You know, I'm really proud that after all these years of doing Canadian Pinball Podcast, I can say I've never taken a single dollar from anybody. I've never sold my show out. I've never said that my integrity as an objective pinball podcaster has a price. I'm not going to turn over my sort of like reputation to help anybody move further their agenda to help them sell more product. Because if you're trying to give people in this hobby an objective opinion about these games, about these companies, how can you do that when you take money from people trying to sell these products? you're legitimately turning over your sort of like journalistic integrity for sale and i don't understand it none of the people in the pinball content space need the money and the distributors are not hurting these damn distributors are making about 1500 to 2000 for every single le and collector's edition they sell and so is that the price of your integrity of your content And then don't get mad that people say you're a shill when you start out your show with advertisements for other people out there. Look, and I understand why a distributor would want that because you want to hand over your audience for what? A thousand dollars a month, fifteen hundred dollars a month is your ability to speak freely, to speak openly about these companies. Is that all it's worth? And so over 12 years, I've done a little bit more than 39 podcasts about pinball. I've done over 1100. And in all of those years, I've never taken a single dollar from a distro, from a manufacturer, from an accessory company, from anybody. Because in the end, the funny thing is this, and the lesson in life is this. This podcast has made more money than all of those other content creators who take the sponsorship dollars. Sponsorships like this. I gotta address the elephant in the room. You're probably looking at me and you're like, something's weird. Dude looks weird. Well, and yeah, man, I'm just going to sit here. I'm going to put some pin balm on my lips. I'm not sponsored by pin balm. Hold on to that thought for a second, because before we fully roll into the episode, I just want to give you a quick word from our sponsor, flipping out pinball. Are you looking for a new pinball machine, a used pinball machine, or to trade in your old pinball machine for something new? Look no further than Flip N Out Pinball. They can handle all your pinball needs. They ship anywhere in the United States, and they will give you the best experience in the business. Check out the link to Flip N Out Pinball in the video description for more information. Now, back to the video. Now back to having some integrity. Ralph, you make such good content. You don't need the money. I'll give Ralph. What should I give him? What should we raise like $2,000 a month to get the ads away from the shows? And so, look, again, I mean it. I understand why Zach and Nicole would do it. It's smart marketing. But, man, it doesn't matter what anybody would offer me. You know, maybe everybody does have a price, but you know that the money these guys are getting is not worth it. And then I heard something else when I was just trying to listen to the George Gomez interview. And this one's even crazier. So I get you're going to do an ad for flipping out. I mean, they really I mean, forget the pinball network. I mean, they're just going out and they're just getting their name out there. And again, it's smart. I heard they were the number one distributor for Harry Potter pinball. So congratulations, Nicole and Zach. I hear you guys are crushing it, but here's what's crazy. Imagine this. Imagine you're sitting on some inventory that you can't sell. So you turn to a content creator that's supposed to be giving objective opinions and you give them a promotional code so their audience can get a discount on a game that's not selling and you try to sneak it in right at the end. Listen to this. Scott, we've got an amazing episode today. I'm excited for it. Plenty of Stern machines are being released right now. We just had the Jaws 50th that came out. But if you want some new Stern pinball machines, where are you getting them, Scott? I'm going to call Zach and I'm going to call Manny at Flip N Out Pinball. There's a lot of great options out there, and there are some that are coming out too. So reach out. Looking for accessories too. I'm always looking for ways of making my machine look a little better. Also, any old games that you may be interested in. they have a good program that you can find some old ones too so zach and nicole many flipping up in ball definitely if you're looking for that fun house too just uh type in loser kid in your promo code on checkout or talk to zach and nicole and they'll get you set up for that to get a new fun house in your house what is that did you hear that like oh and if you're also looking for a fun house like you know use the promo code so i did i went to the website i used the promo code and you get Off the game If you put in that promo code So wait a minute now Media outlets are now discounting games for distributors if you put in their promo code So how much money do you think they get for every funhouse that is sold now with this new discount? Again, gang, I'm just here to tell you I don't like this stuff. This is not how it's supposed to be. content creators are not supposed to be helping distros move their unsold inventory it pleases me to introduce you to a new show from the pinball content creator who doesn't take money from anybody over 13 years way more than 39 episodes and no beards have been dyed I was raised in a dying town, yeah. I missed my drums. They've been my friends since 21 still. I'm burning out. You'll probably die before I make you proud, yeah. Welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast. What is the price of freedom? What is the price to say whatever you really feel? What is on your mind? Welcome to Canada land, people. I know, I know, I know. I should be welcoming all the people with open arms. Canada, you're doing it again. they're not going to accept your apology. Look, I really, really love the interviews that Loser Kid does, even when Scott's reading those ads. Like, you can see it in his eyes. He doesn't even want to be saying this stuff. Scott, freedom is right around the corner. Retro Ralph, we need his positive vibes in pinball. We used to be like brothers, and now he won't even pick up my phone calls. He won't even respond to pictures of my beautiful children. Ralph, let me tell you something. Kale and I have a plan. We're going to get you back, brother. We know, we know you're not having fun, bro. We know you're hitting that vape, brother. We're going to get you back because we run a roll through expo the way we should. The best pinball content creators arm and arm, But the way you join the NWO, the way you have integrity for life is you got to tell the truth. You can't take the money. You got to just be content with not taking the money. And I can't tell you all of these years. It's obvious, right? It's so thinly veiled when a new game comes out. Like who's able to just tell you it's not good. Heck, even I signed an NDA with barrels of fun. and I've been ragging on Dune as a theme. I ragged on Labyrinth as a theme. They're both not good themes. I just saw yesterday, Barrels of Fun put up an image of the factory and they wrote, it's so awesome seeing Dune machines fly out the door. What's the problem with the picture? There's nobody in it except for some dude. It looks like he's just lost inside the factory. why if you want to connote that games are going out the door that they're flying out the door what time of day would you take the photo would you take it when nobody's there and no games are being built or would you take it when people are there it's just comical to me nobody believes this spin anymore but there are people they won't tell it like it is because they want to get invited it back to barrels of fun. There are people that won't tell you that King Kong LE is a ripoff because they want to get invited back to Stern. And as we're in this little window now where we're waiting for the next Stern game, I don't even know who to trust anymore. Where do you go? I don't even know if I can trust myself because I don't even know anymore. I wish there was more balance, some balance to the force as we think about Star Wars right around the corner. are we going to get balance to the force? Is Stern going to make these pinball content creators pay their own way to go see the game? I'll tell you this right now. I'll tell you this right now. The way it should work, the way it really should work is all of these content creators shouldn't have to sell out their integrity. They shouldn't. What should really happen when you have over a certain amount of followers, when you have a certain amount of sort of clout and sort of influence in this nano space. And it is a nano space. I mean, Ralph, God bless his soul. When Ralph puts up a gaming video, some of them get like a hundred thousand views. Now, arguably, I don understand anyone who would collect arcade one but still it a much bigger audience You put up a pinball video the most you ever going to get is maybe 5 to 8 views I think maybe Harry Potter, the featurette, maybe got 20,000 to 30,000. When you think about that for a minute, there are 2 billion Harry Potter fans on planet Earth. You launch a pinball machine, and you can't even get 100,000 views. Now, you probably have to put some paid media behind that to get more eyeballs. But the real part, and I mean this when I say this, the real part that kills me, grown men who cannot tell you how they really feel about a pinball machine because they are worried about hurting their ability to go back to those companies. They're worried about their relationship with the individuals at those companies. Okay, so I just want to say this right now. I think Mark Seiden is an amazing man. I'm not sure if Jersey Jack is handing him another title to make. He had a chance at the plate with Avatar. He's a super nice guy. When I went to Jersey Jack to see Avatar, you know, did I feel bad about giving my opinion, my real opinion about the game after meeting Mark and how nice he is as a person? Of course I did. But I would not tell you something I didn't really feel about the game because as someone who's speaking to you as a community member, someone who might be thinking about spending somewhere from $12,000 to $15,000 on a product, I think it's important for me to tell you something that's not trying to help the company sell the product but trying to help you make the right decision. and there's a big difference there. And I don't think Avatar is a great machine and neither does the market. And we see the prices sinking and sinking every single month. It's not a terrible game. It's a beautiful looking game, but it's soulless. And that's my overall feeling about the game. There's a lot of soulless pinball games out there and you know what they are. It's like Kong. It's a game that's not soulless. It's just not enough. Every single version of the game looks the same. We're not clicking with this CGI, not even CGI, just like really sort of like mediocre graphics. This stuff looks like a video game from, I don't know, maybe like 20 years ago. And people are just not going to plunk down this much money when you gave them stuff like Godzilla, when you gave them assets like in Star Wars, when you gave them so much more. And it's not just about getting the assets, gang. It's like John Wick has all of the assets. Gun Gate did not kill John Wick. It's just we're not vibing with it. And I just would love in this pinball space, we just got more honesty about stuff you're vibing with and stuff you're not. Now, look, you might vibe with everything. And I will say this in the larger scheme of things, with everything going on in the world, pinball is a toy. It's fun. All of it is fun. What we do as content creators, as a community, it's fun. It is like so silly to everybody else out in the world that we would spend this much money on a coin operated device that is hard to move, that is really heavy and bulky, that takes up a lot of space in your home and you're not making any money off of it. I love when I talk to Kale, this dude who operates Electric Bad Arcade, you know he's my new homie now. You notice how like he's not giving me any money to promote him. Chris and Melissa over at Cointaker will give you the best service in the industry. And they did not pay me any money to say that. Mike at Automated will give you an incredible deal. And there's no Canada promo code. In fact, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to talk to Mike over at Automated and we're going to set up a Canada promo code. And if you put it in, it's going to charge you $500 more for your game. And we're going to charge you a tax on me selling out for all of you. All right. That's how it's going to work. See, you can say nice things and you can say not so nice things. And there doesn't have to be any money exchanged. You know, when I hear people buying from flipping out, I don't hear bad things, but I'm just going to go with the people I know, the people that are near me. And that's how it usually works with distributors. That man is like, I just wish there was more. I wish there was more objectivity. And it's hard. I get it. It's hard because like I was saying, the world's a crazy place. And, you know, if you think pinball is not a rich person hobby, you need to go zoom out a little bit. Yeah, you don't have to be rich to play pinball. That's how it was supposed to be. But when it comes to buying pinball machines, you have to be pretty damn well off financially to absorb where these games are at. So look, we're like a few weeks away from Star Wars and I just think it's gonna be really hard to find some objective opinions about the game. You know what's funny, let's talk about Pinball Brothers for a minute because I do think that the Pinball Brothers to me are a company that in very very dire straits And by that I mean I don believe them And when companies start misleading us I not going to say it a lie because they are purposely leaving out really important information. So Colin over at the Kineticist reached out to them and asked them, have you sold 650 units if you've only got 150 left. Are you ready for their answer? This answer sounds like Damien Harden and Andrew Highway and Robert Mueller and Marty Robbins and Kevin Kulik and John Papadiuk all got together and created an AI chatbot to kickback this answer. Have you sold 650? When you said we're going to make 800 predators and there's 150 spots left. Does that mean you've sold 650? They said the following. We have filled our production capacity except for 150 games and are very happy about the big interest for predator. What is that? Our production capacity? we filled it except for 150. This is the ultimate spin I've ever seen maybe in the history of pinball. So what does that mean? Has anybody ever, ever released a pinball machine and said, hey, we're only going to make this now for like two, three months and that's it. A game that's been in development for well over a year, a license they paid a lot of money for, all of this is them in denial that they released a game that nobody wants. They haven't even sold 200 out of 800. They barely sold a hundred to 150. This means to me, they're done. How are they going to move on past this? How are they going to absorb this failure? Okay. I'm just going to say, how are they going to absorb it? Oh man, Canada, what's up with this podcast? You want some exclusive news? Okay, Big Bang Bar is coming back. There you go. Have you heard it from anybody else? Big Bang Bar is coming back. I'll leave it to you guys to figure out who's making it. But Big Bang Bar is coming back. The original artist worked on an art package for it before he passed away. So Big Bang Bar coming back. Is it going to come back the day after you die like Medieval Madness Merlin's edition? Where are the Twilight Zones that are coming out? Oh, man, what's going on in Pinball? Good day to what's got you all riled up. I'm just telling you, I'm just telling you, we are so close to Star Wars. I can't wait to see it. I had a rumor, a couple of rumors. I want to tell you how the rumor mill works. It's so funny. So I got one rumor that was like, JK Rowling is on to the AI debacle at Jersey Jack and she shut down Jersey Jack for weeks. They've been shut down for weeks. I mean, literally someone came to me with that information and wanted me to share it. Okay. So you know what I did? I hit up Brett Abbas. Yo, Brett, someone said this. He's like, yo, that's total BS. They're flying out the door. And unlike Barrels of Fun, they're actually flying out the door. The other rumor I heard was that on the new Stern Star Wars game, there's a lot of Rey and the Rey storyline. I'm like, oh, it's not going to be episode seven, eight and nine. And then I went back to my real source, who, by the way, works at Stern Pinball. Oh, go try to find out who that is. And he's like, nope, it's the original. trilogy, Kaneda. Don't worry. All right. So there you go. Kaneda's outing people. It's going to be a witch hunt over at Stern Pinball. Who is it? I'm going to tell you right now. The leak of all of my information is Gary Stern. He calls me every day. He's like, Kaneda, can I sponsor your show? I love it. I love how you keep everybody honest. I love your outfits. I love how you won't take the almighty dollar. I love how you could have done so much more with those hours you spent on those 1100 episodes. You could have made so much more money if you just sold out. But you didn't. You stayed real. You stayed true to your Sicilian roots. You gave everybody an offer they couldn't refuse. You gave them a pinball podcast that wouldn't take the money. Everybody happy. What is it Tuesday morning? Congratulations to Nicole and Zach. You've done a smart move. You got these content creators to make ads for you. It's genius. Now you got me to make an ad for you. I can tell Zach is laughing over there in Indiana. I fell right into it. You know, and you didn't have to pay for this ad. And this one will get more people talking. All right, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We'll be back. Star Wars, maybe this Friday. Take it away, MGK. Burn my last shit Lose all contact Make my own death Make me feel like I'm right Run rebel run Don't let them turn you into what they want I'm bad to the bone