Need a pinball machine? Another pinball machine? Maybe some fat accessories like a topper or a shooter rod? Yes, you do. Hit up Jeff over at Mad Pinball for the best products and service, and use our promo code NudgeCast, and get a free exclusive t-shirt when you buy any game. And you also get free shipping on any new in-box stern. So many great games are out right now. Go pick one up. Hit up Jeff at MadPinball.com, and don't forget to tell them we sent you. Nudge! Hey everybody, you're listening to NudgeCast, the official podcast of Nudge Magazine. That intro music you just heard was the song Glass by Stiff Richards, who I have been obsessed with lately. They have two albums. They're both awesome. Highly recommended. As always, I'm Ian Jacoby, a.k.a. Doc Monday, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Nudge Magazine. With me is my co-host, Shane Toll of the band Silverstein and the Lead Singer Syndrome podcast. Hey, Shane. How's it going? Ian, I'm fantastic, dude. We're back again. I love that intro music, dude. Stiff Richards, super sick. It's got that perfect blend of old school and new school. I love it. Yeah, man. They just rock so hard. I don't know what it is about Australia that they just keep coming out with good rock bands. Probably fear of death. Everything can kill you down there. So I think that's what it is. It is. They're kind of rough and tumble down there. One time I compared wormhole people to Australians because I think a lot of Texas and Australia, there's common... It seems like they love guns. They love fun hats. They love beaches. You know, there's a lot of crossover there. I think you're on to something, man. I think you're on to something. Yeah, and this is exciting because I think both of those places also have sort of an aggressive culture, which is going to fit with the theme of this episode, which is fighting, I would say. Yeah. Yes, I mean, people have already clicked on this. They already know our guest is somewhat controversial in the pinball world. Yes. To say the least. Yeah. So we, of course, are talking about the crown prince of pinball, Kaneda. Chris Kularis joined the show, which it started off actually kind of on the wrong foot. I do remember that because I called him by his government name. And then you guys were like, Kaneda. And I was like, I didn't know I had to call him. I thought we could treat each other like real human beings. Like, you didn't have to call me Doc or something. Yeah, I don't know. We did this a little while ago, so it's not fresh in our minds. But I do remember sitting there listening to you guys arguing for a long, long time, which is why this is going to be a two-part episode. Yes, a two-part. So, yes, fasten your seatbelts. Get ready for this one. I'm going to say this will be entertaining regardless. Agreed. Absolutely. Of what your opinions are on what Kaneda does on his show and his past controversies. This is a good listen. So yes. I am not anti-Kaneda at all. Like, you know, at all. I don't think so. Obviously, I'm not either or we wouldn't have had him on the show. Exactly. But also... But there are people that that you know don't fuck with kaneda oh i would say this podcast is for those people specifically because i really tried to when you said that i was arguing with him really i was trying to be the voice of like you know the common part like for me this is my cycle with kaneda is like i love i think he's so entertaining i love listening to him and then after a while you start to like disagree with everything he says and you start to get a little bit burned out a little bit burned out and then you know what that's the point when you walk away for a little while you got to walk away you know and then and then you come back but i really wanted this to you back he does he always does because he's he's well he's like one of the most entertaining guys out there for sure i'll give that to him so i just i wanted to be that person you know what i mean when when you're watching a canada episode you're like oh i wish someone would just like question just some of that stuff so if you guys like that this is going to be this is the conflict episode so we're actually starting off our first uh little segment that we're going to talk about is an article that i recently wrote called budge the nudge which is also a sort of conflict-based game show that uh we we recently started over at nudgepinball.com so if you like fighting uh this is the episode yeah so budge the nudge this is this is interesting dude um before the article came out you were just texting me photos and giving me the concept to which i was like what the fuck because it's um game show is one way to put it um but from what i understand the gist of it for people that haven't checked out the article yet over on nudgepinball.com is you brought a game to a party yep and set it up and said to the party goers, we're going to play pinball. And if you beat me, you get a magazine. But if I beat you, then I get to take a picture of you making an extremely ugly face. That's the gist, right? That is it. That's the entire... See, for me, it's like the dumber the game show, the better, right? Like usually the less rules, the easier it is to understand the better. So for me, that's really easy, right? And we're also looking for humiliation. And so that was kind of part of this. I'm like, what can I do to kind of humiliate these people, right? And so obviously taking an ugly picture. But yeah, you got the gist of it for sure. So I've had this idea for a while, but I haven't really had a chance to try it out. And then I was actually contacted by this woman, Solveig. It was her birthday. She's like an indie rock indie rocker based out of Minneapolis, which I thought we were going to be in Minneapolis. It turned out we had to drive all the way to Mankato, which is like an hour south. Like, dude, I'm sure you've driven into Canadian darkness that looks a lot like this. But it was just like, you know what I mean? It's like you're seeing like a lonely farmhouse like out in the distance or something. And then and then we kind of came to this college town. But yeah, so basically she asked us to come take pictures. She asked me to come take pictures, and I said, what if I brought a pinball machine and we tried this idea out? So I got my buddy Dan, Dan Hanson, who's an amazing pinball tech and repair guy, and he helped start MPC, the North Star Pinball Collective in Minneapolis. So I asked him for a game, and he said, I have a Xenon, and I'm like, that would be perfect for 25-year-old hipsters. That's the game you want. so it is perfect too because the rule set it makes it a little more fair i think like you know it's not like i'm trying to think of a game like venom or something like that where it's like you have to know to start the multiball or stack the multiball and if you do that it's like 100 million this is like definitely a lot less forgiving yeah it's yeah it's it's a simple rule set but also like it's easy to get just beat by someone who doesn't know what they're doing like it was exactly It was a hard one for me, for sure. I gave away, I don't know, probably five or six magazines, maybe. Probably a couple more just to people that I was like, oh yeah, this is great, that they were messing with us. But it's one of those things where it's like, if you just get a couple locks in that gobble hole up top, you're good. And it bounces around in the pops for two seconds. All of a sudden, you have a 30,000 point lead, which can hold up in that game for three balls especially when especially when people are kind of uh you know under the influence so so okay yes and i'm sure they were i saw the pictures uh so i mean bringing a game like across the state lines that's no small feat yeah like you had to load the game up and bring it in and set it up um you know it's most people listening to this understand what goes into that but it's it's a lot well i knew it was a big ask for dan but i also knew dan is like a party guy and it was such a weird look i'll just be real like and dan had voiced this before we left he's like is it gonna be weird because we're like way older than these kids which was true i mean they're like 25 you know 25 26 right there like i'm not gonna out myself for for how old i am on the podcast but like i'm older than that so and and and i i look a little young but like dan does not look young right like there was going to be no hiding that part of it and so i think he was feeling kind of self-conscious but uh i just knew he's also down you know and uh and he doesn't usually kind of let stuff phase him too much and so like he was the right guy to ask like he had the technical knowledge to be able to do it i mean most people don't just have like a vibey game lying around that that's like yeah sure i can i can bring that over but i just knew like he would do a really good job he would take care of that side of it and i would take care of the like making it less weird side of it so yeah that was kind of the idea so yeah i mean obviously you are the editor-in-chief of a pinball lifestyle magazine correct and you've been playing pinball and you're like in the billion club on godzilla etc etc yeah yeah and i assume most of these party goers some of them had probably never played pinball before but if you said that you gave away four or five magazines that must mean you lost yeah four or five games now were you were you trying or did you let some people win oh i didn't let anybody win no absolutely not um i don't do that because i think it's i just don't i mean i think it's more fun and maybe that's part of my my problem is i should be doing that more but i think it's like people can tell when you're faking the funk like i never let i never liked that so i'm like no like let's play for real but yeah like i said there were times where it was like they just kind of just got it in the pops a couple times i had like a bad ball or two and um sure what was funny though is there were some people who could legit play you know like um there were a couple people where it was like they were familiar with the game they knew how to start like you know for for a multiplayer game they could they they knew how to start a two-player game especially this one kid i mean amazing that there's this kid in a bucket hat that you'll see in a lot of the pictures and he had his own camera there and he was like this weird like we were living in his movie for sure like he walks up to the game he obviously played pinball before it was like a total ringer like he was better at kind of like you know slapping the game kind of like when you're like hitting it and he like was killing slaps and just kind of like dancing to the music as he was playing i think he put up like 250 000 when i had like 125 or something like that and on his last ball like literally in the middle of him just playing he just like stopped and did like a backflip into like a break dancing party that was happening behind us and just started like i sent you some a video of it and and you can find the video on our instagram but it was insane i was like what you know and it was so great because i actually got a bunch of messages i put that up on the nudge instagram and i was getting messages from a bunch of people who are real good like ifpa pinball players they're like we need more of this in pinball you know they're like i wish i was at this pinball party i'm like yeah for sure like supposed to be fun you know and and that's what we love about places like electric bat is they kind of like bring that energy and um yeah so but that that kid was just such a i mean he was a trip man for sure okay so this is going to be an ongoing thing budge the nudge so if people listening to this want you to come and bring another yeah these game over to their party and maybe if you reside in you know the wisconsin minneapolis illinois area oh we'll go anywhere um no for real i will i mean why not right i think we got connects all over the place that's the one nice thing about running a pinball magazine is that you know i know operators nearly everywhere. And the one thing that I know about pretty much all those guys is they do like having fun. So if you want to get in contact with us, hit me up either our Instagram, uh, nudge magazine, or, uh, you can hit up like Gmail nudge pinball magazine at gmail.com was not thinking it through when I came up with that email, but, uh, yeah, nudge pinball magazine at gmail.com. Um, yeah, well, we would love to, we're already setting up some stuff. I'm in tentative talks right now with a pinball manufacturer who has a game release coming out and i think we're going to do a budge the nudge themed uh kind of like collab on that so um we'll have some pretty vibey pictures in the in the very near future so i do love it okay so you had to give away the magazines yes people get to take humiliating pictures of you as well no no one asked to do that which i was i would have i know i that's kind of the thing well i they all were just psyched to have the magazine i think because they're the nice ones with the nice cover. But yeah, no one asked. I've thought about that before. I have so many good, ugly faces that I'm ready. I'm ready for it. If anyone out there is listening and thinks they can budge this nudge, for sure, come find me. Well, dude, I love it. I love it so much. Are you ready to get into our main guest this week? My goodness, am I. Yes. Gotta ring that bell, because the fight's about to start. Round one. Here we go. I'll put a little ding-ding in here. Maybe the one from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out or something. Perfect. Yeah, exactly. Or is there anything that we can take from Champion's Pub, right? That's like a... Yeah, yes. Let's get ready to rumble. No, but seriously, here is part one of our conversation with Kaneda. Shane, do you have a drink? I do, yeah. I'm not drinking whiskey. I'm drinking white wine. Oh, okay. White wine. What do you got, Chris? Red wine. That's good. Oh, yeah. The decanters. I just didn't want to do it. Yeah. I did Manhattan's earlier, but it's just like, it hits so hard that... it's hard to like regulate you know such a strong drink oh yeah and i just didn't want to feel crappy tomorrow i get it dude uh let me check your audio real quick give me a give me a quick one two what's up what's up one two one two i think it's okay i think it'll be all right because we mix and edit we do this shit pro all right all right let's talk well shane i'm really excited i'd like to welcome to the show a six-time, should be seven-time, Twippy winner and host of Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, one of, if not the biggest pinball podcasts in the world. I have to say that, disclaimer, or I'll get an angry note from Zach Money. Please welcome the bad boy of pinball himself, Chris Koulouris, a.k.a. Kaneda. Yeah, it's just Kaneda. It's just Kaneda. Come on, man. I'm sorry. Bleep it. that would be actually funny. No, it's all right. It's all right. They all know. They all know. They've come at me. Okay. Yeah, I was going to say, like, you've been normalized at this point. Like, I feel like Kaneda is not, like, it's not a radical thing to like Kaneda anymore, is it? I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's people hate, people love. Exactly. People, you know, it's been around for over 20 years now, the avatar for Kaneda, like, on different forums. So it is legit now. I remember listening to your show one time in the car with my girlfriend. You know, she listens. She's like, wait a second. Kaneda's not even his last name? Where'd he get that from? And I go, I don't know. Just Kaneda. Wait, do you actually not know where Kaneda's from? Is it an anime thing? I don't know. Yeah, bro. I don't fuck with anime really, so I don't know. I know you're a big anime guy. I'm not an anime guy. I not even a big anime guy I just love Akira It was like the one big anime that crossed over in the sort of like mid 80s So if you were a geek then we passed around VHS tapes of it It was like the coolest thing ever The animation on it's amazing. Like it does. It still holds up now. It's just like, really, I always say as a stoner, I just like watching the like smoke in. It's 26 frames per second, which is incredible. Yeah, that's why it's like a work of art. So when you watch it and you know that like every second of that movie had 26 different fully colored illustrated frames it's an it's insane that is and kaneda is like the i mean that's the protagonist of the movie so yeah you're the good guy actually you're not that's it i am the good guy i'm the good guy in pinball too just we're just not at the end yet that's true yeah i wanted to actually just like start off with this because i feel like you don't get asked this too much but what do you like about pinball oh man easily it's like i love that it's just every game is unique so when you own a pinball machine unlike owning a classic arcade machine it's just random fun every time you play it and i don't think there's any other totally like arcade device where you could just own it and enjoy it and not get sick of it the way all the other stuff from like the 80s and 90s just gets old so fast. And I say that as I have like a Neo Geo behind me. These are not fun unless someone comes over to play with you. Street Fighter, I love fighting games, but they're not good unless someone else is equally as good as you comes over and plays. And let's be honest, gentlemen, when you're a grown man, nobody comes over ever to play your classic arcade machines. So you can own a pinball machine and still enjoy it. And then I just love the world under glass and how with every new machine, it's an opportunity to see how much creativity they can put into such a finite amount of space. I mean, that's a difficult creative ask. And that's why I think we love pinball because, and we're about to get a new game like in a week, like every time a new game comes out, I just find it so exciting to see what creations they can put in that tiny little area. It's true because for such a long time, pinball has really remained unchanged with the parameters. You've got roughly the same size game. The glass comes off. The lock bar comes off the same way. It's the same thing. It's still old but new in some way, right? It's still exciting when a new game comes out. And sometimes it's even hard to find a duplicate of a game, which is kind of amazing when you think of how many games come out a year now. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, there's really not – other than the fan layout games, a lot of it is just – there's still originality happening. What is the dimensions even, right? It's like what? Yeah. Like four feet by two and a half, and that's it. That's the sandbox. And nobody's decided to make it a foot longer or anything. Well, John Papadiuk. Well, right, yeah. Yeah, Magic Girl was a little bit longer. It's not like a company comes out and we're like, yeah, our games are like a foot longer than all the other. Like, nobody's done that. So it is interesting that the parameters remain so consistent. I was just talking about this, though, with Shane, like right before you got on. And basically it's like it is interesting to hear you talk that way because I agree with you. And like there is something sort of like statement PC about like owning a pinball machine. like right it's like a the sickest piece of furniture that you can have like it's so vibey and stuff but also like the just like playing it right like so for me it's like i don't even think about owning these things so much as like this is like a good thing to establish early on it's like i think this will be interesting because i am definitely a location player and you're like and your primary audience right is like home buyers i i would say right yeah for sure yeah absolutely like that's a valuable thing for you because dude your listeners guess who else is But Ian, guess who else's primary audience are homebuyers? Stern, Jersey Jack. Exactly. I would say homebuying is 80% of the market. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. You're absolutely right. I think that is who powers this industry for sure. But I think the 20% is like that's how you grow it. So it's interesting. I have this question for you actually. How do you grow it like that? Let me ask you. Let me stop you there. I'm asking. How do you grow it? So someone's at a bar and they have a few beers and they play a few pins. Oh, yeah, honey, I'm going to go home and order a $9,700. Get the hell out of here. Totally. No, I don't think you can do that. I don't understand how it grows. Exactly. No, I think what it is, well, if I'm looking at places like Electric Bat and those places, right, you're doing it through community. Like you would have like a league and like in Minneapolis here, they have like like home like home leagues, you know, where it's like a bunch of people band together. And that's like kind of the culture. So and that's how that's how a lot of people transition into buying games, I think. But like, no, I legit want to ask you, like, in good faith, I don't think one's better or worse than the other. But but how do you speak to the core audience, which is your audience, dude? like with also being able to like smartly because i think like the other audience is flexible they'll go with things that they think are lamer like godzilla is popular i don't think it's popular with like millennials or gen z people but they love that game you know like so what is the way forward where it's like it speaks to kind of like homeowners and can grow the hobby too right like forward yeah i mean there's two ways to grow the hobby you make amazing games and you price them right that's it if that happens more people will come into it because at the end of the day tell this to seth davis i've told this to george gomez you know they brought in a marketing company that did market research on future proofing pinball and how do we get kids to buy it that's how we ended up with john wick that's how we're gonna end up with some of these games they made these decisions and that's how they passed on back to the future is that is that for real like 100% the reason why they passed because they put back to the future in front of the focus group of these kids right and they're like well I've never seen that movie and on to the next right I thought nobody at Stern even wanted to make like none of the designers that's a lie okay that was a lie no designer wanted to make the greatest 80s movie of all like come on guys I feel like they probably They just went too young with the focus group, right? Because they're thinking like kids. They're like thinking people in their 20s. Like, no, people in their late 30s at this point are like young in pinball. No, they need to go with people that make $250,000 a year. Totally. Well, that's what I mean. It's like people in their late 30s and 40s. Yeah, and I keep telling this to George and Seth every time we meet about this. And Seth is on board with this. The way you grow pinball, you just take everybody who is in it right now, who loves it and get them to bring a friend into the hobby. Then you've doubled your size. And so to your guys' points, like people who make a quarter million a year or more, guess who they're friends with? Guess who lives on their block? Poor guys. People who make similar amounts of money who can get bit by the bug. You can take pinball to some poor neighborhood and set it up for the kids. You're not going to grow behind me. I think that's a little bit not exactly what I'm saying. But yeah, I hear you. That is the best way to do it. I think like – I mean I do just know people like anecdotally that buy pinball machines after they like get into it and then like buy two and three. And like that will be – that is a source. But you're right. Like I think you're uniquely tapped into what homebuyers like feel about stuff. And you know what's shocking, Ian, is this. It's like if you look at all of pinball marketing in the world, Stern's, all of their efforts are only targeting location and tournaments, right? We just saw the Stern Pro Circuit. I guess you could play at home on Insider Connected. But when's the last time they ever did anything, right, from a marketing standpoint that brought together the loyal customers who have bought all of their LEs? So I'll give you an example. I went into Stern Conference Room and I said to them, when was the, name me one moment in which you did something special for somebody who's bought $250,000 of your product. Have you ever done anything for them? Have you ever, you know, had a party for them? Have you ever given them early access to the next out? Nothing. And so when you, because, you know, for the longest time, they didn't have to do anything because they just assumed those people would buy every single game. but this is why i love where pinball is at right now it's a crossroads where it doesn't matter if you love it or not i think everyone now is having a a debate internally you know are we getting our money's worth and heck man nobody nobody's watching the last few years can be happy watching the incredible decline on most of these games right on the used market i mean it's that's it's staggering the losses that's a question i have here is just like do you think that pinball is in trouble like as an industry. Absolutely, it's in trouble. How many times, when I toured Automated and you saw those games, if you saw me walking through that distributor, how many unsold new in-box games are just sitting there? That's bad. And that's just one place. So if you add up hundreds of distributors around the world now sitting on inventory because they overbought during post-COVID, because during COVID, nobody had inventory. Beautiful time to be a distributor dealer then. But it's, you know, and like, look, I just did a show. There were 14 or 13 new games last year alone. Who's absorbing 14 titles if prices are where they're at, right? Of course, like three of them are probably 80% of the purchases, right? But, you know, three or four. But why aren't the themes better? Is that the problem? Is the problem that the themes aren't selling the games? Yeah. It's a huge problem. Are the themes too expensive? Nobody talks about what an IP costs. I have no idea what Uncanny X-Men costs versus if they went with the X-Men 97, which was rumored first, versus the movies. And I know – I mean we can probably just say Dungeons & Dragons is coming. We don't know yet if that's based on the movies or if that's just based on the game, which the IP would be different. I do not. I don't know. I don't know exact cost. I know that it's obviously more money once you have to pay the actors for their likeness, right, for the scenes. So a good example of this was Pirates of the Caribbean was probably the most famously devoid of IP but had the IP as the name of the game, Jersey Jack. So what I heard – Jurassic Park as well. Jurassic Park. I heard that Johnny Depp, just to get him, was a quarter million dollars extra to use his likeness from the movies. That's just him and his scenes, right? So that's not Keira Knightley and maybe Orlando Bloom is even extra. But it was a quarter million per movie. So if you wanted just his likeness and his clips over, what was it, five films? So then you're talking another $1.25 million. I'm always like, yeah, so what? You're a billionaire, so what? You'll sell more games if you invested that into the product. Here's the other thing, though, no one talks about. It's not just the next games. Shane, let me get this out before. Yeah, go ahead, man. They just needed to wait, dude. They needed to wait like two years. He was going to go through a costly divorce, right, famously. and then it's like bro no we're gonna give you 15 000 a movie and he's like hell yeah yeah but ever since he coined the term mega pint of wine now everybody loves the guy again he's bigger than ever his rate doesn't go down even though his oh his rates his rate will go down absolutely in the middle of being me too he went down but there's also a certain investment if you let's say you blow the bank on a game and you get fucking everybody and maybe it's not jersey jack that's going to do it but let's say stern does it and they make the greatest game ever of the best ip all that's going to do is grow the hobby in the long run nobody seems to think more long term than just okay your next game you know and then picking up the pieces from another failure it's like responding what i find really interesting about ip it's one of the greatest stern machines of all time as new movie clips and it's lord of the rings but when you play that game right they have the audio and the call outs from the film and it it really puts you into that movie in the perfect way right and i think i think the lcd screen has been a blessing and a curse with pinball and i think it it really i think has hurt the level of creativity that's happened on the playfield and under the glass because of relying on that lcd screen now is is dramatic in terms of like where we're going to apply the creative effort because you know some games get it done really well like godzilla is a great use of assets jaws is a great use of assets but i think you know now it's you you kind of have to go the full monty with the assets do you guys agree because like jurassic park now it's like for sure it's it's not great and you're right you're a slave you're a slave to the screen in a way that's like it actually doesn't pinball is not about screens right like when you play pinball you're not looking at the screen for the most part a lot of your stuff is actually solved when you're talking about like oh this is how much it was for johnny depp it's like you don't have to have johnny depp if you're not focusing so much on this and like focusing more on playfield stuff that's part of why pulp fiction was was a good totally good game too right it didn't rely on any video assets and there's so many iconic lines in that movie you know so hard for me to like yes i'd laugh because that's just like yeah we all ordered one like three years ago yeah there's that that's the only thing well hey bro this is the this is the beauty of being a location player we've been playing it for the last three years bro yeah we just go out there and play it for a buck yeah but like the thing is this like what you don't want to do with a theme ever is walk up to a theme you love and feel like it's missing, right? Just some of the most important paramount things about that theme are absent from the theme itself. And that goes beyond just clips and assets, right? When I walk up to Mandalorian, a Star Wars pin, and there's no use of the force with a magnet that's magical, I'm like, hard stop. How did this ever leave the drawing board? We're going to make a Star Wars pin with no force grabbing of the ball with a magnet. Same way when I – yeah, it's like you can't. That should have been – we got to figure this out before we make this game. What's funny about that game, I think, is that it's sort of universally disliked by both tournament players and by casuals, which is like really saying something. because it's like you'll meet tournament freaks and they're like, I love Rush. And I'm just like, I don't see it. I'm a fairly competitive pinball player and Rush doesn't make me hard. Isn't it sad though that Star Wars, the greatest movie, does not have two of the greatest pinball machines when Stern had a crack at Star Wars. And I hear they might make Skeleton Crew, which I don't know. I love the show. Not sure it needs the pinball machine version of it, But, you know, I think I would love it. A real question I have for IP is when does the exclusivity, when is it up? Why can't someone make another Star Wars pin? Like, this is it. We got to just take Steve Ritchie's uninspired game and live with it forever. And that is such a good question to you, Chris, because with games, like they're talking about all the remastered potential games now because Metallica was such a hit. So you mentioned Lord of the Rings, right? I have no doubt it would do well, but do they still have the rights to that game? Can they just do whatever they want? If they start bringing movie clips into it, is that going to add a whole other can of worms? Probably. What about all the actors? You mentioned Orlando Bloom. He's in both Pirates and Lord of the Rings. I don't know how it works. Nobody fucking knows how that works So the speculation is so no one knows how ip works and that so important to the hobby yeah well they did well they they know and george we don george knows well when you hear george talk you can hear his desire that i wish everybody knew the realities we face with licensing and merchandising and ip because if you did you wouldn't listen to idiots It's like Kine to go on and on and on about no guns on John Wick artwork because we couldn't do it. But look, here's the thing. I don't care. At the end of the day, I look at it like it's a product, right? It's a toy that is really expensive. And if you're going to put in the effort to make it, I don't give a S-H-I-T. You can say shit. Just make it right. Make it the right – make it right. Like make it right. It's like Jersey Jack. You're going to make Avatar and there's a big tree on Pandora that is the main – you go to the Pandora Park in Disney World, right? And it's like that big tree with the bioluminescent vines hanging down. And then I look down at your game, son, and it's a flat piece of plastic and you sold me that for $12,000 to $15,000? Get the F out of here with that. You know what I'm saying? This is what's so frustrating about this hobby is it's not that hard because all you got to do is go play the Bally Williams games from the 90s, and that stuff was insanely awesome. You get amazing themes like The Shadow starring Alec Baldwin. This is going exactly like how I thought it would. It's amazing. Going great. We get sucked into his world. He's just like, let's go, baby. You guys have like a list of questions. I do have some, and it's just like we'll never – We haven't even scratched the surface, dude. I asked one at the beginning, I think. What's your name? Exactly. I was like, what do you like about pinball? You're like, let me tell you about themes. No, I'm really interested in, dude, because you are a charismatic person in pinball. There aren't a lot of people like this, right, in this hobby. You do a niche thing, but you have a big personality. How did you get in? What was your first podcast? like when were you what was the start of this yeah i mean well they they banned me from pinside and is that what it was yeah they banned me and i said all right well you're not gonna silence me inside and so i did a podcast and that was it that was the genesis of it like 10 years ago and it was it was like i i grew up people follow you over um yeah someone yeah obviously how'd you have to go on with burner accounts and be like hey it's kaneda follow me here Bro, to guys like me, this is like my Lord of the Rings. This mythology is like, oh, this is the birth of Kaneda. This is like Sauron or something. Well, when I started it, there weren't many shows like there are now. So there was Nate Shivers who had an awesome show, Coast to Coast Pinball. So Nate was the dude I listened to all the time. Spooky had a podcast. You had a couple others. and that was like it. So when, you know, when you were searching for pinball podcasts back then, there might've been like three to five at most. Now there's a ton, but you know, I think what I did do well was just consistency and quantity. You could argue quality, but there was just always a consistent amount. But what my show always has done, two things that I think make it stand out. I don't care about being friends with the manufacturers. Once you accept that as like, I don't care. I want to talk freely and openly about products, even if it will get me on a blacklist. Like I didn't get invited to the Dungeons and Dragons media day next week. I did. You did. Yeah, right. Even with one of the largest audiences from a content standpoint. Way bigger than mine. No one's arguing. I don't care. Mine's cooler, for sure. Part of it, though, is you're also all of your listeners are behind a paywall, right? Now they are. Yeah, but before. Okay, maybe before they weren't. But I don't think this is about that, right? I don't know if it is or not at this point. Because those guys obviously fuck with you. All of Howard Stern's listeners are behind a paywall, correct? Yeah. That's true. That's a good point. Yep. And in the end, I always tell this. I have 700 plus on Patreon, probably another few hundred that steal it and log in without giving me a dime. That's hilarious. Can you imagine for $5 a month someone doing that? No, they will. Imagine the toxic personality that they're going to steal Kaneda. This person is like, put those people on a list, bro. Well, I know, but I hear people talk. They hear the episode, and I can see they're not the subscribers. They must have listened somehow. No, absolutely. But the thing is, is just even just like a thousand listeners, if you have a thousand listeners, which is not impossible to get, that's every single Stern LE they need to sell. So it's a decent amount of the potential buyer base of any manufacturer's launch. So, you know, look, we're nano, nano, nano influencers in a nano, nano, nano subculture. So yeah, start the podcast. It was free. When my show was free at the height, when I had a good interview, it had 5,000 listeners for that episode, which is great. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just woke up one day, I'm like, screw this. Been doing it, making nothing. Nothing. Now I can, end of the year, got to pay the IRS, but I can buy a pinball machine or two a year based on the Patreon, which again, it's not a lot. No, you're the only person making money on pinball content like that. I technically am, but I realize I'm a terrible business person, so I'm not making any money on it. I'm still shocked that people are still one foot in, one foot out. Because to me, it doesn't really make – I think some people – I get why some people would do it is they want more of the exposure that keeping – but I still do a lot of free stuff. No, you do. This stuff is free, and now I've opened my lives are free all the time, and the Saturday Morning Spectacular is all free. And I also uploaded all the old stuff before I went on Patreon. So there's like 500 free episodes if you want to go back and listen to some older stuff. Well, that's also a way to drum up new business too, right? I mean people aren't going to just pay $5 and not know what it is without hearing it because all the people coming into the industry – into the hot and now. You know what kills me, gentlemen, though? like a distro can sell three le's and make more money on the margins i love what he says this then all the hard work i do all month and like believe me like no i know it's crazy it's like real and i look and every time i say that believe me my distro friends hit me up you have no idea you have no idea like i'm like you've seen the warehouse with them stacked to the ceiling i was gonna say dude you want to you want to get a warehouse in connecticut and start piling machines to the ceiling now i feel like those guys have lives like um like casino like when it's high they're just like fucking loving life and when it's bad they're like oh my god what am i going to do like my wife is gonna leave me tomorrow like she has a terrible cocaine addiction you know like that's that's what i feel like the distro life is like yeah like there's days when you're probably making 30 to 50 000 in one day yeah those were the guys who are rooting for Back to the Future because they're like, what the fuck? You would sell a million of those. That is just wild. If that is true, not to go back to that. It is true. That is wild, dude. It's also like I know so much more about the backstory with Barry and Joe Camden Cow. It's just the whole thing. But here's the thing about Back to the Future. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening, I almost 100% I can guarantee you will not see that game released in 2025. No. It's not even totally developed. It's not like they don't even know. Like the only way it's going to work is if Barry just takes the damn money and lets Keith Elwin make it and Stern bails them out because Dutch can only make like 10 games a week. It doesn't make any sense for them to make. That is the brutal part of it. Unless they just don't care. I don't know what. Again, we go back to the IP costs. We don't know what the IP costs. like is it worth it to them to just make the game and sell whatever they can sell and who cares make like think about the price on pinstide if there's only 500 of these games i mean the way barry would have to do it he'd be making it for like eight years to satiate like a normal demand the best outcome of this is that you wait a million years for a game for a good game like that's the best outcome or or they know what they have they know they're sitting on a gold mine and they actually figure out a way to manufacture them faster like they sub it out and stern's not the only part that last part you just said is like yeah if i could just get a unicorn you know like that last part's everything like they're not going to figure out how to make them faster like they just they would have to increase and barry had an opportunity to grow you know in terms of getting more of a a bigger warehouse, more employees. The problem is this. It's like Stern makes five to 800 games a week. A week. Like they could finish the evil dead run in a week and a half. Totally. It's insane, right? Now the thing with Stern is like they should be putting everybody out of business. I'm surprised there's no mergers and acquisitions happening with like the boutique space of pinball. The fact that like there's legitimately like eight companies manufacturing. You're saying like spooky-wise or something? See, the way spookies run their whole business has been the right way to do it. I agree. Baby steps. If you were around long enough, you saw the baby steps. 150, America's Most Haunted. The next game was like 300. I don't know if it was like Rob Zombie. Then it was like Alice Cooper's Nightmare Cat. But it was like 150, 300, 500. you know they made a mistake with 1969 scooby-doos yeah yeah but but it did work with their trajectory like rick and morty was so big bigger like bigger than they thought it even was their biggest regret their biggest regret is that charlie said no more than 750 ever they they left millions on the table with that announcement they did but they still have loyal customers because it's you know and they never play the long game they never remade it they never remade it stern would have remade that certain would have called it something else like morty and rick it's not like they would be like see what we did there like it's not the same game and they would have sold another 750 well what has been really cool about spooky i think is like of course like there's a bunch of knocks on qa stuff and boards and whatever like i'm not a big upper playfield guy so like to me a lot of those games are just like not that fun but uh the art is always banging like they always like pay like that when you talk about assets like now it's well that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying it's like but post halloween halloween was the first one to me where i was like halloween is not a fun game to play but i love looking at it it looks amazing like and now like can i just ask you guys a question like and if you're like a nudge you guys are in the artistic world you you know your beautiful photography it's so stupid to me that like people get art wrong in pinball like like there's not good artists out there like there ever should have been crappy artwork on an expensive product like this and and you know how pinball is like you get like zombie yeti's amazing french is amazing but you get like four or five guys and we act like that's it like it's these are the guys that can figure out pinball art like there's nobody else out there there's got to be more but like i'm in the art world and there's friends of mine there's i don't know what the budgets are again what they're paying people to do obviously a lot of fucking work dude you work in marketing too it's like it's just death by committee like this shit like goes around it has to function in like 18 different million ways like even if it was a cool like it's all about checking all these boxes right like and that's the ip game is like you got to check this and this and all these things so it's like you're right like yes you're right obviously in a perfect world like it would look like that but i just like i understand why it doesn't like yeah because the money's not there and also someone's going to be like okay yeah i think it's how i think it's how committees function in like these department creative departments in the industry this is i'm telling you as a writer right now bro this is how it fucking works no but what i'm saying is probably both right it's it's the the budget is what and Canada's being the peacemaker here. Amazing. Well, the budget – I mean I haven't been able to make my point. What I'm saying is the budget is probably not that great when you're talking about what artists are making these days, which is a lot of money. Plus, then they find out that they can't put guns in John Wick. Like give me a break, right? Come on. And we wonder why the art isn't good. You know what I mean? I mean – Come on. Well, I kind of like the art for John Wick personally, but I mean I feel you. I think it sucks. I do not like the art and drama. You don't like it? I don't like the style at all. It's so like the neon colors and stuff. You don't like that? I don't like it. I think the LE looks pretty good with the back glass on the LE is cool. They got that right. But the rest of it, I think is pretty bad. Shane, you've become Kaneda. This is what happens. I just think where John Wick suffers for me is it needed more of like a JJP light show. You kind of need to feel like you're going into like a raid. You're right about that. And it just doesn't have, like, Stern's lighting system, I mean, this is off topic, but I hope when they do Spike 3, they modernize the lighting because from a creative standpoint, their games are really looking dated when it comes to lighting. Yes, dude. And it's the easiest way to add value without having to make expensive mechs or something like that. It's like a light show is the way to do that. It makes it look good the cheapest way that you can. Yeah, agreed. I mean, I have a Guns N' Roses. I mean, the game doesn't have like a toy in it. It's one of the best light shows in pinball. It is still the best light show in pinball, easily. Like nothing – the way they code the lights with the songs and they're synced up perfectly is genius. Yes, I still hate the multi-balls and all the – I can just hear – as I talk about G-Nair, I can hear people screaming. Yeah, who cares? How have they not fixed that yet? It's like people, they still hate that game for so many obvious reasons, but you got to get past them. You know, I don't I don't hate it. Dude, this is the thing is like it's like ice cream flavors. Like people like different shit. Like for real. Truly. It's not just the hipster. Dude, it's not the hipster part of me that loves the shadow. Like, yes, that's an element of it. But it's also like, I don't know, like that shit really clicks with me with the diverters and a cool upper play field. And like and it's so like art deco vibey. like i truly that is my favorite game like it's not my favorite movie that movie sucks but like right i think pinball is like that too like there are gnr people out there i know like smart pinball people who own like a lot of different games and and love that game so that's kind of what's nice about pinball to be honest yeah and it's a game you can you just walk up to and a casual person can enjoy you know the creative wow of it where there's so many modern games gentlemen like you try explaining them to anybody. They're like, what? You're right. Yeah, for sure. It's a problem of like, that is definitely a barrier for sure. This actually kind of, I want to ask this in general, is like, who do you see pinballs, like Prime Demo looking like going forward? It sounds like kind of just more of the, I mean, like you said, friends of the people who are pinball owners now. The children of all of us will inherit the bug for the most part. Do you want your kids to play pinball? yeah sure if it keeps them off social media absolutely anything that's like analog and physical over the digital social world absolutely no i look pimple is never gonna go away like i'm sure somewhere people are making modern day jukeboxes still and record players right it's like it it just like not gonna grow keep growing though like though and i don know why it needed to you know that the other part like Stern is a not a publicly traded company none of us are investors in them I want the companies I invest in to keep growing to get those returns But why does pinball, if you're in a place where the margins are good and this many machines a year is perfect to not oversaturate and create way too much supply so that there can be a collapse in the markets. My fear now is that the dam has – it's leaking badly right now, and they're hiding it. And a few good Elwynn games here and there is masking a much larger problem that is growing. Are you saying like structurally though, would you say is there a world where like Stern wouldn't exist in like five or ten years? Absolutely. There was a world when Stern didn't – almost didn't exist ten years ago. For sure, but I'm just saying like – And the reason is because they grew too fast maybe. They're too big. They've got a huge – I haven't been to their facility, but from what I understand, it's like absolutely massive. They have a shitload of employees, and they're putting out three cornerstones a year. Maybe they need to be putting out like six cornerstones a year to be where they want to be with the current sales numbers. Oh, you're saying – yeah, but the market just like would not support that. I know it would, but maybe that's the issue. I don't know. They need to go in the other direction, in my honest opinion. I agree with you. Only two major games a year at most. The rest you can do the vaults and the remakes. You can do that stuff. You've got to do it smart so you're not burning the people who bought the LEs of older titles. But three is too many. I agree with you. It's just like there's not enough space for the collectors to absorb all those. There's also – I think what sucks about – every three months, we're on to the next. You can't even give a game time to kind of click culturally anymore in pinball because we've already moved on to the next. Look at Uncanny X-Men. I get there were some issues, but man, people are – the moment people are past it, they're past it right away. Now we're on to the next game. D&D is about to hit. Uncanny X-Men hasn't even started to take any strides forward with its code. And then once D&D is out, in a month, it's all going to go to Elwynn, King Kong. Not even a month. In two weeks after D&D is out, we're on to the next. And then Harry Potter drops. And then Barrels is going to have maybe Gremlins. And then Goonies. I'm dropping some big rumors, boys. It's hilarious. because next year the titles are supposed to be bangers so we'll see but it's like coming at the exact wrong time this is like the end like if this is what you're talking about this is like when they had like medieval madness and like all these things like right at the end of the 90s like pinball boom that's like i don't know i mean yeah you're right i sorry go ahead shane well i was just gonna say i mean it's part of it that the code is just way too early when they're releasing these games too i think that that's a big problem for sales you know that they rush that we buy anything incomplete it's weird it's no no other name another industry where this happens especially a high price industry like pinball it is weird that the games are not even 90 done based on their perception of them this just devil's advocate here guys because y'all are just so in agreement on all this stuff i will say a lot of times i feel like people who say code is bad are secretly not very good at pinball and wouldn't even know one way or the other if it's good or bad anyway not not saying you guys specifically no but look at look at look at both of you like act like i just farted right now hold on hold on hold on and this is not like a gotcha moment or something it's like explain to me like two modes in x-men right now cadena like can you do it no yeah exactly that's I can definitely do it, but it's not important. How are we saying what's good code and bad code? I think the code's good. I have fun with it. When you think about code, it's what drives the atmosphere of a game 100%. The music, the call-outs, the lights, all that is code. I think first and foremost, releasing a product that's not done sucks. I don't know how to evaluate this stuff. For sure. And there's just this, I think, blanket sort of excuse that like, well, they're going to make it great. And sometimes they do. They don't always know. And sometimes they don't. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Yeah. And so like, here's the thing, though. And the play devil's advocate, I would just say, well, no one made you buy it. Right. This isn't a cancer drug. Like, I got to get this medication before it was properly tested. You know? Right. Yeah. This is a freaking pinball machine. You're the wait-and-see guy. These guys already have 20 in their home. So if you want to roll the dice on an uncanny X-Men and then complain that the theme song is not in it, well, you bought it without hearing the theme song in it. It's on you. Yeah, it's how the power gets back to the consumer for sure. And this is happening over and over again. You kind of know what you're stepping into at this point. Yeah. But the point of the conversation, the crux of it all is how are we going to make this better? You know, people get burned, and maybe they get burned a second time. They're probably not going to get burned a third time. So at what point, you know, is it too much? I think we're there now, Shane, with new in box. It's like, what kind of moron do you need to be at this stage to jump in on, like, new in box week one, witnessing what we've witnessed? The only game that has held any value is Jaws LE and Metallica Remastered. That's it. Everything else, not $500, not $1,000, three grand loss in a year. If you're a godfather, 5,500 loss on a godfather CE. You're kind of famous for owning, at this point, I only own one game, Guns N' Roses. Yeah. And you were in on a Metallica LE. Yeah. Which you were talking about flipping, and you ended up definitely pivoting away from that, and you ended up doing a giveaway. Yeah. Is that a part of the reason that you are not a big pinball owner at this point? Because you just know you're going to take a loss, and you seem to be kind of a business-minded guy? First, I don't have room for more than really one pin. So I have space issues just in pinball people. uh size issues uh you know like ridiculous yeah let's let's do this um the thing is just like i just think like for you know covering this hobby for over a decade i had never seen what i've witnessed in the last two years happen in which i think one of the just reasons why people love this hobby so much on top of the fun of the gameplay and all the you know all the expected things is it it's like you didn't lose much like you could actually go in and out of games you could cycle through product you you know and and for the most part you know if you're in the right place at the right time your your thing made money and it or it held nicely now it's just there's just this this there's no reason why the prices should have gone up 40 percent in a two year span of time. There's no reason why, right? I get COVID and I get inflation. I get all that stuff. I think what sucked the joy, look, as a podcaster that covers every new pin launch, I love the sort of FOMO and the excitement and the enthusiasm, but it's kind of funny, right? When you're like over the last two years now, now that I've just watched everyone walk into a bloodbath and you're trying to tell people, wait and see, wait and see. And I've been right on like 95%. If you just waited, I'm not saying don't buy these games, but if you just wait a little bit, think about it. Think about it. If you're a dude that with tax, some people have to pay tax and shipping on a game with tax and shipping, you bought a Godfather CE, right? And your total bill came out to $16,500. And then a year later, you're like, honey, I'm on pin side right now and in a box is a 9800 godfather ce and she's like f you mother like you got nothing for that seven thousand dollars you lost like yeah and it's just but but that's the thing is like it was never like that because think about it like this too is and i bring this point up a lot recently they're never in the history of how long has pinball been around 80 90 years not in that like 80 year period could you ever have lost three thousand dollars in one year on a game unless it was 2022 to 2024 and that's a big problem and yeah and look we have the power as consumers just stop buying and the prices will come down these companies are not going to go out of business they will just lower prices it does it does feel that way this is see this is quite refreshing like i said i'm never like someone who even gives a shit to be honest with you like truly as like as just a guy who plays on location like god bless god bless on location pinball i actually want to ask that a little bit this is a question that i did have is like i want to talk about how did you meet john from jack bar and like what was your relation like you guys have such a fun so for people who don't know the context of this for real is that true yeah that's amazing uh so john owns jack bar one of like the best pinball locations uh in new york city and also he's a frequent like he's part of your uh you know community brat pet exactly yeah he's part of your online community and he and he's a hilarious like foil for you guys and you and you will go to jack bar sometimes and that so what is the backstory between the the two of you yeah no i met him like he met my elbow before i met him because when i went to that new york city pinball championship or the female this tournament was during the tim sexton incident yeah i don't know if everyone remembers this part so i was out that night with lyman sheets and penny his girlfriend okay and and we were having a great night and i had never been you know i never been to a pinball championship and there i was like rooting for lyman's girlfriend and apparently i I was standing a little bit too close to where they were playing. There was like a piece of tape on the ground. And all of a sudden, Tim Sexton is yelling. Kaneda has one warning. One more, he's out of here. Now, I'm three sheets to the wind. Lyman and I, Lyman liked to drink. Like we were in a good mood. And all of a sudden, like all this stuff just spiraled quickly out of control. I had just ordered a vodka soda. and Tim Sexton on a chair announces my expulsion from said tournament. And I'm like, all right, I guess I can't drink this. He can have it now. Boom. Wow. And then it was like this sort of like Cobra Kai. So John was part of the group that was like tackling me out of the establishment. And so, yeah. And then, you know, fast forward, he became friends. Wait, what it is? So he just like threw you. I'm picturing you're like DJ Jazzy Jeff. You know, like with Uncle Phil, like when he'll just like toss him out of the house. It was kind of like that sort of vibe. Yeah, I mean, everyone was just kind of grabbing me and like throwing me in the elevator and saying, get out of here. And then, you know, and then later he proposed to his wife on my podcast. you know we we by god did well how did yeah but what was the bridge between that and that that's what i'm saying is like well he's like he's like boy i really like this canadian guy you've apologized you've apologized for that though i've i know this story isn't even about litigating that incident i literally i literally don't care like let it be stated publicly i literally don't give a shit one way or the other i just think it's kind of funny that it's like uh like i feel like Because he busts your balls all the time. You bust his balls. How did that start? We're New Yorkers. I do think some of that's just like we're from New York City. There's thick skin. There's too much thin-skinned people out there that just can't jab at each other. I don't know. Forgiveness is something that is important in life. I think a lot of people in this culture now are just one and done with you. Like there's people that hate me from 12 years ago or might even hate me from that situation. And that's it. Like in their eyes, that's it. Like I'm stuck. That's a hard way to go through life, you know. And it's hard for them. It's not hard for me. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Those people, they, you know, they're stuck and they want and they're stuck with their anger. And I always say this, like, well, and that's why John said to me, he's like, look, it's just if I forgive you and I actually try to get to know you. And then I actually, you know, meet who you really are, you know, outside of like a lot of that other stuff. And, you know, you had a drunk night and you act like a jackass. And it's like, you know, this is what you see and who's never had a bad night like drinking or who didn't act out. And I look I've had some drunken moments. and it and again i do find it funny that people will record them you just didn't have to do it to tim poor tim sexton man it's like you know he's uh but i'll tell you this i'll tell you this i got i got times i apologize to tim sexton i got you never once he never once has even like acknowledged it well you know what that's that's that's his right but like you said you're really only hurting yourself in this situation so at some at some point we're gonna get you two together over a good game of John Wick. And I hope that I'm there to be player three. Is that part of why you're not invited to Stern? I mean, obviously you're tight with George Gomez. And you talked about Seth Davis. Is there a weird elephant in the room there? I always say it's better to be friends with the mayor than the cops. I like to be friends with everybody, but I feel you. So that's my relationship with Stern. So there it is. Part one of our conversation with Kaneda. We're going to leave it at that for now. But tune in next time because there's a whole hell of a lot more with the man, the myth, the legend. You love him or you hate him. Sometimes both. Both. In the same sentence sometimes. You can. Somehow it works, doesn't it? It does. It truly does. And the man can rock some Gucci sunglasses. You got to give him that. That's right. He's got style. He's got a style. He's got style. He's got flair. He's got it going on, as the kids say. And he's got some good points once in a while, which I think you have to admit. God, do I? I mean, sure. Yeah. We'll say it. We'll say it. I mean, stick around for part two when you'll finally hear a good point from Kaneda. Absolutely. All right, guys. Well, that's all we got this week. For real, stick around and you'll hear some more Kaneda on part two of the Kaneda interview. And make sure that you give us a follow, subscribe, like, whatever it's called, whatever you're listening to on this. We've had some great feedback, too. feel free to write a review on iTunes too preferably five stars that means a lot I know it's lame but it does go a long way in making sure that this thing ends up at the top of some feeds and that we can continue to spread the word on what we believe is pretty entertaining pinball content that's all we're trying to do is have a good time here and do something a little bit differently so thank you for listening and please help us spread the word thanks guys Thank you.