And I said welcome to New York, it's been waiting for you, welcome to New York, welcome to New York, welcome to New York, it's been waiting for you, welcome to New York, welcome to New York. Welcome everybody, happy Friday, welcome to New York, Canadas Pinball Podcast, they're doing construction across the street, so if you hear some banging and you hear some honking, This is just New York City on a Friday morning. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk all about what's going on in the pinball industry. We're going to go around the horn. We're just going to go through every manufacturer. It's a fun Friday. Let's just go around the horn and talk about what's happening at each manufacturer, what we think is going to come from each of these manufacturers next. You know, and we're closing in on the end of the year. Pretty soon, Twippy eligibility will be over if your game does not ship by the end of November. It's December 1st to December 1st. And we will talk a little bit about a Twippy criteria that they tried to put in place that would have eliminated Canada's Pinball Podcast from the running. Let's just start there. This is the most hysterical item I've ever heard. So Colin, you know, our friend Colin over at the Kineticist, he brought this to the Twippy committee. He wanted there to be a positivity criteria that content creators had to reach if they were to be eligible for the Twippies. Let me repeat that. If your content was deemed by him to not be positive, then you would be ineligible for a Twippy. Who do you think he was trying to eliminate? The guy who's won six years in a row for favorite pinball podcast. What a sad proposal, but I'm happy to report that when he brought it to the Twippy committee, they immediately shot it down. So I'm happy that the Twippy committee is not going to be persuaded by censorship. I mean, think about a world in which the media are not allowed to say something negative about something. Really, how are you supposed to critique stuff objectively if you can't say this game sucks or this theme sucks? Is that spreading negativity? So let's just cheerlead everything and see how boring the world becomes, people. You only get better products. You only get better things in yourself. You only get better things at work if you're unhappy with the way things are currently going. That's how life works. Unhappy men and women, they change the world for the better. And I would like to believe when I go to bed at night that Canadian Pinball Podcast has been a positive impact on pinball. It has not been a negative impact on pinball. All right. So get your trippy votes ready, people. We need five free shows to be eligible by the end of this month. And I'm going to do something funny on this weekend, Saturday morning spectacular. All right. So let's talk about these pinball companies. Right. So let's start with Stern Pinball. Now, look, I'm looking at this Elvira Blood Red Kiss Edition, whatever it's called. I saw the unboxing by straight down the middle. There's like a two-minute video, and I'm just going to say this right now. This is one of the most beautiful pinball machines I have ever seen. It is gorgeous. There is like nothing about this machine I would change, and it actually makes me want to buy one. It's just so beautiful, and it goes to show if Stern makes a little bit more of an effort, what they can do with the game. I think this Elvira for $13,000. if I were in the market for something right now and I wanted to spend this much money this would be the game I would get I also think the bottom line is this there's only going to be 500 of this version of Elvira and it is by far the nicest version of the game and I'm just going to say this I think this game is going to hold value I don't think this is going to be one of those $13,000 games that immediately becomes worth $10,000 in a few weeks there's a few reasons why this game is filled with toys unlike most Stern machines. This game also features Lyman Sheets, and it's also Lyman Sheets' last game he ever did, and he's the best coder in the history of pinball, and because of that, this game is always going to hold value. It also has all the assets you want in a pinball machine. They got Elvira, they've got the movie clips, and Lyman Sheets was such a master in arranging all this kind of content on an LCD screen, and then you've got just the beauty of the damn machine itself. I mean, look at this thing. It's pure sex on a box, in a box. Everything happening with this game just screams like, oh my gosh, if you put this game in your lineup, it is going to stand out more than almost any other Stern machine ever. And then I don't think people are going to sell it very often because of that. You know, I think it's much nicer than Jurassic Park 30. If that version of the game, even though it's nicer than the older LE of Jurassic Park, it's still not nearly as nice as this Elvira machine. And I know there's debate on which game is better. I think it's just different strokes for different folks. For $13,000 though, I will say this. I mean, this game should come with the topper. You know, and the other thing is this. I wish Stern would say this is it. Like, this is the final version of Elvira. I don't want to send a message to Stern that they can just keep doing this on every single theme. Like, just add more sparkle, change the color palette, and we're just going to line up to buy them at $13,000. but man this game is seductive it is very seductive so a beautiful game and now after this right it's like what's next over at stern we're waiting for these stranger things premiums we expect that game to be on the line sometime in like december january and then it's all about Keith Elwin jaws and how will jaws be received by the pinball world now look following this elvira which is so beautiful if the rumors are true that jaws pinball's art package is pretty terrible it will be interesting to see if people line up for the LE knowing that there's a thousand of them. And that's the other thing too, is I think everybody wants to go back to just having 500 LEs. I'd rather have 500 LEs of any game in the world and that's it. You know, and I don't even mind it if they make 500 of this version and 500 of that version, as long as they are different. When you make 1,000 units of the same exact looking game, it's just not limited. It's just never going to be limited. If you're going to make a thousand Jaws LEs, maybe make like 500 featuring the shark on the cabinet and then maybe 500 featuring the boat or something else on the cabinet. But just break it up a little bit and then you have two versions. And then anyone who owns one version at least can sleep well at night knowing that they have one of 500. I just don't like one of a thousand being on any LE plaque. I think it means nothing. And by the way, you are probably hearing New York City behind me. It is ridiculous. They are putting up some scaffolding. They made a street that's already crowded one lane now because of this damn construction So I apologize if there a lot of background noise I hear some dude just blasting his music That normally me and the demon blasting ACDC and Guns N Roses and then after Jaws at Stern Pinball the rumored titles just to remind everybody are going to be Dungeons and Dragons. I don't know who's buying that game. John Wick. And then there is the rumor of Pokemon. So those are the three strongest rumors of games that might be coming out next year. If that's Stern's lineup next year after Jaws, it's really not that strong, people. I get it. Pokemon is huge, but I'm just not sure it's going to cross over with the pinball buying demographic. All right, then let's get to Spooky Pinball. They are busy making Scooby-Doos. They put up a picture yesterday, which is awesome. It is the Mystery Machine cabinet. Now, we haven't seen this before, and I'm actually really digging it. It is really neat, and I think that's the cabinet you get if you order the standard version of the game. You know, I was thinking about this, too, because Spooky Pinball is another company where, like, None of the games are really limited, and they'll make as many collector's editions as people order, and then the majority of people order the collector's editions. So then, ironically, the base version of the game actually becomes the rarest version of the game. I don't think it should be that way. I mean, think about it. It'd be like getting on an airplane, and the majority of the seats are first-class seats, and then the most exclusive seats are at the back of the plane. It doesn't really make much sense, and so, like, I think anyone who gets this Mystery Machine cabinet version of the game is at least going to have something different than everybody else. And it just looks phenomenal. Now look, after this, the real question is what's next from Spooky? We've been getting some clues. There are three rumored titles that everyone is expecting. And it is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is Evil Dead. And it is Looney Tunes. Like which one doesn't fit, right? Looney Tunes. So we will see what happens. I'm still hearing that the next game is going to be a single design where two themes will share the same design like they did with Ultraman and with Halloween. mean. I'm not a fan of that. The reason I'm not a fan of that is it indicates that you did not design one of those games from the ground up with the theme in mind. I don't like it. I don't think they should keep doing this. I think they need to hire another designer. I think they need to get a little bit more mechanical magic into these spooky games. And now with Barrels of Fun in the world, which is basically made up of like ex-spooky people, they're going to start to feel the competition and they're not going to be able to get 2,000 non-refundable deposits anymore. They're really going to have to work hard for their sales moving forward, which is a good thing because it's going to make them get better. All right, let's go on to barrels of fun because I just mentioned them. I think everyone who ordered a labyrinth is patiently waiting. They have 500 or so games that have been ordered, maybe more by now. They brought the game to Houston Expo, so that will sell them more games. And now it becomes how many can they make, right? That's really the next step for this company because we're all excited. We're all excited by the rumors that they might have the Fifth Element. They might have Goonies. They might have Gremlins. You know, everyone's excited. They might have Beetlejuice. So this company's future is looking pretty good. What I hope we see from Barrels of Fun, the more I look at Labyrinth, I'm still not really seeing a lot of mechanical engineering in the game. And I want to see more mechanical stuff. Basically, I want to see more toys in the game. And the thing about Labyrinth, if you like the movie, I get why you're going to like this pinball machine, but it's not pretty. It's just not pretty to me. Like these ugly ogres all over the game, the brown color palette, like put this game next to Elvira. And look, people, if you load up this game with the topper and all the options, you're getting close to $13,000. To me, like I would have a hard time buying this game over Elvira Blood Kiss Edition. But I'm glad these guys are here. It is exciting because they did it right. They did not reveal until games were on the line. They figured manufacturing out. They took no money from people before they got their business up and running. And that's how you do it. Now it's just going to be, can they build these games consistently and get games out the door every single week? We shall see. Let's go on to Jersey Jack Pinball. So here's the thing. I think unanimously everyone's feedback is that Elton John is the best shooting Jersey Jack game ever. It is probably the most fun Jersey Jack game to shoot of all time. And this is where the dilemma lies, is I bet most of us really would love to give Elton John a shot. We would love to put this game in our lineup if the price was right. And that's the thing about this game, is they finally made a game that plays like a Stern machine. They finally did it. You know, it's not surprising because Steve Ritchie just brought over the same exact designs he's been putting on every Stern machine into Jersey Jack format. You know, but it's like Stern Pinball and Jersey Jack had a baby. I mean, that's what Elton John is, but it's just not a game that feels very enticing at $15,000. Like when you look at the CE of the game, it just does not look like a $15,000 machine. And the LE is so much more beautiful. It's not even funny. And then you have that dilemma. Like, do I buy a $12,000 Elton John machine in which we know the demand is not strong for the LE of the game, especially at 12K. And then we all have seen what happened to Godfather LEs and Toy Story LEs. Within a few months, they're gonna be trading for $10,000 or less. And so, you know, do you wanna take the early hit or do you just wait and wait for these distributors to take the product, not be able to find anyone to buy it at $12,000 and then get a huge discount? And we're gonna see that. We are absolutely gonna see it because Elton John is not a take my money now theme for people. I also think the weakest part of this game is the code itself. When you look at the gameplay and it's that screensaver of just images of Elton, it's not really captivating. I don't think they did it right. You know, there's just something about this game that feels off to me. The shots are there. There's not a lot of toys. But man, just watching the game being played is not that enticing. I'm going to apologize for the noise again because I can hear it. So I'm sure you can hear it again. I don't know what's going on out there, but it's New York City. So welcome to Canada, live from New York. All right, so that's Jersey Jack. And then we know that Matrix and Harry Potter are around the corner. And that's another reason why it's like, why jump in on a theme when you know there's much bigger themes coming? I don't think Jersey Jack's ever going to lower the price. I think they're just trying to buy their time until they get to those bigger themes. All right, let's go on to Chicago Gaming Company. Chicago Gaming Company, where are the Pulp Fictions? You know, the Pulp Fiction game is not going to be eligible for the Twippies this year because none will have shipped by the end of November. So I don't know if they're going to try to get just one out the door to be eligible, but they probably not going to make the twippy cut You know there just something frustrating about this company Everyone feels it There nothing we can do Complaining about it won change any of it They going to make a high quality product They're going to do it. This game will eventually make its way into people's game rooms, but man, it's probably going to be another game where you wait a year longer than you thought. And because of that, I don't really feel like there's any momentum about what's next at CGC after Pulp Fiction. I don't feel like the Mark Ritchie game, which was rumored to be Gremlins, I don't feel like that is ever going to happen. I thought these guys might remake Kingpin or help that project move to fruition. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think Rick over at Planetary is going to give them another old game to remake. It just feels like CGC is in this weird place. So we shall see what happens. But once again, Chicago Gaming Company is more like Chicago Delaying Company. And they do nothing when it comes to like talking to us, right? There's no communication from Ryan White or anybody over there on a monthly basis about the status of that company. It's really strange. All right, so after CGC, we got American Pinball. David Fix has now said that their goal was to make 300 galactic tank forces by the end of the year. The only problem is there are not 300 people who want to own a galactic tank force on planet Earth. Just think about how sad that is for a moment. You've got this rich guy in Mukesh who's basically given you the ability to make a pinball machine. You've got Ametron backing you. And then you need to pick a game where you need to excite the thousands of potential pinball buyers around the world. And you land on a theme that can successfully excite more than 300 people on a planet of around 9 billion people. About which maybe 10,000 people are pinball buyers and collectors. so out of 10,000 people you can excite 300 the game is a failure people American Pinball is a failure people they need to change the team over there David Fix is not the right man for the job and this is not a personal attack he's had the helm over there now for how long and he just doesn't have the answers and if Cuphead is next by Ryan McQuaid just stick a fork in these guys nobody wants Cuphead other than Ryan McQuaid. So I really hope that rumor is false. There's only one answer for this company. If they have He-Man, they need to make it next and they need to load it with toys. It needs to have Castle Grayskull. You need to have this amazing moment when Adam raises his sword and turns into He-Man. If they have this property, why is this game not on the line. Nobody wants Dennis Nordman's failed tank experiment. Nobody. All right. Well, that's American Pinball. I'm just going to say this. I think this company is in jeopardy of closing its doors. And I think Mukesh is going to get tired of not making any money with the pinball division. All right. After American Pinball, we got P3 Multimorphic. Jerry's not making any new games this year until they solve the problems with the old games. And look, there's nothing really new to talk about here. Not many people own this platform. If I talked a lot about Multimorphic P3, I wouldn't have 655 subscribers. So look, if you own one, great. Here's the thing that makes me sad. I do think Multimorphic has one of the greatest engineering departments in modern pinball. They actually make these incredible mechanisms that nobody else is even coming close to. Like the crane and heist is unreal. The mechs and Weird Al are super cool. The only problem is, right? If you're a mechanical engineer, you have to work around the fact that there's a damn TV screen taking up the play field and you can't even put mechanisms on 75% of the play field. I just don't get it. I want to challenge Jerry to do something. You know what? Look, Jerry, keep making your multi-morphic P3s, but then have your engineers just make a normal pinball machine. Just try it for once, Jerry. Trust me. Try it for once. Give them the entire piece of wood to fill up with amazing mechs, get a licensed theme, and watch that normal pinball machine outsell your dream platform 10 to 1. It would happen. It would absolutely happen. It's like he doesn't even want to try it. He's just so all in on this platform, and it's just never going to catch on. And it's so much more difficult to have to fill up that screen because if you get a licensed theme, like look at Weird Al, like you're not going to be able to code and put stuff on that screen. and then the other screen, it's a nightmare for the software people. All right, the Pinball Brothers, the rumor is that their next game is going to be another music pin after Queen. I don't think a lot of people bought Queen or own Queen. Queen was kind of dead on arrival. It just felt like an old game that came out in a new time. We got the Ripley version of Alien, which was nice that they put that into the game. You know, but I'm just still waiting for the Pinball Brothers to make a move. That is not a move that was started by Andrew Highway. That's what I want to see if these guys really have it. Like, do they have a good designer? Are they going to be able to bring a licensed theme out that people really, really want after Alien? And I think we don't want another music pin. I don't want any more music pins. I'm just so sick of music pins. So that's the Pinball Brothers. Dutch Pinball, they're making these big Lebowski still. They're going to make them for the rest of all of 2024. if we're lucky we might get back to the future at the end of next year all we can do is hope we're gonna get it there's a rumor there might be something before back to the future but we'll see if that happens but i'm just happy these lebowski's are being made the machines are gorgeous every time i see a lebowski in a game room it still holds up after all these years after 10 freaking years this game is still more impressive than most modern games that cost a lot more money. It's like one of those games where it looks like it's worth the $13,500. I think that's the price for a machine. You know what I'm saying? Like you stand over Lebowski, you see the assets, you see the mechs, you see the artwork, everything in it. You feel like you're getting your money's worth. And that's all we want from all these other manufacturers. All right, Homepin, there's shipping Spinal Tap. Nobody cares. I'm not even going to talk about Homepin. Oh, the noise. All right, let's talk about Haggis Pinball. So Haggis, it looks like they're going to finish the Fathoms. People are still unboxing them. So it looks like Damien might achieve his goal to move on to Centaur. The thing is, I just don't think they're going to sell many Centaurs. They're not going to sell as many of those as they did Fathom. And look, the thing is this. Are we ever going to get to Marty Robbins' original designed game? The game by the way if you don know is War of the Worlds which is an open IP It probably going to be based on the Orson Welles radio address That what I would do but that is the game that Marty Robbins has designed and remember if you go back and listen to the Haggis interviews like three years ago Marty War of the Worlds was supposed to be out like two years ago yes they could keep making these remakes and making them beautiful and add all these crazy toppers and lighting and all this stuff and under cabinet lighting that lights up your bathroom toilet, but I would rather these guys show us what can they do with a theme that they designed. I'm just bored with remakes and I'm bored with remakes from an era like this. I just don't think that many people want these old games right now. And I still can't believe that they charged like what, like $17,500 for that Oblivion edition. Absolutely stupid. You know, speaking of stupid, by the way, did you see now the new low for James Bond 60th? $13,000. $13,000 for a James Bond 60th, which now means that every single one is basically worth $13,000. And I was given out to Neil McRae on my Facebook page because he said he bought four of them and flipped three to James Bond collectors in the UK and made enough money to pay for his 60th anniversary edition. You know, the reason I was given out to Neil is he does not contribute to Canada's Pinball Podcast. He does not subscribe. He's a very wealthy individual, flies all over the world. And I gave him crap because I was like, Neil, think about it. Neil, do you donate to Pinside? You know what he said? He's like, yeah, I donate to Pinside because I spend a lot of time there. And then I'm like, brother, you are on my page every day. You're watching every Saturday morning spectacular. You engage with me every single day and you're not gonna kick five bucks, yet he'll spend $80,000 on four James Bond 60s. It's so weird to me that some people's mamas just didn't raise them right. They didn't raise them right. I bet he tips real bad at restaurants. You should go out with Canadian New York City. See, when I go out to my restaurants, how happy all the staff are because I take care of people who take care of me. I take care of people who take care of me. That's how it's supposed to be. You know, and that's why I'm thankful for each and every one of you who subscribes to the show. You give me a little bit of money every month. I give you a lot more than you're paying for. You know that. I mean, heck, you walk into a Starbucks now and coffee is like $7. All right, let's go on. So we got Haggis. Who's next? Who's next on my list? Pinball Adventures. Are we going to talk about this? Puny Factory being tossed off the roof. Look, Donald, I know you're listening. You got to just take the grand and throw the machine off the roof. Because, Donald, you got to weigh your options here. You got to weigh your options. You're never going to sell this thing for $5,000. You're never. The one on Pinside for five grand is never selling. All of my selling of this event and Win Schilling of it to Kingdom Come is not going to make people want to hand you $5,000, brother. And also, like, the GoFundMe page has been taken down. You know why? Because Andrew McBain complained about it. Well, I'm not surprised. I don't know. It's at a point now where I've told Donald, you could be a hero and just give this game to Todd Tucky, toss it off the roof, and give everybody the holiday pinball content they would love to see, or it's just going to sit in your game room, not really functioning properly. It's not going to give you any peace of mind. You're going to want to get rid of it. I know you keep saying, I can't let it go. You have no options, man. It's not worth any money. The game is just not worth any money. After knowing what we know, nobody wants this game, and that's where I'm at on it. It's not personal. I got to tell it like it is. And that's how it is. All right. I think we covered everybody. Turner pinball. Nobody's buying that game. We got about a month until Twippy voting opens up. We're going to see what they do to try to make Canada lose because the last person Colin wants to see up on stage is Canada. And this is why everybody get everybody ready to vote for Canada. I mean, out of all the years, this is really the year where behind the scenes, they tried to make a move to make me lose. I mean, think about that for a minute. I'm the six-time champion, six in a row, and they tried to change the rules so that I would not be eligible. So what I really would love for each and every one of you to do, I want you each to vote Canada. I want you to get your wives or your partners to vote Canada. Get your kids to vote Canada. Everybody can vote Canada. Let's send a message to the damn TWIFI committee and Colin that we don't want to live in a world that tries to censor people for speaking objectively about a hobby. And censorship is so un-American. It's so weird to me. And that's why no one's taking his thing seriously. Like, does anyone take that site seriously? It reads like it's written by an AI bot who doesn't know anything about pinball. And also he's only been in this hobby for two years. He doesn't know anything yet. He absolutely doesn't know anything. Like, I really don't trust anybody who came into pinball during the COVID period of pinball and then tries to be a trusted media outlet about the hobby. They have no idea. They have no context for anything. You know, at least with Don, you're getting like his enthusiasm about getting into the hobby and that's his angle. And by the way, people, and by the way, just for the record, I sent Don a really nice note offering to bury the hatchet, congratulating him that the Twippy category for favorite new pinball podcaster is going to open the door for him. I said, look, we both said bad things about each other. Let's just bury the hatchet and move on. Let me know if you're open to that. And guess what? No response. I've said in Cengiz a bunch of notes too. No response. Unable to have a conversation. Unable to talk it out. Unable to forgive. Unable to work it out. And that's the part that's weird to me is why do people want to wake up and hold on to their anger forever? And there's no greater example of what benefits happen when you actually get over the anger and work it out. Like me and Jason Knapp. There was a period where nobody was more disgusted with me than Jason Knapp, and we just talked it out like grown adults. And we basically met on this common ground where life is too short. We've both lost people we love way before we should have. And holding on to anger over a pinball feud is absolutely stupid. And now we have a great relationship, and we enjoy each other's company. And that's how it can be with me and Cengiz, me and Don, me and Zach, me and everybody. But when Canada extends the olive branch, some people just want to turn their back and walk away, and that's fine. You know, but I wake up every day and I try to measure my life and how many days do I wake up in a good mood. And most days I'm there. It is hard to measure life by that simple measurement. It is hard to measure the success of your life by that simple measurement. How many days do you wake up in a good mood? Everybody, I hope this show makes you wake up in a good mood every like Monday, Wednesday, Friday when you get a new show. And I hope tomorrow you wake up in a good mood. And join me for Canada's Saturday Morning Spectacular. Have a great Friday. We'll talk to you soon. The lights are so bright, they never blind me Welcome to New York So bright, they never blind me Welcome to New York Welcome to New York