Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no, we're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kane. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney knife, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nut house. You're goofy. Don't piss me off, Art. Clark, I think it's best if everyone just goes home. I just want things to get worse. Worse? How can they get any worse? The following is an anti-radio production. TV. It's the Super Awesome Pinball Show. All right, take off. That's right. It's time for your favorite pinball show. With your favorite hosts, pinball artist Christopher Franchi and Dr. Put-In-Cell Christian Lyne. And you'll be done for That is mine Oh yeah Also a rotating gallery of bonus co-hosts to spite things up That is mine Sponsored by Chicago Game Company Home of your favorite top quality pinball remakes Like Monster Bash, Evil Badness and more Visit Chicago-Gaming.com And by Cointaker.com Distributors of new in-box pinball machines mods, accessories, LEDs, and much more. That's coin-takers.com. Also by backgalleycreations.com, makers of the most amazing pinball mods, black pearl pinballs, and the easy-slide platyfield support system. That's backgalleycreations.com. Happy holidays, all you pinball rock stars out there, and thanks for tuning in to the Holiday Edition, episode number 21 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. This is Christopher Franchi, the semi-famous pinball artist, and as usual, we've got another spectacular show for you. The Pinball Brothers talk exclusively with us about their controversial path to today's release of Alien and what's on the horizon for the near future. We'll also take a fantastical virtual sleigh ride to visit friends for the holidays, like Gary Stern, George Gomez, Joe Camenco, and more. We'll also talk about the new release of Stern's Led Zeppelin, and you can enter for a chance to win a brand new Stern Led Zeppelin team-signed translate. We'll also tell you who won the Super Awesome Stocking Giveaway and how you can win one of 12 Super Awesome Special Edition T-shirts. All of this, the latest news, rumors, and our past few weeks in pinball on the Super Awesome Pinball Show. And now, the co-host voted most handsome pinball podcaster of 2020, the doctor on the front line, a hero to many, my second best friend, Dr. Pin himself, Christian Line. Happy holiday, pal-o-mine. Happy holidays, my friend. Chris and I love the holidays. So we've decided to go big with the Super Awesome Pinball Show holiday special. I've got the lights up on my tree. I've got the gifts partially wrapped. Still have a lot more to go, but we love this season, so we're going to bring you something really special for this episode. Instead of having our guest hosts come to us, we're actually going to go to them on this episode, and we've been working overtime to get this plan together. Last night, we hung out at the super awesome Pinball Show headquarters, and it's a hell of a good time. Come and join us for a little trip through pinball land with some of your favorite pinball celebrities, and a hell of a good time. I've got the mistletoe securely mounted on the back of my belt, and I'm ready to go. All right, let's kick this episode off with a little harp. All right, Franchi, you ready to get going? I'm as ready as I'll ever be. These fucking moon boots suck, though. Who could that be? I'll get it. Hey, man, come on in. Get out of the cold. Let me help you with those. Hey, guys. I'm John Junk from Pennside Secret Santa. Just wanted to drop off some of your presents for the year. Whoa, we know you, John. You're doing that awesome Secret Santa exchange on Pinside. Do you hand deliver all the presents? No, but you guys are special. Which one of you guys is Franchie? The good-looking one. Oh, okay. Here you go, man. God damn it, not him. Hey, man, since you're already here, would it be cool to pick your brain a little bit about the Secret Santa program you've been running on Pinside for the last few years? Sure, man. Hey, tell us a little bit about who you are and why you started the Secret Santa thing on Pinside. My name's John Junt. I'm from Minnesota. I've been playing pinball and arcade games for as long as I can remember. I got kind of heavily into pinball in the mid-90s, playing on route, and then went to college. Played heavily at college. Played games more than I went to class. Kind of dropped out of the scene for a little bit and then found SS Billiards in the late 2000s. Started playing competitively there. Had some luck playing competitively and then really kind of dove into it headfirst. Started running tournaments, helping out with events, doing anything we could, playing in everything I could locally. And it just kind of went from there. And so I found Pinside, and of course, like most people, got obsessed with Pinside. I read it all the time, have it up pretty much all day long while I'm working. And I noticed that there wasn't a Secret Santa program on Pinside. I had been a member of the Killer List of Video Games forums for about 10 years, and they had one over there that I had gotten involved with a couple years beforehand and just had a really good time with it. I had a lot of fun, brought back some good Christmas memories. And so when I looked for something like that equivalent on Pinside, I didn't see it. I was really surprised. So I figured, hey, we'll give it a shot, see if anybody wants to do it. And kind of threw it out there. There was definitely some people that were like, this is never going to work. People are too negative. People won't come through. And I figured we'll give it a shot anyway. If people want to do it, if it's five people, if it's ten people, we'll do it. And kind of blown up from there. That's kind of the one thing that I really like about it is that everyone always says that Pinside is so negative, but this is one thread that is literally nothing but positivity and good vibes. So that's part of the reason why I love it so much. And I know that other people that I do it with feel the same way. So, like, how long have you done this? When did this start? The Pinside Secret Santa started in 2017. So this will be the fourth year of it. I had been involved in the killer list of video games, one for a few years before that, before I started it on Pinside. You know, like I said, just figured we'd give it a shot. And it's just grown leaps and bounds. You know, every year we started with 61 people in 2017, and then in 2018 it doubled to 113. Right. And then in 2019 it was 147, and then this year it's like over 162. Yeah, and it's just, you know, to see the people keep coming back and the reactions that people have to different things and how far out people go to do the gifts of the people they're buying for is just, it never ceases to amaze me. It has to be a ton of work coordinating everything. How do you pick who gets who? It is a lot of work. It's all manual. I don't have any, I have an IT background, but I haven't taken the time to try to automate any of this. So it's a lot of manual cut and paste emails, a lot of Excel work, you know, talking to everybody individually, keep track of who sends gifts and, you know, answering questions for people. I get a lot of people that say, hey, the person I bought for hasn't posted that they got it. Can you check and see if they got it? I want to make sure that Porch Pirates didn't steal it or, you know, can you see? Yeah, we get a lot of people that are worried about that. And we get a lot of people that want me to ask a specific question, you know, like, can you reach out to my guy and ask him what his favorite color is or, you know, what his cat's name is? You know, it never ends. So it's a lot of going back and forth. And I'm happy to do it. I don't mind it at all. So I know people look at it like they're always apologetic, like, I'm sorry for asking. It's not a big deal. No, you know, if I can help and make it more personal on the back end, then I'm all for it because I love those reactions on it. Getting to the second part of how do you get who picks who, when I get them into Excel, I give everybody a number. And I go through and sign up numbers randomly based on that. The one thing I do is I will try to keep Canada people with Canada people and international people with international people only because the shipping just gets out of control on that stuff. We've had people from Austria and Greece and Australia and the UK and Spain and a lot of Canada every year and, of course, a lot of US. and if we're doing like a $30 gift value and then shipping anything, even a pound to the UK or, or God forbid, Australia from the US, I mean, it could be 50, $60. I try to keep those isolated so we can get the max value on the shipping end because I don't want anybody to feel like they can only spend a couple bucks on a present because I know they got to spend 50 bucks on shipping on the back end for it. Well, I've been doing this for three years. It seems to be run incredibly smoothly every year, despite all the people and gifts you have to keep track of. Do have to do any of the policing side of things to make sure that people actually send their gifts? A little bit. Honestly, it's been better than I ever could have dreamed on that end. You know, when I first started it and heard the negativity, a lot of it based in reality, you know, it just will be too hard to manage. You know, you're dealing with hundreds of people that don't know each other and all the different parts of the world. You know, how are you ever going to this work? There was definite thought in my head, like, oh my God, you know, how am I going to do that. And luckily we have really good people on pin side. I know negativity gets pushed at the forefront on things sometimes, but there really is some good hearted people there and they really, they, they dive in headfirst. They want to enjoy it and they put a big effort into it. And I say it every year, you get out of it what you put into it. And so, you know, if you just go out and just kind of half ass buy something for somebody, you know, you meet the requirements, quote unquote, of doing it. But if you really get into it, have some fun with it and put some meaningful stuff, behind your gift that you know your person will like. I mean, the reaction on the back end is fantastic. And with the help of the good people that partake in it every year, I mean, we've really had very minimal problems. I've never had any person just vanish and not send a gift. I think I've only had to really, really follow up with one person ever. And that was just life had come up and I didn't hear anything. They didn't contact me and we got it worked out at the last minute. But other than that, people do what they say. They keep in contact with me. If There's issues they let me know, and that's why it runs smooth. I mean, I can do all the policing in the world, but if I don't have the cooperation from the people on the back end, it's just never going to work no matter what. And I feel like people who sign up for this are people who probably are committed to doing it, so you're not just getting random people that you're going to have to worry about. Right, and that is a big part of it because I've had people say, why don't you send it out to some of the Facebook groups and open it up a little bit, and I just want to keep it to that known pin-side factor of people because I think you get better buy-in from those people because they care about the community. They care about their reputation. They don't want to let that community down. When it gets to Facebook, you're kind of getting a little bit on the edge. It might get too big, too. I mean, imagine having to do this with like 3,000 people. Yeah, it does scare me every year. When we did that first jump from like 60 to 113, I was like, oh, my God, what am I going to do? And I've had gracious people absolutely offer to help out. I just didn't know how I would split the duties really successfully. At some point in the future, I might have to do it where it would just be, you know, maybe A through J goes to this person, and I take K through Z or something, and we do it that way. But I've been able to manage so far even with the increase in people. I mean, that's a great problem to have. I can tell you I'll make it work somehow if I, whatever I got to do. I find the best way to split a duty is with, like, a plastic knife. Oh, God. That's a nasty franchise. So what are some of the coolest things that you've heard about people receiving over the years? Yeah, some people have really been generous. I remember the first year we had somebody get a run DMV clock, and that's $400 right there. And we got a $30 base limit. And the sky's the limit on the top end. If you've had a good year, if you're feeling generous for whatever reason, if you want to go crazy, go for it. I just set the limit of $30 to make sure that nobody was shortchanged, at least on a dollar value. So we had kind of some basis to go from there. But we've had the run DMV clock, multiple of those, PinStadium Lights, color DMV. This year, I got a little sneak peek into what somebody was buying for their person, and I think we might set a record this year. I was quite surprised the person had a good year and, you know, just wanted to give back, and so I think that'll be fun to see some reaction on the back end of that one. So that hasn't been opened yet, I guess. No, that has not been delivered, opened, or anything, so the person has no clue as to. Very cool. Yeah, so they'll definitely, when that shows up, they'll, I don't think they'll wait to open it. Let's just put it that way. Well, tune into the Pinside Secret Santa thread on Pinside to see where that goes. So if people want to do it next year, when are sign-ups usually? So normally I do sign-ups right after Halloween. So I'll post in the old thread from the year before, and I'll link to a new thread for the current year. So anybody who's following the old thread can see the link and then go to the new thread. We'll keep it nice and clean like that year by year. But I'll usually start about right after Halloween. I started a little bit early this year because God knows everybody needed a little early Christmas this year. So we started early, keep it open for a couple weeks, and then I have to close it off so I can get people assigned, get people's information out there, and then they can get gifts, and then they can get them shipped out. You know, it seems like no matter what, if I keep the sign-ups open for two weeks or two months, I'll still, the day after I close them, I'll get people saying, oh, can I get in? Can I get in? And, you know, if I can make it work, the more the merrier. So I understand people miss out on that kind of stuff, even though I try to make it so you can't as much as possible. But we'll get you in and make sure you're matched up with somebody and have some fun with it. And then I try to keep it pretty stable every year, too. So it's pretty much the original guidelines, original rules I set forth in 2017. It's been pretty consistent for those that have done it year after year. People seem to like it. Well, this is very cool, and I'm sure it's the highlight of a lot of pinball fans of the holiday season. I'm looking forward to it. This year is my rookie outing, so we'll see how it goes, but I'm pretty excited about sending out what I've put together. And to you, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for dropping off our presents. Personally, that was very cool of you. And thanks for putting this together each year and bringing something positive to Pinsight and to Pinheads. We all need something positive in 2020, that's for sure. Yeah, Merry Christmas, man. Happy holidays, Sean. Do you have a holiday message for our listeners? Yeah. First of all, thanks to you guys for having me, for reaching out. Happy to do it. This is great. A lot of fun. I always love talking shop. with people. So this is the highlight of my night. So I appreciate that. And just for the season overall, I mean, it's been a rough year on so many levels for people. So hopefully people can gravitate towards something that can bring them back to some happier memories. That's what this program does for a lot of people. It goes back to that childhood around the Christmas tree where you were getting things that you had no idea what you were getting. And this just helps facilitate that. I know a lot of us have spouses where if we want a pinball related gift, we basically have to spoon feed it to them and say, you know, buy me this or even buy it for yourself and then, you know, have it shipped. And this adds a little bit of that mystery and magic back to things. I hope people can find that, you know, and if they can't find it, you know, definitely next year, reach out, get involved in this and have some fun with it. My wife and I have been loving it every single year. It's her highlight of the pinball, you know, Christmas season for sure. We both got our gifts already. She has a limit on when she can open them from her secret Santa. So she's going to do the last couple of days of Christmas, but they're all wrapped. They're under our tree. I opened mine up and got an amazing set of pinball coasters. I got a shower curtain with a giant pinball. Oh, I saw that. Yeah. It's amazing. Get you the photo package. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got a giant blanket with a pinball and pop bumper on it. So, I mean, whoever My Secret Santa was, crushed it. So, thank you so much if you're listening. I really, really appreciate it. The whole family loved it. And I've been having a lot of fun watching My Secret Santa, who actually He figured out that I was his guy and emailed me almost immediately after he got his package. But we formed a friendship over the last couple of days, and that's really cool, too. So you get to meet people through this that you wouldn't necessarily meet normally. And it's only a matter of time before he starts sending you stuff, too, you asshole. You're so jealous, man. You got to get over this. That's a great byproduct, the people that meet up because of this. And, you know, we try to keep a secret, and sometimes it's hard to do. You know, there's definitely people that know who's sending them things. And it's not always even a bad thing. It can build up relationships and, you know, make connections just like you're talking about. It's a nice byproduct. I'm pretty sure mine's going to be a dead giveaway. Well, I really hope whoever got you, John, does a good job giving you a gift this year. Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. We've got a bunch of houses to visit tonight, so we'll catch you later. But thanks again for the great gift exchange that you do every year. And we appreciate it, man. Happy holidays. Absolutely. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Merry Christmas to you guys. Hey, you too, man. See ya. See ya. All right, man. I'm ready to go. Let's do this. And now we follow Frankie and Dr. Pin as they travel by Santa's sleigh, bumbling toe to chin, visiting pinball friends both far and near to see what they want from Santa this year. God damn! Hold out here. Whose idea was this? This is going to be great. Just throw on an extra sweater, bro. Are you sure you know how to drive this thing? Yeah, not so much. But how hard can it be? It's a spray. All right, first step, let's get this thing off the ground. On saucer, on flipper, on bumper, on spinner. On kickback, on bonus, on drainer, on nudger. Those don't rhyme. I can't yell like this all night and it's fucking cold. Hit that button that says snow dome. This big red one? Whoa, this is fantastic. Yeah, Gomez designed it. It's the latest in modern sleigh riding tech. Snow dome. Anyway, now we can go over the news in between stops. But hey, we're coming up on our first house. Mr. John Borg. I hope he's not up at his cabin ice fishing. Nah, it's Christmas Eve. He should be home, shouldn't he? Well, we're about to find out. Dome up. That's the house right there. Mush, mush. They're the reindeer, man. This isn't a dog sled. Ooh, the roof is stumping. Morgan's kicking up a jam. Yeah, that dude knows how to rock. I've seen his Facebook guitar videos. All right, down the chimney. You go first. Ugh, I never realized how filthy chimneys are. Keep moving, Liberace. Hey, there he is. What's up, John? Morgan! Morgan! Hey, guys. Hey, what are you working on, brother? Just working on my next game. What the heck are you doing in my fireplace? Yeah, sorry if we spooked you. We're just doing this thing for our podcast. We're making the rounds, wishing pinheads happy holidays and seeing what they want for Christmas. You guys are nuts. Yeah, and maybe send out a holiday message to our listeners. Here, have a warm cookie. I just took them out of the 3D printer. I think I'll save mine for later. Nah, turtle ninja bread, man. Thanks. I guess what I want most of all this year is a trilogy of pterodactyl with the chains still in place. And to all of your listeners, have a great Christmas, have a happy new year, and long live the super awesome pinball show. Thanks, Forgy. You rock. And sorry about the snow on your carpet, man. No sweat, guys. Don't worry about the water. I'll just take care of those puddles with a leaf blower or something. I blew up a leaf blower up in Wisconsin this year. Yeah. See ya. You can leave the way you came in. Forge is so damn cool. Yep, he's the man. Oh, sorry. Oh my god. I'm gonna barf. Just get up there, baby. Get up there. I said sorry. My god, man. Why did you eat? The McRib is back. You are so decided. Hey, look, a wombat. Okay, next stop, Gary Stern. All right, I'm going to put the coordinates in for Mr. Gary Stern. And while we're flying there, man, let's talk about our last two weeks in pinball. Well, we can't do that without our special theme. Hit it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Shut that off. Oh, my God. All right. No new rule. No drops in the snow dome. That was crazy. God damn. Oh, great. What are we going to do with our laugh track? We can't even have a show now. We might as well quit. Ah, man, there goes the fucking Twippy, bro. People love that laugh track. But anyway, let me go into my two weeks. So there's been a lot of awesomeness over the last two weeks, Chris. Mostly getting ready for Christmas. You know, the tree and ornaments are up. We've got the trees down in the man cave with all of our pinball ornaments on them. And it's just cool to have everything coming together. We have a ton of gifts left to wrap, but we're going to get on that this week. We've had a ton of love for the Gary Stern interview. I wanted to touch on that, thank everybody for that. It's been an honor to talk to him, and I think we were able to get some good info from him. And Chris, I'm also really glad that you two were able to work through your differences. Yeah, that was really cool. I got a lot of messages about that, too. I mean, honestly, when you have unfinished business that you've got to get done, you just do it. I didn't think I was swallowing my pride to say anything, but I'm glad that I did it. And most of all, I'm glad that he was gracious enough to accept and move on. But that was a really fun episode. We got amazing feedback from that. Yeah, we did. Even from fellow podcasters, which was cool because they don't usually dish out compliments. No, it's true. I found that the people that you wouldn't necessarily treat you as, hey, you did a great job message, did reach out to us for that. So I really appreciate that. And speaking of shout-outs, a huge thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday last week on and off our Facebook page. That was really cool. Seriously made my day. I freaking love the people in this hobby. and the highlight of my last two weeks actually happened on my birthday, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that. It was low-key. There really wasn't anywhere to go, but my wife told me that she wasn't going to get me anything, and I totally believed her because we are getting Guns N' Roses and we're redoing our basement. So, you know, we're trying to be a little conservative, but let me tell you that she blew that out of the water, and she gave me three gifts. They were wrapped. They were kind of three small little gifts, and I want to see, Chris, if you can decipher this Da Vinci code that she gave me to kind of solve. These weren't really gifts. They were clues to the gift. So I'm going to tell you what they were. I want you to tell me if you have any idea what they mean. I know you know what I got. Yeah, I was going to say, does it count that I know what it was? Yes, it does. I'll put it out of my mind. Okay, all right. The first gift was one of her makeup compacts. Do you have any clue what that might be leading us to? Makeup compact. I don't believe one figures in any of the movies. to somebody like... All right, that's true. All right, I didn't know if someone was, like, putting on some foundation and they saw... in the mirror. You spoiled it, man, because I'm leading up to that. Well, we'll just edit that. Yeah, edit that out. Yeah. All right, so let me jump to the second gift. The second gift was a baby's chew toy rattle. The first thing I did was give her a shock look and say... Yeah, oh, no. She goes, don't worry, I'm not pregnant. That was the first thing she said. I'm packed. A baby's rattle. No, I have no clue. I'm completely lost. All right. Third gift was one of her bracelets that she loves. She rocks it at school, and it has these plastic dinosaurs all over it. So in my head, I'm trying not to freak out at this point, because I've always wanted Jurassic Park. But I know that she wasn't going to get that, because she was trying to be good this year and not spend a lot of money. It's not being thrifty. Right. So the first thing I think of is Jurassic Park, but I know you wouldn't be getting that. So I have no freaking clue what this means. So then she tells me. I don't want a dinosaur. No, I don't know. I have no clue. I would never get anything. Here's where Stu is going with it. The compact was a way to represent a mirror, specifically mirror blades. The rattle represents a shaker. And the bracelet did indeed stand for a Jurassic Park tip-off machine. So we are getting a Jurassic Park Pro in a week. It's coming from our good friends at Cointaker. So I was floored, man. Just one of the many reasons that I love my wife. And it was a really cool way to do it. And I am so fucking stoked for that. After having two girls, I would think that that's the one kind of baby. you can cradle right about now. Yes, that's one baby that I actually would love to add to the family. So I'm two and out for kids, but I can add as many pinball machines as I can possibly get. So yeah, dude, that's pretty great. So also being that it's Christmas time and it's the holidays, I think it's cool to talk about all of the gifts that we've received recently. And our freaking listeners and our friends have been ridiculously generous. We both received a package from Cointaker, and it was filled with like the most ridiculous stuff. I had a pack of bake-at-home soft pretzels, which my kids freaked out about. We had these cookies that were mind-blowing. And then they took on Laserific. They're making these amazing toppers with this equipment that they have. And they made us a super awesome pinball show topper that is LED lit. It changes colors. Sarah got a Mrs. Pins pinball podcast topper as well with the Magic Girl logo in the background and her podcast title there. It was phenomenal, and my wife was, like, beyond blown away, and she said it was one of the best gifts she's ever gotten. So thank you guys so much for sending that. Yeah, it's cool. I got the same pretzels. I got the same cookies, but I got, instead of a Mrs. Pintopper, which I would have gladly had, I got jumbo, jumbo, I mean, peanut butter cups. It was like a box with three, like, eight-inch wide peanut butter cups. Like, nice. It's crazy. I had to get a knife out to cut a piece off. Like, it was, like, crazy. Yeah, so that was cool. Thanks, Chris and Melissa. And Charles Thomas, a big listener of our show. You notice I didn't say fan because they're listeners. We're not Taylor Swift yet, so no fans. But anyway, yeah, he sent me, I know he woke up packed, because I got a Frankenberry Tiki mug, which is really cool. Cool. And not just kind of mug, it's like a big tall glass, but it's Frankenberry, and I got some M&Ms and stuff. He sent me a custom slash pin gulp for my Guns N' Roses, which is a beautiful pin gulp, the nicest one I've ever seen. He got me some ice molds that are for bourbon and whiskey. shot glasses that you can actually make out of ice, which is cool, and some gifts for the kids. So, dude, a huge shout-out for Charles Thomas. And you got a package from Australia from, you know, the land down under with some pretty amazing shit in it. Yeah, Louis C.C., also known as Luigi Cicerelli, he sent me, this was like one of those magic tricks where, like, stuff keeps coming out of the box and you don't know where it's coming from. Because he packed this box. I mean, every square inch. I mean, they should hire this guy to work how to package furniture for Ikea because it was amazing. Every flavor of Tim Tams imaginable, little stuffed koala bear, platypus, and a kangaroo. There was magnets. There was a collector's plate, you know, showing different features of Australia. It was like an Australia care pack. Like, it was everything Australian in there. There's some other things I didn't recognize. Australian light candy sort of things. It's going to get so fat between all these cookies and candy and stuff like that. It's going to be a rough holiday, but it's going to be delightful. It's going to be delightful the whole time. Tim Tams are amazing. We found some at a local Target, and we immediately texted the head-to-head guys, Ryan and Marty, and talked about how freaking awesome they were. So they're tough to find, man, and I've never had all the different flavors, so that's cool. You've got to tell me what the best ones are. Yeah, I've only cracked open the chewy caramel so far, which is quite delicious. That's good. And then we both got a package, just one more to round things out, from Hooked on Pinball. A gentleman there by the name of Robert has sent us some shooter plates. I got one for Wonka, and you got one for Munsters. They're heavy, gorgeous work, really appreciated, and totally unexpected. So thank you very much, and check out Hooked on Pinball. I went on their website after I got these, and they've got some really epic mods. They have a Jurassic Park shooter rod that I think I might be buying, and a few other really cool things. So check them out, and thank you, Robert, for that. Yeah, I got another one, my last package, so far, from Gabe from Pintastic. He sent me some keychains and a cool Pintastic hat, and the reminder of a dark time in my life, a very nice T-shirt of the artwork that I did. That went over so well. For Pintastic, it's 2019. No, it actually went over well. It just, you know, it didn't go over with a few people very well. But I would say 99.3% of the people who saw it loved it. I still get requests from people like, can I get that pint glass? because Gabe made every, he put that artwork on keychains and hats and pint glasses and all kinds of stuff. So, and I just uncovered four of the pint glasses. So since it's too late to enter, I can say that I am putting one of those pint glasses and keychain in the super awesome stocking giveaway. Oh, okay. So it's going to be, there's going to be some cool pinball treasures in there. So yeah, thanks everybody for the stuff. You know, I make a joke, it's sort of a running joke on the show that I never get anything. So when you hear that joke, and you will hear it in this show, please understand that I do appreciate that I do get things. It's just a joke. I can't stop doing it now because it's too funny. And it's very similar to your Captain Fantastic joke that is a running joke, but you do love that machine, even though you posted that you wanted to set it on fire on our Facebook page. Yeah. I was hoping that it looked like that. I was trying to convince people that it was actually on fire because it looks pretty real. But people probably go like, it's not your house, is it? Nice. So thank you everybody who sent us stuff. We really appreciate it. Everyone who sent us anything, I'm sending you guys stuff back because it's really, really cool to get. And I want to show our appreciation for it. Did you put together your Secret Santa for Pinside? Absolutely, yeah. And that was sent out a while ago. Oh, yeah, great. I'm a little bit on the eight ball on that one. Dude, I was way ahead of the eight ball on this. So my Secret Santa gift. I was fortunate enough to get Mark Guidarelli, who is a gentleman who is a freaking awesome dude. and he works for Stern Pinball. So I was really excited about that to learn a little bit more about him. But he works on the code side of things and works on the spike system and does a lot of the coding in the background. So he's one of the unsung heroes of the Stern world who does a shitload for pinball, but doesn't really get any credit. He lives in California, and that's why California is half on fire because the coding is so hot. That's right. Nice. That's a rough joke. Yeah, that was a little rough. So yeah, this guy is awesome. He immediately wrote to me as soon as he got the package, but I sent him 25 gifts, one for each day of December, and he's been opening them. They came around December 4th, so he's been opening them since then, and he's really appreciated everything, and we've been writing back and forth about stuff. But he's worked in Midway. He did stuff for Mortal Kombat and for the Doom video games series, and now he's basically one of the head IT guys and tech guys at Stern Pinball. And so he's got a lot of really good stories, and he's just a really solid dude, and we've kind of formed a friendship over the whole inside Secret Santa thing. So one of the reasons why I love that program. That's so tender. Yeah, man. It was nice. I can't reveal my Secret Santa just yet. I'm still putting it together. I haven't sent your crap out, too. You know what? God damn it. I had it all packaged up. I used this fancy tape that's got my logo on it and all that. You know, that kind of, you have to dampen the one side. Yes. And then that, for some reason, the way I stored the box, it kind of buckled off, and So I didn't want to take it off because it was so cool. So I put tape over it so this box is like mega taped. Yeah, I do the same thing. And then three presents that I got for you that I forgot about arrived. And I'm like, oh, man, I don't know how I'm going to get this box open to get these things in here. We both agreed, right, that we're not going to send our Christmas gifts until after Christmas. So it's like a little bit of an extra. Oh, good. Okay. Yeah. This is going to be another late thing. No, do not send anything. I got stuff for the pin kids in there. It's not fair. I mean, we can wait, but the kids are probably like, you know, Uncle Franchi sucked. We'll wait till after Christmas. No, man, they'll be so psyched. They are so overloaded with shit. These kids are ridiculously spoiled, so a delayed gratification will be good for them. All right, I'm happy. But, hey, man, our second stop for the night is straight ahead. You know, I'm really glad we had Gary on the show. I feel like I was able to heal an open wound. Me too, Franchi. It was definitely a step in the right direction for you guys. Speaking of direction, that's Gary's place right down there. Dome up. And down we go! Hey, do you think Gary's fireplace uses sternal cans? See why I did that? Solid dad joke, Francino. Get down that chimney. I hate people. Hey, Gary, happy holidays. Hey, what are you two idiots doing in my fireplace? Yeah, sorry, sir. We just wanted to see if you could maybe give our listeners a quick holiday greeting. Sure. Happy holidays. That was quick. Shut up, man. And, uh, could you maybe tell us what you want for Christmas this year? I want you to get the hell out of my elevator and get out of here. Go! Go, go, go! Did he say elevator? I think that was a vodka talking. Keep moving. Next on the list, the something of the silver ball, Mr. Joe Kamenko. Okay, let's go. Whew! That was a narrow escape. See what happens when you watch Scrooge? Actually, we have to say that we kind of painted Gary in a bad light there, but it was all in good fun, and he took part in that knowingly and being a good sport. So thanks very much, Mr. Stern, for being our Scrooge of the Year. Thank you, Gary. We fed him those lines, and he pulled them off perfectly. Yeah, so it's all in good fun. Let's talk about the new game from Stern, man. I mean, it came out this week. It was kind of the worst-kept secret because I remember talking about Led Zeppelin on Head to Head a couple of times with Marty in the past, but it was also a well-kept secret because we didn't know it was next. I saw Jody Dankberg on Facebook for a Thanksgiving message. He was wearing a Jaws t-shirt, and I thought for sure that that was a sign that Jaws was coming next, and it wasn't. It was Zeppelin. So what did you think, man? What did you think of the big reveal? I think... I can't even do that without taking a second breath halfway through. That was the worst thing ever. That's going to break everybody's eardrums. Led Zeppelin, the king of old white guy rock. How can you go wrong? This is definitely a white guy rock band. And this last weekend, we got a teaser from Stern. Our friend Jeff Teolis almost had a stroke because this is his all-time dream theme, so I'm happy that it's coming and that he's going to get that. I think they're going to sell a boatload of these. I think that's because there's a lot of people out there with expendable income that are hardcore Led Zeppelin fans. I feel like this pin scratches the itch for people who are really hardcore into the band. I don't think it's your Ninja Turtles or your Deadpool or a Star Wars or something that can kind of transcend age ranges. I think this is really geared towards a guy who grew up in the era of Led Zeppelin and now has the cash to buy a pinball machine. And, you know, for that demographic, I think it's going to do a good job. But let's kind of run through it, man. Let's talk a little bit about a few of the different features. Like, let's start with the music. I'm not a huge fan of Zeppelin, but I immediately, when a music pin comes out, I open Spotify, I listen to the band's top tracks to kind of re-familiarize myself with the stuff. And before the game came out, I kind of wrote down the songs that I thought would be great for pinball. And they were like rock and roll, cashmere, ramble on, immigrant song, whole lot of love, black dog. And it turns out that all of those songs that I listed down were in the game. And then I put a big question mark next to all of my love and stairway because those were the two songs that are pretty much the most well-known songs of Zeppelin, in my opinion. But I'm not an expert, that's for sure. But stairway is like psychotic. and I was like, how are they going to incorporate this into the game? And it turns out they're just not. They're not. So they left it out. No stairway. Denied. Well, personally, I don't think that was left out because they're like, this isn't really a pinball song because it does pick up at the end. I think they left it out because when you license songs, it's not like, all right, Cashmere, five bucks. Black Dog, five bucks. It's more like Cashmere, 15 bucks. Black Dog, five bucks. You know, everything's different. Stairway to Heaven is an anthem. I think it overshadows every song that they've done as far as popularity and whatnot. And I'm pretty sure it was a small fortune and a private island in the Bahamas to get that song, which you just put it out of their price range. That's really interesting, man. I had no concept that songs were individually licensed. And it wasn't like, hey, we're doing a Led Zeppelin pin. What does it cost for your discography? And then them just letting you choose. Every song actually comes with a price tag. Yep, every song has its own price tag. So you could probably license one of their bombs off of Into the Outdoor that no one's ever heard for literally $5. But it's going to cost you $500,000 for Stairway. So I'm sure that's probably the reason why it was left out. And to be honest, it really isn't the best. It could probably work in pinball, but it's not really the best for pinball. So I don't think they're missing out on anything. I really was curious as to how they were going to work it in because it's such a slow build-up. It's not a song that you would associate with a rock and light show or a lot of fun with multiball or that sort of thing. So, yeah, that makes sense. It's like I told Joe Camenco the other night, as long as this has got cashmere in it, who gives a shit? Nice. All right, well, let's jump to the art because I know you're into that stuff. So let me start by saying that I like the playfield art. I think it looks really good. It's not Deadpool, right, with every square inch populated, but there's some dead space in there. And I like the color scheme, how they kind of represented the band members. And the black and white Zeppelin right in the middle kind of contrasts well with the bright pinks and the reds. So I like it. It stands out, and it definitely kind of contrasts with the R package on the side of the machine. With the premium, for instance, the black and white, it definitely brings some pop to that. The Pro is a little bit more of a white cabinet, so it really brings the color. So I do like that. Yeah, the play field, I thought, you know, what else has a lot of dead space? Vintage games. So it was done in a very retro style. I think, you know, leaving pockets open to let the game breathe is very retro, so I think it fit. There's a couple of choices, a couple of hard choices I don't understand. Them being a band, I don't understand why there's no representation of them with their instruments. Right. There's no indication of music anywhere on these games. No music notes, no instruments, no pictures of the band with their instruments, playing their instruments. So that I don't understand. But again, the mysteries of licensing and what you can do and what you can't do are different for every single IP. I would venture to say looking at what they ended up with, they had some pretty major handcuffs on. And I'm sure they probably did the best with what they had. And it's classic Zeppelin imagery. I'm not a huge Zeppelin fan. So when I look at it I don think like oh cool you know they got Zeppelin I on there I don think in those terms because I not a Zeppelin fan you know the history of the band really doesn matter to me But that kind of a question But I pretty much agree with what you said I think you know the play field fine I've never heard of Stephen Jenkins. I don't know where he came from. Couldn't really find anything on the Internet about him. So I didn't know if he was, you know, his thing was retro art or what. I don't really know. I tried to do some background reporting on that and couldn't find nothing. Well, I was going to just comment quickly on what you said about the instruments in the sense that, you know, yes, it's not on the play field, it's not represented on the cabinet, but we don't know what's really going to be shown on the LCD screen. So maybe they have tons of rotating clips of them playing instruments, so maybe that's how they incorporated it. I know there was a very brief moment in the intro video where they showed somebody playing a guitar. Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that. But I personally don't really look at the screen when I'm playing unless there's a locked ball and there's some animation I have to pay attention to, like in the monsters where in Grandpa's laboratory and you've got to look up and see what you're being awarded. I really don't pay attention to that stuff. If I wasn't looking up, I wouldn't get the feel. Yeah, man, that's fair. Yeah, anyway, moving on to the gameplay. Yeah, Steve Ritchie has a very unique style. Over the years, he's kind of settled into a particular kind of style that is not my style of pinball. I'm not saying it's bad for pinball. I know people love him. They're going to kiss the ground he walks on because I'm cursed being an artist. I want to walk up and look at a game jam-packed with little plastic toys and stuff that put me in the atmosphere of the IP. and that's not really Steve's style, but when I look at it, I can see that it's a Steve Ritchie game, and I know there's definitely a very massive audience for that. Yeah, it's a Steve Ritchie classic fan layout with, you know, the lower two-thirds of the playfield are pretty barren, you know, with the exception of the Ironmonger-esque, you know, spinner and magnet device that kind of raises up from the center of the playfield. But because of that, because it's so wide open, it's going to be a flow monster. Steve is going to have all those combos set up. He's going to have the ramps that are going to feed to the in-lanes. And then I think it's going to be a fun shooter. And, you know, it's one of those compromises between packing the play field full of stuff and compromising flow or leaving it a little bit less exciting on the lower half of the play field and making it really flow nicely and making the shots feel good. Well, that's the beauty of pinball is the variety that you get from the different designers. And I'm just sitting here thinking as an artist, you know, God, I would have loved to have, well, like I said, I would imagine there's some handcuffs with the IP here. but who doesn't as an artist want to do a game where the play feels wide open? You know, it's just more real estate to play with as an artist, you know, so it's kind of a shame that it's like, well, what kind of a vintage feel? So kind of leave these areas open and like, oh, damn it. Exactly. But, yeah, like I said, it's definitely a Steve Ritchie game, and, you know, pinball's all about variety, and there's different people that look for different things. Actually, I think it might be a little more festive than a typical Steve Ritchie game. I think you might have thrown a little more fun into this game from just looking at the play field. It does look like a Steve Ritchie game, but it just looks a little more fun than the usual Steve Ritchie game. So I can math. In what way? The toys or the rams? I don't know. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Just everything in general. If I compare this game to Star Wars, the original Star Wars game that came out, this just looks like there's got a little bit more going on. And it still retains that Steve Ritchie quality, so I guess that's a good thing that you get that flow, you get the speed, but it also seems like there's just a little bit more going on in there. Yeah, I mean, the Zeppelin toy in this game is probably the biggest toy of any certain game that I can think of recently. It's like, I think they said it's 13 inches. It's sculpted really beautifully. It's a nice toy. It's not really interactive, which is kind of there, but it's a gorgeous feature of the game. and the magic raising and lowering electric magic device is what it's called. It's cool. It's fancy. It has an extra spinner, which I always appreciate, and you have to hit that to kind of charge the magnet that's in there, and then that lowers down into the play field, and I guess you start a multiball with that. But, dude, all I could see when I saw that was, I'm going to brick the shit out of this thing and not be able to hit that spinner because there's these two giant black holes all around it. Oh, my God. It's like a brick vest. But, you know, I have yet to flip it, so we'll see how that plays out. And then, what do you think of the lighting? Because, you know, lighting in band pins with guns and roses coming out is the new hotness, and this is a new thing for Stern, having lighting on the sides. I think before we get to lighting, I have to mention, as I say, I'd be hard-pressed if I didn't mention the other toy on the playfield, which is the swan song man, completely naked. There have been comments on Facebook that have said that they are very proud that there is now a completely naked dude on a pinball machine, which is so rare, it's usually half-naked women and overexposed female heroines. Can we say the lady's got short chains because of the mangina? Definitely has that. Yeah, there have been talks about modding that out so that it's not quite so barren down there. I can see that now on Measle Mod's new swan song dick. Just 50 cents. Just a little dab of glue. It's awkward, right? That he jumps up and down like that. Like, it just seems overtly sexual to me, which is fine. I don't think that's what they're going for. It's a very strange choice. It's a very strange choice. I know that that is an iconic thing. That's the mascot for the record company, Swan Song. They have T-shirts over the years. They'll say Led Zeppelin, and it's got that character on it. So it's definitely tied to them. I mean, when you see it in three-dimensional form bopping up and down. It's interesting. It's either Steve Ritchie's greatest hit, as in like this tongue-in-cheek, like, look what I pulled off. Maybe his new slogan is play harder. I don't know. If you mod out the dude, you know. I mean, I guess the question is Bush or no Bush. I don't know. What are we looking at here? That's the question, Ritchie. So what do you think about all of the companies that are incorporating PinStadium Lights into their games now? Now Stern is doing the integrated cabinet lights. You know, it's like the guy that invents something. You know, someone says, oh, I know how to cool off your room. And like turn this fan on and it'll blow air right at you. And then some guy comes along and goes, hey, what if we had a cooling system in there and it would blow cool air? We have air conditioning. So now you've got air conditioning to cool off your house, and the guy who invented the fan, people are like, huh? What? I don't know. Whatever. Fan. Hey, listen, man, that's business. That's competition. That's the way it goes. I feel sorry for Penn Stadium, but I actually think CERN perfected it, if you ask me. The light rails that Eric did are very cool in Guns N' Roses, and they're the epitome of the concert experience. However, what CERN developed is the best of both worlds. It gives you a fantastic light show, but it's also practical in that that light show is going to help illuminate the play field. So you get a cool light show. You know, you saw it work, those LEDs, you know, RGB LEDs going back and forth and all that. But, you know, it also eliminates, unfortunately, the need for PinStadiums to give you additional lighting in the play field. So I think it's fantastic. I really enjoy it. I know I've heard some other podcaster shit all over it, but I really like it. That's the first thing that stood out when I saw that game on the video. I was like, you know, whoa, check out those lights. No, I like it. I like it, too. I mean, it adds 96 LEDs to the game, which still pales in comparison to GNR with their 300 or 600 or whatever it is. But, man, it's a step in the right direction, because I think Turtles had, like, 20, and Avengers had something similar to that. So this is getting more light on the play field, which is great, and I'm curious to see what their light shows are like, but it's still going to be really tough to compete with a Guns N' Roses 300 LED light show. So, but man, it is a step in the right direction. And I hope they continue this. I hope this isn't unique for Led Zeppelin. You know, they always say, you know, competition breeds ingenuity. And I think, you know, having these other companies around trying these different things and even, you know, the mod companies, you know, because Pinstadium is not a pinball manufacturer, but just a dude who had an idea. I think all of that stuff is just, you know, keeping the manufacturers on their toes and keeping them innovating new things. And I think what keeps pinball exciting is these different innovations that come out. And that was definitely something cool to see, that Stern is not sitting there and saying, this is the way we build games, like it or not. They're following suit, and they're bringing new ideas to the game. Absolutely. Yeah, man. So the two other things to talk about, cabinet art. I mean, I think this is the most polarizing, most divisive feature of this game, just because it's extremely unique from a Stern cornerstone game standpoint. There's usually very unique, different art on all sides of the cabinet, and the back glass is unique, and it's definitely not the case here. I mean, each package focuses on a singular image, basically, that's iconic to the brand, whether it's album art or it's their logo. And it kind of repeats all the way around the game. And when I first saw that was, you know, I wasn't really crazy about that and just kind of felt repetitive. It was kind of copy-pasted. And on the LE, you know, the Zeppelin Flying Man is on the game, I think, 10 times. So it's very much the same image repeated. And the question is, is it overkill or is that okay? And I talked to a few people who are really big time Led Zeppelin fans. And I wanted to see from their standpoint whether they like that or not, because obviously that's really who they're trying to attract. And they liked it. They thought it was a very minimalist approach. You know, it's better. It's got a retro vibe. It kind of highlights the album art. and they don't necessarily need the very busy artwork that we've seen in other Cornerstone titles because it is a retro band and it is a little bit different than your average release. So I thought that was interesting because every Led Zeppelin fan I talked to said the same thing, that they liked it. And of course, those are the people you want to attract. But I've heard a lot of negatives too, but it's usually from people who are not big time into the band and don't necessarily appreciate that. What do you think, Chris? I'm not into the band. It was like pounded to death when I was a kid. Everybody loved Zeppelin, and I was the one person who was like, I just heard this song eight times today. Between on the bus going to school and the radio and everything else. So I really appreciate what they did, but don't care for the band at all. And the art, you know, again, as we talked about earlier, I think there were some restrictions because I really don't see, I know that art department, and I just can't see, unless they were forced to do it that way, that Greg would have been happy with that look. But I don't know. The first album cover is very iconic, but it's very simple. And to have that hard black and white, it's not even a grayscale. It's not like the Munsters artwork. It's like a black and white photo. I mean, it's hard black and hard white and nothing in between. And to have that image just so overly used around there, I would have liked to have seen, like, why didn't they just take those circular drawings of the band's heads and put them coming down the side of the backbox? Yes. You know, mix it up a bit, put the faces of the band in there. But it's not fair to critique this stuff without knowing what kind of pressure they were under to make the licensure happy. I can see Led Zeppelin being very strange to deal with. They just have their ideas and then you've got to roll with it. You're not going to have like a Deadpool, you know, cabinet on this game. You know, you'll notice that the play field isn't your typical color palette that everybody uses these days, which is like, you know, your orange, purple, blue, and yellow-green, you know, like that sort of a color combination. These are more like earth tones, more 70s looking. The Zeppelin III, it's a little more interesting. It's a little more collage-y. It does show pictures of the band and stuff. I just kind of scratched my head as to why they left the III in there, which, again, I'm sure they had to. Well, it's also important because that's the album art for the album III, right? No, because there's a classic image of Kiss where they're standing on this rock pile. It's a painting. Yeah. And they use it on shirts and posters and everything. And it doesn't say Destroyer underneath it, you know. They don't make sure that they put the word Destroyer, which is the album that that's on the cover of. The thing is, though, is that it seemed like this art was very much geared towards making it look like the album. Like, they wanted to make it very clear that this is the three albums. This is the Led Zeppelin album. And then the LE is the logo that everyone knows and loves. I think that's what they were going for with it. But I totally understand where you're coming from. Everything is the same. And I wonder if it was an asset limitation thing or a creative decision to do that. And it seems very hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that if they were given unlimited assets, that they would choose that. Yeah, exactly. And photography, it depends on the band. You get the assets from ACDC and you've got like 300 photos in there. Those are 300 photos that they had to pay for and pay for the rights for. They had to track down the photographer and say, we want to use this in our style guide. You know, so here's $500 and nothing comes for free. And that's not saying that Led Zeppelin can't afford it, but that they're just not interested in it. You know, they're not a big image band, especially these days. You know, back in the day, it's a little different story. But nowadays, they're just kind of like, they come out with new albums, you know, the Celebration Day album. It's a big blimp. They're not like all about themselves as the image of the band. It's a little bit different. It just is what it is. Let's get Greg Ferraris in here and talk about the story of the Leds Up on Pinball art, because from what I've seen being mentioned on Pinside and across the Facebooks and stuff, very polarizing. Absolutely. I think that's definitely an interview we need to look up before this episode airs so our podcasting friends don't hop on it. Well, from reading Jeff Patterson's Twip Deep Dive, which was excellent, by the way, He kind of featured the fact that the songs were going to be going consistently throughout. Once you beat one, you move on to the next. And you're kind of collecting different parts of the song as you play, which is a really cool concept. There are tour modes. There's a number of multi-balls and wizard modes, obviously. So I know Tim Sexton did a great job on Black Knight. And this is his follow-up game to that. He's going to make this a really fun game to play. So I'm looking forward to playing that. He's looking the part these days, too. What do you mean? I've seen a recent picture of him. He looks like John Travolta with a beard from the 70s. Is that right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's almost like a porn star. Yeah, he's got a big old beard, and he's growing his hair out, you know, so he's got these long bangs and hair growing over his ears and all that. It's awesome. He's definitely playing the role. I love Tim. Tim's a good guy. Either that or just quarantine hair. Who knows? But, yeah, he's awesome. Dude, have you seen the accessories for this game? Have you looked at the video for it? Yes. What do you think of the shooter, Rod? It looked really big. Right? It was huge. And I didn't understand, like, the guy was rotating it. Yes. There's no way that you can, there's no electronics, I think, that can make that actually function. Was he just turning it because he didn't want to look at it? I have no idea. Do you recognize the imagery? Like, neither of us are Led Zeppelin fans, so I don't know what that was. But to me, it looked like a dreidel. Oh, the shape itself? No, yeah, I have no idea what that was. They should have done, like, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, like 16-sided dice or something. because, you know, Led Zeppelin and the Majesty and fairies and things. But, yeah, I think a little, weren't they those little four icons of the band? Yeah, the logos. The logo and the feather and the, yeah. I bought from somebody, sorry, I don't remember who I bought, an antique glass doorknob shooter rod for my Munsters, which is smaller than this thing that they showed for Zeppelin. And every time I grab that thing or I walk by, I go, man, that thing looks big and clunky. And it's smaller than that Led Zeppelin thing. So I'm not sure what's going on there. with that. It's got to be some significance to the band, which neither of us really know about, but it did look really bulky. What I thought was cool, though, is that they had the topper ready for the release, which is great, and the topper looked cool. They had these two kind of reticulating spotlights on the top and the Led Zeppelin logo, you know, all the imagery up there. So I thought that was a nice-looking topper. I think the spotlight idea is great. Sarah had incorporated that into our Guns N' Roses topper, so it definitely works well for a band theme. Yeah, it's like searchlights looking for a blimp in the sky. Yeah, absolutely. And the side armor with the cutout symbols was very cool, too. So good on Stern for getting that out with the release. That is very nice. Well, Gary told us that that was one of their initiatives, was to get that stuff out at the same time. However, we were only shown it at the same time. That doesn't necessarily mean anybody's getting it. So overall thoughts on Zeppelin? It's a Led Zeppelin fan's dream come true. For someone like me, not so much. Yeah, coin takers getting one soon. I'm going to go out there and check it out. I think overall, I completely agree. If you're a fan of Led Zeppelin, this is going to check all the boxes. For a non-fan, you're not going to buy it anyway, so it doesn't really matter what you think of the art or any of that. But it's a Steve Ritchie flow monster. It's going to be a fun game to shoot, I'm sure. And hopefully they sell like gangbusters, man. I think there's a lot of people out there that are going to pick these up. Oh, and look, our next house is showing up on the radar. Let's do it. All right, that's Joe's place right down there. Dome up! Heading down. Pretty swank joint! Well, he's a successful dude. Okay, make sure you don't get any snow on his hardwood floors. No doubt. And make sure you don't get any soot on his car collection. Alright, down the chimney. Happy holidays, Mr. Kamiko. And happy Hanukkah. And Kwanzaa as well. Hey, guys. Do you mind explaining why you're in my fireplace? Yeah, we're doing this podcast. Is that Madonna? Yes. We're having her over for a dinner party. and, well, you know, I need to get back to it. What can I do for you boys? We were just wondering what was number one on your wish list this year, and maybe you could send out a holiday message to our listeners. I want an Aston Martin DB5 with all the James Bond spy gear. And to your listeners, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, Merry Christmas, and any other holiday that may have missed. Now, I really need to get back to my party, guys. I'm kind of tied up and sort of busy. Do you think she'd sign my shoe or something? You're an idiot, man. Yeah, you're an idiot. But, you know, seriously, I love you guys, but really, I've got things to do. Thanks, Joe. We really appreciate it. No sweat, guys. See ya. See ya. See ya later. Ciao. Joe's got a pretty sweet hat. A few more years of making that sweet podcast cash and we might be able to compete. Yeah, probably not. Next up, Eric Menger. Menger. Menger. Boy, after being at Joe's house, this sleigh looks kind of shabby, doesn't it? Let's get some snow glow on this sleigh. Nice. Well, next up on the news, Deep Root launches their website, and they make Raza finally available. Now, I personally want to throw pies at Robert Mueller, so I'm going to kick this over to you to take the lead. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have as strong feelings as you do, man, but it's good to at least see that the game is officially on sale through the Deep Root website, and they dropped a ton of info on the game. That was cool. I thought you and I could talk maybe a little bit about the highlights. There is an arcade edition for $58.99, and there's an extra edition for $94.99, and the sales are limited. They close on December 30th, so once December 30th hits, that's it. They're not selling anymore. What do you think about that? Do you think that's going to create FOMO, or do you think that's going to... I think it's the right thing to do, personally. I think people have had it with this title. Get it over with. If anything, it will create a situation where their first game out of the gate is maybe highly collectible. But I think people are tired of hearing about this title, and I think as a company they need to move on. I think as much of the stigma of this company revolves around this game as well, because it's a Papaduke game and people don't like him. It's a title we've heard about for five years now. Once they sweep this thing under the rug and they move on, they can grow as a company. You know, I made a joke about throwing pies at Robert Mueller, and him and I don't exactly see eye to eye on some phone conversations that we had. But, you know, I'm going to tell you, I don't understand what it is about this guy. He's come out and been very humble, because he has been humble, you know, but he originally was very brash, like, oh, we're going to come out six games a year, and they're going to be $300 each, and you're going to love them, and everything's going to be awesome, and pinball's easy. And he had to eat his foot on this one. And he did. But you know what's weird is, like, I can't forgive the guy. I can't say, you know, he sees the error of his ways. He just doesn't come off genuinely. I think he's biting his tongue every time he makes some sort of half-assed apology about how he's acted. And I really want to be a bigger person and get past, like I said, this argument between the two of us about what went down on a phone call. I don't even care anymore. You know, it's water. The bridge doesn't matter. I'm really not interested in working for that company for more reasons than just what happened. So I should just move on with things. And I'm really trying, but he just doesn't make it easy. I don't know why. So I'm just going to push that aside for now. We're just going to forget that he has anything to do with this company. You hit it on the head a little bit with him being more humble because he has been. I mean, the two interviews you gave, I feel like it was a different guy. He was very much down to earth. He was still confident in his company and he still talked it up. Well, yeah, but look at it this way, though. Sorry to interrupt, but look at it this way. How many millions do you think he has invested in this so far? Just throw it out there. Throw it out there. Well, I can't even shot him, dude. It's a ton of money. Right. Now, if he doesn't change his ways, he might as well set that and the rest of the money he has on fire because he's got nothing because people already have judged him, have reacted to his crappy attitude when he first came out of the gate, and he has to play catch-up now. He has to play nice in the sandbox or he's not going to sell a single game. So, you know, when the president got caught getting head in the White House, he came out and he made a statement. Robert Mueller has not come out and said, look, when I first came out, I was an asshole. Have you listened to the interview with the pinball news guys and Teolas? He said pretty much that. He said, listen, in the past, they've made brash comments. You know, in hindsight, you know, I probably shouldn't have said those things. Everybody wants to hear me say that pinball is not easy because I made that comment in the past and people love to remind me of it. But it's not easy. It's hard. Did it say, I'm sorry? Or did it just say, yeah, I said some things I shouldn't have? It was more of a, I shouldn't have said those things. I mean, and does the guy really need to apologize? I think so. He's offended the entire hobby. Well, yes, he said some brash things, but no one has lost money through him. I think he needs to kind of step back a little bit and not be the face of the company and let somebody else handle the marketing side of things. Let Steve do it. Yeah, let Steve do it. Let Steve be the Colonel Sanders. Nobody hates Steve. Nobody could possibly dislike Steve. He's the nicest guy. He's intelligent. He knows pinball. He is why we're talking about this company right now, because otherwise I'd say, I don't want to talk about it. Yeah. I love Steve. You know, I just remember when he took a swipe at Jody Dankberg for some crap, and it was really shitty. Gary and I had recently made up, and I haven't always had the best track record with Stern, but I will say this. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for keeping this hobby alive, because if it weren't for them, pinball would have been dead 10 years ago. And, you know, they may not come out with games that look like Jersey Jack games and whatever. You know, Stern is just Stern, but they automatically get respect for what they did for the hobby, period. And for someone like Robert to come out and try and shit on them, and then his whole company implodes, maybe that's it. Maybe I just won't feel comfortable unless he comes out and he says, hey, Stern, you know what? I'm a dick. I said something stupid. I was cocky, and I wouldn't be here if you weren't here, and I owe you that much. So thank you for being here, and thank you for rolling out the welcome mat for people like us to come along and join this hobby and create games alongside of legends like you. Maybe that's what I'm waiting for. I don't know. Yeah, I think in retrospect, and when he looks back on things, he may say something like that years down the line, but I don't think he's going to say that right now. Because he came into this industry meaning to be a disruptor. He wanted to flip things on their heads. He's brought up the iPhone analogy many times. He wants to be the iPhone to the mobile phone where you see a product and you're like, where has this been all my life? How does iPhone do that? iPhone comes out and says, look at our phone. Look at it. It does this. It does that. They don't come out with a commercial and go, here's our phone. Look at that one. Look at that one. They don't shit on other people's stuff. They just say, here's our product. You know it's better than the others because you're looking at it. That's all they had to do. They didn't have to say shit. Just come out with the stuff and say, this is what we're talking about. Here we are. You make a really interesting point because if the company had had a PR person who really talked them through this and they came out and they did something like that or they leaked different innovations over time and really got the hype train going, would this be a very different product release than it is now? I would argue that it would be. I think that they are coming out with some really cool stuff. People joke about the pin bar, but dude, it is freaking cool. The cabinet with the light-up side art, the glass lifting directly, and then being able to put your play field up, that is really cool. All of this stuff is stuff that is bringing new ideas to the hobby and are bringing good ideas to the hobby. And shit, man, they've got Goonies, and I'm really hoping. Always back to the Goonies. It's like Goonies and Steven Bowden are what's keeping this company alive. So at the end of the day, there's people's lives and stuff like that involved in this company, and I don't wish them bad. I do hope things can turn around. I hope Robert can turn around. I hope he can be sincere and by his actions and his words from this day forward will more easily bury his past. Right. And the company can march forward. Rise of the Phoenix Day. It's done with. I'm fully subscribed to him running sales until the end of this month, putting them out there and moving on. Yeah. I hope they get some sales. I hope there's enough sales of this game that it can push them forward to see what's coming next from them. And, you know, the manufacturing piece, obviously, is the biggest question. It always has been. The people who went out there, the six VIPs that went out there, have all said that they didn't see any manufacturing going on. So if that piece comes together and they can actually create these games and get them out, it's going to do a lot to make people more confident in this company. and, you know, as you said, I hope they do well because more pinball is always good pinball. These guys have good ideas and I'd love to see them implemented. Yep. Oh, hey, that's Eric's house. Shame in you. Straight ahead. Allez, reindeer. This is a tricky one. Hang on. Hey, why don't you throw on your Santa suit and see if you can fool Eric into thinking you're the real big guy. Yeah, I'm gonna slip my ass off, but alright. I'll go first. Hey, check this out. The last kind of coolness. The attention is already deep. Okay, I'll hang in the chimney. Just go to your dad. Rad-Gee-ly! Ho ho ho! Happy Holidays, Eric Manois! Whoa, it's Santa. It's actually pronounced Minyard. Uh-huh. You put out a damn fine pinball this year, Eric. What would you like for Christmas, seeing as you've been a good boy? All I really want is for those super awesome jokes to quit hounding me for interviews. Uh... Just kidding, Christopher Franchi. I knew it was you. You can come out of my chimney, Christian. Oh, how's it going, man? We were just making the rounds to see what you wanted for the holidays, and if you had a holiday greeting for our listeners. So I guess what I really want for Christmas this year is to be able to see all my friends and family in person again. 2020 has sucked. Not having pinball shows, not getting to drink beer with a bunch of the people that are listening here, and also not being able to see me and any of my family all year long. The one gift I'd love to give my kids for Christmas is to be able to hug their grandparents, but we can't quite do that. So, hope everyone out there in pinball land has a safe, happy, and socially distanced holiday celebration. Let's get through this together so we can all hang out again next year. Perfection. Thanks, Eric. And happy holidays to you and your family. And all was right with the world. All right. Rock on, Eric. See ya. Bye, guys. Stay safe out there. All this climbing up and down chimneys is making me hungry. Yeah, I get why the real Santa, he took a trillion cookies on Christmas Eve. Do you think we can swing this sleigh through a drive-thru? Tough it out, bud. Only a house or two left. Taco Bell. Ding, ding, ding. Taco Bell. Soon it will be taco time. Alright, man. That was good. Let's get back to the news. So quickly, jump through a couple of things. Jersey Jack Pinball now has a merch store. You can buy banners and T-shirts and posters, translights, all that stuff there. And they're actually throwing in some Not In This Lifetime posters into some games that are signed by Slash. So that's pretty cool. Did you see that Slash gave an interview with the Consequence of Sound website, and he had some pretty nice things to say about Eric Meunier. Eric was quoted as saying, Danke, Bundeslauschen. No, that wasn't what it was. No, it said, so Slash said this about Eric. He said, I went to them with all the stuff, and Eric was just fucking on it. One of the most amazing people I've ever worked with in any capacity. And so we put together a great team of programmers and artists and technicians and just went to town and really putting their heart and soul into making this game great, and they did. It was way beyond my expectations. So, dude, can you imagine having Slash say something that complimentary about you? Eric, you know, take a bow, man. That's really cool that he said that about you. It's well-deserved, and on top of that, Slash isn't like a shit blower. You know, he's not a pitch man. Right. He's not saying this to sell pinball machines. That's not his style. So you know it's coming from the heart. So that's really cool. I mean, that's one of those milestones in a career that you just got to kind of pound a stake in the ground at that one because it's very cool. I don't know if I've ever had anybody say anything that complimentary to me, so I really don't know how it feels, but I imagine. I don't know whether it feels awesome, but it's well-deserved. We know Eric pretty well, and he's definitely very focused and very driven. He's a hard-working dude. He's creative, and, yeah, so well-deserved. And, you know, bravo for Slash for saying that, too. Yeah, that was cool. He could be like, yeah, my machine, me, you know, focused on the fact that, you know, I helped design it and stuff like that. So, you know, of course, again, very unslash-like. So, very cool. Kudos to Eric for that. Moving on to our friends at Spooky, they have done some really cool stuff with Rick and Morty. I mean, these guys come out with code for their games, and you know that when you buy a machine from Spooky, you're going to get updates. I mean, TNA is still getting updates. And they dropped a pretty big one for Rick and Morty with a bunch of stuff from new dimensions that were added. I guess that's really the big thing that a lot of people have asked for, new modes. And they brought it with this update. Even some more stuff from Season 4 of the show. I think a lot of people who have that game are going to be stoked. Definitely, yeah. Those guys are always on the ball. Moving on, quick shout-outs. I think before we kind of land at our last stop, let's talk quickly about Project Pinball. These guys are amazing. Everybody knows Project Pinball. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm sure you're well aware of it. They just finished up their road trip donating pinball machines across the country to various children's hospitals. They have a great presence on Facebook, and they've shown all of their stops, and they've talked to Emoto Harney and kind of gone through what they've been up to over the last few months. Did you hear about Jason Fowler and what he did? Yes, Jason Fowler and Matt Morrison from Slap Save Pinball Podcast. They not only raised a boatload of money, but they were able to donate two pinball machines to children's hospitals, and that is just freaking epic. Jason and Matt, thanks for what you did. It's really awesome. Yeah, this also reminds me, last year we did the Barlow's Pinpet Shelter Drive, and we'll think about maybe doing this in January or February because I want to put a lot of attention to this. We had a fairly good turnout for this last year, and I would like to see it do a lot better. So just in case you're wondering where our charity is, my charity, of course, always lies with animals, so we're going to see a return of Barlow's Pinpet Shelter Drive coming up soon. But in the meantime, do what you can for the kitties and the puppies. See if you can just drop off something to make their holidays a little bit better, too. Have we got anything else? I did want to make a quick one-sentence shout-out to Carl D'Python Anghelo with Pin Slash. If you haven't seen this amazing tournament put on by Carl D'Python Anghelo, do yourself a favor and go to IE Pinball on Twitch and watch it. It was the best tournament stream ever, in my opinion, with player interviews, easy-to-understand objectives, and it was a really great format. I watched all eight hours of this. it was that good. So check it out. It was a Super Bowl of pinball. And Carl was just, you know, amazing at putting it all together. So, you know, thank you for doing that. We all need some competitive pinball in our lives during the pandemic. And they came through for us. And as a listener, what's the prize in the bottom of the cereal box? Jeff Teolis. Hey-o. He gave some good interviews. Guy did a really good job. We give Jeff shit for being overexposed, but it's just a joke. He does a good job, and he's definitely a good dude to have in the hobby. He's an inspiration to us all. No doubt. But hey, we have to get back to our holiday visits. Right. And up next, George Gomez, and that's his roof right over there. Put her down, Captain. Aye, aye. Watch it. You almost hit those power lines back there. Quit being a backslide driver, Franchi. All right, here we are. Shat-to-the-go-males. Dude, your elbow. Get your foot out of my butt. Happy holidays, George. Hey, you guys know I have a front door, right? Yeah, uh, sorry about that. Listen, we're checking in our pinball fan to see what they want for the holidays this year. Didn't you guys know I used to make toys before I made pinball machines? I can pretty much make anything I want. Yeah, you designed that sweet snow dome on our sled outside. It comes in really handy. Thanks. You know what, George? I've actually got a holiday request for you. Sure, what is it? After Led Zeppelin, I'm kind of hoping for a Lord of the Rings vault in my stocking. Can you make that happen? Yeah, good luck with that. you're going to need a bigger stocking. This is a Johnson License rumor joke. He already shot you down the last time he was on the show. Hey, George, before we get out of your hair, your fireplace, do you have any holiday messages you'd like to pass on to our listeners? You know, what I really want to say to everybody, to your listeners, the whole pinball community, is happy holidays, and thank you so much for the incredible support throughout this crazy time. I hope that we've been able to bring a little joy in your lives. But the reality is that, you know, I feel very blessed that you guys have been so supportive and that the company has managed to get through this. I think things are only going to get better. And happy holidays, everybody. All right, now you guys really do have to get out of my fireplace. See you later. See you, George. See you, George. All right, one last climb up. When you get your ass up there. Hey, that was my face. Sorry, bro. Well, that was awesome. We got to hang out with our pinball friends, spread some holiday cheer. Yeah, happy holidays, buddy. Now, let's head back. I'm cold, my butt is sore from this wooden bench, and my moon boots are soaked. Yeah, I've got to tuck in the pin kids, man. Let's head back. head back. Hey, here's some hot chocolate. And you know, you should really try these boots I'm wearing next year. Steel toe, waterproof, really awesome. Nice. Where did you get those? Oh, a listener sent them to me as a Christmas gift. Well, you know, God damn it. You get everything. I get jack shit. This is such bullshit. Happy holidays, everybody. Yeah, you did. Actually, Mr. Nice Guy and all this stuff just keeps coming and I get shit. I I don't know what you're talking about. I even asked for shit and I don't get shit. Nothing to give my bulletin board yet. My internet brush with me. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. Hi, this is Sparky, the super awesome pinball elf. Stick around after this commercial break for an exclusive interview with the pinball brothers. We'll be right back. Guess what? I got a fever. And the only perspective is the super awesome pinball show. Oh, yeah! Super! Yeah! This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new, full-size, authentic Stern pinball, Chicago games, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. Led Zeppelin, in concert and beyond. Robert Platt, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham. The song remains the same. Rated PG. Hi, this is Keith Ellens. Since I was forced to be on this podcast, I'll make the best of it and give him a little teaser here. You listening to what this called again Super Awesome Pinball Show Oh oh super awesome pinball podcast show not podcast oh so sorry you can take your apology and shove it straight up your ass now back to our program well it's about freaking time i am the god of hell and fire and i bring you the super awesome pinball show It's a cool show! It doesn't look like an SOS. It looks like a warning. Change of timeline. Wait a minute, let's move on. What the hell is that? You still don't understand what you're doing, Mr. Here you play pinball. In April of 2018, Highway Pinball closed its doors after releasing two machines that were exciting and pushed new innovations for pinball. Full Throttle and Alien Pinball. As the company closed, a group of investors formed a new company called Pinball Brothers Limited that hoped to retain Highway's licenses and assets and create games moving forward. Well, the Pinball Brothers are doing exactly that, and we're excited to have them on the show today to learn more about their plans. So please welcome Roger and Alexander to the show. Welcome to the show, guys. We've heard a lot about the Pinball Brothers for years now, but I don't think that many of the enthusiasts know exactly who makes up the company. So what can you guys tell us about who the Pinball Brothers are? So we're just some pinball-enthusiastic guys from Europe and on the mission to build pinballs that have never been built before. At least that's the plan. How many people make up the company Pinball Brothers Limited? And what are your roles within the company? We are currently four active members. It's me, Roger, and my business partner, Kato, from Norway. We have Otze in Germany and we have Daniel in Sweden. And how we divide things among us is we have different skill sets. We all come from a computer-related background, if you want to put it like that, and a business-related background. Kato is currently helping out with the programming side together with Brian Domoney, who is consulting as he has been for a long time. And I'm doing anything from mechanical design to prototyping, purchasing, stuff like that. Alexander is on the creative side, working, of course, with contracts and with other teams and design work. And Daniel is mostly at the time dealing with administration like finances and other business-related contact due to that. But we also overlap our roles. So it's not that straightforward, if that makes sense. Sure. Do you all have a pinball background, or have you all kind of learned about creating machines through this process? When you say pinball background, what do you mean then? I've been dealing with pinballs as a hobby for many, many years, which I also think the rest of us have. But none of us, as far as I know, is coming from a pinball manufacturing background. hence why we need sometimes to outsource work. Wanting to join the pinball makers community, you had a choice to start your own company or to invest in Highway Pinball. Why did you choose Highway and take on all the troubles that fall? The thing was that we looked on the Pinball Expo at the games and thought they were pretty, pretty nice. And then there was some guy who told us, yeah, we're mainly two weeks away from delivering to the customer, but we could use some more money to speed that up. And I was already building or trying to build a homebrew game, and I thought, well, that sounds like an interesting option to enter a real pinball company and seeing how it really works. And you know the story about the two weeks. And that guy was a pretty good salesman. I mean, if he can't maybe do anything else, but what he can do is he can sell you stuff and stories. And that's what he did. And so at least I just jumped right in and said, okay, let's do that. I believe in that product because I think that's a really good pin. Yeah. And so it changed the rest of your life. It did. Right. So Highway had started in 2015, but the Pinball Brothers, you guys didn't really get into it until maybe a year before they closed. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. The thing is, we went in to help the guy to finish the game and deliver it. And yeah, I think both us here in Norway and Daniel also. So it's kind of the initial deals was we purchased some games that we prepaid to help the process of getting the games. And by what Alexander says, it looked like an interesting product. The license, of course, with Alien was very interesting. And it looked like it was sold to us as more ready than it was. So when we first looked into it and decided to put in more money than just purchasing machines, I guess that's where the snowball started to just be a one-way money thing. Right. Well, we all know what happened to Highway. So take us from the end of Highway to where you guys are now with the new Pinball Brothers company. How has the company changed and evolved since that time? Pinball Brothers changed from trying to help a struggling Highway, completing Alien, into a company that wants to do right what HP just failed to do. So there was a product which just had to see the light of the day and not just vanish. So we decided to just go silent. And we just got everything that cost money out and just tried to rebuild that game to make it possible to just bring it to the market. Right. in a way that the customers will get working machines when they open up the package and just not have to return it immediately because it doesn't work or needs a month of work on it to get it solid. I mean, those games are solid, but you have to invest a lot of work to get to where they should have been from the start. The people out there still think, or some of them think, that we just bought everything from Highway, like the license or the design for cheap money, then just threw the keys away and went with it. And the problem is we really lost a million dollars in there and that's gone. And we even at the beginning, when we ended the game, we even tried to pay people back. And the problem then was that it just took over, that people just wanted to get out. And we didn't know how many people prepaid because the sales guy was very good in selling us something else. So as more and more people showed up to get out and get their money back, it became clear that most of the million we planned for that venture to to get the aliens out of the door just went to back to the prepaid customers and then other stuff came up that just where we had to pay even more money for uh things that were years away and so that that was what highway broke the neck and it wasn't that we just thought we get some cheap license it was we lost a lot of money in there and just may have to close it down so that the machine had any chance to ever be built again. I think what Utz is trying to say to try and put it in an easier, simpler way is when we went in, we lost a bunch of money, more than a million dollars, we just lost. And as Alexander said, we knew that it was a lot of prepaid customers and we knew that some of these customers, of course, would, with new investors on board, for now, take the short way of trying to get a refund for the money, try to charge the money back. What we didn't anticipate in that was that the number of people that bail ship was so immense that when we first started on the politics of saying, we're going to be fair, we're going to pay the money back, and hopefully most of our customers still want Alien, it was kind of too late for us. At some point, it was just like a landslide of refunds that came that we had anticipated and budgeted for for some refunds yes we had budgeted for some bumps in the road but we didn't foresee the amount of this can you elaborate on the numbers or give us a rough idea of what you're talking about as far as how many people as alexander said we uh we lost more than a million so so yeah it's uh it was it was a lot more than we anticipated. That's the thing. Let's see. $1 million divided by $5,000 equals 200 refunds. So the million that you lost is in paying people back. No, not only. Not only because the other thing... I would think it's at least a third that we just paid back of this million and it's maybe $150,000 to $100,000 more that were just paid for stuff which came out of nowhere because we had to pay taxes which came after us because somebody else didn't pay them two years ago. Stuff like that. And also another thing, when we took over, the lease for the factory was signed as a long-term lease, which was way too expensive and the buildings were way too big. So we tried every way we could to try and even to get out of the lease and to try and change. because the company that leased us the building also had other buildings, but they didn't have anything more suitable available, so they kind of uphold us through the contract. At what point in your investment in you buying into Highway Pinball did you realize you just bought a hornet's nest? Before we ejected the one guy who gave his name for the company. Shit, we didn't want to talk about that guy. Yeah, you just say Voldemort. or, you know, DT Barnum? No, the answer to that question is we knew we had not gone into the best business deal we could have done. But with the effort we put into it to try and look into it as good as we could, when we did our due diligence, we knew there was going to be a rough start. And we knew that we had to rely on that for this to really work. We were dependent on two things. One, the loyalty of the prepaid customers. And two, the stability of the product, which was promised us and on the prototypes and everything, what was on the factory floor when we took over, was supposed to be way more solid than it turned out to be. Then coming back to what we said earlier about if the customer can't have a machine and open it from the box without spending a month to get it to work. So at one point, we had a strange thing going on where we actually had machines standing on the floor. We were in contact with prepayment customers, which came back to us and said, no, we want to wait until we see the machines that go into the market actually work. So we don't want our product just yet. so there was there was kind of there was not one factor that made us have to shut down there was a lot of circumstances that all in the end when we saw how that would end up a couple of months ahead if this didn't change we had to pull the plug when we when we still uh when we still saw a potential of being able to save it in the future now with the benefit of hindsight do you guys feel that you possibly had made the wrong decision in entering into highway pinball and would have been better off just starting from scratch? Are you really asking that? That's a pretty easy answer. Okay. If you want to pay my pension in the future, I say it was not a mistake. Okay. Well, let me clarify. Let me clarify. You guys had a lot of faith in the alien game, And in that sense is what you were buying when you bought into Highway Pinball. Now, after everything has unfolded, after you invested, would you have rather just said, yeah, Alien Pinball is nice, but screw it. Let's just start doing our own thing. Or are you happy with your choice to stick with it to get this game out? Can we answer that in six months time or something? No, no, of course. Of course. What I would say there is it is it is pretty easy. But that is the same thing as when you look at the stock option you didn't buy when you see how some companies make their money. With what we know today, of course, I don't think that any of us would say, let's do the same again. But with what we know today and with the team we have today, I'm pretty sure with that knowledge on board, if we then had sat down to make a pimple company, we would have been able to be even further than we are now because we hadn't then, of course, lost all this money and tried to fix everything to get where we are now. Sure. And, you know, Alien Pinball was really the game that Highway made that had the killer theme, really cool ideas. So I understand why you wouldn't want to just let that go and pursue it. But what was the push for you guys? You know, was it that everything was pretty much there and all you had to do was perfect it? or were you thinking that you just couldn't let this license get away from you? Yeah, the game itself was fun and very immersive, but we just needed time to improve on the parts that were not optimal on the highway version. And designing a completely new game would have taken much longer. But with the changes we now made, I think we will be able to create any next game even faster. We have put a lot of work since we shut down to make our own platform and to kind of build up everything that we need for any future titles when it comes to standard parts and stuff like that. So how did you guys handle the license? Because was it still in play for you when everything shut down or did you have to go back and renegotiate that? No, we just renewed it when it ran out the first time. But it was clear to us that at that time it was already clear that it might get or be a very rough ride. So we just put the license already into Pinball Brothers, which means Pinball Brothers paid for it. OK. And not Highway. So that's another thing where we just said, OK, we need to save this somehow. So we need to pay for it. And that, for example, is not a thing where you could say, We just got in cheap and then bought something for cheap money. Understood. It wasn't something you just inherited. You had to actually go and pursue it yourself. Yeah, right. And that's also the same thing we did with, that's kind of as any sane businessman would do, in a position when we saw the status Highway was in when we took over that. It's also one of the reasons why we, of course, founded Pinball Brothers. That was to protect some of our new investments. Like all new parts we bought were bought into Pimble Brothers, even though they were used on the Highway Pimble games. Because if anybody or anything would come and close down Highway or whatever in the first month, things that would show up, the white elephant in the room that we didn't know about, then at least all those containers with parts that were coming wouldn't belong to Highway Pimble. So it's kind of, so Pinball Brothers was initially started, I think, to protect part of the investment and make sure that the Alien license would survive. The original plan, of course, was to let it run its course in Highway as the Highway Pinball game. We couldn't foresee that the game was ending up to be one of the problems. Right. When you went and you renegotiated the license or you re, or Pinball Brothers took that license and possessed it, Did you try and get any additional assets, like the often requested Sigourney Weaver inclusion, or are things very close to what you had originally in the game? No, we didn't, because the game itself was just good. I mean, we didn't try to change anything, because another problem would have been that we wouldn't have needed to go through the process of Fox accepting everything we did again. and we had so many things to do because now after closing Highway we were such a small group of people working on this and there was so much work we just didn't have the time to extend on anything it was the goal that we had was to make this game better no better is the wrong word because it was already good to make it work out of the box maybe that's the right way to describe it stronger yeah more stable and that's what we tried with the small group we had left because we had so much money in there that we thought if we try that again and throw all the money on it and it goes wrong again, then we've totally lost. So we just stripped down everything we could and tried for in the last two years to just make it a more stable game. Sure, bulletproof. And on the way, we have some new inventions in there. Sure. Yeah, we want to talk about those. Yeah. I guess what we're trying to say is that we thought the game was good as it was. It wasn't the game or the shots or geometry or anything like that. Or the rules. All of those things we thought were good, so why change something that is good? We try just to improve and make better what we thought needed to be changed into to be a stable, good and stable pinball machine. Now with the license changing hands, sort of, or possibly needing to be renewed, was Fox or Disney aware of the problems that Highway Pinball had, and was there any hesitation on their part to allow this transformation to happen? In the dialogue with them on the licenses, they knew that we had taken over the company. They knew that it had been a bumpy road and that there were challenges around it. So we didn't try and not tell them anything on that. So everything in the meetings we had with them, We also had a meeting with them in London. The cards were put on the table, and we told them exactly where we were and what we needed to do to get it done. So they didn't put any extra demands on us for that, no. The recently introduced voucher program, did that have anything to do with the renewal? Is that something that you promised to Disney moving forward? No. That is something we have had in our minds since day one. since we say, okay, if we close this down and if we get back on our feet on this, let's see how we can try and have all our Pimble friends in the world to come out of it without having lost too much on it. Let's see how we can help. That's been our initial plan all along. It's just we need to get to that stage before we can do anything more, I guess. Well, now that we're talking about it, let's cover that because we did want to ask you about the vouchers. You had said that they're at least a 50% value voucher to purchase a new game. And obviously, legally, you guys aren't responsible for highway debts, but you're doing this anyway. Can you tell us a little bit about the vouchers? Will they have any cash value, or are they just going to be used towards the price of a new game from the Pinball Brothers? Yes, it's going to be used against. They will get a discount against you purchases they do from Pinball Brothers. Okay, excellent. There's a time limit, I guess, from February 28th, 2021, I guess, people can submit. And there's a plan to distribute the vouchers then in April of 2021. So if any of our listeners has an interest in getting one, now is the time to kind of follow up on that. I think a really good way for you guys to kind of earn the trust and get some positive rebuilding of that, the community's idea of the Pinball Brothers and the history that you guys have. So I really commend you guys for doing that. Thank you. We try our best. The Pinball Brothers Alien game looks very similar to the earlier version, but there are some changes as well. So let's run through some of those changes now if you guys are up for it. The game was designed in part by industry legend Dennis Nordman and Highways' Dave Sanders, who was responsible for Full Throttle. Were either of them brought back to help with the design changes or improvements on the original game? No. the main changes we did were just technical. We kept the gameplay as it was because that was already very good so we had no need to have any of the designers revise the game because in that regard it was already perfect. And when it comes to Dennis Nordman, he wasn't involved in this. I think I was the one from us from Pimble Brothers that was first in contact with Highway Pimble and already at the stage when I got talking to them the first time, Dennis Nordman was no longer involved in the project. So I have no recollection of what he had and hadn't done. Dave Sanders was the only one that was involved in that as far as I know. Right. He did most of it, I believe, towards the end of development. As far as I remember, that ADN was first planned from the stories of the people working there. Alien was first planned as a standard body, and then when Jersey Jack came out with the white body, it was decided that Alien had to be a white body, and I think, but I'm not sure about this, but I think that Dave Sanders made it a white body, but don't hold me to that. So you've already kind of covered this answer, but you know, you really didn't want to change what the game was, so you never really discussed converting it to a standard body again or anything like that. You just kept it as is. Yeah, that is a very nice story from social media. We have some of those stories. We have no idea where they came from. Let's put it that way. We have never tried making Alien into a standard body game. I guess if we had done that, it would be kind of going back through the drawing board and making a new game. So it's the purpose of having a perfect game and improving that. Are there any other misconceptions? because the Pinball Brothers have been such kind of an enigma out there that nobody really knows a ton about, so I'm glad you're doing this interview. But are there other misconceptions you guys have seen on social media that you're like, where did this come from? Yes. I have one example, if you're interested. We heard that DeepRoot tried to get some of the old highway licenses from us. but as far as I know Mr. Mueller never talked to us you might not know it but that is actually I think we can actually strike that because Mr. Mueller talked to me once Barry Oursler is working with him so he obviously knew the designs from Barry Oursler and this was just at the time when we closed down so I had a short conversation with him and I told him okay anything can be looked at bring an offer on the table but I never heard anything. There were rumors that they had picked up Queen and there's recently been rumors that Stern had picked up Queen. So are you guys saying that you still have Queen under your control? I guess they both have Queen now. Everybody has it. Yes. As far as I know, in the pinball industry, there is no exclusive right to make any pinball machines. So I don't even know if Stern and Deep Root have Queen. Maybe both of them have. Maybe Jurassic Jack also has, I don't know, everything. Yeah. All right. Well, let's jump some more into Alien. So let's talk about some of the changes you made with the screen kind of in the middle of the play field being the most obvious that's been omitted in this game. So why did you guys decide to take that out? And will the video assets that played on that get moved to like the airlock LCD or the backbox screen or just changed in some way? The play field screen was only a mirror to the backbox screen from the beginning. So whatever you had on the Playfield screen, you always had on the main screen in the backbox. And at first, it was planned that the Playfield screen would be the only screen and the backbox would just be one big piece of art. But when we started to sell the games, everybody ordered. I mean, maybe one or two went out with the full art, but everybody else just ordered the backbox screen. So it was pretty clear people wanted to have something there. And so we decided to remove it because we heard people complaining about that you can't level it very good, so the ball will always destroy the wood after a while. And we just thought if everybody wants a screen in the backbox, then that must be more important. Makes sense. So what you don't lose is anything because you have it in the backbox. And what we now did is we replaced it with a weapons display. because that was, in our opinion, the weakest spot of the game because the weapons in the game are a very important part. And you either see them on the main screen, I think, if there's no mode, and if there is a mode, you see them on the small screen, on the analog screen. And so it was always, where do I have to look to see what weapons I have and which one is selected and how far am I into the sentry gun multiball? And all this was just sometimes here, sometimes there. So we said, let's put it on the playfield. It's important. Do the playfield weapons, do those light up in conjunction with what's equipped and what you have in your inventory? Yeah, of course. They are just plain inserts, and you will exactly see what weapons you have, which one is selected, and how far you are with your ammunition for the sentry multiball. So the two stacks up the middle, that's sort of like your quantity? and how much you've got left. Yes, because you have to get, I think it's 1,000 bullets before it starts. You can exactly see how far you are. Now, maybe not exactly because we don't have 1,000 LEDs in there. This is also, when it comes to the Playfield screen, there has also been some of these social media rumors and statements that that has been moved because of reducing costs, because of the bill of material. but that is actually not true. As I said, as I also just explained, it's a better game feature. And to be honest, the replacement of what's there already with a PC keyboard and everything like that, it's cost-wise, it doesn't cost any more than what a 10-inch screen would cost or anyway. So the most important, I think, reason for it to be removed in the first place was the worry of maintenance and chipping of lacquer around the screen because we had seen that on the highway games. So that was kind of the initial reason why we started to say, can we improve the play field with a play field screen so we don't have maintenance and adjustment problems, or should we remove it and put something other cool in there instead? Right, yeah. Now, the physical hypersleep chamber ball lock with the opening cover, this used to be virtual, correct? Yes, correct, yes. So what made you add that mech? Was that something you guys always felt like was missing from the game, that you really wanted to have it be a physical lock? Yes, that's correct. I'm also thinking at it, and the talks I've had with Dave Sanders on this earlier, it's something he also wanted in the game, but I think that it might have also been removed for cost reasons or something like that earlier on. So we thought, okay, that is cool to get a physical three-ball, multiple-ball lock in there, and it would be cool not just to have a coil dropping the ball back into the left orbit, but actually lifting it up so it comes up on the left ramp and down. So it kind of feeds the left ramp with the ball. So it's a cool upgraded feature. The shot to feed that lock, I guess, is the upper flipper on the right. Is that correct? That's correct. And so you had modified that a little bit. There was a magnet that was in the original game up by that flipper, but you've modified that now. Is that correct, to kind of stage the ball? In an early design from Dave Sanders, again, there was supposed to be a magnet grabbing the ball from the orbit shot and grabbing it into this. That was removed early on. Yeah, that was removed early on before we came on board. Because I looked at the flyer of the old game and I saw that magnet there and I said, I thought that was new. I thought that was something they put in there. But I guess it had been removed for the production of the old games. Yes. What we chose to do is, because the inner loop shot and the hypersleep chamber shot was a very hard shot because of how fast the ball passes that flipper and stuff like that. So to try and improve the gameplay and also make it a bit more easy for Novi players and stuff like that, because we can choose, of course, in the game mode how active that magnet should be. but then we decided to put that in there. So you actually, it pauses the ball, and you get a fair chance of actually concentrating for a second before you're aiming at the hypersheet block. That's very cool. That was the hardest shot in the game, according to a lot of people who owned it. So this will make it a lot easier, I would think. It does give you a chance. If you make it or not, that depends on how good of a player you are. All we ask for is a chance. So the airlock scoop has been moved to the front, making room for a secret back entrance. the airlock. What was the reason for this change and how do these things impact the gameplay? Yeah, the original Scoop in the old games was very large. It had a very large opening. And what then happened was that if you put the second ball in there and one was already in, the Scoop had problems to just kick them out again because they were not aligned one on each other, but more like a bit sideways, but not really. So they were just clunking around and falling back in. And to help this problem while we were just still at highway we brought out some kind of block which you inserted into the scoop to make it a bit smaller so that the bolts aligned one on each other so we knew of that problem and we said okay let's build this with a scoop that's smaller from the start and then we had space in front of that scoop so we could have just put some more wood there but we thought this stuff is good let's move the scoop to the front and that made way for a secret entrance from the back. So now we have some, I don't know, how would you call it, Roger? If you don't make the inner loop with high enough speed, the ball used to just roll back out onto the play field and the new entrance should just avoid that. And I really get in the game codes and some cool secret features and some stuff into there. So it's kind of a, but it's at least when you make half effort of almost getting the ball always through the inner loop. It's a secret. Like Taste of Arabian Nights and stuff like that. Kind of like a soft punch skill shot that you can't really see. Yeah. Does it make it easier to start modes and to get into different game features that you couldn't necessarily get into as easily with the original version? No. To hit the scoop from the front is the most easy shot in the whole game. Yeah. Okay. And there are switches that detect the difference from the scooping it from the front than the scooping it from the back. Ah, all right. Well, one of the major sticking points with the original is that the Xenomorph head, as cool as it was, sometimes had issues with the ball-eating feature. And so how have you guys modified that for improved function and durability? Because it really is the biggest wow factor of the game, I think. Yeah, the Xenomorph toy is, of course, a really cool feature, and I think everybody likes that in Alien. The only weak part of that was that it had a plastic gear on some of the components. There was, how do you put it nicely, a cheap knockoff copy of a component. So what we've mostly done there is we've changed this to a more solid metal gears and more solid components. And, of course, the whole driver board, the whole interface board on the electronics and everything like that for the Xenomorph is new and upgraded. So it should now work nice and stable. And the way it was meant to be in the first place, I guess. Of course, it worked in the first place also if it hadn't been for cheap components, I guess. But now it works better. So now you've kind of hammered it with repetitive trials just to see what it can take and tested it really well? I don't think we used any hammers on it. But, of course, everything is tested, but everything obviously needs to be tested more. One thing is, as you probably know, one thing is what the tests we do on our games in-house. The really interesting part, of course, even we can be as confident as we want. The real test, I guess, will be when we come out into the real-life public test and see the feedback. But we are confident that this now should work properly. Yeah, there was also some issues with the facehuggers as well, because some of them broke under use and some of them just flew off, which is a nice, you know, it's a nice scare feature, but then you've got to try to avoid this thing in the play field. It looks bad if you have a facehugger without any legs. Yeah, yeah. So what did you guys do to improve on that? We changed the material, simply as that. Was it more flexible? Yes, the material is much more durable on a facehugger, but also the bracket, the facehugging used to be a small bracket that was put on top of the slingshot bracket. So it was kind of an add-on to a standard slingshot. We now redesign the whole bracket so it's part of the slingshot component. You remove the original slingshot bracket and you insert this, so it's now one solid bracket, which also makes, for all of those who have tried to change a facehugger on one of the old games, which is the nightmare itself, which makes that process no much easier than what it was. people listening to this show can't really see you, Roger, but you've been kind of using a facehugger as a stress ball the whole time you've been talking, which is pretty cool. Yeah. With the new bracket on it. Yeah, I can't hold this tail up. It's strong. Yeah, push on the tail so we can see how flexible it is. Let's see if I can twist the tail. I can do – Oh, okay. This would be a bad commercial if this not worked. But now I've twisted it probably five times and pulling it. So now a cool added feature is when that thing jumps out at you, you get sort of a wiggle effect, which gives it more life, too. So that's extra cool. That's cool, yeah. So you guys have done a lot to, it sounds like, to really improve the reliability of this game. You have new electronics, you've got smaller PCBs, you've got assemblies and guides that you've revised. Do you guys want to take us through anything else you really want to talk about, about features that you've improved that are going to be more solid now in this game? I think, all in all, what's taken the longest time, What's been the biggest and most important change of the whole thing is completely new electronics. All the electronics is new from base up. There is none of the old PCBs, designs or anything, the old IO boards, nothing is used anymore. So, of course, doing a drastic change like that has taken time to do. But it also makes the assembly of the game and the maintenance and everything a lot easier because in the old game, all the PCBs were kind of placed around in the cabinet. And it was kind of the whole cabinet was kind of the PCB box, if you want to put it that way. But what we've done now is the different sections of the PCBs have their own closed module boxes. so they are actually in different boxes, so it's easier to access, easier to maintain and everything. Very cool. I think that is, I would say, the main change. And of course, in this process, looking at all the time that the guys in the old game, on the old factories spent on the floor, assembling the game, and how much work it was if a PCB board didn't work. because if you remember, you had this big PCB boards under the playfield. So if something didn't work on that PCB board, you pretty much had to take apart a large portion of the game just to get to it. So that, of course, now, both top of the playfield and the bottom of the playfield and the cabinet is based on the principle that everything, mostly everything, of course, pinball is still a lot of parts, But mostly everything should be easy accessible, easy changed, and easy maintained. So, yeah. Okay. There are some changes that are just cool, like you lit the stand-up targets with RGB lighting now. Now, is that just showing off? Is that it? No, we had light lit-ups targets from before also. So it's just that now that we've redesigned the targets, it's kind of all of the targets have RGB possibility, not just some of them. Cool. You mentioned the code a little bit. You said now with the secret entrance feature of the Airlock Scoop, you've got some new code in there for that. How much code improvements or code additions have you guys done? Kato is working with Brian Domini, the original programmer for the game. Of course Joe Schober also worked on the original game but he now contracted with another pinball company so he not available But Brian and Kato and of course electronics engineer Mark which mostly then do the firmware and stuff are working together to both improve, and have been working to improve both the electronics side, communicating with the pin prog and Brian's original code, and, of course, making changes to the game code where needed now for the updated changes, like the hyper-sleeve lock, the secret entrance, the magnets. So they are still working on code updates for that and I'm also assuming there will come a future update where Brian is involved. So it's good stuff. A lot of good stuff coming out. Very neat. We're going to move over to art now. My favorite part. You guys had Art Lawson originally responsible for the game's original art. Was he involved in any way in the updated art package? No, we just mainly stuck to what he did already and especially on the playfield. So there are not that many changes except at the place where we took the display out. There we had to extend the planet and put the weapons on there, but that was not a really artistic piece. What we needed to do was an update on the cabinet because that was now a full-size artwork and not the thing we had before, which was a bit too small for that. Sure. Now, is this the reason why the new cabinet appears to be more style guide, if you will, than original hand-drawn art? Is that the reason behind that? Is it because it had to be redesigned and you didn't have the original art, so you just went with assets? No, we had the original assets, which are used as well. But I think the difference is not that large, except for the front, which now has some artwork, and that is hand-drawn. Sticking with the cabinet, obviously the old highway cabinet was a lot different than this one. The backlit side panels are gone. The size is more of a Bally Williams style. So can you tell us why you went in that direction in terms of moving away from the lit side panels? If you remember, one of highway's missions on this was the modularity of the cabinets where everything should be able to change side arts and the button panels. If you want a game that had one button to two buttons, the panels were already there. You could just change the panels and stuff like that. So when looking at all this and looking at all the challenges of assembly and how everything was done there, we never really saw the benefits of that cabinet in itself. and the outer MDF panels, which looked very good as a furniture. If you kind of buy a collector's machine, you put it in your living room, you unpack it very nicely, that's good. But for me as an operator's background, where I put them on a trolley and in and out from pubs and stuff like that, scratching in those panels did not look very good. So our choice to go more traditional was many-sided. One was to, I think, make a change. We are not a high-weight pinball game anymore. And then after going some rounds on that, we kind of figured out we like the old traditional cabinet. So let's stick with that. Nice artwork. Does it really need to be lit up? Usually the pinball machines are lined up next to each other, so you don't see that lit artwork anyway. anyway. So out of a reliability and production side of things, it makes more sense with the cabinet that we have now. Did you guys license this amazing side-lit panel feature to DeepRoot? No. Because all exciting new innovations are available for license. So, you know, obviously they did. Sorry about that. The backbox is different as well. I mean, you have a smaller backbox screen and new, well, new expanded, I guess, backbox art because of that smaller screen. So why go smaller with the backbox screen? As a pinball player, we, of course, it's not small, small, it's still 18 and a half inch screen. And when you put up a traditional backbox, which is 70 centimeter wide outside, so you can actually fit it through a door in a pub and stuff like that, the room between the screen and the outer walls are just big enough to be able to fit a good sounding four inch speaker. So it was a lot of different reasons for it. And on the other hand, we didn't want to go like another pinball company goes with a full screen backbox because it also puts a lot of effort into what you need to put on that screen. And as a pinball player, do you really get the benefit of everything that happens back there? So I think we found a balance between a smaller screen and a bigger screen. We kind of put us in the middle there so that both the player can get a good view of what's happening in the game, but also the spectator that's standing behind the shoulder can actually see what's going on. So for us, it was a natural balance. Some people would like a smaller screen, some people would like a full backboard screen. That's fine, I think. For us, that was a good choice. Yeah, it makes sense. Can you guys tell us now about the different models of the game? Highway Pinball had a game that was a 35th anniversary LE model, and I guess now we're approaching the 40th anniversary. Is that LE model going to be updated, or is it scrapped, or what? Just tell us what the different models are, and if you could, you know, rough some price points for each one. First of all, I think the 35th anniversary model never came out. They had to, because they lost that time frame also, so it was just changed to a limited edition. There might be some artwork still out there that states 35th anniversary, but I don't think there was any games released on it. They had the LE model with the apple green armor, the alien green armor. That, I guess, was what morphed from the 35th to the LE. It was all kind of the same, maybe not the branding. The blue one was always the most beautiful. Yeah, the blue one? Yes. Is that a point of contention amongst you guys? because I know a lot of people thought the green one was the perfect one, and then some people liked the red. But the LE had a blue back glass. Yes. And so you needed the blue trim to make it really beautiful. I would say green. I may have to side with Roger on that, but let's not go there. From an artistic standpoint, I side with Nata on that one. Oh, all right. It's split right down. I knew that. There you go. I got your back, buddy. So what was the question again? Tell us about the models and the differences between them, and if possible, the price points. Yeah, I can say a little bit about that, and Oxy can jump in if he wants. The current model that is coming out first is what we would call the premium version, the standard version, the first version that comes out. we have a plan on making a limited version so we assume it will be limited to 500 units at least not more than 500 and from a game play point of view it won't change the play feel there might be some other cool toys on there and some other cool lighting effects and stuff like that but from a game play point of view the standard version would give you the exact same feeling of playing. But of course, if you're a huge Alien fan and stuff like that, you might want a limited collector's version there where you can have some different color trims on the side and on the lockdown bar. And from our earlier talks there, I think green and blue is still probably possible. But we'll see where exactly that's for them. You had to order one with green on one side and blue on the other. Yeah, why not? The Transformers did that, didn't they? That's right. The Decepticons and Autobots, right? Yeah. They actually have that limited edition, so it's a cool game. It sounds like you guys haven't really come up with the official release for this yet. So is this something that's going to come down the road after the initial game comes out? Yes, we do have a list of possible add-ons we are still evaluating. and we need to see what we can all squeeze into an LVE version. Okay. I'm pretty sure it will be amazing. Nice. And, of course, as we always want, we want to put more into that than what is actually physically possible. So I guess that's where we are now. We're trying to balance how much to put in there and still keep it cool. What's the time estimate, do you think, before you'll have that ready to show off? Is it something that will happen soon or like a year from now? Are you talking about the limited version? The limited, yeah. I don't know if we have any, let's say six months. Let's hope so. At least you didn't say two weeks. Oh, jeez. Well, that's very cool. So do you have a price point for the model that's coming out sooner? The standard model will have a cost of $7,777. Cool. Plus the eventual tax in different countries, but of course we can't deal with that. What is the significance of the sevens? It's lucky. It's just lucky. It's four times luckier than one seven. You guys deserve some luck for this long road. There was some discussion from Andrew Highway that there was going to be internet connectivity in the game, so I didn't know if that was ever something that you guys were hoping to incorporate or not. So if you update the old Alien, you need a USB stick and just put it into the machine to get an update in there. Let's talk the bottom of the bill of materials on this game. Was there a push to modify either up or down the cost of the making of this game? And how might that affect the cost of the new game? We, of course, hope that we could, in the process of redesigning it, get the cost down. But there was no kind of initial goal or none of us kind of said, okay, we need to reduce the price to a certain amount. That was never in our attention on it. What we have had focus on is we need to get this game to work and what do that cost us to get it to work. So on some areas, we have reduced the costs. On some areas, we've had to take a higher cost to make it work properly, like the Sinohead and stuff like that. But all in all, we are still a new company. We don't have many, many years of experience with suppliers and stuff. So I'm pretty sure that we can, in the future, improve the bill of material further. But as of now, with what we see and the product we see, I think we are happy with where we are at the moment. So, yeah. Nothing has been, just put it another way, nothing has been cut from the game to make it cheaper. Right. And will you offer additional add-ons that you can buy to have them included, including, you know, like a shaker motor, non-reflective glass, cabinet trim, that sort of thing? The standard game has an output for a shaker motor. Okay. We will not put it in at the factory, but customers can buy it and install it with four screws and plug a cable in for themselves if they want. Currently, the plan is to have a slim product. So there's only one version that we deliver. And because we don't want to get any problems at the factory, we have to tell the people what to put in the machine and what not, and then where to deliver it. Currently, we just want to build one product that works. and if we see that we are able to do that, we might offer additional parts that people can build into their machines at home or maybe later we would even add some options that you could choose at the factory. But currently we are not going to bring any more complexity into the build process. We are happy if we get a good product out of the door and then we'll see if we can improve on that and give more possibilities to the customer. Now, speaking of the factory, the hardest part of starting a new pinball company is the manufacturing side of things. What is the Pinball Brothers' plan for manufacturing these games? Are you doing it in-house? Do you have a contractor in Europe? Are you having these games built in the U.S.? What's the story? When you're saying in-house, we're not building it out in the Norwegian winter cold, if that's what you're talking about. Maybe you guys have your own facility. Yes, we have teamed up with Pedretti Gaming in northern Italy, which many pinball people already know from. They make pinball parts. They have the original license to reproduce Valley Williams parts. They have 50 years of history with arcade games, jukeboxes, and pinball machines. So they are a big manufacturer in Italy. Do they have anything to do with Zachariah? Actually, I do not know that. But that's a fair and good question. The Zachariah, the Italian pinball brand that was many, many years ago. But maybe, I don't know. It would be strange. I haven't heard anything. I haven't heard Andrea Pedretti. No, they focus on jukeboxes, which they built themselves. And they did work with pinballs, but I'm not sure if they ever built them themselves. But they were not Zachariah. So, yeah, we've teamed up with them on doing all the assembly and everything for us. And they are also, because they already manufacture Williams parts and stuff like that, so they're also sourcing parts for us for part of this machine for things we have not designed ourselves completely. So, yeah. So it sounds like manufacturing pinball machines is somewhat new to them. is that going to take some time to ramp that up or have they already done so? They have been working on it now since the beginning of October with physical parts. But of course, with everything and especially in these times with the COVID situation and everything goes slower than we are thinking. So, yeah, they will need time to ramp up. And we are not pushing to try and get as many units out the door first week as possible because quality is more important to us than that. So we will take it slow with them in the beginning and ramp it up as we go. But they have large factories and people available, so they say they can ramp up to actually whatever numbers we want in the first year or so. Do you know if they have games already created in box or is that process not started yet? They are in the process of getting the first patch together now. So they're not in box yet. I mean, I know you say you want to take it slow, but do you have any rough estimate as to how many games per week or per month? Or is it just kind of we're going to see how it goes? Let's put it that way. After we get through the first patch of them fine-tuning this process, give them two, three months from now to kind of get up to speed. After that, I guess we are hoping for 100 plus a month. Wow. Okay. All right. So based on that, what is your plan for the timeline for releasing this game then? The first games to show up through Cointaker in the States, we hope they are able now to get them and show them off in the beginning of January. So that's our, if everything goes according to plan, which knock on wood and all that stuff, This business is not easy when it comes to keeping deadlines on anything. That's true. But that's our goal on it. I also need to put into this when it comes to the quality, and we trust all the work that Pedretti Gaming is doing in that. But also a question that's been coming is our playfields. Our playfields now are produced in Hamburg by Peter Brunner, which some may know, I guess. There's a lot of pinball people out there who has been buying replacement playfields from him from William's Game Stand. And his quality of the play field is superb. So, yeah. No chipping or pooling. There should be no chipping, no pooling, no nothing. I guess you will get dimples because that's the nature of pinball. Absolutely. Sure. So we understand that you guys have partnered up with Cointaker to be the official distributor for the States. That's correct? That's correct, yes. That's excellent. So our first, our idea is instead of, because shipping and handling of goods and everything like that has also a bumpy history in pinball, I think. I think most pinball suppliers that are shipping small loads of game around the world sadly see too much damage on it. So what we are hoping here is to, as fast as possible, get to the point where we are shipping containers, sealed containers of games to coin takers. So we know that they can't be handled by a million people before they get there. This damage isn't exclusive to pinball machines. I can't even order a DVD without it getting crushed in shipping. People just don't care these days. Yeah. Well, you guys had mentioned in your press release that you're not going to be taking any pre-order money. And I think that's a great way to help reestablish trust as well. Working through the distributor, it's going to be when the game is available, you can buy it. And there's no down payment, no pre-order, nothing. That's the general idea. Yes. So we get them ready in box and then they can be sold to the market. So guys, what are your hopes and goals overall for the Pinball Brothers as a pinball company? What do you see as the outlook of things down the line? I guess we're in this to put this crazy venture of making pinball machines and actually being in the pinball community. If we weren't in this to try and build good pinball machines, to try and get creative ideas out there, to try and see what we can do with it, then we guess we wouldn't have been here. This needs to go back to, for me at least, when this started. One of the reasons why I got involved with Highway in the first place was that I've been an operator for many years there in Norway. and the pinball machines that you could get at that time, which then, of course, basically were stern, were very one-sided. There was kind of no alternative to it. Of course, today when you have Jersey Jack and now Deep Root and Chicago Game coming out with other stuff, there is more to choose from. But the reason to go into this for me in the first place was that we wanted to see something new, something different, and I guess that is still in our soul that we want to create our own thing but also try and see something different from the rest of the things. People always want to know what might be coming down the road as far as did you retain any titles from Highway that you're going to move on with? Have you obtained any of your own? Obviously, those are things you can't talk about as far as what they are but it gives people an idea of what your future is. Are there plans already in place moving forward beyond Alien? Yeah, we do have some more licenses in the portfolio, but I think we should first roll out Alien and then see if we might come up with another hit. We've got to ask, guys. We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't ask what was coming, so don't fall for it. So it's clear that you guys are incredibly passionate about pinball. You've been very open and honest with us during this talk. And what I really think is refreshing is that you want to bring this game that people want back, but do it in the right way, make it more reliable, make it bulletproof, as you say, and hopefully bring us some other more exciting titles in the future. So, you know, we really appreciate you coming on and being so open with us. You're welcome. I guess we are at the stage now where you're not the only one who wants to talk to us. So we will probably be busy in the time to come. So, yeah, that's part of the pinball industry, isn't it? It's a strange industry when you look at it. Everybody wants to know exactly what you're doing in the smallest detail. I don't know if there's too many other businesses in the world that work that way. But it's cool. It's a small, cool thing. So, yeah. Yeah, and we had to wait before we talked to anybody to see if we think we can pull this off. And currently, we all think it looks pretty good. And we think that the game will be nice. Right. Yeah. You know, people watch the original, and if you guys are doing all of these improvements to it to make it function better, I don't see how you can go wrong. One last thing. This show airs on December 18th. Is it my understanding that you guys are also going to roll out some sort of official reveal on that day so people can see pictures and all that and kind of relate to what we're talking about? And if so, where can they see this? We will roll it out on our social media pages where we have already posted all the teasers and that stuff. So, yeah. Yeah, you will find Pinball Brothers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and usually we put the same stuff out on all three at the same time. Your teaser program went for a very long time. Who was responsible for that? Who picked those pictures that were so vague? That must be me. But every picture I put out there is from the game. Interesting. So rolling coal on ice is, of course, something else or water drops on. What was it? I can't remember. On gold is the head of the alien. There was one that was really kind of obscure and I kind of recognized it because I was doing research on another project. And so I was curious if I was correct. Did you use was one of the images a gun muzzle flash? yes go man but that is drawn and drawn yeah oh no sure but i just you know most people look at the ship and they're like what the hell is that and i look at i go that looks like a muzzle flash it's a little squished but uh yeah so i but i never you know there's no way i could tell unless you know you go to the source so now i know yeah and it will be it will be lit with an insert because uh it's the sentry gun oh okay right right right all right cool so that's gonna like pulse with a like an LED if you turn the spinner then you hear the fire sound and now you will even see the guns fire very nice as Chris said this is our holiday show so do you guys have any holiday messages for our listeners before we call it yeah don't eat too much play table don't get too drunk excellent well thank you guys again yeah Roger Asa really appreciate your time doing this and picking us to go first and all that that's very cool of you and we're going to do you justice and we look forward to seeing the roll out of this game and what you guys have planned for the future. A lot of exciting times coming I guess. Excellent. Definitely. Happy holidays guys and thanks again for joining us. Thanks for having us. Happy holidays and happy new year. Well thanks to Roger and Alexander for such a candid and personal insight into the Pinball Brothers and best of luck to those guys. Yeah we recorded this interview about a week ago so one of the things we talked about to the Pinball Bros after the recording was a great thing they're doing for the talent that was involved with the first game. They never really saw the financial benefits that they might have hoped for with the game. Like a paycheck. So Roger said, also on the old design team, we did not bring them on board for any updates, but we brought them back for a royalty deal so they get paid for the work they did on the game and they didn't get paid for it highway. So I think that's really cool that they're trying to make whole all these people that put creative energy into this game that is sought after and people are still excited about. So hopefully they do see some benefit from that. I think that and this interview are going to shed a very much brighter light on this company as opposed to the darker one that's been forced on them for the past couple of years by other people. Yeah. All right. Our first order of business before we close the show. Let's give away a Led Zeppelin signed trans light. How poorly can you draw? We're having a bad art contest. just draw your favorite Led Zeppelin album cover in your own unique crappy way and post it on our Facebook page along with nothing more than your shirt size. If you say anything more in the comments, you are disqualified. We'll draw one random winner, and the contest ends December 31st. So get your crayons out, guys. This is a signed translate by the team that worked on Led Zeppelin over at Stern. And one more thing, Christian, it's our favorite time of the show, the time where we get to give away prizes that have already been won. And dude, there are so many prizes to give away. Let's kick things off with the Paper Flock Stern 30th Anniversary book that we offered up last episode. The question was, Which pinball machine title has appeared on a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade float? So let's go to the Paper Flock guys to see what the answer was. The answer is, Who's Tommy? So multiple people came in with an answer immediately after our episode came out. So I think people are kind of getting a little bit of an edge here, knowing that we pose these questions at the end of the interview, because an hour after our two and a half hour episode came out, we already had answers. Unfortunately, the first four or five were not right. But then there was a long stream of correct answers. The very first correct answer came from a gentleman named Spencer Klingin, and he is the proud winner of the 30th anniversary book from Stern. So congratulations, Spencer. Congratulations, buddy. that book will be being sent out to you from the guys from Paper Flock all the way out to you in Rancho Cordoba, California. I wish I lived there. Doesn't it sound awesome? Rancho Cordoba. It sounds like a car commercial with Ricardo Montalban. News from Chrysler. Rancho Cordoba. Rich, who's getting leather? A Mexican dish with a lot of beans and rice. we have got the holiday special contest the super awesome stocking giveaway which i have to say man it's the best contest ever i love getting cards from our listeners i really appreciate everyone who sent them in almost everyone came with really nice handwritten notes from our listeners i'm going to personally send out christmas cards to everyone who sent me one and chris won because you know it's christmas and we got to share the love okay we're going to draw the winners today for both of our stockings, but before we go into who won, I do want to just recap what's going to be in these stockings. So, Chris, you didn't really tell us what's going to be in yours, so why don't you cover maybe a few of the things that are going to be in your stocking? Some of the things? Well, let's see. We have, well, we've got a great photography book by a guy in New York whose name slipped my mind because I'm old as fuck. But I know it's a book you put out. You made 100 editions, and he sold out. and this is one of the first printings. We also have a pair of pin shades. We also have a collectible pint glass and key chain from Pintastic with my artwork on it. There are going to be some art prints in there that I'm not going to describe, but I'm sure you won't be disappointed. And there's a bunch of other stuff, but I think the thing that is, at least from a receiving standpoint, most impressive, is that it will include an original piece of Batman art, not a print. This is an actual drawing made with art supplies and stuff. It's an actual drawing, and it will be personalized to you. That is very, very cool, man. All right, well, just to cover, I can't compete with that, but I will go over a few of the things that are in mine. I have a merry, flippin' Xmas t-shirt, a one-of-a-kind, super awesome pinball stocking, a pinball notebook that says money can't buy happiness, but it can buy pinball machines, a box full of super awesome pinball swag, a two-pound candy cane, a boatload of Hershey's chocolate straight from Chocolate World, a custom pin gulp for the winner made by Mrs. Pin, a pair of pin shades, and a $100 gift card to Pinball Life. And I'm also going to throw in one or two small gifts as well that will be surprises to the recipient. Because you're trying to make yours sound better now. Well, no, dude, I can't compete. I fully appreciate that I cannot compete with a hand-drawn Batman. I actually forgot there's going to be a ton of swag in there too in mine. Stickers and pins and t-shirts and stuff. I left that out. Well, I left a bunch of stuff out. Anyway, if you didn't enter, now you know what you missed out on. A simple Christmas card and a 20 cent stamp or whatever the hell postage is these days could have got you all of this shit. So maybe next year you want to be a little quicker with your Christmas cards. We do have a good stash of them. So we're going to pick them out. And I made a recording with my daughters and they chose the winners. So let's go to that right now. Hey girls, are you ready to pick the winners of our super awesome stocking contest? Yeah! Alright, I have a huge stocking here. At the very bottom of this stocking are a bunch of pieces of paper. They're all the same size and shape. Penderella, I'm going to have you pick a name first. And whoever you choose is going to win Christopher Franchi's amazing stocking full of awesomeness. Are you ready? Yes. Alright, you're going to have to reach way down into the bottom of that thing. Hi. It's a big stocking. Pull it on out and read the name. Can you read it? Joshua Clegg. Congratulations, Joshua. You have won Christopher Franchi's stocking. Dude, that is an awesome stocking. That's a really, really good prize. Okay, so next up is the winner of Daddy's Stocking, full of great stuff. Princess, you are up. Reach in and see who won my Christmas stocking. All the way down to the bottom. Thanks. Who's the winner? The winner is Scott Elliott. All right, Scott Elliott. Congratulations, my man. We will be getting those stockings out to you ASAP. Girls, do you guys have any messages, any holiday messages for our listeners? Merry Christmas. Thank you. How about you? Well, we all know that this year has been hard for everyone, but I hope that everyone has a great Christmas. That's really, really nice. All right, guys, Merry Christmas, and back to the show. Congratulations to the winners. We're going to get these out ASAP. Keep in mind that the United States Postal Service is getting slammed, so I'm doubtful these will get to you by Christmas. But it will be like a second Christmas when these arrive because they're going to be freaking awesome. Before we go, because it's the holidays, I want to thank some people for giving you a round, and that would be our sponsors, Cointaker, Chicago Gaming Company, and Back Alley Creations. We don't take a nickel from these people for sponsoring our show. All they do is give us stuff to give you, and they've been very, very generous over the year, and we couldn't be happier to have them. In particular, I'd like to call out some people that have actually become family, and their love for our show has gone beyond sponsorship. and they do so much for us and we're talking about chris and melissa at coin taker like when i say family i'm not kidding i'm like i talk to these people daily every day there's not a day that goes by that i don't talk to them and they sent us some uh some great gifts that we talked about earlier they've provided some great prizes and they threw a freaking tailgate party for us with yeah a ton of people a ton of food lots of games and it's just been incredibly supportive all the way around. So we really wanted to highlight them and just give them a solid shout out and say thank you for everything that they've done for us over the last few months. Yeah, they're already planning the second tailgate party. They're so excited. So look for that in September. But Chris and Melissa, we love you both very much. We're very proud to be part of your family and we're thankful that you sponsor our show. So thank you. And as a gift to all of you listeners from them, they're so generous. They have created a special limited edition Super Awesome Pinball Show shirt that they want to give to 12 of you people. So what we are going to do is we are going to pick 12 of the cards that didn't win the Super Stocking, and we're going to give you shirts. And I can tell you that we had enough cards to make this work, but we didn't have a ton more. So I think that most people who sent us a card are going to win a t-shirt. So congratulations to pretty much everyone who sent us a card. You're going to get something. Make it easy on us, please, because we're swamped. If you sent us a card, please send an email to superawesomepinball at gmail.com with your address and your T-shirt size, and that will enable us to get your shirt to you. If we don't get that, if you don't send that to us, you're not going to receive your free shirt. Sorry, but we're way too busy to deal with all this crap. Thank you, everyone who sent us a card, and I'm glad that we could show you some holiday love in return. Everyone, honestly, who wrote these cards were great. They sent us very personal messages and said some really nice stuff, so we're happy to be able to send you something back. One more thing before we go. Coming up January 1st, which will come before our next episode does, Twippy Voting starts. So we wanted to promote this because Jeff does a really great job, and he works very hard to put this together, and so we want to make sure it's successful. And one way it's successful is that people vote, And then he knows you're listening, he knows you're interacting. So it's very important. Please show up and vote. Vote for all your favorites. Christian and I, I know, have really worked hard over the past year to provide you guys with some good entertainment. So hopefully we've earned your consideration in the podcast department. But certainly vote for your favorite, whichever one you like the most. So in order to vote, go to thisweekinpinball.com after January 1st, and you'll find all the information there on how to vote. Well, Christian, that does it for the holiday episode. another fantastic episode I had a great time doing it with you and just hearing the holiday music in the background gives me the warm and fuzzies I wanted to say to you that I also feel that you and your family are part of my extended family now I've had a great time this year and I wish you and your awesome family and your two beautiful kids a wonderful and safe holiday season and a happy new year I look forward to doing this with you for another year that was super nice man I have something as well well it's been one hell of a show. Thank you to all of the pinball celebrities for allowing us to crash your holiday parties. To the pinball brothers for being open with us and giving us an exclusive look at what they've been up to. To John John for telling us all about Pinside Secret Santa. And to all of our listeners who have been so damn good to us over the last year. And of course, thank you to my most excellent partner in crime, Mr. Christopher Franchi. Happy holidays, my friend. You are more than just a co-host. You're definitely family. And I wish you nothing but the best holiday season. Can't wait to do this with you in 2021. And with that, we wish everyone a super awesome holiday season. We will see you all next year. Happy holidays everybody. Good night. And Dr. Finn Get up off your asses And go to bed Because it's super awesome If you'd like to drop us a line or ask a question, we can be reached at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. Questions or comments may be read on the air. The original content of this podcast is copyright 2020 Asshat Radio Productions. The comments, your opinions, shared by the cast and guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the sponsors. Coin Taker, Chicago Gaming Company, and Batgalley Creations. Their sponsorships of this show only serve to add to their continuing support of the pinball community. Cause we're gonna be legends! Come get their attention! What we're doing here ain't just gaming. It's about to be legendary! Okay, okay, show's over. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hey, you fucking chalupa suck! Now it's time for some funny bloopers. I can't hit that note. I don't know. I can't do that anymore. You couldn't hit that on your best day. They spelled extreme like a girl when I was a kid. I could hit that note higher. They had to make dogs tilt their head, but not anymore. Not anymore. Now I've settled into my... This is Chris Frenchy, 107.3 pillow talk. Coming up, we've got some Tony Orlando and Don. Dude, you would never be able to maintain a romantic, like, radio station because you would immediately talk about **** or... It's 101.7 Tinder Radio. Lay your head down, palm the pillow, pull your blankets up, and... Oh, sorry, I Dutch-ummed you. I think that's exactly how it would go. I think that one left a ****. No. man no I'll be right back I want it clean for you do not put that in the bloopers do not put that in the bloopers oh Christ that's exactly where it's getting no it is not Chris do not put that in there do not end our holiday show with a fucking joke that's going in the bloopers No, dude, no. No, Chris. Bad. You're a fucking killer. All right. Great, I don't have anything to drink either. Oh, shit, I got some cold coffee here. Hang on a minute. Oh, a little laugh and a little coffee in my mouth. Do not end our holiday episode here. It's only funny to you, man. It is only funny to you. I'm just laughing at you, not the joke. I'm not laughing at the joke. I'm laughing at that line. Don't ruin our beautiful holiday magic with... Oh, shit. My face hurts. Please let me quit. Oh, man. No. Oh. It was very satisfying.