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Pinball Roundtable -EP13 - Pinball Rumors 2026: Pokémon, Halo, Fallout and Industry Drama?

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 54m·held·Jan 15, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

JBS hosts cancel awards show, critique Star Wars difficulty and Jedi ball save, laud Kong over Godzilla, confirm KISS Remastered.

Summary

JBS Show hosts discuss their decision to cancel the Pinball Roundtable due to lack of interest and logistical complexity, then dive into game design critiques including Star Wars: Fall of the Empire's difficulty spike and Star Wars ball save feature. They praise King Kong layout over Godzilla, confirm KISS Remastered over rumored AC/DC, and discuss Predator generating significant venue hype.

Key Claims

  • Star Wars: Fall of the Empire was designed by Boydston (referred to as 'Borg') and is notably difficult with tight shot geometry, making it less accessible to casual bar/barcade players compared to what Keith Elwin could have delivered.

    high confidence · Cale, Ralph, and Jamie discussing Star Wars design and comparing to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; suggests Stern games test primarily with top 20 players.

  • Star Wars ball save feature in Star Wars is overly complicated, requiring knowledge of slow vs. long pulses and ball trajectory, and lacks clear user education from Stern despite the feature working well when implemented correctly.

    high confidence · Ralph and Cale describe difficulty using Jedi ball save, mention Raymond Davidson and Joel from Flip N Out Pinball providing lengthy explanations needed to understand the mechanic.

  • King Kong is a superior layout compared to Godzilla and is considered Keith Elwin top title, with more interesting playfield design and accessibility potential once code matures.

    high confidence · Cale and Ralph agree Kong has better layout fundamentals; Cale states Kong is in his top three 2025 games and would be playable without code.

  • KISS Remastered is confirmed over AC/DC as the next Stern remaster, with Boydston (Borg) likely to have designed every remaster title.

    medium confidence · Cale cites insider sources who initially indicated AC/DC was 100% confirmed, but Jason Knapp predicted KISS instead; Cale now believes KISS is correct based on designer continuity logic.

  • The Walking Dead remaster is experiencing licensing complications because new approvers at AMC are rejecting animation choices (rotoscoped DMD-sized display) that wouldn't have been approved originally, forcing design changes mid-production.

    high confidence · Cale explains conversation with George Gomez about licensing changes mid-production; draws parallel to Hunger Games becoming WWE due to licensing pivots.

  • Predator (Pinball Brothers) generated exceptional venue hype at Electric Bat before Expo, with 50+ people signing up and the machine staying 6+ hours beyond planned duration.

    high confidence · Ralph describes the Predator preview event at Electric Bat; Aaron (Pinball Brothers) extended the visit due to unexpected demand.

Notable Quotes

  • “I would just kind of like i lost interest because i thought what we do the conversations we have are like so much so much more interesting than like announcing a People's Choice Award.”

    Cale Hernandez @ ~0:05:00 — Explains why the podcast hosts abandoned the Pinball Roundtable Awards initiative despite initial excitement.

  • “You put a lot of quarters in this game, boys, and no code is going to save this Brickfest.”

    Ralph @ ~0:20:00 — Characterizes Star Wars: Fall of the Empire as mechanically difficult regardless of software updates.

  • “They need a consultant who's ranked 4,000 in the world to come in there once in a while... Keith Elwin knows how to make games.”

    Ralph @ ~0:25:00 — Critiques Stern's game testing methodology, suggesting reliance on elite players obscures casual accessibility issues.

  • “I could play King Kong with no code. It's just so much fun just playing around with these ballpads. Once this code is mature on Kong, I think you really do have something that will dethrone Godzilla.”

    Cale Hernandez @ ~0:35:00 — Elevates King Kong's mechanical design as superior to Godzilla, suggesting layout strength independent of code.

  • “If your light is lit up, you should be able to use the magnet at that point in time. To have like a short pulse and a long pulse and then the fact that you have to be really thinking about which way the ball's coming down... they made it too difficult.”

    Ralph @ ~0:30:00 — Directly critiques the Jedi ball save feature complexity and lack of intuitive interface design.

  • “Borg did Kiss. Borg is still at the company. And that would mean Borg will have done every remaster.”

    Cale Hernandez @ ~0:55:00 — Logical reasoning supporting KISS Remastered confirmation based on designer continuity.

  • “I think they found working with a band... These people are enthusiastic. They think pinball is cool. And it's going to be a little bit easier.”

    Cale Hernandez — Explains licensing advantages of band-owned IP (KISS) versus film/TV licensing (Walking Dead, Hunger Games).

Entities

Cale HernandezpersonRalphpersonJamiepersonGeorge GomezpersonKeith ElwinpersonJack DangerpersonBoydstonperson

Signals

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Boydston's design approach prioritizes mechanical difficulty and complex rule paths over casual accessibility, creating friction for bar/barcade players unfamiliar with pinball, exemplified by Star Wars: Fall of the Empire and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

    high · Cale and Ralph critique Star Wars tight shot geometry and pop-up chaos; Ralph notes 'this game is too damn hard' for casual/Nickelodeon IP context; hosts contrast with Keith Elwin's accessible layouts.

  • ?

    product_concern: Star Wars: Fall of the Empire's Jedi ball save feature lacks intuitive interface design and adequate Stern-provided documentation, requiring multi-source explanations (Raymond Davidson written guide, Joel voice message, community troubleshooting) to function correctly.

    high · Ralph struggles with mechanic despite onsite testing; describes needing to read 'like this novel from Ray Day' and receiving follow-up clarification; criticizes Stern for not producing quick Instagram video tutorial.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: King Kong's playfield layout and mechanical features (drop targets, biplane ramp, log jam diverter, concave cave shot) establish it as mechanically superior to Godzilla and potentially game-of-2025 candidate, with sustainability independent of code maturity.

    high · Cale states 'Could play King Kong with no code... so much fun'; confirms top-3 ranking for 2025; Ralph and Cale agree on layout sophistication; notes accessibility challenges for casual players due to spider guy and extra flippers.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: The Walking Dead Remastered encountered mid-production licensing complications when AMC representatives changed, requiring animation redesigns and potentially forcing game discontinuation or theme substitution (parallel to Hunger Games→WWE pivot).

    high · Cale cites George Gomez explanation of licensing department turnover causing approval conflicts; rotoscoped DMD-size display rejected by new AMC reviewers who 'wouldn't have approved this back then'; walking Dead 'running into issues'.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.342

0:00
🎵 Hello and welcome to the January 2026 edition of the Pinball Roundtable. Joining me as always, Cale Hernandez of The Electric Bat and Retro Ralph.
0:42
Where are you? Tempe, Arizona or the Retro Ralph Arcade? I don't know. Whatever. What? The garage. Phoenix, Arizona. It's on the garage. Boy, we got a long show today. We should just start getting to it, right? Strap in. It's a really long show, so we got to just go right into it. The topic section, ladies and gentlemen, got long because we were out. We were shown to record. Because we didn't get to record ourselves because we had George Gomez on.
1:12
It was less than a month, really. Which was great. Feedback. I thought the feedback was good. A lot of people reached out and gave us some props, right?
1:23
Yeah. No, really good feedback. Yeah. A lot of people, the civilians, got in touch with us. Tell me if this happened to you. I also got a lot of industry people getting in touch with me, kind of giving more insight into some of the things he said. Did you guys experience that? Not to the extent that you did, but I think Ralph and I got some as well, yeah. I think we got the same individual, but I don't know that he wants to say who it was, so I'll keep it the same person. But, yeah, no, it's cool. Interesting stuff. Yeah, for sure. That was a great interview. If you haven't checked it out, what the hell's wrong with you, go back to the JVS show. Like and subscribe and all that stuff. I need to get to 1,000, boys. So I'm saying that right off the bat, so I'm not the guy at the end. How far are you? That's like 940. Oh, man, you'll get that, don't worry. Yeah, you'll get it. No problem. Yeah, let's just like and subscribe. It just takes time, man. All right, let's talk about the Pinball Roundtable Awards.
@ ~1:00:00

  • “Aaron leaves... I went into the office and printed out a giant picture of Jeffrey Epstein's face and then cut it out and taped it to the Predator back glass.”

    Ralph @ ~1:50:00 — Anecdote about pranking the Predator machine; demonstrates venue engagement and personality.

    • Raymond Davidson
    person
    Joel Steffenperson
    Aaronperson
    Jason Knappperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Pinball Brotherscompany
    Electric Batvenue
    Flip N Out Pinballcompany
    Star Wars: Fall of the Empiregame
    King Konggame
    Godzillagame
    KISS Remasteredgame
    The Walking Dead Remasteredgame
    Predatorgame
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Foo Fightersgame
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Stern's shift from studio/film-based licensing (Walking Dead, potential Hunger Games/Tron/Lord of the Rings remasters) to musician-owned IP (KISS, Metallica) reduces friction because band members are enthusiastic pinball advocates and direct stakeholders.

    high · Cale explains KISS/Metallica working 'with a band who's more enthusiastic than working with a licensing company'; contrasts with difficulty of 'working through a movie or television production company'; suggests Lord of the Rings/Tron would trigger 'serious licensing issues'.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern may have strategically assigned Boydston to Star Wars and walking Dead remasters to preserve Keith Elwin for high-value original IP, accepting casual accessibility trade-offs for remaster tier.

    medium · Cale speculates 'IP speaks for itself... put Keith on another IP because usually Keith's games sell anyway'; notes Boydston was designing Star Wars and Walking Dead simultaneously; suggests math behind assigning big IP to Elwin.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Star Wars: Fall of the Empire exhibits mechanical difficulty mismatch: Pro model with open middle shot is significantly more playable than Premium/LE models where center jump ramp becomes 'the most dangerous shot in the world' with ball drain risk.

    high · Ralph notes Premium LE 'jump ramp while ball saver still on' risk; compares to Pro's 'always open' middle shot; describes Premium ball bouncing straight down middle between flippers without Jedi save active.

  • ?

    venue_signal: Pinball Brothers' Predator generated exceptional pre-Expo venue hype at Electric Bat with 50+ player signups and extended 6+ hour availability, demonstrating effective location-based product launch strategy.

    high · Ralph describes 50+ people signed up; machine stayed 'probably six hours or something' beyond 'couple hours' planned; Aaron extended visit due to 'didn't realize this many people were going to be excited'.

  • ?

    community_signal: JBS Show hosts cancelled planned Pinball Roundtable Awards due to scope creep, voting system complexity, loss of differentiation from other year-end industry awards, and collective loss of enthusiasm despite initial excitement.

    high · Cale lost interest after months of planning; hosts admitted individually wanting to cancel but avoided direct communication; cited voter system security requirements, trophy logistics, and oversaturation of year-end lists from other creators.

  • ?

    content_signal: Flip N Out Pinball (Joel) providing multi-channel technical support (voice messages, follow-up clarifications) suggests customer education responsibility shifting to retailers/podcasters when manufacturer documentation is insufficient.

    medium · Ralph consulted Joel for Jedi ball save explanation; Joel left voice message and follow-up because 'I wasn't that specific in the last one'; indicates pattern of retailers filling Stern's education gap.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community sentiment shifting from Godzilla as flagship title to King Kong as potentially superior long-term value, driven by playfield mechanics and code depth potential rather than novelty/IP recognition.

    medium · Ralph states 'I'm enjoying Kong more than Godzilla' despite Godzilla's market dominance; Cale agrees Kong 'will dethrone Godzilla' once code matures; Ralph: 'Kong is a much more interesting layout than Godzilla.'

  • ?

    testing_methodology_concern: Stern's game testing relies primarily on top-20 ranked players, creating blind spots for casual/bar-player accessibility issues; hosts advocate for inclusion of ranked 4,000+ players in development cycles.

    medium · Ralph: 'They don't need to bring in shitty players to test these games' (sarcasm); 'outside people that I know they bring in are like top 20 players'; criticizes Keith Elwin's unavailability to address accessibility.

    • 2:33
    We're not doing it. It's done. There went that. Yeah. I guess we should give a little back story about how we got there, why we're not doing it, and we announced it. We were, like, hyped up and we're like, hey, we're going to do something. mega hyped on it yeah and everybody well i kind of spearheaded it uh and we'll get into why but like after a while after because we sat on it for like months and months and months and i'll get into why we sat on it for so many months but um i would just kind of like i lost interest because i thought what we do the conversations we have are like so much so much more interesting than like announcing a People's Choice Award. And that's why I kind of lost interest. And the funny thing was we were all, like, getting in touch with each other. And, like, Jamie had feelers out, like, hey, what do you think? Should we have a meeting about this thing and nobody would say anything? Right. And I wanted to go, you know what, guys, can't we just move on? Because – Well, you know when I got frustrated is I started doing research on the voting systems, and I was like – it was painful, man, because it's like you want to try – You've got to find one that can't be gamed, and then one that's got a cool interface, so it's just like boom, boom, boom, because you don't want it to be like, how do I use this thing? Right. Yeah, it was – Well, I experienced the same thing, and I tried three of them that were mega secure, but you had to have everybody's email addresses in a database before they vote. And I understand that makes it ultimately secure, but we weren't looking for like – we're not voting for a world leader. government encryption levels or anything to do this. Yeah.
    4:22
    You know, we're just like, man, you know, screw this. And I can't remember if I was the first one to say, like, I'm not real. You know, can we just move on? No, no. So Jamie and I were like, we were like, I don't want to do it. Like, what if Cale's really still amped up about it? And I was like, well, I'm going to say I'm not that into it, and then we'll see what happens. And then you're like, everyone's all, oh, thank God we're not doing it. We didn't want to do it. We were all trying not to hurt each other's feelings, ladies and gentlemen, right? Because I'm sitting here compiling a list of podcasts. Yeah, because I thought Kale was still hyped. So I'm like, well, I don't want to jump in and be like, yeah, man, I don't want to do it. I know. Ralph and I are on the phone, Kale, that day going, how do we get him the hell out of this? How do we get Kale out? And you're sitting at home going, how do I get him out of this? And you're like, I can't wait for these guys to bail on this thing. Yeah. I'm not responding to this. Yeah. What's the movie? Does it have Vince Vaughn in it? What's the movie where they're going to Vegas and they're all pumped up, but then on the drive they realize it's five hours. So they're like, Vegas, baby. And in the beginning they're like, Vegas, baby. That's what it was like. That was what it was like. I was compiling a list of podcasts, right, because we were going to compile the list. And when I had gotten to 20, I'm like, we can't have 20. And then I start cutting people, and then I'm thinking about the crap and the shit I'm going to get. Can you imagine though having to scroll through like 25 creators to pick the one you like? Like that would be annoying to people. So like then we started overthinking. I'm like, I don't want to do it. Yeah. I was like, this is not worth the hassle that I'm doing that. Right. We didn't even get to the trophy part. I think Rachel might have gone a little bit far. Like we didn't even get to that. Then there's an order in the trophies. Do you put people's names on them? Do you don't? It's just, yeah, it's a disaster. And another thing that we were kind of like, why are we doing this? Like, so many other content creators were doing their own shows. Right.
    6:17
    Sometimes I say stuff to you guys I wouldn't probably, like, just say. Like, I wouldn't say it, but I will now because you guys are here. But I was like, well, I mean, and no one's listening. But I was like, oh, this is like the sixth live stream this week on top 2025. And it deflated me because I'm like, why do I want to do this? Everyone is saying what their favorite thing is. So it seemed like, I don't know, it took all the wind out of it. No offense to all you guys, it didn't. But it took all the wind out. I didn't want to do it. I'm like, I'm done. Because we don't want to do what everyone else does. That's not what we do. That's not our thing. Not really. So what's the fun of that? I'm glad it's done. That's what happened. That's what it basically is. We didn't want to tell each other. Then we did, and everyone bailed. And we're good.
    6:59
    As the British friends say, we all couldn't be arsed. We just couldn't be arsed. forget it speaking of Zach on his podcast I listened to today he said that he wanted to recommend me and Ralph to spearhead a like riverside with all the content creators and we do our favorite everyone does their favorite and we compile a list of 10 of us and I don't have time for that shit Like they do it live? Like meaning when it jumps on live? Yeah. Well, I don't – I think he was just talking about compiling a list of content creators' favorite – I chatted with him about it today. And it sounds – I mean, this is just very preliminary, but it's almost like – you know how the Academy Awards or the Grammys, it's not a People's Choice Award. Yeah, it's like the community. It's their own community that votes, right? It's insiders. Like professionals in the field making – coming up with decisions. But he thought of like taking – like he mentioned Don and Kaneda and everybody submitting their like best game, whatever. And then like seeing – like having a graph of seeing like – Like how aligned everyone is or not? Right. That's kind of cool actually. industry, like people actually know what's going on, think about, you know, their favorite idea. Right. I like that. This is all you. This has your name all over it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, Zach brought it up, so he's got to do the hard work. But is Zach doing it, or is he saying someone should do it? He just mentioned, like, it would be cool to get all that information from everybody so he could compile it and, like, talk about it. But this is so much cooler, not necessarily cooler, just different than a People's Choice Awards because you know good and well in something where the general public is voting, there are many games that people haven't played before. There are mods people haven't seen before, and they're just voting on, well, I heard this was cool on Facebook, so I'm going to vote for it. Yeah, exactly. You know, my fraternity brother said to vote for this, so I'm going to vote for the JBS show. Yeah, and then when you have, like, the, when you have, no, man, I'm going to get in trouble. When you have the weighted voting, and then you can vote for three things on one thing, you're like, I don't know.
    9:34
    Yeah. You're like, I don't know what the third one is. I'll just pick whatever. You're going to get in trouble.
    9:42
    There we go. Not happening. All right, let's move on. Are we ready so we can move on? Yep. There we go. That's what happened, ladies and gentlemen. Couldn't be ours.
    9:56
    Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. Let's talk about it for a minute. Okay. Is it a brick fest? Is the question that Ralph and I have, right? Ralph has one at home. I have one two-minute drive away. Yeah. You put a lot of quarters in this game, boys, and no code is going to save this Brickfest. I can't.
    10:20
    I can't hit a thing, guys, okay? And it's like I can't hit anything. Well, I know you're exaggerating. You're over-exaggerating that you can't hit anything. But I would say that the shots are, like, you look at it and you're like, oh, okay, stand loud. All the shots are right there. It should be pretty simple. But the shots are really tight. Like, not all of them, but some of them. The orbits are probably the only things that aren't tight. Everything else is just extremely tight. But you can, like, backhand certain shots pretty easily. But the thing is, it's not a stop-and-go game, because if you get stuck in those pops, dude, like, the game is chaos now. So it is a little bit weird, like, just from a design standpoint. It's a little bit weird that you wouldn't make it easier to shoot and make the code have, like, depth to it because it's Star Wars, and you know probably the person in a barcade or bar walking up to it for the first time, there's a high percentage they might not have played pinball before. They just stumbled in and, like, Star Wars, and that's what they're going to go to. Right. So it's just kind of weird. Like, the approach they took is weird, and it's unfortunate because the code is actually pretty good that Ray Day's put together so far. So I don't know. I just, you know, one of the questions that Ralph and I were having just recently, bullshit when we were trying to convince you not to do the pinball awards was that, you know, Stern has these great players in there, like the greatest. And they're testing each other's games, and they're testing these games, and they're going, this is great. Look at the flow. And Ray Day is just flowing.
    11:56
    And they don't – they need a consultant who's ranked 4,000 in the world to come in there once in a while. Don't you think? Do you, Cale, do you know, do they have people that come in, instead of going by all of them who are, like, really good, do they have, like, average players come in and just say, how do you like this? I don't know about average players. I know in, like, in product development, they want to keep things kind of secret, but I do know for a fact they bring in outside people. But these outside people that I know they bring in are, like, top 20 players. Also amazing. Yeah, they're badasses. Yeah. But here's the thing. They don't need to bring in shitty players to test these games. Keith Elwin knows how to make games. They have the king of playable games on staff.
    12:53
    You know, this is just a Borg thing. Really? Yeah, really. Well, I mean, board games are all really, yeah, kind of hard. Think about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We were playing that game at the, we just had the Starfighters Pinball Festival, one of the, what's it called? Like the Stern events, you know, whatever they are, the big Stern pinball tournaments.
    13:23
    They had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was, from the time it came out, everybody was like, man, this game is too damn hard. Why did they design a game based on a Nickelodeon IP, and they made it, like, hard as shit? I went over there after one round, and there were two top ten players on the game. The highest score was, like, 4.6 million points. Yeah, the scoring's also really weird on that game, too. It's, like, really low, the scoring on it. It is really low. Like, the GC was, like, 25 million. But still, they were having, like, short ball times. I mean, this should be a game that kids can approach. The game is beautiful. Zombie art is cool. The layout actually looks cool, but the damn thing is so hard to play. I mean, universally, you hear people, you never hear people going, oh, I had a fantastic ball on turtles. Yeah. They go, what do you want, turtles? Oh, good luck, brother. And that's just Borg's style. I think one of the most playable games he's made is Rush, probably. It's just so hard as shit. Yeah. Because you've got that scoop right there. It could be because Surge came over, but I've gotten a lot better at the Walking Dead remastered. But I feel like I've gotten really good at the one at my house. I bet if I go to the bat, though, I'd get completely. Because they did tweak a little bit. When it comes out of the pops, I know it's not every time, but a higher percentage of the time it doesn't just go straight down the middle. So that has helped it a lot. But that game is, you know, that game is pretty hard too. Yeah, no question. But they definitely helped it. Like the geometry changes probably helped it. But, dude, I hadn't played Metallica Remastered in a while, right? It's just like it's one of those games where I play it every now and then. And I jumped on it. My high on that's like pretty good. Like my GC on it's like six-something, 600-something million. So it's pretty good. dude, it was kicking my ass. It was kicking me in the nuts repeatedly for like 10 games straight. And I was like, holy cow. And I was pissed. But that is Borg, though. Like, his games can be really tough. Yeah. Maybe Borg wasn't the right designer for Star Wars. Like, why not? No, he wasn't. He wasn't. And that's nothing against Borg. You need these difficult games. Yeah, for sure. But it would have really, and maybe I would love for somebody from Stern to reach out to us and tell me why I'm wrong. but it would have made more sense for somebody like Elwynn to do a big IP like Star Wars. Probably what they're thinking is that, like, this IP speaks for itself. Let's put, you know, you put Keith on another IP because usually Keith's games sell anyway. So that might be the math behind that. But what, like, a banger to say, like, it's a big, big IP like Star Wars and an Elwynn game. And no offense to Borg. I like Borg games. I have three of them in my collection, so I like his games. But you're right, though, man. And the weird thing is he was doing two games anyway. He did both of them, right? He was doing Star Wars and frigging Walking Dead at the same time. Correct. It would have been another offloader. I'm not shitting on him. I'm just saying it's too hard.
    16:35
    Just look at the math, look at the geometry. It's a standard body game, standard size game like Stern is always going to do. but you have like a million shots in a fan layout. Like, of course, it's going to be difficult. You have a bunch of tight shots. They should have removed like two shots and then made, you know, one of them back. Yeah, give it a little bit more open space. Yeah, and then what's interesting is, you know, they have the premium at Starfighters we were playing this weekend, and, of course, Ralph, you know this because you have the LE. Yeah. Like the pro is so much more playable because you have that middle shot that's always open. And on the premium in L.A., you spend more money for the most dangerous shot in the world. Like, it's straight up the middle. It's going to, you know, it's coming right down between the clippers. Yeah, like, you want to hit that jump ramp while your ball saver is still on because, like, if you – because sometimes if you hit that thing dead on, it will bounce off that rubber and go straight down the middle. And then you're like, cool. And by that time, especially if you just started, you probably don't have Jedi spelled yet, so you can't use the ball save thing, so you're kind of screwed. But speaking of ball save, can you tell people how to use the Jedi ball save? And what the hell is going on at Stern when they can't educate people? Nobody knows how to use it. Like, on the pro, it's easy, right? Yeah. Well, on the pro, it's easy because it works like a lifesaver on Jaws or whatever the heck that thing is called. But, like, at one point, Ralph was like, I figured out how to use it. Here it goes. And Raymond Davidson's like, that's actually not how you use it. Well, then why doesn't somebody at Stern, like, just do a quick, it takes like two seconds to do a fucking video on Instagram. This is how you do use this thing. I read Ray Day's long message. And so I go into the garage and I'm like, I got this. And I go in front of him, I was like, what the shit? What did he say again? I'm like reading the thing. I'm like, I'm having to read like this novel from Ray Day to figure out how to use this feature. so then I messaged Joel from Flippin' Out and he's like, oh, Ralph, yeah and then he left me a voice message it was pretty long, right, of how it works then he sent me a follow-up because he's like, well, I wasn't that specific in the last one, and I'm like this is broken then it shouldn't be this difficult honestly, you've complicated the shit out of it doesn't need to be, because it's like when Jedi's not spelt all the way it's like a slow pulse, so the magnet will just do a slow pulse or like a short pulse then if Jedi spell all the way it'll do a long pulse but then there's like things you have to think about because if it's coming from like the left out lane there's a thing you've seen it right there's a little piece of metal that the ball will like hop off of so when it's hopping you're like okay crap I gotta get that Jedi ball save but if you miss that that little metal thing is assisting the magnet. Explain this to me so you have to spend several thousand more dollars to get fucked with this net.
    19:39
    Yes. How does that make sense? And the little mini micro machine. Joel is going to be so mad at me and same with Ray Day because Ray Day kind of was like, dude, it's not that hard. But I still, it should just work as simply as it sounds like it should work. Correct. If your light is lit up, you should be able to use the magnet at that point in time. To have like a short pulse and a long pulse and then the fact that you have to be really thinking about which way the ball's coming down. It just seems like they made it too difficult. But when it works, it's cool as hell. Jack Danger executed it well in Foo Fighters.
    20:17
    Oh, with the post? You left out Linus Lit. Hold your flipper up. What's that feature called again? I can't remember. That feature's cool, though. Yeah, what do you call it? The dead post or something? Yeah, the post popped up. But what is it called? in the game. I can't remember. It's like you get something when that happens. I can't remember. Was it like Overdrive or something? I don't know. I was just playing it the other day. I would know.
    20:43
    But the whole Jedi thing, so here's, it's really funny. I'll say it in two seconds. So I was trying to explain it to, I don't know if you guys remember Cole from Castles and Coasters, but he came over and he's like, oh, I want to play it. He's like, well, how does this Jedi thing work? And I was explaining it. I was playing, and I'm like, oh, I'll just show you because I'm thinking, oh, I'm the man. This is my game. It fails on me. Like, both times, you can't show him shit. And then he jumps on in his first ball and hits it, and it does the coolest thing because it does, like, the thing where it spins it. It holds it, and then it throws it up. Yoda throws it up. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, honestly, what would be the odds that the first time it would work for him, it would work perfect? You know what I mean? I saw his piss set. You tell me. I don't know. No, it hardly. Jamie, you played it. It hardly does that one. That one's the cool one where he, like, holds it and he tosses it back up. I've only played the premium a dozen times. I play the pro. The pro works all the time.
    21:39
    Okay, who brought the dog? The chicken? Do you have a chicken in the house? No, I have a dog. It's like a rooster. You got it? You got it. It's just being a shit. All right, anyway, so clearly we don't know what the hell we're talking about with the ball space thing. No idea. We'll move on. Again, maybe that was designed for people in the top 100. Okay.
    22:00
    I mean, it shouldn't be this hard, really. It shouldn't be that hard. That's all I'm saying. I keep thinking, like, what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing over here? So, all right. Well, that's our Star Wars.
    22:12
    We could talk about rumored games, or we could talk about Kong real quick. Get Kong, and then we'll go into more rumor.
    22:21
    Okay, what do you want? What's the rumor? Ralph's in the minority here, and he's starting to like Kong more than he likes Godzilla, and I think we should talk about it. It's just a general statement, but I do feel like I'm enjoying Kong more than Godzilla. I don't know why that is, but I mean, I could try to explain it, but do you think I'm in like a weird category thinking that? I've been saying this from the beginning, that Kong is a much more interesting layout than Godzilla. It is. Totally. And I've said this before, I could play King Kong with no code. It's just so much fun just playing around with these ballpads. Once this code is mature on Kong, I think you really do have something that will dethrone Godzilla. Godzilla will always be a fantastic game. But I'm with you. I think this is like Keith's top title. Yeah, I love it. I just love this. I love the drop targets on the side. I love that the biplane ramp is really fun when you hit it. The log jam diverter. Yeah, being able to control that to kind of manipulate your shot is super cool. The concave, that shot's so fun when you go off the left flipper, you raise the right one, and you sneak into that little cave.
    23:42
    It's just a fun game, man. And you're right. I think you could play it without code and still be really fun to shoot. So I think it's a game that you wouldn't, if you're an amateur, Janine wanted to step up to Kong, and she did during the Christmas break. Too hard. She probably didn't like it. Yeah. Too hard? It was too hard because of the spider guy and the post, and she's a panel on that post all day long, right? Okay. When I had people here for Christmas, that was the one that they didn't really play. My brother-in-law was like, I don't, there's too, it was almost like too complex for him because he's like, I have four flippers.
    24:20
    Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's like a common, like, everyday guy-off-the-street game. I think it's more of an enthusiast game. But once you start playing it, you get addicted to it. And it's definitely in my top three of 2025. And what's interesting about it, it kind of got buried with so many great releases in 2025. It was, yeah. With Evil Dead and Beetlejuice and Harry Potter and Winchester and Dune and everybody else just pummeling them. And I still think Kong's a great machine. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, I thought you guys were going to have a different opinion, but that's good. Good talk. Good chat. Are we? Yeah. I mean, we agree with you, brother. Are we excited for Kiss Remastered?
    25:03
    Is Jason Knapp? Let's give a shout out to Jason. He's very rarely wrong. He says no ACDC. Yes. Yeah, this is really interesting because I had some, you know, people, some insiders tell me it was 100% ACDC, meaning that maybe they were ordering parts or something like that. So maybe there was a pivot. And I am way more excited about KISS than ACDC. I don't like ACDC for, like, one huge reason. I hate the way the right out lane is hidden by that cannon. Yep. I think KISS is a much better layout. Not only – I mean, it all makes so much more sense. Borg did Kiss. Borg is still at the company.
    25:53
    And that would mean Borg's – if it is Kiss, that means Borg will have done every remaster. ACDC was who? Who made ACDC? Steve Rich. Okay, so that would mean like maybe Borg is permanently on the remaster project, and they're like, all right, well, that's an easy one. You already did it. Do it again. And plus, they're running into a lot of issues with Walking Dead for licensing stuff.
    26:19
    And I think it's better. They found it, of course, with Metallica, they found it better to work with a band who's more enthusiastic than working with a licensing company that's, you know, working through a movie or television production company. because the problem with Walking Dead, they're running into, not only was that game seriously rushed, and the reason Cary Hardy was asking me about this, he wanted me to ask Gomez about it, but I already knew the answer, so I didn't get a chance to do that. A lot of people on his Patreon were asking the way the display is, and whether or not using the whole display, is that going to be something they're going to do with remasters all the time. And the only reason they used the little skinny area, which is the exact dimensions of a DMD, is because they just rotoscoped. They didn't have time to come up with new animations, so they just rotoscoped the DMD and then threw it onto an LCD. And now they're trying to get approvals for it, and they're running into issues where there's a whole different company dealing with the licensing on the AMC side. And those guys are saying, well, we wouldn't have approved this back then because they're dealing with all new people.
    27:37
    And when George brought us in for the gun gate, the whole gun gate thing, he explained how this is not anything new. This happens where the sometimes in the middle of a production game, the licensing people change. And so they'll have to go back and make changes to the game or decide to drop it. In the case of the Hunger Games, they dropped it. And then WWE, that's what, Hunger Games became WWE.
    28:08
    You know, so that little wrestling ring, I mean, that was going to be where the kids battle in the Hunger Games. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that was the switch back then. So they're dealing with it, again, with The Walking Dead It sounds like it a pain in the ass But working I think they found working with a band you know you working with the band members These people are enthusiastic They think pinball is cool And it's going to be a little bit easier. And I think KISS is a much better idea than something else. You know, because if they do Lord of the Rings, they're going to have serious licensing issues. Oh, that's going to be crazy licensing issues. If they do Tron, they're going to have serious licensing issues. This is a much better idea. and it's also a very cool game. Do you think they'd have live concert footage?
    29:01
    Oh, hell yeah. Come on, like Gene Simmons and his girlfriend. They would want it too, probably. Yeah, put me on the back glass. Yeah, put me on that LCD. Because if you're not using the LCD, the entire screen, what the hell are we doing? What are you doing? Yeah, what are we even doing here? What are we doing? All right. Ralph is not a paid spokesman for Pinball Brothers, ladies and gentlemen, but he has a predator at home. Yeah, man. And he won't shut up about it. So let's give him five minutes, ladies and gentlemen, to talk about his love and companies, you know.
    29:39
    You're so hyped about Predator. Well, you're very hyped about Predator, and you're saying, hey. No, I am. I mean, I don't know. I think Cale might have put that comment in, though. Like, it was about how, like, why would you not like to gain hype for a game? Because Predator had a chance to visit Electric Bat before Expo. And it was cool because it built a bunch of hype. So all these people that are like regulars at the bat, well, they get excited. Like, oh, a new game's coming in. It's only going to be here for a couple hours. So it was crazy. There was like, what? I mean, Cale, it had to be like 50 people signed up for that or more. And they stayed there until we closed. Yeah. Like, wasn't it only supposed to be there for a couple hours, but you guys ended up leaving it for probably, what, like six hours or something? Yeah, Aaron left it there. He's like, hey, man, I didn't realize this many people were going to be excited about playing Predator, and we need to go to sleep. We're going to go to the hotel room. Can we just leave it here, and you pack it up for us? And I was like, yeah, sure.
    30:41
    But this is, I don't know if I ever told the story about what I did. I did a little prank. No, you haven't told the story. at Expo, but I didn't know. I was like, what? Someone said, you've got to go check this out at the Predator. You tell it, but I saw it. I just heard the photo of this. Okay, so Aaron leaves.
    31:01
    Yeah, Aaron leaves. And then at the end of the night, I mean, it was probably like 1.30 or something. I'm packing this machine up. So I'm packing the machine up for him. Before I packed it up, I went into the office and printed out a giant picture of Jeffrey Epstein's face and then cut it out and taped it to the Predator back glass. So it's a picture of Jeffrey Epstein and this Predator. And then I folded up the machine and wrapped it up in shrink wrap and then sent it off. We put it in Aaron's – I never said a word. We put it in Aaron's trailer, and he took it to Expo.
    31:41
    So Aaron has my number. And I haven't heard anything like, no, no, LOL, you're so funny. So I was just like, okay. And so I finally saw Aaron at Expo like the next day, second day. And I was like, hey, man, did you see the Predator back glass? He was like, no, what's up? And I showed him a photo of it. And he was like, oh, my God, that's so funny. We didn't even set it up. We left it with the Pinball Brother guys, and they set up the machine. And so what I heard what happened was the Pinball Brother guy set up the machine, plugged it in, and, like, took off. And then somebody was like, I think it was Don took a photo of it. Don of Don's Pinball Podcast, right? And he took a photo of it and was like, guys, this is hilarious. This is a great joke. And the Pinball Brother guys were like, oh, what the hell is that? And they ripped it off the machine. obviously we're not making light of the disgusting person that was don't pass that around us man so anyways long story short on this uh no i have it i've been really enjoying it and i've been playing it a lot like i notice when i go in there it's like the game i want to go play even more and i think it's because it's different you know like the layout is pretty cool it's not it's a wide body it it kind of is a little floaty it's not super fast the shots aren't really that easy but once you start to get into it, you can get a good flow going on it.
    33:10
    And the theme integration is really good despite the fact that Arnold's not in it. He appears, but you know, there's scenes where he's there and his face is blurred out, but he is there. You do see him, but I just I'm a big fan of the movie and they incorporated a couple of the Alan Silvestri orchestra pieces, so it brings you into that world and they did the one thing they did that I love. is that they built in the calmness and the chaoticness. So, like, if you're playing it loud, it'll be really calm, and there's, like, these jungle sounds, and all of a sudden you get into a mode and things escalate, but it gives you this feeling that you had in the movie of, like, the stressfulness of that scene that you're playing through. So I just, I don't think they're going to get enough credit for this game, unfortunately, because when it came out and then tariffs happened and then it got even more expensive for American buyers. So I don't know. it might be one of those ones that like later on people discover it and then they want it in their collection. Because like you say, Kale on, on some of these games, like they may never, it may never see an arcade. So they might never play it, you know? So they don't get, they don't even get to see whether they want it or not because they can't find one on location. But I'm pretty stoked. I'll leave it at that.
    34:25
    I mean, how many do they make them? It said 300. The one I have is like the weird standard edition that I don't even know. I don't see sold anywhere. It's like a weird one-off one I have. But anyway. I love it. We originally brought up this topic because it was kind of cool that Aaron brought this game to arcades. So should companies start thinking about doing tours like that instead of just focusing on these industry shows? Like, take it to, you know, take a one game across country and, like, show people what's up. Where just, like, people don't have to buy a hotel room or a ticket. You know, they can just come to a local arcade and check out this game for a night. I bet you the ROI is pretty good, right? How much does Rob Burke charge?
    35:23
    Right? So, say, if you're Hexa and you've got the three Musketeers, that's not a bad move for Hexa, right? Let's just take one in a van. Well, also, should you have the cool marketing you could do? You could do, like, a band tour poster and, like, the games on tour. Like, you could do so many cool marketing things with that. Do, like, banner shirts, and then you could buy the shirt because it's the town you saw it in. Like, that would be badass, right? Like, it would be a cool thing. And, you know, all the Instagram reels and stuff, they write themselves. You know, we're on the road. We're getting out of a gas station, and here's funny. You know, we got a flat tire. All that funny road shit, you know? Wouldn't it be cool to talk about, like, even though they might not want to, it would be cool to be like, all right, it's got, like, 1,500 plays on it now. We just replaced our first spring. Like, we're getting it back and ready for the bat, right? Whatever. I don't know. It could be kind of cool to have, like, a repair log, too, like what breaks along the way. All that. This is going to get a ton of play. Yeah, they write themselves, as he said. They really do. It's easy social media. So I'd love to see someone who'd do it. Yeah. I just hope they get a little bit more credit for it. That's what I'm saying. And the fast, honestly, I had never worked with a fast board system. I bought Aaron's board to add a shaker motor. And I'm like, hey, Aaron, how do you hook it up? He's like, dude, he's like, he actually responded to me. And then I got curious and did it myself. So I didn't see what he said. So I just tried to figure it out. And I plugged it in. It pretty much just worked. And I said, hey, I hope I picked the right Ethernet port. He's like, well, that's the cool thing. It's like a board in a network. And it doesn't matter where you plug it in. He's like, you can plug it in anywhere you want. He's like, you really can't get it wrong. And so that was cool. And then it's been really reliable. So to me, like, I don't have history on what Pinball Brothers' previous games were like, but I have heard, like, they've kind of had reliability issues. I haven't had one reliability issue. And this is very different because I talked to Aaron for a couple of hours about his experience with Predator. He worked very closely with the team during development so they could deploy his hardware properly. Yeah. I mean, so far, knock on wood, nothing. The only issues I had was out of the box. I had to move a couple of wire forms because they weren't, like a ball was getting stuck in a couple places. But that was it. That's all I've done so far. So that's good. It's good on them. So hopefully they keep it up. Two thumbs up. There you go. Nice attaboys to Pinball Brothers. There you go. And hope to see more Predators out there because it is fun. I really enjoyed it when we played it at Expo. The rumor, too, is that the next, and this could be bullshit, I have no idea, but there was some rumors floating around that they're going to do another 80s-themed pin. So the next one is going to be some kind of 80s maybe action genre. And I'm like, damn, there's a lot of movies that would fit into that category that I would want to see made into a pinball machine. What about Cobra? Cobra's a hidden gem, by the way Cobra would be cool Cobra is dope, man Cobra would be cool That might be watched soon, dude That might be watched soon There was another 80s game You just made me think of another 80s property You were thinking last Was it The Last Dragon?
    38:40
    Oh, I just made that shit up And for some reason, people now are being like hey, man, you know Barrels of Fun's next game is The Last Dragon? I was like, no, that was me. I did a short on it. I didn't say that they were doing it. I said it'd be cool if someone did it. This is like when you did that AI Transformers video. It was real. I just love that I'm at the bat and you show me and you go, dude, did you see this? Someone leaked this Transformers stuff. I was like, hold on, because it was a small clip, so I couldn't see the whole thing. I was like, I think that's my video I just posted. You're like, no shit. Look, I love our audience very, very much, and thank you so much for your support and like and subscribe and all that shit, but I did not put my hand in a fucking shark, okay? People literally thought, I don't understand. How is it possible that someone thought that was you? Oh, my God. I mean, that is unbelievable. You look good in a wetsuit shirt, though, definitely. You look good. Oh, AI Jamie's buff as shit. He kind of gave you some pecs like you were really working the uppers. Yeah, I like them. I post AI Jamie once a week, but Francie hates it, so I promised him just once a month. Yeah, I cooled off on it. I went hot and heavy at the beginning. I haven't done one in a while. No, no, no, one a month. You're going to get AI Jamie one a month. I was messing with some mermaids the other day.
    40:00
    All right, this is a good segue to TPF, right? is the next conference that Ralph and I are going to. We're trying to get Cale to go and Rachel, but I wish that I could go to pinball at the beach, but Super Bowl Sunday, that's just a mistake, right? You can't do it. No, not on Super Bowl Sunday. That makes no sense to me. But I don't know. I wonder if there are any pinballers that still like to watch sports. I'm one of them, and so there's just no way I'm missing the Super Bowl. Same. I can't miss the Super Bowl. So I'm involved with each. But TPS, let's convince Cale here. We got an extra room here.
    40:40
    Well, we got a bed. You can pull it off the couch. What do you have, an Airbnb or a hotel room? No, it's an Embassy Suites Hotel, and there's two beds and a pool. When is this? March 21st? Second? I don't know. I don't remember. All right, hold on. Let's get it right. We should probably have that info. We should get this right. We don't know when it is. Sometime in March. I think Rachel's going to Missouri, and I'm going to stay here and take care of the arcade. We might be. It's the 20th, 21st, and 22nd. I don't think I'm going. Is there going to be anything new there? Well, we were trying to figure that out. Because if it's March, it won't be. Well, we know Beetlejuice will be there, right? So we're going to be there.
    41:27
    JJP's Sonic won't be ready yet. It won't be March. I don't know, but I think so. No, it won't be. That is no way. Pokemon will be there. Yeah. For sure.
    41:40
    But we'll have all played those. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. By that time, we'll probably have Pokemon. You may have it, yeah. And Beetlejuice at the arcade is, man, one big show a year is about all I can handle. Is that all you can do? I'm only going because I haven't gone before, and I feel like it's fun to hang out. I totally don't, too. Oh, if you haven't been. I haven't gone to TPS. If you haven't been before, it's a must-see. But you guys have to remember, like, this was my life, like, traveling around and working all these shows. Yeah. So it's not like, oh, I've got to go. It's glamorous, yeah. Oh, that's true. But you should. All right, well, maybe I'll convince them to go to Houston Arcade next year just to party. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So we're moving on.
    42:23
    All right. But come hang out with Jamie and I if you're going. If you are going, we're going. Yeah. And we're going to have a blast.
    42:32
    And I'm going to have these things that I'm going to give away to people if they come up to me at the show. I don't know if I can zoom in. Why is it not? Is that the proof? That's my coin. That was good. That's pretty cool. Are you going to give these away? Well, a couple. Well, I better be careful. A couple. You cannot give away a challenge coin. Somebody has to do something. Yeah, good point. But not even that. They just have to do something. For example, if you see, like, two guys playing a game, the winner gets this. Good point. All right, that's better. That's kind of how Stern does it when they're just walking around. All right, okay, cool. All right, so basically if I see you at the show. Give away a challenge coin. Good point. All right, rewind. I already said that.
    43:15
    So if you're at TPF and you're playing someone, I might come up to you and offer that to the winner or whoever wins the game. And then I'll also do something where, like, if you play me or play Jamie and you win, you get one. Something like that. Sounds good. Cool. Because I'm only going to have, like, 20 of them. So we can't give out that many.
    43:32
    Limited edition. At least. Let's talk about some upcoming rumors, all right? Okay. We're hearing never-ending story for barrels of fun. Hold on. Let me stop you right there. Just the way you say it. You sound so uninteresting. Russell spreads. Well, because I like Falkor. He seems like a cool dog. But I don't want to hit him in the mouth and hit his head and stuff. It's just not interesting to me. Who was watching Neverending Story when we were kids? We were watching Cobra. No, see, you were awful a little bit. It was because our ages differ a little bit. I watched the crap out of Neverending Story. Yeah, let me. I was about to say the same thing. I wore out that VHS. I watched so much Neverending Story. Oh, my God. I'm older than you guys, so I just. But also here's the thing. Tell me if you feel the same way, Ralph. I used to love the Never Ending Story. I watched it so many times. I feel like I know what you're going to say. I don't want it as a pinball machine. No, I don't really either. I don't know why. It just doesn't. To me, it doesn't. Like, there are cool characters and stuff in it, but I don't know. It's just not one that I. If you said Labyrinth, that makes sense to me, I feel like. But Never Ending Story doesn't. I'm with you. But it also, like, it fits what it seems like David Van Ness and his vision. Yeah. It's almost like, okay, next you expect a Dark Crystal, and then. Yeah, if he did Dark Crystal, I'd be like, oh, of course. Like, that wouldn't even. Yeah. Of course that wouldn't even. If he did Willow, you would go. Willow. Oh, if he did Willow, I'd be like. If someone said who made Willow, everybody in this community would be like, oh, Barrels of Fun. Like, it's got to be Barrels of Fun. Yeah. They've built a vibe that they're going for Over there for sure But we don't need Willow But do you think people are going to buy it though? Are people going to buy a never ending story? How confident do we feel About this rumor? I'm not agreeing Here's the thing Is Carl Designing their next game? No idea See, that's a huge... Oh, that's true. We all know that. That's a huge selling point, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. He could probably have any theme, and if he's designing it, it's cool that people buy it. Yeah. I guess. Not Willow, though.
    46:02
    Not Willow. I'd much rather have Fraggle Rock, you know? Do you guys think that if they did a Fraggle Rock, people... Think if they did a Fraggle Rock, people would buy it? Maybe. You had to, you know, I have a lot of friends that don't even know who Fraggle Rock is that live down south because they didn't have HBO. Can I tell you something that I don't know? Yeah, my family did not. Like, the rich kids had HBO. We didn't have HBO. You know? They would tell me. They would come to school and be like, I was like, what the fuck is Fraggle Rock? What's a soldier? So my friend had a black box at his house. His dad would, like, it was funny because his black box would always, like, disable and have to get a new one. but his dad was a firefighter. He knew the connections of all these crazy people that get all this kind of stuff. But I remember, like, this is so crazy that you do this dumb stuff as a kid. I remember you could toggle between a channel, and if you, like, for, like, a split second, you could see the picture. So sometimes if it was something I wanted to watch on a channel, my parents would sit there. Like, how crazy that I would sit there and watch it in one-second increments with probably no sound. You were watching a little thing called Cinemax. No, I wasn't. No, see, I knew you were going to go there.
    47:16
    I mean, there was a time where I was, but not in this instance I wasn't. Is Jack Danger designing a game right before our eyes, ladies and gentlemen? Yeah, what's going on? What are you doing? Ralph, didn't we mention in one of, like, some video or something? Yeah, I had a short. Yeah, where him and Gary were in Europe talking about, they're going to show you a whole design process. Yeah, and that's what this game he's working on is. So they're filming, I think he's going to, here's what my guess is, because right now he's showing, like, further along, right? So I think they're going to film it high quality and then, like, put it out in parts, I think. But he's teasing, like, showing us some stuff right now. I mean, that hasn't been officially said, but that's probably what I would think they're doing is probably going to come out with, like, some kind of really cool high-quality videos to, like, take you down the journey, you know? But is it Tank Girl? Well, there's a tank on it, so I'm guessing that's what it is. And he kept, like... But he keeps, like, kind of talking about Tank Girl. Yeah, I think he's... Yeah, I'm almost certain it's Tank Girl. But the thing is, so I was really... I got all up in a tizzy the other night because I'm like, how do I not know Tank Girl? Like, I don't know Tank Girl. So I looked up, like, I gave chat GPT. I'm like, I was born in 1979. I grew up and in high school I used to listen to like grunge music and like I would put in all the bands I was into. And it's like based on what you told me about you and your age, you could have completely missed Tank Girl. Like you could completely have not any. And it was like if you were in those like grunge guys to go to like there's like there's a place called Lupo's in downtown Providence. And it was like a it was like a club that just had like local bands. And where was I going with that? I don't know.
    49:03
    Oh, no, but it was saying, like, if that's the kind of scene you were in, like, Tank Girl wasn't in that. But I guess Tank Girl was more like a punk scene thing, and I was not into punk. Very much. It's like a feminist punk comic. I'm not into punk. I was never into punk like that. It was turned into a movie featuring Laura Petty.
    49:23
    Yeah, that movie has actually a lot of, it has whole, remember whole, Courtney? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It has whole music in it. Yeah, it's dope. Yeah, and it's the coolest thing. Is the movie good? I have no idea. I never watched it. Oh, okay. But, like, so there's, like, nobody knows what's going on. It's like, is it Inspector Gadget? Is it Tank Girl? Are they securing a license? Or is it basically just Jack Danger, like, kind of playing around and making his own homebrew based on an idea? Oh, you mean, like, why aren't they saying things? like, oh, and when we're done with it, it will be offered in a limited, for a limited purchase, 200 of them are going to be made. Like, they haven't given us any explanation other than that one, you bring up a really good point. They're doing something cool, but they haven't really explained what they're doing outside of snippets that came from other people that shared them. That's what you're kind of saying, right? They're not, like, telling you what they're doing. I just checked his Instagram before we recorded, and there's, like, three videos of him flipping around or messing around with the whitewood,
    50:27
    it's really nebulous. Nobody knows what's going on. What is going on here? It'll all make sense in the future, but it doesn't mean anything right now. There's no reason to be invested in these clips he's dropping because what the hell are you doing?
    50:51
    We're going to I know this podcast. What the hell are you doing? Well, hold on a second, though. Here's one thing that we got to say that we did. We contributed to this. I'm convinced of it. And I'm convinced that we did this. I am, too. We were. We love Jack Danger. But we were like, Jack takes on this new role at Stern. And we don't see him. Like, why is he not everywhere? That's his new role. And I know that's what he likes doing. And then all of a sudden, it was like, drinks with Jack, part one through 500. All of this stuff. Like, all of a sudden, Jack was freaking everywhere. Ask Jack anything. I think after that episode. We had to have influenced that. We had to. It's no coincidence, because after we dropped that episode, other podcasters talked about it. Yeah. And then, I'm sure, you know, people in Stern are listening to all these damn things. There's not, like, too many podcasts out there. But, like, there was probably a meeting at Stern. They're like, yeah, what is Jack doing? And then, all of a sudden, they had to, like, put out all this stuff, man. There's no way that that wasn't. So here's what I think happened. I really do think this. I think what you said absolutely happened. But I think Jack was probably like, it was weird because all that content was almost ready to go. Like it felt like it was being edited then. So like someone either, it kind of feels like someone was supposed to be like publishing the shit he was doing. And they weren't doing it. I don't know. Because I don't think, do you think, you don't think Jack's filming and editing all that stuff, right? No, no, he's not. No, no, they have a production guy. Okay. And that's what I thought because when they did the drinks thing, they advertised the production company at the end of that clip if you watch it. But I don't know. Anyway, what were we even talking about? No, kudos to us. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, we did it. We did it. We brought Jack back.
    52:35
    What we're saying is like what's going on? He's dropping hints that he's working on a new machine, but is it a one-off? Right. Can I buy it? Yeah, can we buy it? He's alluded to, like, he's going to bring us through the whole processing, process of creating a machine. I think even from, like, licensing to whitewood to final production, which is cool. That's what everybody wants to see. This has been a closely guarded secret in the pinball world since the beginning of time. Like, show us how this is done. Give us a behind-the-scenes. You know, we know how movies are made. We know how video games are made because those industries are pretty open. But the pinball has been like a closely guarded secret. Like, how does all this work? And I think that's what he wants to show us. But who knows? I think this would be more effective if he goes and films a video, says, hey guys, we're going to give you this awesome behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build a pinball machine. I'm going to take you along the process, and we're going to release it in parts, like almost like a Netflix series. You get like one through five first And then they gotta wait like a month Because it'll build like this anticipation They should do it like that Yeah They're gonna do that now Who knows It would kind of be cool if Like this Turned out to be the Pokemon Home Edition that's supposedly Gonna be sold at Costco You know here's the process You know Yeah. You want to go there now? You want to talk about Pokemon and some of the delays and what we're hearing there?
    54:22
    Yeah. Is that on the list? Yeah. Are you making stuff up? Are we skipping over stuff? There's so much good stuff. I'm all over the place. I'm going back and forth. Back and forth. I don't know anything about Pokemon. I don't either.
    54:36
    Oh, yeah, we did. Pokemon's done. We don't know. There we go. It's not out yet. I think the only thing we know for sure is we're hearing from distributors that Stern reached out to them and said it's coming. They will be released in February.
    54:52
    And people, Pokemon fans are saying that makes sense because that's the, what is it, the 30-year anniversary?
    55:00
    Yeah, sometime in February. I think it's like a 30-year anniversary or something. And that's really all. I know. I haven't heard anything new. Okay. I just threw that out there. So that wasn't a good segue.
    55:12
    There's a lot of freaking good music on the Tank Girl soundtrack. Bjork is on it. Bush is on it. Ice-T is on it. Veruca Salt is on it. Cordis Head is on it. There's a – okay, anyway, so that's good music. I wonder if you license some of that music, it would be pretty freaking cool. Yeah. All right. So I've got – let's talk about 2026. Is this the year the video game theme ends? that Zach brought that up in his podcast, and I think I have to agree with him. I mean, we've got Fallout, potentially Resident Evil.
    55:46
    Yeah, that World Pinball Company or whatever. Halo with CGC and Play Mechanics. And then Sonic, Pokemon, and then Cuphead, if American Pinball ever releases Cuphead. Yeah, isn't that weird? But is Pokemon going to be based on the video game? Or are you just saying there are video games? We don't know. Okay. And that matters whether on the licensing. Game Freak holds the licensing for the gaming aspect of Pokemon. You know, if they only got licensing through Nintendo, maybe it's only like the likenesses, you know, the characters and the cartoon. but there's like three different license holders for Pokemon. I feel like this would be a nightmare to license this thing. Yeah.
    56:40
    But yeah, man, I mean, yeah, I feel like all signs point to it is going to be the year of a lot of video game themed pinball machines, which is pretty cool. The only one we don't know is like, we don't know if Fallout is going to be based on the video game or the TV series. Well it based on the TV series but the whole thing is based on the video game Yeah Yeah No you right But it not the video game We not going to see video game graphics on that backlash It's probably going to be TV show clips. TV stuff, yeah. But this is just, I find it very interesting the way everything's come together because, you know, these companies didn't work together to plan for something like this. It just seems like all in one year. Yeah, it's weird. Everyone's thinking the same way. Right. Yeah. Because all of this was planned a long time ago. Yeah. I like the fact that I think Sonic's going to do really well because especially there's so many people played that game in the Sega Genesis era. And if that's what it is, if it's based on the 16-bit original versions, I think that's going to be really cool. Yeah. And then, I mean, Halo, and I don't know if you told me this, Cale. Well, someone said somewhere along the lines, some of us heard, someone heard that like Mark Ritchie was going to go apeshit on this design. Like it was going to be amazing. And so I don't know where that rumor came from. So I'm more excited about like, okay, pair a kick-ass thing, you know, design with Halo could be pretty damn cool.
    58:09
    So I don't know. I'm excited about it. I know Jamie hates Halo. He's like anti-Halo. Well, it's bored. Right. Another interesting thing about this, you're going to get two games from brothers.
    58:23
    Oh, yeah. Going up against each other. Oh, that's true. Steve and Mark. Oh, that's true. That's cool. That's pretty cool. When's the last time that happened? I guess they actually did a UFC-style versus thing between the two companies.
    58:42
    Oh, those two will fight. Those two will definitely get in a fight. I mean, not with each other, but they'll do it. So good luck to all the manufacturers. You know, video games are hot. We've seen video game TV shows, video game everything, and that nostalgia we're into. I still think Call of Duty would be badass, but we don't think that.
    59:04
    We put Cuphead on there, but I don't think that's ever going to come out, right? We're all convinced they're not doing that, right? Well, who knows? I mean, they're looking. I mean, it's another story here. Boom. You know, they're putting out ads for like a whole new group of people. I put my application in yesterday, boys. Right. Designers, decal folks, everything like that. I want to be the Pates of American Pinball. I just, does anybody, like the thing is to be silent for this long and then have your like your last game that you release, Well, your two last games, one had a ton of mechanical problems and issues, so Galactic Tank Force, and then it didn't really do well. And then you're like, I know what we're going to do next. That game didn't sell well. And no offense to Barry O.
    59:57
    He's no longer with us. But why would that be the game that you would go, I know what's going to kick ass. We're going to make a game about barbecue. Like, why? Well, I don't know. It's almost like you're trying to fail. You have to think about who was making decisions at the time. It was David Fix, and he's no longer there. So I don't know if you can base.
    60:20
    I mean. It might be solely his decision. But here's the thing. This is what you want. You're sitting there going, they've made the dumbest decisions in the world. Well, guess what? We got rid of all of those people, and we're hiring all new people. What I heard, and I don't think this is public, that they found some new funding for the pinball side of things. Okay. Yeah, maybe even that video game thing. Aren't they manufacturing that thing that attaches to the wall? Don't you have one of those? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. I can't see it the way we have it cropped, the polyade. Yeah. Yeah, they do that, that Orbit, under that Orbit Games brand, which is also that thing that's kind of like a skeeball that I can't remember the name of, where you let the balls go up into something. No one's buying that. Yeah. That's a terrible decision. What I've heard is they've gotten some funding and they have some new leadership who is going to get back into the pinball game. Well, they haven't called me back now. I feel like – no offense to pinball because I love it and we talk about it all the time, but you have to be batshit crazy to fund a pinball company. You got to.
    61:28
    100%. You really do. You don't care about losing. You have to be fucking nuts, right? You have to be like, this is going to burn. And them of all people, like, hey, what is the last couple things you did? Well, we made a game about barbecue and beef with, like, stock footage of someone cutting a ribeye. And another game that was shaped like a tank that didn't really work. Oh, shit. We want to invest in this shit.
    61:52
    That game is when it's folded down. Right, right. But think about what they – don't think about how bad they fucked up. Think about what they've accomplished. because they've done more than some other companies. They've actually designed cool-looking machines that have shipped and been successful, like Hot Wheels. Galactic Tank Force was a grand idea. It actually was a really cool idea. Really what? The campiness of the acting and to get the people they got, that is actually really cool. Right. Do you think if it didn't have mechanical issues, do you think if the tank was maybe set back a little bit more so it didn't do what that did, and then all the locks and some of the mechanical stuff worked, do you think it would have done well? We could do a whole episode about what things they would need to change for that game to do well. But the bones of it, do you feel like if they were to fix the things, the bones of it and the concept was good?
    62:54
    Because it's kind of outspoken. The concept was good, right? The concept was great. The hardware, there were serious issues with the hardware. There were serious issues with the software, the rules.
    63:05
    Yeah, but the concept was the wood, the legs. Everything. You couldn't lock. You couldn't have four-player games, you know. What would you guys say is out of all the games they made, would they make six, right?
    63:23
    So out of the six games they made, what would you say is their, like the game they were like, okay, if I could have one American pinball game, that would be the one I would want. Houdini. Hot Wheels.
    63:34
    Okay, see, I was going to say Legends of Valhalla, but not even. They just built. They made it. Oh, that's true. All right, so I'd have to pick from Berrio, Hot Wheels. They made Oktoberfest, right? That's what I mean? Yeah. And Houdini? Okay, then I'd probably go Houdini or Hot Wheels, either one of those. Hot Wheels doesn't even have real ramps. How could you not have a Toro and be Hot Wheels? You can buy new light kits for your American pinball machines right now. That was an ad I saw. I was like, that's weird. Those are like hotcakes. I'm sure. No, but you bring up a good point. But Cale was trying to say, hey, guys, rewind for a little bit. You're defining the company based on two games that didn't do well. They have some accomplishments, basically. So it's not all bad. In all seriousness, if I'm Dutch pinball, and I've got these manufacturing issues that I keep hearing about on other podcasts, I call American Pinball and I say, hey, boys, we got a little thing called Back to the Future. Let's talk about it. That makes the most sense, Kale. We said that on another podcast. The thing is, how the hell is he going to – like, there's no one – no one believes that he's going to be able to meet the demand of that. There's no way. How long did it take him to make the – what's it called? What's the game with the rug in it?
    64:51
    The Big Lebowski. Yeah, the Big Lebowski. How the hell long did it take him to make that game? Ten years. A decade. Ten years. That's nuts. This is crazy. Like, when are people going to get back to the futures? You might be dead before you get it. That's crazy.
    65:10
    That's crazy. You might need a time machine to play it. That's true. You might need to buy it and, like, a life insurance policy at the same time. Like, there's no... Okay, Jamie, that's the marketing. You might need a time machine to play this game. A time machine. That's fucking great. Maybe that's what he's great. It's going to take us 10 years to make this fucking game. Yeah, let's make a joke about it. Leave him. She might need a time machine to play this fucking game. Look at the reel. Right. Look at the reels that we can make. Oh, my God, that's great. We can go Instagram with those reels.
    65:43
    You know, just show me old with just even worse gray hair. Oh, fuck that. So I'm still waiting. Day 7,000. How'd that song take me away?
    65:59
    You do it. You could do a five-year. And Jamie's like walking in with a walker. I love it. Sorry. That was good. Good job. Well, you know, American Pinball, we wish you luck. We've all seen pictures of Cuphead, and you should have released it. It's just too yellow, but it looked really cool. It had some cool shit in it. I don't know. No, it's awesome. Has everyone here seen the one? Like the picture we all saw. I don't give a shit. The picture we saw. Did it all have Josh in it? Oh, my God. Yeah. The picture is this. It's him in the corner.
    66:39
    It's a little box of food. Okay, so let me fill people in for. There are a lot of people who have no idea what we're talking about. Okay, okay, okay. amongst the podcasters, there are photos of Cuphead floating around. And one of them is Josh from Loser Kid. It's like somebody FaceTimed him or he was FaceTiming somebody while he's looking at the machine. And so it's just his face like full frame in there. And then the machine in the background. it's awesome sorry Josh we love you but don't be mad at this everyone has it pinball history it's great all of a sudden like everyone got this video these four or five pictures of the video that Josh Rupp did with David Fix is it not fascinating that that never leaked we all no one ever leaked it No. Pretty sure. I think Kenea finally did. I don't think he did. I don't think he ever did. You might have done like a sliver of it or something. I think Kenea dropped it in his Patreon maybe. Oh, yeah. Okay, so he did. I feel really confident that once it got to him. You feel confident about that? Okay. Once it got to him, there was no question.
    68:05
    He's just what he's going to do. I may have messed up in the show to do it. You just don't send up stuff you want to get released. Because it's going. It's going. Hey, I got another one for you, right? All right, this is Ralph. We're going to switch gears.
    68:20
    Ben Gomez calls out Jamie in an email about the beat to score. Can you explain this, what happened, Ralph? So I get this email from Ben Gomez, right? And he's like, hey, I want to reach out because I was just listening to the last roundtable. Hold up. Can you let people know who Ben Gomez is? Yeah, yeah. So let me, I don't know what his official title is, so let me grab it so I know.
    68:49
    So Ben, he's the Insider Connected. His title at Stern is Insider Connected Lead Creative Designer. So he works on all the Insider Connected stuff. So he was the one behind Beat My Score, which we talked about on the last podcast.
    69:04
    And Jamie, like, lost his body and, like, kind of seemed uninterested after a certain amount of time. So Ben is writing me going, hey, you know, I was watching. And then Jamie started, like, kind of tuning out and, like, getting upset that he's not going to participate in it. Well, come to find out, he's like, well, next time you talk to me, let him know, like, he has a badge. But he, like, got so ADD that he couldn't even, like, focus on what was happening. I had Melissa Loomis on the JBI show, and I was talking about how I love Stern Insider Connected beat that score. And I said, Kale got one first. Or Ralph got one. Who got one first? You both got one within the first two weeks. and then I kept going back to keep trying to get and beat everybody's score, but after the third week, I lost interest. So that's what I said. And then he reached out to you saying, hey, Jamie lost interest too quickly. We got him a badge. But then he says this, though. I'm going to read it exactly how he said it. And he goes, I watched the JBS show. Jamie mentioned that he enjoyed the beat the score quest, but then he fell off really quickly. and he goes, this is Ben, he does seem to lose interest quickly and he even says so himself. He goes, next time you speak to him, let him know that he actually does have a badge.
    70:22
    Ben's a great guy. I talked to Ben a good bit. Thanks, Ben. This was a very cool, this was all his idea. This was a very cool thing and I don't know if you guys I'm sure, Ralph, you experienced it. Jamie probably tuned out. So many people got in touch with me and, like, reshare it, like, would post, hey, I got Kale's badge. How cool is this? This was a very, very cool idea. Yeah. Well, and I was at the bat. It was, like, the second or third week. It was, like, the week before it was about to end. And someone I don't – I had never actually talked to at the bat was like, hey, man, you know – I was like, hey, listen to the thing. He was like, I got your badge. He's like, I worked on it for, like, you know, the afternoon this weekend, and I got it. I was like, oh, cool. And then we started talking. So, like, that whole thing got us to, like, know each other. And now next time I go, we'll talk again. Dude, that shit made us so much money. I bet. Oh, yeah. People were at the bat, like, just pumping money into Avengers trying to get my badge. It was great. I love that. I wonder if it's going to be a top earner for you. I wonder if it moved it up in the earnings for your earnings report, your next. We'll find out. I think we're going to record tomorrow. We're still behind because we have, it's going to be a really cool show, Rachel and I, Electric Backcast, because we have, so November, December, and then the year-end earnings. Ooh, that's good. Oh, that's cool. Very cool stuff. That's cool. So stay tuned. There you go. All right. What's next? We have, is Brian Eddy's next game Dracula?
    72:07
    I don't know. I'm hearing that. Okay. So, you know, hey, this is where we learn everything. We're the show that dropped, like, Fallout's going to be, you know, the next one. Yeah. You know, and everybody's going with it. Nobody said, no, you don't know what you're talking about. No. I'm hearing that Brian Eddy's next game is a non-licensed IP, kind of like King Kong.
    72:32
    Interesting they're going in this direction. They're probably just tired of dealing with license holders. Yeah. And so I started thinking about it. What would be a cool IP, a non-licensed IP that Brian Eddy might be working on?
    72:52
    Dracula? Are you hearing this or you're coming – this is you? This is you? No, I've only heard that it's not a licensed IP. Okay. So these are things that could be that make sense in the pinball space, something like Dracula. I think Frankenstein is open.
    73:13
    I don't think it will be. No. Disney will fuck you regardless. And also, that's just a dumb IP for a company. I'll save that for another company. Also, was super cool, but you're probably not going to see this. Cthulhu, that's available.
    73:33
    No idea what that is. I feel like Bram Stoker's Dracula would be pretty cool. So you're saying that you picked that because it's in the fair use category now. Exactly.
    73:46
    And if you think about it, Gary's dad did Dracula back in the day, the Stern Electronics Dracula. It could be like, you know, we're doing it again. You know, Gary is following in his father's footsteps and releasing a Dracula game. I think it would be a cool title. I just noticed Little Shop of Horrors is also fair use now. Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah, it says copyright was never renewed.
    74:16
    Hmm. That has Spooky written all over it, but yeah. Yeah. But they only make one a year. I think that would be down on the list, but it would be something I could see them making. Is Spooky making Motorhead by Limited Run? Yes. Somebody confirm that? They're manufacturing that Motorhead. Because that was one hell of a homebrew. Did you ever get a chance to play it? No, I didn't. I think their path is we're going to see Goonies next, then Gremlins, Motorheads, somewhere like that, and then South Park.
    74:51
    But, I mean, South Park's like three years away. I know Goonies. Yeah, Goonies I'm all about. See, he's more Goonies than Gremlins. I'm more Gremlins than Goonies. What are you? I'm Goonies. I'm big on Goonies. I feel like Goonies has so many cool things. I don't remember Gremlins enough, even though I did watch it a bunch. Goonies just has moments. Dude, the moment to me that translates to pinball so well is when he's playing the piano, and if you get the note wrong, the floor falls below you because that could be a shot. Yes. And if you miss a shot, it falls. She was playing. Yeah, you missed a shot, the flippers die. Yeah, it'd be so cool. The whole story is the ultimate, like, neighborhood kids going on an epic adventure movie. It's Stranger Things before Stranger Things, 100%. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, we'll see if that... I don't know. And the Fratellis? Come on, man. The Fratellis. They're the best. The Fratellis are the best. And he's like, well, I'm into Fat Kim, and then he threw up in the... He's like, puree! And he shoves his hand in the blender. You'll know this is real when Bugs rolling around Expo giving everybody baby roots. Yeah, that's true. That would be interesting, right? Two games where they could make that connection. That'd be cool. That's pretty cool. All right, what's next, boys? What's on the list? Is Godzilla close to being the best-selling pinball machine of all time?
    76:22
    But that's, see, that's not right, because you're saying it's the best-selling Stern of all time. It's not the best-selling pinball machine of all time. There's no way they did 20,000.
    76:33
    Right. They keep making them. Like, I don't think it's $20,000, but it has to be a shithole because they keep making them. I think that's what they call it back in the day, fuzzy math. Okay. Well, this is what spawned this for the viewers. This is what spawned this conversation. I was listening to Loser Kid, and Joel mentioned that Godzilla is about to be the best-selling machine. Actually, I don't want to misquote anybody. I wrote it down. All right. I'm going to get it back. You ready for this?
    77:02
    Ralph, take it a break. Can you let me just go get a Diet Coke? Go get a Diet Coke. What's Rob doing? Hitting a vape?
    77:11
    What's that? Okay. Wait, what's the, this was the show, you said Joel's. Is it that Christmas show that they did where the loser kid paired up with the? No, it was before that. But he's on with Joel. You're saying Joel from Flippin' Out said it? No, Joel. Did I say Loser Kid? I meant Triple Drain. Yeah, yeah, Triple Drain. I meant Triple Drain. Okay. Or maybe it was that Christmas one. It must have been because that was the one where Triple Drain was on the Loser Kid show. Oh, okay. Right, right, right.
    77:49
    Joel said, Godzilla is very soon going to be the most sold pinball machine of all time. And I sent you that clip, and I was like, why is he saying this? Because I've heard differently. And then you guys were like, well, that's what Gomez said in Cary Hardy's live he did. Yeah. So I went back to that. Oh, investigative journalist. Here's the quote from Gomez. At some moment in time, in the not too distant future, Godzilla is going to break the record for how many pinball machines produced. Right.
    78:30
    That's the quote. Oh, so that's confusing. That's so like, you could take that in so many different ways. The reason my ears kind of perked up about all this is, from what I've heard, they're not close to selling 24,000. And the only reason, about a year and a half ago, I was at a conference and I was hanging out with some people who actually do know, who would know this kind of stuff. And they were very excited. They remember this was about a year and a half ago.
    79:18
    They were on the verge of passing Lethal Weapon 3, which of Gary's pinball companies, that is the best selling game. That's documented at 10,500 copies. So they were excited that Godzilla was about to be the best-selling machine of any of Gary's companies. So you're talking Sega, Data East, Stern, Pinball. Okay.
    79:50
    So to say that it's getting close to Addams Family sales, that's $24,000. That would mean in a period of a year, they sold 15,000 Godzillas? that doesn't even make close that's not accurate. So you think it's more likely that he's saying it's the best selling game that of Stern's of the company Stern has been associated with?
    80:20
    That's how I take it. Right. But that doesn't mean best selling ever because that is Adam's family and that's over 20,000. So he's not saying it's better. Yeah, but the way he said that is weird because you could imply that it's ever. Right. And the only reason I'm bringing this up is because I've heard other podcasters, like, talk about it. Like, oh, no, this is a fact because Gomez said that. That's technically not what he said.
    80:44
    And, you know, when you get, like, Joel is very well respected. Everybody loves him. And he's just going by what Gomez is saying and maybe misinterpreting it. But Don from Don's Pinball Podcast said the same thing. I'm not calling out these people because they're wrong. They're going by what Gomez has said, but what Gomez has said was not very clear. Yeah.
    81:09
    But from all my accounts, okay, I even reached out to somebody in Stern Sales to get a hard number, and they said they changed software and they couldn't go back to see the history of sales. No way. But they said it was no way. No, like, the only people that actually know, it's going to be Seth, maybe Todd, but it's definitely going to be Seth, Gary, and then the guy, I can't remember his name right now, the guy that actually owns Stern.
    81:50
    So, a little bit of information out there for everyone. We're just a little – oh, Dave – I'm sorry, Dave Peterson. All right. So just a little more, you know, we're just a correction. That's all. Wait, wait. And the only reason I think this is important, because when you have important people in the pinball space, Joel and Don, saying this, you know, people are going to repeat it on Facebook like it's a fact or forums and what have you, because this would be a huge – this would be monumental. If any modern Stern pinball machine sold 24,000 copies, that would be huge. And let's not – I'm not taking anything away from Godzilla sales. That's an amazing game, and it's – the amount of games they've sold is something to talk about. It's notable. Yeah.
    82:41
    Speaking of, like, game sales, I don't know if you guys – I don't know if you guys are going to hear it, but on Don's podcast, before the Dune, you know how they closed the sales of Dune? They're obviously sold some through the distributor, so they'll be available, but they closed sales down. But I didn't know that you could buy directly from barrels. So Don, I think it was Shopify or something. So Don tried to see how many Dunes he could put in his cart, because he's like, it's probably tied to the inventory system. And it was like 76 or something like that. I can't remember what number he threw out there. but it was like going to cost him like I don't know some ungodly amount of money yeah but he's like I just wanted to see if I could see if the total is which was actually kind of a creative thing that he did like I was I would never think to do something like that but um and what happened oh it was like 70 or something he could put 76 in his oh interesting so I don't know if that's like but the thing is like if if there's 76 left that they were going to build what what is that end number going to be because I didn't they say they were going to build like a thousand but we No one really thinks they sold that many of those. So, I don't know. I'll tell you what. It took off after Expo, though. I'll tell you that. No question it took off after Expo. I think it was, you know, I know some numbers, but it was pretty low until Expo and Winchester. I think Winchester. It's a trust tree, Jamie. What was the number? Nothing. Winchester did so well that I think it let people go, hey, let's check out Dune. and then with the Dune Co. getting so much better, and then Jeff from Dirty Pool really putting in his music and everything there. What a great machine they put in for that. What do you think about this? I don't even know if it makes sense money-wise. Like, what if that's Barrel's a Fun deal? They do runs of 500.
    84:32
    I think that'd be cool. You mean like what, that that's just what they're going to do? Like, that's our strategy? We're just going to make limited stuff that's kind of niche? So Stern has the market on, like, we're going to make as many machines as you guys are going to buy. Actually, we're going to make more than you guys can buy. Right. In the warehouse somewhere. And then, you know, Jersey Jack has their thing. Spooky has the thing where they're going to make about 1,000 machines of each title. So Beryl could find their little niche with like, dude, we're super niche. This is a like boot cheap. Like $250 to $500, like small. It's a specialty pinball machine, and we just do runs of $500. I don't know how much licensing is. It might not even make sense to do that.
    85:24
    Yeah, I was looking up. I was curious about Winchester probably wasn a big license right Now it is a license They did license the Winchester Mystery House Right But the Winchester House itself But you would have to find constant that type of license, right, that's not Dune. You couldn't do Dune at $500. You couldn't do Goonies.
    85:48
    You know what's kind of interesting, though? It is funny that, like, if you start doing research on it, like, you just say, hey, what would it cost me to license RoboCop in 2025? Because I posted that thing about RoboCop. I saw that. And then people were like, oh, some were like they should remake it, and some were like, nah, we're good. Like, I don't care. But I looked up, like, how much would it cost? And I've talked to ChatGPT about all these companies, so it knows when I reference Stern that Stern is the bigger of the pinball companies. And so I said, out of all the pinball companies that I've talked to you about, who could afford the license for RoboCop in 2026. And it came back and it said, based on what I know, Stern Pinball would be the logical choice because this license is going to cost millions of dollars. And I said, why is it more complex now? And then it showed all of the times that RoboCop changed hands because it was like Orion or something back then. Remember Orion? Yeah. So, like, that's the thing that no one thinks about. when they go, I'd love to have XYZ license, but that license could end up being in such legal licensing hell and all the people you'd have to potentially pay along the way would make it not feasible to do it ever. I think a lot of licenses happen to fall into that category. That's why we don't see them. They were easier to license back then when one entity owned them.
    87:10
    That's what happened with Eminem. Stern was talking to Eminem about doing the pinball machine. The problem is all of the hits, the songs you would want to be in the game are owned by all kinds of different producers. That's just when he was starting his career. Yeah. And, like, the licensing would be an absolute nightmare.
    87:35
    Like it would cost too much to even make. You wouldn't even make any money if you made it. Not even cost, but just getting everybody to agree to stuff. So you would end up with songs that were later in his catalog.
    87:51
    Yeah, so that was the main issue with doing the Eminem pin. Isn't that why Guns N' Roses was easier to work with? I heard that Slash or one of them, they were just like, yeah, do whatever you want. They gave him permission. Eric Minier told this story once about how, like, they wanted to do, like, a Jersey Jack, like, T-shirt that had Guns N' Roses on it or something like this. And they were like, Slash, he, like, called up Slash. He's like, do whatever you want. Like, I talked to the guys. We're cool with it. Like, go do it. And it's like, that's pretty awesome if you can get to that kind of level with Licenser because, you know, it's one person. That's what Stern did with Metallica, you know. That was easy peasy, you know. buddies with the band in the know yeah yeah the band saw rush and they that's the story isn't it that the band saw rush and said we want our pinball machine to be better than this one and or something like that this is what i heard but uh you know i told that story a million times about mark tramani he rep he gives in his record contracts his music is free to use for pinball companies, which is why his music is used in Venom. You know? Cool. Venom's got a cool soundtrack, by the way. Yeah, a lot of that is Tremonti. So, I mean, you could see a Creed pinball machine. What do you think? Get us higher?
    89:13
    No. Come on. I know. That's a clip right there. The story of Van Halen is... The Creed guys are awesome.
    89:28
    My band really helped them out. We let them open up for us to kind of get them exposure when they were getting out of Florida. All those guys are really, really awesome, awesome, amazing people. I just don't think the Creed pinball machine would sell. Six Feet from the Edge ball people? No. No? All right. But I did tell that Van Halen... I want to see Cobra. I want to see Cobra, too. I did see that. I'll tell this very, very quickly. I did meet Wolfgang Van Halen, and the first thing I said to Wolfie was, and his mom, Valerie Bertinelli, why isn't Van Halen a pinball machine? And they said, too many lead singers. So if Van Halen doesn't get a pinball machine, and they've got too many lead singers... Licensing for pinball machines across the board, I've always heard this. I've hung out with Jody for years and close to him.
    90:29
    When you approach an IP holder and say, like, you want to do a pinball machine, they give you the full price. And you have to work from there going, look, we're pinball. It's small. Tiny. And you have to work your way down. And, you know, sometimes, you know, that's why you have a Jurassic Park without most of the actors. Right. You have to make the license and everything it encompasses. You have to whittle down the price to where it makes sense to put it in a pinball machine.
    91:06
    Good point, sir. Yep. One of the next questions we had is, are pinball podcasts too long? And we're already at an hour and a half, so let's talk this out.
    91:18
    Where did that come from? I don't remember who wrote that. I put that in there. And the reason was because of the Gomez interview. Okay. Oh, okay, yeah. That was almost three hours, right? But wasn't our leg podcast, the ones where we were showing our legs, wasn't that one like three hours? It was. I was alive. There were so many comments from people. It's too long. That's too long for a podcast. Canada even messaged us. It was like, you guys are crazy. That's too long for a podcast. Do people not know you can pause a podcast? You can. You can do that. You can break it up into as many segments as you want, you know. But overwhelmingly, pinball fans were like, this is so cool and we love it. You have three hours of us chit-chatting with Gomez. I mean, like, so what do you want, like 30 minutes?
    92:16
    Yeah, we wouldn't have gotten anything. We would have gotten like one question in 30 minutes. We would have gotten one question. He went on a little bit long. That's okay. I tried my best.
    92:26
    Ralph and I could have gone for another hour, and I think Gomez could too. I mean, this was like the coolest moment just to be able to talk to somebody like this. And ask him whatever. I mean, it's not like he didn't want to answer anything. So I was happy he knew my name, you know? Can we go a little bit behind the scenes about how Jamie was hyperventilating the night before?
    92:51
    Go ahead. Make fun of me. Well, I was at the bat, and I was like, I'm like, hey, Cal, what's up? Like, we just did our normal, like, hey, what's up? I was like, man, Jamie's, like, freaking the hell out right now. I was like, dude, you should have seen him the other night. He was, like, crazy freaking out. I was like, well, he was pretty much freaking out on this, too. He goes, no, man. He was, like, off his, out of his mind. So I don't know, like, I don't, what did you, why was it that bad? And it was good. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we share a note. Okay. We share a note on Apple. And Kale and Ralph were listing all the questions to ask George Gomez. It was just, it's not like I wanted to sit and say, hey, tell me about your Porsche, bullshit questions like that. But I wanted to make it a little more lighting than the way the questions were reading. So I started freaking out. Oh, so you didn't say that was why you were freaking out. Oh, and I probably overwhelmed you because I'm like, hey, man, I just threw it into chat GPT and it fucked the whole list up. And I think you're probably like, and then I spent an hour trying to put them together so that it flowed. It's got to flow. I can't just go ask him one question and then go to Pokemon. I was trying to make it flow and it gives me, I have anxiety. This is what it is. I just have it. But this is how bad it was. I'm in bed and Jamie calls me. He calls me. I'm like, yo, what's up? He's like, man, we can't do these questions. I was like, why not? He's like, they're too hard. And I was like, I said, Gomez is a smart guy. I think he can answer them. He's like, there's no way. We can't do this. We had a two-hour conversation in the middle of the night, me talking Jamie off the ledge. It wasn't two hours. It was a good 35 minutes. It was an hour.
    94:37
    But I was like, I promise you it's going to be fine. This is the stuff people want to hear about. And, you know, it was the same thing with Ralph's question. He's like, no, this is too hard, this is too hard. I just want to bullshit with them like we're having a good time. And it turned out that way, but we also had some substance to it. Yeah. Now, I guess my initial thought was just the three of us sitting at a bar talking to George Gomez, but people have done that before, and I'm glad we didn't do that. that's why it's called the round table ladies and gentlemen and the other two knights said hey Jamie calm down dude calm down and I did eventually I calmed down they know what it is to work with me I'm a pain in the ass so it is what it is we can't have that many more left dude you went through like a lot of them I saw one we didn't talk about but I think it was my dumb idea I'm not going to do it so I don't even know if I should bring it up Go ahead. We'll end with it. All right. I felt a little bit bad after when we decided not to do the awards. I felt a little bit bad because I didn't realize that the actual Twippy Awards are not including content creators. So I kind of felt bad because it's like the one time out of the year where like the people that stream games and, you know, make long form content or short form, whatever. and there's so many new creators in the space that I'm sure they would get excited to win something. Well, by us doing that, so I'm like, I'm going to do a creator-only awards. And then I'm like, but why was the, it's just, it's a stupid idea. I want to do it because I feel like the creators should be recognized. I don't want to do it because it's too much work. Is this going to be the Retro Ralph Awards? That's what my, I was just going to do it on my own and just be like, yeah, you'd win something. You'd still get a trophy. But then I'm like, but if I do this, it's only good if I keep doing it. because no one wants to win an award that they won an award for once. Do you choose the winners? No, no, I was going to do the voting. It was just going to be content creators, but then I thought about all the reasons why we didn't do it, and I'm like, well, those reasons still exist. Can you imagine?
    96:51
    I wouldn't be eligible. I don't love you, right? There's some content creators that might not love you right now, right? So what if you'd like? What did I do? You know who I'm talking about. You don't want to stream with certain people. Oh, yeah. Don't touch trouble. We're good now. We made up. Are you? Yeah. I don't know.
    97:11
    Anyway, what if you didn't put them on your list? They'd be on the list. Trust me. Everyone would be on the list. That's the thing. I'll tell you some good news. You'll be able to hang out with them because they're coming to the electric bat. Okay. the Smokin' Popes are going to play at Yucca and we're going to have in that same weekend, we're going to have a pinball tournament at Electric Bat Arcade. When is this? I don't have a hard date. I think it's in like June. Okay. Alright, cool. Yeah. That'll be fun. We're hanging out. You could bury the hatchet once and for all. There's no hatchet. Stop. You're causing trouble. There is none. We're talking about punk rock pinball. There's some misunderstandings. We're good. Period. Ralph, come on. We don't need this in this hobby. Oh, God. Come on. Now you're going to make people start talking about it. No, there's nothing to talk about. No, there's nothing there. I'm just having a go, ladies and gentlemen, just having some fun. But the issue is you're going to list someone out, and then you're going to get hammered from those people. And I just think it's not worth it. But there was a moment in time, very brief, where I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. I don't care if people complain, and I was going to put as many of the creators in the categories as possible. The thing is, it was on JCC. It was that last year, remember? And it was a cluster. Well, anyway, I'm not doing it. Clearly, you guys think it's – no, it wasn't a good idea. All the issues with us doing it still exist, so I'd just be doing less categories. I'd have to still do all the – Let's do something with Zach where we do a – we invite 10 of us, okay? Mm-hmm. Let's whiteboard this. Wait, why Florida? Hold on. Wait, Ken. Invite ten of us to do what? No. We all get on a Riverside Zoom. Oh, my God. What a nightmare. No. Do what?
    99:04
    You're going to have ten motherfuckers that like to just run their mouths constantly on one call? No, it won't work. Just wait. Let me talk this out. No. All right. So what is it? What are you? What's the point of this? We get on a... All right. He says ten of us on this thing. We each give a vote, and we get ten categories, like we were going to do in the Pinball Roundtable Awards. And everyone gets a vote, best podcast. And we do that. And then we title it up, and boom, the best podcast goes to whatever. So you'd vote for your favorite as a creator? Yeah. There's ten industry content creators. We're also picking the best game 2025, the best launch, the best whatever. All right, if I'm pale, then I'm not going to say electric bat because I can't. So I say my favorite pot, like, wedgehead, if that's what it is, right? So that's what you're saying they do? Yeah, and we count them up, and then wedgehead wins. Congrats, wedgehead.
    100:02
    You know how hard it is? I don't know if I like this, Jamie. No, no, the logistics are – This is an even dumber idea than mine. It's a nightmare. You know how hard it is for us three to find time to do this? No. You're going to get 10 people.
    100:17
    All right, well, maybe Don can do it. Don can spearhead it. He's not working hard. But you still need to, you just brought up the biggest point, Cale. You're never going to get all 10 to be able to do it at the same time. It'll never freaking happen. It doesn't even make sense.
    100:32
    No, it's just stupid, Jimmy. I don't like this. My line of business is it doesn't even make sense, ladies and gentlemen. When he says it, I laugh. What are we doing here? What are we doing here is mine, and it doesn't even make sense. It's my favorite. Make a t-shirt of that. It's such a good thing. Do we have time for another one? I got a cool one. One more real quick. Yeah, one more.
    100:55
    It probably won't be real quick. Another Kale's Conspiracy Corner, you know, like with the Godzilla numbers. Yeah, these are good. Yeah, you'll love this. This is a little insight.
    101:05
    Another thing that Gomez said on Kerry's interview was about, Kerry asked about a warehouse in Chicago that's holding what did he say, like 20,000 Stern machines that they can't sell, right? I can verify that's not true that doesn't exist Zach Manning on the pinball show brought it up and he talked about Rotra, are you guys familiar with Rotra? I was from that, from you. Okay. Tell me from you. I've been to Rotra. Is that the drop ship warehouse? Like the one where you can, like, be a distributor and use it as a place to stage your game before? Yes. Yeah. I don't think they're using it anymore. But I don't think Stern's machines were in there. Okay. Like nine years ago or something like that, I was helping out Rob Burke. And me and one of his employees took a cube truck over to Rotra to pick up some machines for Expo.
    102:17
    And so you got to – this was like nine years ago. I'm like, well, you know, what are we doing? This is kind of cool. So they opened the doors of this place. You drive a truck in, and it's Stern machines, like a couple million dollars worth, I don't know, just like stacked. You know how they say, like, don't stack? Yeah. These things were stacked up like three high as far as you could see into the warehouse. And you can imagine me, I'm just getting in the industry. I'm going, oh, my God, the whole industry is fake.
    102:48
    Because, like, I thought all these machines got to – they were on the streets or in somebody's house, you know. But, no, I mean, that's just the business model. Like, Stern gives them to the distributor, and the distributor has got to figure out how to, like, offload these things.
    103:02
    So that did exist. Talking to people, I heard people, they're not using Rotor anymore. So, like, Marco Specialty's games were in there. Melissa Cointaker's games were in there. Like, all the biggest distributors, this was just where they stored their games. Because it made sense. They were manufactured at Stern, and Stern would just send them to this Rotor place. But what people are talking about now About a warehouse with Stern games that they can't sell I mean, that does exist, but it only has about 3,000 games in it It's full of mostly John Wick and Venoms They can't even sell them to distributors So that's what that whole rumor is about It's not 20,000, 30,000 games And I even verified that Because, you know, people at Stern have tried to, like, sell those games to my friends. They're like, man, we got these 3,000 games. You know, we've got to figure out something to do with. And I think that's why you're seeing them pop up on Amazon, which is a smart move. I mean, they got to, you know, because they're paying to store these games.
    104:11
    It's costing them money to, like, sit on these games. Yeah, that was actually one of the topics we were going to talk about because the Amazon store popped back up around the holidays. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. and I think there was a couple of like, I can't remember who the content creators were talking about someone was saying for like a short period of time, they even did a couple like Black Friday ones like they did some deals on a couple games, I can't remember which ones, well I want to say it might have been John Wick it was posted in like one of the Stern Enthusiast things and then people were like, oh I got it, like I got the deal but yeah, it's true, I'd love to, it would be interesting to see what the process is I'm assuming you buy it from Amazon and then they just partner with some shipping company to ship it out to you, I would guess, right? You can buy like gun safes off Amazon. So you're used to shipping heavy stuff. Yeah. All right. I need a title for this podcast real quick before we end it because Ralph was right, right? No more editing the podcast and putting Roundtable Part 12. Who gives a shit? Nobody cares.
    105:19
    Right? So I need a roundtable. Boom. I need a little snippet there for us. Are we talking about this on the show? Yeah, why not? Let's talk about it on the show. I thought Cale does a good job or something like Cale dispenses rumors. I don't know. I need something.
    105:39
    Well, normally you'd pick like – 25 recap. Well, you did. You did. Kale had his. You could say, what was it we talked a lot about? You just pick three things that we talked about that would be fun to have in the title. Like, pick three. You know what I mean? I'm not good at this. I'll send you a thing. This is Ralph's wheelhouse. Yeah, I'll send you something. Oh, Ralph is so good at it. Before we go, and this is on the list, each of us say, what is our favorite game of 2025? Oh, good.
    106:09
    You want to go first? Who wants to? Do you want me to go first, Ralph? Yeah, you go first. I'll go first.
    106:18
    D&D was released in 2025. That's a 2025 game, right? It is. That's not getting enough attention. Man, that is an amazing game. Cool artwork. Stays true to the IP. Like, you're going on an epic adventure in this pinball machine. And I think it gets forgotten at the end because it came out so early in the year. Yeah. I, you know, when Kaneda did his awards and gave the award for best mech to Dune, that worm, he, well, he happened to call me and I was like, bro, you fucked that part up. because like how can you overlook the dragon yeah it's a mistake the premium dragon's badass i mean the dune worm it doesn't even look like a worm it looks like a can of beans and i mean it's like like the dragon looks like a dragon it shoots balls at you it's also a bash toy, and it taunts you while you're playing. Yeah. Like, that is one of the most amazing mechs in pinball, period, in the history of pinball. In this single game that I label as the 2025 game of the year, ladies and gentlemen, Dungeons and Dragons, The Pirates of the Night.
    107:51
    Over Harry Potter, Evil Dead. We can't count Beetlejuice because it's not known. Right. Alright, Ralph, you're up. Is this our favorite of 2025? Yeah, your favorite. Your favorite game.
    108:06
    So up until... This is going to be crazy and people are going to think I'm nuts for this. Because it's really hard because I got like three that I would put almost all together in a group.
    108:18
    I probably would have been a toss-up between Harry Potter and Kong because I just really like... You know the big one. I really like... Yeah, but I'm going to pick... You got a big one. I'm going to pick Predator as my favorite game of 2025.
    108:30
    Wow. I like that. Yeah. It's just different. Like there's something about it that makes it so fun because it's different. And I will say the disclaimer might be I'm very much a super fan of Predator, the original movie. And like Arnold was all those Arnold 80s action movies were all like movies that kind of like that's what I grew up watching. So something that's based on that I'm going to love. But it's just fun. It's just a fun fucking game. The game is Jamie's game of 2025. I had a tough time because I just started thinking of where do I put my most quarters when I go to Eureka?
    109:10
    And I put a lot of money into Harry Potter, ladies and gentlemen. So that is my game of the year for 2025. I spent the most money at Eureka Heights on Harry Potter. I think it's a win. When you can have a wizard edition that looks just like the middle edition that looks just like the collector's edition, you're winning. Well, the arcade edition is the real deal. That's what I meant, the arcade edition. You know, here we have an arcade edition of Eureka Heights, and I'm not missing anything, nothing. Yeah. You know, I could play against Ralph. Because the one they have, is it the corrected artwork?
    109:50
    Yes. No droopy dragon. Ralph, you kind of like having the original, the mistake artwork, right? I do. I have a mistake. How many do you think are out there? Like two, three hundred?
    110:05
    I don't know. Does it seem like it took a while before they actually corrected it? Yeah, it could have been. Yeah, it's got to at least have been. At least a hundred had to have left that way. Yeah. At least. Yeah, it makes it special. It's like a piece of football history. Like, oh, they printed the wrong damn pile. Makes it worth more. Yeah, that'll be cool. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to be. We should do one next time. We need to do a segment, Kale, on what's leaving Ralph's garage. Oh, that's true, because there's going to be something leaving soon. Real quick, do you guys think, how many Harry Potters do you think they sold?
    110:40
    Oh. I thought it was almost 2,000, I thought. Okay. I thought I heard that from somebody. 2,000 all in between the arcade, wizard, and collectors? Yeah. That's a 2,000 collector. I think Kaneda said, like, I think he said 1,800, and that was, I hope I'm not giving too much away, that's after he had dinner with Brett. Brett? Yeah. Well, he got to have dinner with that Brett guy. I had dinner with Brett. And he had, like, four Manhattans on his kudos, and it was great. The more Manhattans going, the better. Isn't that awesome for them, though? Like, that's great. Oh, that's amazing. And I have to, you know, there's egg on my face because I was on record for saying I didn't think this game was going to sell.
    111:27
    Kudos to the whole team. They knocked it out of the park. And people speak with their wallets, and they're doing it. Yeah, they sold the shit out of it. Honestly, I thought it was going to be another Jersey Jack. It was like people would be excited for a little bit, you know, and then, like, people forget about it. They really did something special with this game. and we know it costs an arm and a leg and blood, sweat, and tears. Ralph was part of it and saw it happen behind the scenes.
    111:57
    They pulled it off, and this is a game that looks like they're going to be able to sell for a long time. Would you still consider it? Would you get one? No. No, just because of the reliability. Right, I understand. I mean, you know, Eureka doesn't get to play the back end, so you're talking apples and oranges. But it has to – for something to withstand the kind of play you get at the bat, it has to be a stern, you know. Yeah. Like, Winchester would probably be a nightmare, and so would any Jersey Jack.
    112:33
    We're going to end on that, ladies and gentlemen. Check out K.L. Hernandez at Electric Bat, Retro Ralph at Retro Ralph. What is it, 1980 on Instagram? No. Oh, Instagram? I don't care about Instagram. Just go follow me on YouTube. Go to Retro Ralph Live on YouTube or Retro Ralph. That's it. And then like and subscribe to JBS Show. Let's get to 1,000. I'd appreciate it. And give a shout-out to Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey. She's going to be giving away a prize to the 1,000th subscriber to the JBS Show. How cool is that? That's cool. Yeah. She's helping me out. She's going to give away a prize. So there you go. That's nice. The 1,000th subscriber to our channel here That hosts the roundtable Will get a surprise from Erica From Erica's Pinball Journey So we love her Alright boys, thank you so much Great time As always, what are we, an hour 53? Not too bad Remember you can always hit pause You can do it You can hit pause See you guys Thanks boys Thank you
    113:42
    Thank you.