I came in like a wrecking ball. I never hit so hard in love. all of these venom accessories that dropped today not only that we got a game release from mr turner thank you sir texas's own the father of the ninja eclipse brought us what i was hoping beyond hope was going to be pirate eclipse but it wasn't maybe that's the next game to come out but we're going to talk all about i guess merlin and arcades and we'll get deeply rooted into that saga but let's start with this it's been 18 months in development like there's probably been some sort of electrical fire at some point along the time that uh derailed the whole venom accessory launch but venom is stern pinball seminal level building fanish layout below the toe the back third you only get one stand-up target that's all you get kind of game a game that i wouldn't even call the pro fully cooked or fully baked right i mean it's one thing if you're into plain cheese pizza and stuff i can totally appreciate that but like this is like if you put soy cheese on there and you cut half the crust off and like that's what you get the incrustable of pinball machines in venom pro don't even dignify that game with a response you can go live in boxes in a dusty warehouse the premium is a fun time and i will still defend that game and honestly at today's prices for venom premium and le how could you not defend the little purple guy man so let's get into that i picked a ball theme song to start with this because my favorite part okay we got a topper we got art blades we got side armor but the shooter rod is probably my favorite i love it i'm behind this 100 call me a show all you want i went and paid cash money today for the venom shooter rod and i don't even own a venom and i'm probably never going to own one again but i will tell you what i will own the hell out of this device all right so let's let's uh let's start at the top with the topper those are the big news uh we knew something was coming and honestly i'm not surprised with what we got i am surprised at the price because gosh darn it i'm actually not offended by it i love this i love this if i had a venom 100 to be buying one of these man okay so we got ourselves a topper for venom and it's not a black venom sculpt with a long tongue hanging out it's not a layered plastic black venom with a black or purple tongue plastic sitting out that maybe maybe turns 180 degrees like they're really getting a lot of mileage out of that Deadpool device right uh so now what we got uh was layered plastics which of course we did in the shape of the Mandalorian topper for about $700 less than that thing cost at launch $700 less than the Foo Fighters one cost at launch and uh even less than the John Wick topper and this thing I think got me a little bit more excited about it so you get the plastics i get it now give up ever getting a first party topper from stern pinball for 600 bucks that's never gonna happen and this is the reason why we're gonna get these layered plastic toppers going forward we're gonna be lucky if there's a sculpt in there foo fighters had one probably because they already had some manner of tooling that was already done with it or or jack really pushed for it the reason we get the layered plastics is because they're probably only making 500 to 1500 of these things they're not making a hundred thousands of these things and so the cost to tool a part to injection mold to give us those sculpts is like in the high five figures you know 60 80 000 just to give you something like that that wolverine that's in the back of the premium and lexman right so if you don't want flat plastics you're gonna pay a heck of a lot more for it for these small runs now there's there's margins built in here there's margins for the distributors there's got to be margins for the employees and margins for stern gotta pay the licensing fees this is where we are okay so you don't have to be happy about it but like i'm not going to come out and criticize this thing just overpriced yes it's overpriced are you kidding me it's plastic what are you talking about i'm judging this thing on its aesthetics and the fact that it has all the characters represented it's interactive with the game part of what you're paying for mostly what you're paying for because the rest is okay plastic all right but um you know each one of the characters little faces will light up when You select one. Also, you get some bonus content. Ghost Rider, long rumored to be in the development. I'm glad. I think they should have really led with that. Like, the trailer should have had Ghost Rider, you know, coming in with, like, flames and stuff and chains and then a big reveal. Whatever. We got what we got. Hell, we finally got the damn thing. It's near legendary at this point. So you get Ghost Rider in some sort of wizard mode. And also, you can select him now as an unlockable character. If you have the topper or if you have the game for the next three months, it's unlocked for everybody. or if you know how to set dip switches, you can go play this stuff. You can go play this stuff. Most excitingly, right in the middle, right where there probably used to be some sort of ferromagnetic fluid container that, I don't know, something may have happened to it, we got an LCD screen. But it's kind of cool watching the symbiote kind of bounce around in the jar there, reminiscent of the films and things. I like it. I like that little kinetic satisfaction, even if it is just an LCD screen. Godzilla didn't have that on his top. and that thing was $1,000 and had the same sculpt that was in the damn game down there. And can we give them at least a little credit that they didn't just spell out Venom in large letters and just stick it right above the back last saying the same thing? So thanks. I kind of dig this thing. And look, I get it. But it costs like a third of what you can get a Venom Pro for. If you're buying a Venom Pro, you get what you get. Venom LEs you can get right now for $8,000, $8,500, $9,000 maybe if it's still new in box, whatever. I think at that price, eh, I'm not that angry about it. I'm not that angry about it. I'll get into who I think this is perfect for in a bit, but the days of $13,000 Venom LEs, it's never going to happen again. So, okay, we finally got something, and it actually doesn't look too bad. I dig it. I like this better than the Food Topper. I like it better than the Godzilla Topper. And I think it's on par aesthetically with the John Wick Topper, which I'm warming up to, although that thing, of course, that's overpriced. overpriced they're all overpriced um but i do think this slots in as one of the better releases that we've seen in recent history there's my shield talk what else do we got we got armor for the sides a point of contention for me since i've uh i've hooked up with people in the industry that can make my own armor i kind of like the diy aesthetic and powder coating it myself it is a little bit more work it takes some uh it takes a little bit of know-how but i mean it's it's learnable um so i'm not mad at these art blades right you get a big venom mouth on the side of the thing looks like it's right out of a comic book it's the teardrop shaped lollipop which i kind of like the slanted ones better but i'm not mad at it this i am mad at the price 399 jesus we used to get expression lights for that back in the day back in the day i mean like two years ago what happened so if you want to gussy up your game that is definitely a way to do it I guess I love the armor. It's on the Ellie though. I don't think anybody is pulling off their powder coated slimy, uh, dripping venom Ellie armor to put these on. Um, but these do look better than what the pro and premium come with. So on aesthetics, I dig it. It ties in with the art that's on the front of the premium at least. So like, I get it. They're cool. They're definitely better than what comes standard for sure. If the price makes sense to you, you and these armored blades can, can go have babies and be happy together and i'm happy for you i'll buy you a little present tell me where you're registered tj maxx i got you buddy um but i mean they're cool they'd be cooler at 199 uh they're less cool at 399 but there you go i'll tell you what though art blades for 99 bucks industry standard i dig it uh you can get the official zombie giddy art as far as official releases go these aren't bad again the venom le comes with some of the best art blades that stern has made first party, I think, ever. So I for sure would push for those. Or, you know, get some mirrored versions or some aftermarkets that people are making. But I'm not mad at these art blades. And honestly, if you're buying yourself a shooter rod, which you should, go ahead and grab some of these too if you don't have any art blades in your Venom game, because I dig them. And I think they're, just looking at them aesthetically, they're about as good as anything else you would find. So not mad at them. I'm not mad at them. You know, some first party art blades, They don quite match up with some of the ingenuity that you find on the secondary market But these i vibing with these i vibing with these now my favorite part by far oh my goodness is this shooter rod if you haven seen it yet go check it out but basically it's it's absolutely venom right so it's uh i'll tell you what it looks like uh but uh this is fun you get an egg-shaped shooter rod it is i got that egg shape but it's got like the what they're calling the tendrils right to me they look like big dilated blue veins because that's exactly what they look like. And then there's also a plate that goes on the shooter housing. So the shooter housing being that metal plate that you screw into your machine that integrates with the rod. With Stern, they always come mounted with this plate. Some of the newer ones, in fact, all the ones they're using now, have the holes in them if LED lights are going to be an option. Those are behind that Stern sticker. Go take a look at your newer Stern machine. You see that Stern logo that's on the shooter rod housing? That's a sticker and behind that sticker are two little circles that you can put in led lights and light up your shooter rod so that's kind of cool they just went to doing this so that whether they're going to have aftermarket uh shooter rods with lights or not uh they only have to buy like one plate design or one have it and i love that because i can use it too so thank you for allowing me to do that so this thing's going to come already assembled and you're just going to screw it in from the back just like anything else uh the the red guidance screws you can leave in place there's another alignment plate on the other side of there. So it's just three screws. Put it in there. You don't even have to take a rubber tip off. It's just swap in, swap out. Couldn't be simpler. Couldn't be simpler. Now, the Venom aesthetic borrows a lot from biology. I see a lot of human biology in this thing. The first thing I saw, of course, was that molded base plate that's on there. Black and, again, covered with the blue, what they're calling tendrils, but to me look like varicose veins. And I love it, man. Listen, professionally, let's just say I've personally delivered a lot of babies. And when you deliver a baby, you also get to deliver a placenta. And this shooter rod plate that I'm looking at right here on the screen on NAP Arcade's site looks exactly like a fresh human placenta, only it's in a lot of blue scales. But exactly the texture looks the same, the radiating pattern out from the middle. This is a placenta shooter plate with a testicle on a stick, and it's all blue like it's diseased, and I love that. It looks like it's right out of an anatomy textbook with some serious pathology going on. And they have to know. They have to realize what they've done here, man. There is a finding in something that could happen to a human testicle. I guess it's any mammalian testicle. If it gets twisted, it essentially strokes. It cuts off its blood supply. and the hallmark that they put in the medical textbooks when you're evaluating this is to feel for something that's like a bag of worms because you're going to get these dilated veins in there something else called a varicocele if y'all are medical you know this already but when i'm looking at this just as i'm watching the game and reaching over to the shooter rod by touch to find it it's going to feel just like i'm examining a a disease testicle the fact that it's black and blue is just perfect it's like someone got kicked squarely in the nards like someone kicked venom's nards and they put it on a metal rod and they're selling it to the general public for 199 dollars and if you know a way to get a fully sculpted pathologically correct anatomical display piece of a diseased testicle for 199 dollars with a spring i will buy that off of you so i bought this in a heartbeat an email went out to jeff at madbimble.com and i said if you give me one of these as soon as you can before before somebody realizes and stops this i mean size shape i can tell the texture it's going to be so perfect i don't even own a venom i owned a venom i loved the game eventually i played 500 times i passed it on i i think every now and then i'm picking up one of these le's just to go from premium to le because i did enjoy it you have to add some mods but it is a fun game to play through at least but i'll tell you what um when a new game hits my game room the first thing it gets is the godfather silver lions because i haven't found a way to get gold ones yet uh the other thing it's going to get is this venom shooter rod i think every game is going to get this initially as a form of hazing or whatever but like i am in love love with this shooter rod and i cannot wait i'm already checking the tracking i don't even jeff any boxed it up yet i don't even know if he's received it yet but like i can't wait to get a grip on this thing i'm gonna hit the show floor at tpf and while my first stop well it'll probably be portal before the lines build and then that's probably merlin's merlin's happy arcade game uh but then i'm gonna go around and i'm gonna i'm gonna spend a good 90 seconds just just imprinting the feel of this thing into me don you're going a little bit too deep into this i'm enthusiastic about it and that's my my podcast is nothing but enthusiasm i'm looking at the thing right here and it is a thing of glory i love this the john wick shooter rod hot steaming garbage this yes yes man I love this. Is it overpriced at $199? Everything at Pinball is overpriced at the prices we're paying now. But you know what? I'll tell you what. I'd rather get this at $199 than $249. So thank you, Stern, for seeing it through, releasing all these awesome accessories. And I think you've got a definite hit, hit, and hit. And while they look nice, the armor, it's expensive. But I get licensing costs, whatever. You know what? I ain't even mad at it. You can pay 140 euros and import some laser cut stuff and then go and pay $20 to $60 for powder coating, bolt it on. You got to do a lot more legwork, though. This will arrive bolted on. And this looks great, too. I just love the look of that LE armor. I just do. But notwithstanding, there you go. Trick out your Venom. All right. I'll speak to this for a moment. Who is Venom for? Who are these accessories for? If you bought a Venom back in the day and have had it this long, it's games depreciated. appreciated i hope you're getting your value and love out of it it's not a bad game talking about the premium le we don't even acknowledge the pro it's not a bad game and so you know if you're in for a penny in for a pound trick it out get some get some joy out of this what i will say if you are able to purchase a pinball machine and you have not owned a venom maybe you've played it 40 to 60 times in the arcades or so but you haven't had the game at home and you haven't ground grinded through it and unlocked all the characters and you're interested in getting into ghost rider this is not a bad game to have for five to six hundred plays at home and then move on somewhere and the fact that le's are showing up sub nine thousand dollars jeff just posted one he took it on trade barely played looks gorgeous this is one of the best nicest le packages as far as art uh foil art blades uh mirrored art blades uh back glass and cabinet and uh the powder coat i'm not even too mad at either although mine was better and i love the the laser cut side armor this is a much better build package than godzilla le had and that is a hell of a desirable game so the fact that you can pick this up for sub nine thousand dollars maybe even twist the knife and get eight or maybe even below if they're desperate for an le man i don't think it's a bad way to go for five to six hundred games to play at home and then turn and burn it for about the same that you're in it that that's not a bad thing in pinball i don't think for this game it sucks it'll never be thirteen thousand dollars again so if you want to get that for your le i hate to tell you that reality just bites with that um you know part of the reason is there's just not a whole lot in the lower two-thirds of this game but like i hold this game up as an example to what a multi-morphic game could be like in a regular cabinet which is to say super fun and probably in my game room i would buy this game if it was portal in this cabinet absolutely i'd put my testicle launcher on there and we'd have some fun let me tell you so if you you know You're just looking at what's on the market. You're not really wanting to jump in and be one of these crazy new in-box guys. And you wouldn't mind grabbing a steel here. I'd rather have this than a Mandalorian. I'll tell you that. And playing through and unlocking all the characters and stuff, it's good fun. It's good fun. I had fun doing it. So I think if you picked one up cheap and got yourself a topper and then the dangler shooter rod, I think it would be something I would consider doing. Yeah. And pick up some tasteful mods for it. You got to get the little PCB covers for the quick locks. And that's a quick 3D printed device. They're not that expensive. Anybody can make them for you. They do add some aesthetic. I had the Taco Bell bell tower for my Venom. I put the spinner on the left orbit. There's a spot for it. Just screw it in. Fantastic, man. So not a bad way to go. I love this package and release. And I'm so excited that I get to participate, man. And I'm getting this shooter out. I'm going to run around and play with it. Thinking about it I probably should have bought two It only would have made sense right Am I crazy probably I spent on a shooter rod for a game I don have I had to I had to I going to have so much fun I'm going to have as much fun with the shooter rod as I did with the game. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that. Moving to something that's probably more family friendly. If you were going to design and release a pinball machine in 2025, guaranteed to offend nobody at all, I think Merlin's Arcade would be the game for you. So we saw this game came out just before the Venom. Once the Venom accessories dropped, my whole day was gone because I was just obsessed with that rod. But let me click over because my good buddy, Chris Turner, and his little company down there, a little fledgling company that launched Ninja Eclipse, came out with their second sophomore release game. He came out with the half cabinet. He took the feedback, lowered the price, brought out a product that sold out on the market at 100 games. And now he's back with 500, what, legendary editions of Merlin's Arcade, which from what I understand is a holdout from the Deep Root days. Okay. And I'm still trying to piece it together. I haven't pushed him for details because I don't mean to pry or anything. But it seems like he was involved with the Deep Root Corporation, ended up quite savagely coming in, not savagely, but like, you know, stealthily or deftly. Deftly. D-E-F-T. Yeah, deftly coming in and scooping up some stuff at auction. and got himself some licenses, some of which were sold off, some of which end up with somebody associated with Dutch Pinball. And, yeah, good choice. Buy low, sell high, I say. Nothing wrong with that. And so part of the assets I think he was still holding was this game here, designed by a designer whose name just escaped me, but I did read the information. I've been at work all day. I haven't had time to synthesize every little detail about this game. but what I have been able to do is get the one thing I didn't see at launch and that is a photo of the entire play field I reached out to Chris himself and he happily passed it along dude is busy today his game just came out his second company his second game from his new company tpf is at the end of the week this guy's probably running around crazy I wonder if you even remember to brush his teeth today with everything that's going on so I don't mean to overwhelm the guy but I did reach out congrats on the new release by the way any way that you have a photo of say just a play field and he did and so it's over on the patreon right now i just wanted to get that out for some people pay them back for paying me forward man i love it uh i gotta i spoil those guys i spoil those guys so what did we get we got a game called merlin's arcade i haven't read through the whole story i don't know if i'm merlin i don't know if i'm the arcade i don't know if it's a wreck-it-ralph situation and we're running from game to game through uh serial bus ports But what I can piece together is that this is a Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot, Merlin kind of affair crossed with a family entertainment center. I don't know. There's some knight with an afro reverse dunking a basketball. So I think we're taking some liberties with the historical accuracy here. is this is this like a camelot arcade like from the 1980s and we're going in there and these are all the teenagers that are working there and they all have fancy lancelot names and stuff maybe it's an aesthetic to go with so what we have essentially is uh as far as layout we got ourselves a fan layout uh seven stand-up targets with an eighth hidden around the corner a three flipper game i don't know how many balls are in there there's a launch button so you know the venom testicle is not going on this um but we have some interesting uh spinners there's not really a giant mechanism there's one ramp in the game and that's kind of what we have so a simple layout for a simpler time let's go with that seven thousand dollars for the standard arcade version nine thousand if you want the yellow powder coat and i think there's some other accoutrement like some bigger speakers and speaker lights and stuff like that again i'll have to go through the whole rubric i barely had time today to synthesize everything um but what we have is a game that is in that ninja eclipse cabinet which has really got to be the unsung hero of uh turner pinball because i love what they've done you've seen the cool uh pop top that's on this thing this isn't a pull the lockdown bar off and slide the glass straight out the glass is integrated in the armor and the lockdown bar as one piece there's what looks to be similar to like the aura lighting that we saw with American Pinball, but it's embedded into that whole device, all as one piece. And I think before it was polycarbonate, and now it's glass, or maybe it's still polycarbonate. I'll have to double-check with Chris on that. But you can open the coin door, reach underneath, unlock the latch, which is incredibly satisfying if you haven't had a chance to do it. And then the whole assembly will just roll right up and off, and it can be stored out of the way. You can set it down on concrete if you want, because the glass in there is protected. and it's all kind of one piece and there's a wireless contacts to run the lights and everything so really cool engineering that we've seen from Turner Pinball and it's really a hallmark of what you get with their Ninja Eclipse at least ask anybody this game looks very much like it was made in the same factory that Ninja Eclipse was as far as the colors that are used on the inserts and the art and such and I think for the most part that game is holding up pretty well I know 50 have shipped probably more now to date um i've been to some houses of people that own this game and so far it's all been uh rosy cheeks so i haven't heard of any major mess ups uh you know any coils exploding any vials of ferro liquids staining games and playfields or anything like that haven't heard about shipping or any of that business uh so i think you're going to get a well built cabinet i think looking at i think what's called the legendary edition um it looks like a good presentation and that's about all i can say right now haven't got my hands on this i've barely looked at all the photos but i do have a complete play field photo so i can comment on the layout which i want to help everybody out and do hence all right so three flippers uh extra flippers over on the left i think there was that extra one on the right side in a more vertical orientation uh on ninja eclipse so this is very much like you know of that uh iteration um from the bottom flippers you got one two three four five six main shots so again fan-ish layout uh there is an orbit it was hard to tell from the pictures that were released but on the full play field image which i'm sure will leak out and it's probably a nap arcade as we speak uh there is that left orbit each one of these major shots is themed after a different arcade type game a game like you know a basketball a foosball shot a dart shot there's a pool area there's an air hockey area there's a scoop. It's the second one from the left is the scoop that starts the modes. There's four inserts there, which look like to be for modes. And that's kind of what you have. So left to right, left, you have an orbit that clearly comes all the way around the other side. Next to that is that castle with the plastic ramp. The only ramp I can find in the game, this ramp starts out plastic, goes around a semicircle, and then feeds in that barrel with the Black Knight or whoever on it into a wire form now embedded in that barrel is an up post so this is also a physical ball lock so don you say what do you feel about a game that uses the only ramp also as a physical ball lock i don't love it you know because i wish there was a ramp that you could just repeat uh you know at any time but you know i think you would shoot this until you qualify the lock and then after that it's just balls just will sit in there until they're ready to drop for the multiball so that is what it is Ninja Eclipse had a mechanism like this on its first iteration where you'd shoot a ramp and it would physically lock balls. And then it was redesigned a bit, I think, to try to get the price into something more reasonable. And so now I think there's a virtual ball lockage. But Ninja Eclipse had several other different ramps as well. All right, so I was able to suss this out. So there's a foosball shot just to the right of where that ramp is with the castle that's in front of it. And it actually uses one of the little foosball guys, like the same kind of sculpt, which I love this, man. and it looks to be on a bearing so hopefully this thing will spin like crazy and hopefully it's off-weighted enough that it'll settle back for like subsequent shots right so it doesn't get stuck upside down where it wouldn't register i can't wait to shoot this and see how it feels this is really probably like the stand-up feature of this game that i'm most enthusiastic about trying so this is a horseshoe shot that you can only hit it looks like from the front because it feeds back into the left orbit and it doesn't look like there's a way to hit that left orbit and come backwards through it would have been cool to see a diverter there but whatever we'll see how the game plays i can't i can't judge that but i did find out that does make a quick u-turn underneath that plastic ramp and looks like it'll rocket back down the left orbit which i think is fine uh next to that you got a set of four pop bumpers one of which has i guess the merlin arcade owner wizard uncle grandpa kind of character uh he's coming out of i don't know a chimney or something it a little bit difficult to ascertain i mean i think it a chimney it certainly looks like one maybe he standing at the counter or something uh regardless there looks like a set of four pop bumpers there i like that there a shot straight through the pops i do love shots through the pops although this one looks like the two lower pops that you would run into are both guarded by what i think are basketball stand-up targets on the left and then the scoop that starts modes on the right so it may be a more forgiving shot up through the pops but there you go there's an arcade machine on top of the just above the to pop on the back right so that's interesting is there a screen in this where it's actually playing graphics and stuff that would be cool is there a shot up there where this thing's interactive i'll have to look through the rubric or hopefully there's some gameplay video footage about the drop either way i'll drive myself down to the texas pinball festival where i hope this is an attendance and i can get my claws in on it lift the hood touch the things with my fingers like i like to do it looks like this other spinner is also on bearings which after playing pulp fiction and owning it at home every spinner i have i want on bearings instead because they spin for days so satisfying what else do we got uh next to the spinner there is that scoop that starts modes to the right of that looks to be an orbit that plugs back into the left uh the shooter lane goes right into that orbit it's a launch button so i don't think there's any way to do a short plunge and have it roll down backwards but i guess we'll see um otherwise the barrel looks to just be a barrel um there is mention of a barrel that physically locks balls and i saw the the the up post that's inside there but it said there's also connected to a subway and i can't tell if what i'm seeing is true but it looks like there might be some sort of vuk upshot wire form behind that arcade machine so maybe that plugs into a subway maybe from the scoop that'd be kind of fun what if instead of the scoop firing balls straight back at you fed into a subway fed up through the arcade machine and came down from the barrel or functioned with a diverter under the playfield to send balls through a subway back to the barrel to lock for multiball action or to shoot back at you i think that'd be kind of fun i have no idea i haven't gotten underneath it it looks to be some either high quality 3d prints or some sculpts of uh i don't know a four horned black knight on the right and a couple horned elf lady on the left and then there's some art blades on here and a game with yellow powder coated armor quite the bold choice very hard to pull off i think it seems to kind of work here otherwise i'm seeing a lot of rgb and such and that's essentially the game from what i can see now i haven't read every single insert uh there's a couple of inserts lit particularly one under the left upper flipper that doesn't seem to go anywhere i can't tell if there's a stand-up target back there but there's got to be some reason to shoot a ball up into what would just be a dead space into a rubber so again we'll see uh there's one more stand-up target on the right i don't think there's another uh vucker scoop over there and then you got a panel of what looks like seven stand-up targets that look like arrow targets or dartboards or something um not the most fun thing i don't think just a rack a row of stand-up targets you know look at deadpool pro and deadpool premium words are hard uh drop targets always more fun than stand-up targets on jaws the drop targets were always more fun than the stand-up targets on the pro so i'm a kind of a drop target guy i wish this game had some of them i'd feel more enthusiastic about it but hard to judge it just based off of this although he is asking for a one thousand dollar deposit and it looks like games will start shipping this summer 2025 so if you're already in on one of these who cares what don thinks you already put your deposit down and if you're one of the first ones you're probably going to get your game pretty quick he's going to do this top end edition at first and then it looks like once a hundred of those have shipped then they'll start going through the what they're calling the arcade version which is like the more scaled down one and then probably just you know build to order after that i'm happy to see chris turner's company doing well and get into its second release that first release is the hardest most companies when they come out with their first game it's some unlicensed title road trip america's most haunted uh well jersey jack did come out with uh wizard of oz but then it pretty much buried the company and had to be rescued so you gotta get one game out there get your feet wet show people that you can make a game right and a hundred not a bad number to start with spooky did that turner pinball did that now he's got a little i'm sure he's got way more experience bidding pinball machines now than he did 70 games ago when he started ninja eclipse so using that and paying it forward this is the game we have now uh probably he's leaning into some of these designs which have already been proven and designed uh to help keep the company going and then maybe we'll see some sweet sweet licensed action will he be the guy to secure goonies how about that turner goonies what else is going on don well i am enthusiastic as you can tell man it's been it's been two days of insanity and like i hope i don't sound like i've got pressured speech like i'm i'm rambling like a madman too much but i am excited generally about this hobby and what's going on i can't wait to finish up work this week and then get out to texas where i can chillax and rub my hands all over that sweet, sweet Venom shooter rod. Oh, I got ideas overflowing about what I would like to do once I get to the show. Also, I've been hard at work trying to make D&D look as cool as I can. I've played the game through and done just about everything I can do in there. One of my characters is a pretty high level, 16 or so, not terribly high, but I've got a ton of magical items and weapons. I've been having fun. I've been playing the dragon multiball dozens and dozens of times, and it's kind of all the dragon is programmed to do now. Can't wait till there's some more in there. I beat the game. Well, I beat Simaster and unlocked the bard. And I think that's all you can do right now. Because I played through again, I finished all the modes and they just kind of just keep sending me to a different town at this point. So I'm waiting for some more code. While I'm doing that, I'm also tricking this game out. And there was no better place to start than with the mimic chest that's on the lower left of the play field. It's a flat plastic. It's got an LED light board behind it and a flasher dome on a plastic. And that's kind of all you get in that area, which I was not going to settle for. So I did find a 3D model of a mimic chest online from an artist that does allow commercial production, provided that you're part of the Patreon. Not a cool way to go. I wish I could 3D model. I'd start a Patreon just for 3D printing. But I was able to heavily modify this thing in order for it to fit directly down using existing hardware and that flashing light board to have this really cool mimic chest. and I just got the first full color prints off. I got them installed in my game. I got some going out for people to try. And I thought, why not share what I'm doing now that I have a proof of concept and it's working? And so I just, as a way to judge interest, I posted what I've made. So far, it is a mimic chest. It's a 3D print of some terrain with some ruins on it to replace that flat plastic that's up there to give it some dimensionality. And then I replaced the flasher dome with this really cool fluorescent crystal that flashes and lights up and even fluoresces under UV light if you've got that in your game room. So it looks pretty boss. And I was thinking, you know, this is so fun. I bet some other people would like this. And when I shared it on Patreon and the Discord, absolutely I got some interest right away. So as a way to judge interest, I put it on the Facebook page. And so far I'm getting a lot of emails, and I started a list for this. So it looks like after Texas Pinball Festival, when I have a final version of this, I'm going to start slinging them for whatever I consider a fair price. I'm not trying to gouge anybody. I'm just trying to make games look super cool and hopefully not get too much hate from the rest of the mod community. But if you want to go check it out, it's on the Facebook site for Don's Pinball Podcast. I posted it today, which is Tuesday, which is March 18th. It was St. Patrick's Day, I think, just recently. So go check that out. And if you want more information when they're ready to ship, email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. If you think I'm terrible and you want to rant at me, email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. If you're going to TPF and want to hang out again, you know where to go. If you're at Pentastic, I'll be there as well. Spoke with one of the guys there, Gabe, I believe his name was. Had a great conversation yesterday. I can't wait to go to this game convention. This thing starts and just goes for 24 hours. No 11 p.m. and they kick you off the show floor. I guess this is like a 24-hour rager for three days. I've never been to Pentastic, but I'm going to be going there. I'll be high-fiving everybody and hanging out on Friday and Saturday for sure. So if you're in the area, so am I. Let's go hang out. Otherwise, TPF is coming this weekend. I'm about to swing out of Wisconsin like a wrecking ball. I came in like a wrecking ball. I never hit so hard in love. All I wanted was to break your walls. All you ever did was wreck me. Yeah, you wrecked me. I put you high up in the...