying to think if there's, four might be the only one of the, four in one, might be the only ones where I never did the story another way. At least in part. Yeah. I think I just continued on with four. But like I did a hardcore run on New Vegas. I did – I played New Vegas probably the most. I – for three, I went through and played as an evil character at one point to try that. I don't know if I finished it all the way. But I went along to become as evil as I could be and just all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, no, they've really stuck well with that. It's unfortunate that they've taken such a black eye with 76. Yeah, it is. But that was the developer's fault. Well, they caused their own problem.
    72:47
    Anyway, I knew that would be one you would like. Yeah, definitely. Let's see. Trying to not go without flexing all the way back, super old again.
    73:04
    Civilization. Okay, yeah. One that holds for me one of my highest playtimes in a game on Steam, like number three on my list, I think, with Civilization V. And I know for a fact I've played Civilization II and Civilization IV a lot more than those. Civ I was one of my first PC games ever. Yeah. because I think I got it in fact because Sid Meier Railroad was like the first PC game oh Railroad Tycoon yeah Railroad Tycoon and then it was called Railroad Tycoon at that time I believe and then later they released one called Railroads and then I think it's because I saw his name on that box and that one was I haven't played him as much recently but And there have been other civilizations that weren't tied to his involvement. But the ones with his name on them are very good games. Yes. I've enjoyed them all. I can't even imagine the kind of hours that I had in Civ 2. Because that was the one... I barely ever... I think I might have played Civ 1 a little bit. But I know I played Civ 2 forever.
    74:26
    Ever. no i remember my um my dad played civ one and he he would uh he put it on emperor mode which is one basically where the ai cheats yeah he would what was what's the term you use save scum or yeah you'd have to say you'd have to on emperor mode yeah because they got every they got to research and build units faster than you were capable of you couldn't it's not like you could just get yourself to that to their levels they they cheated yeah you had you had to save scum because every Every single bit of RNG, every single role had to go perfect for you to actually pull it off. Now, was it Civ IV that we played for a year? It was Civ IV that we played for a year. Now, that one was Tony and I started a cooperative civilization game. Well, where we were trying to win, and it was actually by email. We shared the save files, and we played for an actual year. An actual full year. Before we achieved our victory. Yeah. But we did win. Yeah, no, it was. And then we took a break.
    75:31
    And then Civ V came out. Which didn't have the play by email option in it. No, that was very old school. Which was probably, yeah. That was very old school. Yeah, because Civ IV had an actual play by email option where you put the other person's email in. And you played your turn and you hit the button and it emailed it to him. Yes. Wow. That was special. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. But man, that was a full year of – and the occasional phone call of like, have you not played your turn yet? I've not been home. I'll be home. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm trying to build all these units. We just exchanged a lot of just hit return to continue sort of turns. I'm building up an army so we can invade India before they nuke us all. Yeah.
    76:18
    Yeah. Civilization. That's definitely a good one. I'll flex old school to new again as well like I did with Fallout and say Wolfenstein.
    76:28
    Wolfenstein, my first – we played a lot of Doom and Doom 2. We did, which is obviously one that would be on this list. And Duke Nukem as well. No, that is not a franchise I would cite at this point. No, no, no. I meant Doom. Right, Doom, yeah. And Doom I could just as easily have said here because there's – ever since Doom 2016, which is an excellent game. Amazing game. But id Software with its Wolfenstein, for me, while it made me motion sick quite a bit to play Wolfenstein, I really – it was the first one, first FPS that I put a lot of time in. And what I liked about that original one was the ability to make your own levels. There was a real easy level editor to use. And so I would make Wolfenstein maps and then play the Wolfenstein mode. So I did a lot of that with Wolfenstein. And so when Wolfenstein rebooted, what's really cool about Wolfenstein now, and I've not played Youngblood yet. I've put it on my game wish list, but I've played the new Wolfenstein and the sequel and then the Oldblood one and all that, is the storytelling is so high level on Wolfenstein now, which is not the route Doom has gone. No, no, no. Doom has gone very much the old school video game god mode. The nice thing, it's like, and maybe I should name them since we're kind of bringing them both up together. But with Wolfenstein, you had classic FPS, and now it has moved into this FPS with some of the best storytelling in a first-person shooter that you see outside of probably a Call of Duty single-player AAA campaign back when they were doing them with hiring actors.
    78:11
    And then with Doom, it was old-school Doom. oh what they took from that was this is really hard so we're going to make really tight mechanics and this is going to be all about the gunplay and interacting with the levels and just making you feel the oppression we felt getting to those latter doom stages where you are just swarmed by these demons from hell and but you have an arsenal at your disposal now use it and try and survive and keep moving always keep moving and and always keep shooting and that's what it's about and there's a bare bone basis to a story uh but it's really about the mechanics but both of those franchises cutting edge when they came out and in a lot of ways with their polish are very cutting edge visual and mechanical experiences those are just really they were fun to play then and they're really fun to play now and they had really long lulls where there wasn't really a lot of activity of note, at least, to talk about with those franchises. So to me, again, especially if you want to talk about single-player experiences, both, those would be the FPSs I would look to, both in the past and today.
    79:26
    Yeah, and I agree with you. Those are the FPSs that I, at this point, play still. I mean, other than occasional one-off games, but franchise-wise, I've been off of Call of Duty for years and years and years now. I've not really been a Call of Duty person since they left World War II. I never – most people who buy Call of Duty buy it for the multiplayer. In fact, I think they just had one come out recently that only had multiplayer. Yeah, that's pretty much how they do it now. Other than like couch multiplayer, I've not done Call of Duty multiplayer. That's where I've turned to Battlefield with DICE and I do that if I want to do – I don't do a lot of multiplayer in terms of breadth of games it's always been fairly I play a lot of multiplayer I do multiplayer in Overwatch I'll do multiplayer in DICE games and that's generally about it maybe I crawl in and get my butt whooped in Rainbow Six Siege a couple times and go I don't belong here and I leave this is not my home nope it's not noob get out of here what's wrong with you shot me I did that with playing Rust a whole bunch, and then it's like, ah, this is a little too toxic for me. Is that the one where you go and you raid everyone's homes and steal? Yeah, and you start the game naked with a rock, like literally naked with your dong hanging out? Yeah, I saw some YouTube videos of Rust players that were getting kids to cry and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I saw a meme talking about it where a guy met his met a girl playing Rust and they started dating and then they got married and then while they were off to go do the honeymoon he sent the key the joke was he sent the key to his buddies like the base is empty because they were on their honeymoon so yeah it's got all sorts of another game franchise and notice we've been steering away from like the big ones that most people would probably talk about uh but that is important to me in a similar way as the wing commander games but i don't rank it as high as the wing commander games are the tie fighter games so the x-wing tie fighter x-wing versus tie fighter i didn't have much time on those i put lots of time on those games i enjoyed the crud out of those games uh my only issue was they did not have the kind of branching storylines that were in wing commander so they always felt weaker to me because of it but i enjoyed the games a lot and probably the only star wars games i put on this list there's other star wars games i've enjoyed people are like knights of the old republic fans and such I enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic. It was a lot of fun.
    82:33
    But weren't there only a couple of those so far? There were just two. And the second one wasn't completed completed. It was one of those where it was released uncomplete because they were like, put it out. But I liked those games. Those were all part of my flight simulator days.
    82:50
    And there's some games starting to come out like that again, but they don't grab me the same way they used to.
    82:58
    And, you know, Chris Roberts, creator of Wing Commander, has Star Citizen out there, supposedly. People are playing it. I've not looked.
    83:10
    We've talked about Star Citizen on the show, but it was a long time ago. It's out there. They have a... Is it fully released now? Not yet. They have a roadmap. the single player version of the single player part of it which because they're basically creating two games in together they're going to use the exact same engine but one of them is going to be like Wing Commander it's going to be an old school single player game and the other is going to be this big massively open world game that's Star Citizen the other one is Squadron 42 it is slated for release next year or the year after. Okay. They're in the polishing stage of it now. All right. Supposedly. Yeah, I don't know. Let me look at the status real quick. Now, here's the thing is, I actually kick-started this game back in the day. See, I thought you had done something with them. Yeah, no. And I could be playing the beta right now, I've not touched it in years. Years and years and years.
    84:24
    So, yeah, they're putting out monthly updates for Squadron 42. It'll be there eventually. The Star Citizen, eventually. It's got a lot of playable stuff. People play it, but it's not there. It's not fully active. It's still all alpha stuff. so we'll see what happens with that I think it's just it's shocking to me the amount of money people are pouring down that hole we talk about pinball as being a money pit hole yeah no it's not the only hobby that's kind of screwed up I've seen lists of people individual players who have poured enough money into Star Citizen that they could have purchased every LE Stern has put out since they started putting out LEs.
    85:17
    And that wouldn't be a drop compared to the kind of money they've put in. I mean, Star Citizen, you're talking about having things where there are $10,000 packages and there's like nine different versions of it and some people have bought them all. See, Stern? The toppers, that's not where you got to go. You got to go into this. You got to go into the Star Citizens.
    85:39
    That's where you make the bank. Right. that that's that's where it's at that's the that is the fat money right there um there are because i mean they still release gain or release ships oh look here right now starter packet 45 so just get you in right now with a cheap little cruddy starter ship 45 bucks nothing big or let's see something a bit bigger that they'll want you to purchase and flex into. How about this? That looks like a cool ship. It looks like a giant turtle. What's the buying options for this?
    86:20
    $220. Wow. Just to buy just the one ship and play in the game. $220. It's nuts. It's nuts, but hey. Yeah, they're in Alpha 3.7.
    86:35
    Okay. Well, thank you for the Star Citizen update because I've almost forgotten about it. Yep. Nope. It's still out there supposedly. So, we'll see what happens.
    86:50
    Do you have any other franchises that you don't have yet? I think I've named enough. I mean, there's so many others. There are. I mean, we've not touched Mario. We didn't touch on any of the Nintendo stuff, no. Metroid, And I haven't been playing a lot of those recently, so to me, they are less important. And there are other things that I played a lot historically that I don't really play as much anymore. So it doesn't rise to the level. There are other things I play a lot. I played a lot of the Gears games. I played a lot of the Halo games. But I mean, I like them, but not as much as what I've been discussing. Yeah.
    87:30
    I'm going to go ahead and throw out one returning franchise that has returned recently, and that was the XCOM series. I wondered if you'd mentioned that one or not. Yeah, because XCOM, the original XCOM, XCOM Terror from the Deep, all those original XCOM games were huge to me, and that kind of tactical-like fallout. Yep, isometric, tactical, turn-based strategy. Yep, those games. There was another game that we played the crud out of that was like that also. Where you were mercenaries.
    88:07
    Yeah, I don't remember the name of it. Hmm. But all of, I mean, and the way they brought that game back made it fun and enjoyable in the modern was awesome and great. I really, really liked it.
    88:29
    And that's probably it. That's all, folks. anything else is crap and you shouldn't buy it. Oh, I wouldn't go that far. They're just not... Fallen. They're not as core. I mean, you could go with like Command and Conquer. Sure. I thought about Age of Empires. Age of Empires is all... Yeah.
    88:51
    Warcraft. Yeah. But you see they haven't... Other than World of Warcraft keeping it alive. It's like, I don't know. They've got the original three. Real-time strategy. Warcraft 2 in particular was a very big game for me. And then Age of Empires started to fill that void because they kept having Age of Empires games. And then they didn't for a while. And now they are again, though.
    89:14
    Well, I guess we can end the show. We've actually been at it over 90 minutes. Well, that's surprising. For no news. For no news and no anything like that, yeah. We sure were thankful for a lot of stuff. And as a reminder, we will have another episode in about a week. I'll probably get it out on Saturday, would be my prediction. Okay. When we're planning to record it. So we'll be back then. But until a week from now, I am Dennis. And I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.