A lot of people are saying this, but Don's Pinball Podcast is frankly incredible. I sold my Tesla stock to join his Patreon. Can you believe that? Such a big, beautiful man. I wish I had a body like that. Well, hey there. Welcome everybody back to another flip-tastic episode of Don's Pinball Podcast. My brain feels like a pinball machine with all the news of just the last 6 to 12 hours, and it's not stopping. We had to document this and come together. So let's build together and go right now. It's my podcast. It's my podcast broadcast. Casting a wide net. Catching all the scoops. Swing. Ding dong, man. King Kong is coming swinging in. Here's what I know. As I know it, over the last 24 hours, the email has gone out. Invites have gone out to the media, including myself, which I'm super excited about. We're having a media day for the next Cornerstone release from Stern Pinball. That's what I know for sure because that's what was in the email. I also have a date of April 17th. It is a Thursday, and it is coming up in like two weeks from today, media day, Which means a bunch of us will be over there in Stern, gobbling hot dogs, doing interviews, and trying to squeeze in some time on whatever this new monkey-themed giant ape banana-grabbing frickin' new game is themed and reported to be. Okay, I don't have any confirmation on anything at all officially from Stern other than media on the 17th. Fast forward a couple of hours later, I'm finding out that on the 16th, distributors will be on site. So the way they did these media days in the past was early in the morning, around 10 a.m. or so, maybe a little bit earlier, distros showed up to play the new game and get the talk, the feedback, the straight dirt from the designers and everything, questions and answers and stuff. And then noon in the afternoon, media folks showed up, YouTube channels showed up. Let's play. Let's get some content. Let's make some Facebook reels, some YouTube stories and all that business. And then the preceding week was the teaser and then that drop. And that drop generally includes a Zoom meeting where everything is live streamed PowerPoint style to the distributors. And then at noon, it goes live for everybody. Okay, so when is all that going to happen? I don't know. But speculating, it's going to be next week. It could be teased as soon as Friday, tomorrow, the 4th, with that media drop online on Monday the 7th. And then the next week, distros can come out. Media can come out. Everybody will be out there. Also, this is super cool. This new game, whatever it is from Stern Pinball, will also be available to the public to play that same day, that same weekend, the 18th, 19th, 20th, maybe on the 17th as well, at Pinball at the Zoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Yes. So I like this. There'll be a simultaneous release. The public will have a way to play this game. Media will have a way to play it. Distros will be on site. And I think everybody's going to know everything about whatever this game is in the next, like, couple of days. Between 48 hours and 96 hours, I think we're probably going to know something. So what the crap, man? That just landed in our laps, like, literally yesterday. And I'm still trying to get caught up. Still stuck in the mix. There's, like, what, three other fairly major releases that are all rumored to be coming around the same time. And, like, not even small releases. Like, Barrels is supposed to have a game here, like, soon. It seemed as if they were getting keyed up to release it at TPF. but circumstances don't always work out that way. But whatever it is, I don't think they're waiting for a November release. So that's floating out there in the ether. We've got American Pinball's new game still floating out there. Wasn't that TPF? Really wish it was. It's not going to be at MGC. Really wish it would be. MGC is this weekend. And so that can drop really at any time. Probably they'll just miss MGC, but I would be surprised if that's not out at the end of the month. And speaking of the end of the month, we've got Predator. As well, don't forget the Pinball Brother, that lone guy still running that, what's now just a pop shop. I guess it was a mom and pop shop before, but mom left town, and pop's an orphan now. So the Pinball Brother will be releasing their Predator game. They've been dropping little teases, and my God, with everything that's going on right now, the time to release your game is a week ago, man. Let's go. Don't wait any longer unless you're planning on waiting longer, because if you were to drop something like this week next week ah like our money's already kind of tied up Jack's out there himself like the biggest mysterious release of these next few weeks Harry Potter the wizard man himself like like the boy who lived right like the prophecy game that we been hearing about as long as Pokemon Pokemon is not on any artificial horizon that i been able to see but we got confirmation of the man himself harry potter coming out probably soon ish in pinball terms i don think it imminent but it could be and i wouldn't be surprised honestly no matter what happens so looming over all of this we have confirmation of the new release from stern probably kong probably elwyn probably awesome probably gonna get it probably gonna have an SLE edition um that'll be dropping here and then the wizard is overshadowing everything and then fighting around like rats in the darkness scattering around trying to make you know get their knives in your gut and get your wallet money for that one extra game besides these two that you have to have uh we got the barrels game we got predator out there hopefully it's not just a reskin of ABBA and then this uh you know rumored to be video game themed American pinball game, which I really wish was out because I really want to play it again. It was super fun. All that's going on and like it's a flurry of craziness, man. I'm hearing confirmation from my friends in the media space, in the influencer space or whatever. We're all making plans to congeal in Chicago on the 17th. My texts have been going nonstop. I haven't even been able to catch up with them, but I did want to wait. I wanted to get this out there. So, I mean, pinball's hard. Pinball's hard. It's a complicated machine. Each one is unique, you know. This isn't like, you know, we spent a lot of time and we came up with this electric vehicle. And now, after all that R&D, we're going to release, with small cosmetic upgrades, we're going to release the same electric vehicle every year. You know, it's not that. It's like coming up with a brand new product every single time that you don't know how it's going to work. You don't know how it's going to hold up. You're going to have to program everything from the ground up. There's no piggybacking, copying, pasting, and do palette swaps and things. None of that. It's not like you can release your video game and then the next year do the game of the year edition with all the DLC packed in and re-release it. Just kind of keep putting out the same stuff and then do little modest upgrades every couple of months to keep the microtransactions going. You've got to create this whole device. So it's like 18 to 24 and sometimes longer months to put in this. And so how can you forecast that all the dominoes are going to fall as they should so you can meet that show release? I get it. But, man, the time to get your game out was when Chris Turner and Multimorphic were bringing Portal out there, just that TPF. That was such a good time. And now all bets are off. Okay, so we got a new game coming from Stern. It very likely could be a teaser tomorrow, Friday, and then a full reveal on Monday the 7th. That would give them one calendar week before media descends on Chicago and it's bedlam and we're all getting over there to play it. They might play it a little more coy and wait until Friday the 11th, which would be coinciding with Pintastic out in New Robert Englunds, which I'll be in attendance. I'm going to miss MGC this weekend, but I'll be out there at Pintastic. Maybe they go ahead and release on Monday and then they can get one of these games. Whatever it is, we'll know by then. At Pintastic, that would be some fantastic synergy. At least one game out there would be cool. hell I'll drive the thing there myself all you got to do is ask who doesn't like a road trip across the northern uh midwest man so anyway uh so we're gonna see that there uh there's Allentown Pin Fest I think coming up towards the end of the month and I think Predator is supposed to be there uh Portal's gonna be at Pintastic Portal's gonna be at MGC um all the new games are just like leaking out right now it's gonna be a hell of a spring with new releases and then into the summer we'll see these releases hopefully getting delivered and hopefully not getting skewered by tariffs, which is the other thing that's that this is like the biggest week in pinball of the spring, man, I thought TPF was going to be the big week. And turns out it's now so April 2, across the board, United States tariffs went into effect, which means that you owe a 20% tax to the US federal government for anything that you import from the EU, including I'm portending here that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from DPX when they do start shipping, which should be relatively imminent because I think they've got confirmation that they're having games that are in the final stages of completion. You're going to have to turn around and pay that remaining $10,500 balance plus another 20%. That's like the entire $2,000 deposit you already put down on there. My goodness. And here we are in April, and DPX has a deadline of December 31st to get these games made and delivered. All 500, I think was the edition size. And they had a caveat. They had an out where if you didn't get your game by December 31st, you were entitled to get your deposit back paid in full. Hell of a deal. I'm glad they did that. But, man, that only leaves them like eight months now. Eight months. Less than eight months to get these 500 games out before people start calling for deposits again. And I telling you man as enthusiastic as everybody was back at Expo when the order banks opened and the sky looked like the limit and the FOMO was hitting hard you know when you get to December and they still only you know delivered 385 games or so and you number 386 and it looking at like another you going to have to pay for this game at that point when everything else is already released and spooky pinball is taking deposits on their brand new game by that time What's going to happen then, man? I don't want to be, I don't want to be in that camp and I don't think I'm alone. So that's a little prognostication from me. Here's a little pinball fornication from me for now. What's going nuts? I'm going to be there in Chicago on the 17th and I ain't going to be alone. I got some friends coming in. They are allowing plus ones now for these media events, which is super cool. And isn't this, isn't this what I said? Like, well, like a year and a half ago when they did this first media thing, I was like, dude, and everybody was like getting upset because they weren't invited. And I'm like, look, I don't know what I did to get invited. Maybe they messed up, but here's what we're going to do. If we got invited, we're going to go, we're going to behave. We're going to say, thank you. We're going to be very appreciative. We're going to eat the hot dogs. We're going to gobble the glizzies. so that next time they'll do this again, and then next time they'll do it again, and each time maybe we can bring some more of our friends with us until we can build upwards to a full public event that's open to everybody that's interested to come on down, play the new game, kick the tires, you know, fire the balls around so everybody can get their hands on these brand new things if they want to. It's one of the most exciting things in pinball that I've discovered. As a new game is released, and then I can get my dirty, grimy hands all over it, Get that Cheeto dust on the rails, man. I can't wait. So all that is going on. We're all starting to culminate. And then I'm hearing rumors that there's other companies that are just like right, like chomping at the bit to get their games out and maybe doing days of their own. It's building, man. It's happening. And I love it. I love being a part of it. So I didn't want to wait to be able to drop this. So what else is going on, everybody? How's your Thursday going? You know, Bugs Stream and Stream moved over to YouTube. and he's going live today at 7 p.m. Central Time on his YouTube channel, so go check that out. I just got that confirmation there. I just wanted to do it before I forgot about it. Let me mention again that Barrels of Fun, if you've got a Labyrinth, go ahead and register that machine. You still have a couple weeks left to get whatever their brand-new game, which will be released probably pretty soon. You may get a free one, and that's pretty good odds, and there's no cost to entry other than what you've already paid. So bonus, that's cool for them. I want to make sure I drop that. uh speaking of dropping barrels of fun has been doing some teases for the further upcoming game they're they're in this imminent release window from days to weeks probably not months um and they've already got confirmation that the thunder from down under shaker will be included in the game that's super cool now they're saying that they've got their own high visibility low glare glass product called infinity glass which perfect you know we got ghost glass infinity glass voodoo glass, HD glass. I think there's one more that I'm forgetting. Pin glass plus. Pin glass plus sounds like we're getting my haircuts done that Multimorphic is doing. So I love that everybody's embracing these nice high-grade optical coating on their tempered glass. It adds such a bonus to their games. And so for companies looking at elevating their market to the collector, I love that that's included from the factory. I don't have to muss or fuss, and I don't have to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with this standard glass when I take it out of my game. uh so spooky pinball's got their ghost class there's 250 for the wide body edition uh narrow body is on order and will be a product that they'll be providing at some point uh their deal is that when you go ahead and uh accept your game and you get that email that your game is about to go into production you're weeks away from getting it that's when you can tell them you know plus or minus on the topper plus or minus on the butter coating and then plus or minus on the ghost glass and they'll go ahead and install it at the factory i love that because again what am i going to do with all the standard playfield glass. Besides, you know, we can't all fit on Tom Tookie's roof and toss it off. So, you know, that's interesting. I want to make sure that we got that out there. Oh, man, I'm just excited, and I couldn't wait to do this. I think that's all the news I have right now, but, like, my phone is blowing up right now. I've got one, two, three Discord notifications, four Discord notifications. I've got a couple of messages come through here. I've got emails. MGC has emailed me. Somebody just ordered a WAP shirt. My goodness, man. All right, so I'm going to cut this one a little bit short, and we'll plug back in as I know more, which, hell, it might be later today, of all things. I will do this. So I recently acquired a set of glow balls, four glow-in-the-dark pinballs, which is awesome for Mr. Brian Savage down there at Pinballs and Plus. No, Barrels of Fun down there in Houston. He's got a side gig. He likes to make custom-coated balls. And so he wanted to see how these glow balls held up in Avatar Revenge of the Fallen or Battle for Pandora. That's the game that I got over here with all those fancy UV lights. Now, I've never used glow-in-the-dark pinballs before as a concept. It sounds pretty cool. In practice, I'm wondering exactly how that would work. Pinballs spend most of their time in the dark in a trough, and so, like, would they be able to really charge and glow? And I happy to report that absolutely they glow their brains out They the glow things you ever seen at least in this game Avatar is packed with so many of those UV lights You see them kind of posted around the game They're in the apron. Instead of RGB, they're like RGBU because they have the ultraviolet as well. And so the first time these balls kicked out when you're playing the game before the eclipse really comes in, they're just white and they look really cool just by that alone. But by the time the eclipse kicks in, when those UVs kick on, these things, it seems like almost immediately they're just glowing and it's a really cool effect. Now there are some trade-offs. You have to add this coating to the pinball. So you have to start with a pinball that's slightly smaller than a regular size. That way, when you add this ceramic coating with the glow in the dark stuff, it then approaches the regulation size. So it functions in the pinball machine. It's just slightly underweight. And from what I understand, these ceramic power balls or something are supposed to have a little bit more weight to them. these are a little bit the opposite and it's kind of weird like holding them in your hand like it's weighty it feels the same weight as a pinball like it's a good good weight to it um but playing the game it almost looks like a rubber bouncy ball bouncing around because it just it has a little bit more reactivity now playing the game while i do get a few more air balls than you otherwise would um they are able to hit all the shots just fine and you kind of adjust to them and it is so cool even if you know this wouldn't be something you could use in a tournament because it's not regulation weight, you know, to the absolute centigram. I know kicking them around this game with the glow going off is super fun. Now I've got four of these and the game takes seven, six or seven balls altogether. So I do have a couple of the regular ones in the mix as well. But I'm going to go ahead and order another set of these just so I can have a full set of glow balls at avatar because a game like avatar, it's about fun. It's about the gameplay experience. It's about going in there. It's about starting a mode and just finding what you get. You know, I mentioned earlier that you know having this game it's not like the game where i know exactly which mode i'm starting when you know on evil dead as you're hitting shots you know it's randomly going through the eight different modes and they're there on the back plate and whichever one is flashing will be the mode that you start avatar while it may have a way to signal that i don't know how to interpret that and i just know okay i started a mode let's see which one it is oh it's the dive mode oh it's the blue tribe mode and i'm sure there's modes in here i haven't even played yet uh so it's just kind of like all about this experience and seeing glow-in-the-dark pinballs in a multiball flying all over the damn place leaping through the air landing on wire forms rolling back it is some pinball magic that i'm enjoying and while this is not replicating a tournament experience it is replicating a super fun experience in my game room so uh brian if you're listening i'm going to send down my order uh for uh some extra glow balls or heck i might just swing through houston who knows what the week is going to bring um and i'm going to get on some of these and it seems like a heck of a lot of fun. So that's everything I know for where we're at right now. More to come. Thank you so much for the celebrity endorsement at the beginning there. Anything else, go ahead and email your boy. You know the address. That's Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. Get in at me. And oh, hey, wait. Pull this back for a second. I did promise last episode that I had a meeting with one of the big swingers in the pinball manufacturing space. I regret to inform everybody that my Zoom meeting that I had with the head of Multimorphic fell through due to business conflicts that he had. So we're looking at rescheduling that at some point in the future. I was hoping to come on and just talk about everything that we talked about. Just a couple of guys in the industry having some fun in pinball, having some cool Portal fun, getting on karaoke after a martini or two and singing Still Alive. I finished Portal again the other day, like the first time in 10 years that I played that game. Super fun. and when Still Alive kicks in, man, it's a total vibe. I'm right now printing up some 3D toys for Portal. I got my Portal t-shirt. I'm going to be doing that giveaway at some point, man, as soon as I can catch up on all this news. But I can't quite yet reveal everything that happened during our conversation because it didn't happen. I didn't want to leave everybody hanging there. Hopefully, it can get rescheduled at some point in the future. I will say this. Mr. Wise from Wise Trailers, he sells travel trailers and other things and also Multimorphic Machines. He'll be at MGC tomorrow with Portal there, so go play it. I heard it's going to be at Pintastic as well, so get over there and play it. I hear they're even bringing one of the designers from the project of Portal. I can't remember exactly who it is, but they'll be there in attendance. So go play some Portal at MGC this weekend. Get a shot on me. And if you see the spooky crew, tell them I said what up. Don's Big Bowl Podcast at gmail.com is where you can get at me. Email me. Get yourself a t-shirt. Give yourself a mod. You want something? I can make it for you. And while supplies last, you get a free five-hour energy included in that shipment because we're all about sharing. And I got way too many. I can't use them all. Oh, it's a total vibe, man. I'm so excited. Later, everybody.