Welcome to a very special episode of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, May 16th. This is episode 141, and it's raining like a mother outside. I didn't say anything more. It's raining. It's raining, mothers. Oh, wait. No, that's not how it goes. It could. It could be. My daughter this morning came in and knocked on the door, and she's like, it's raining cats and dogs outside. Why is it raining cats and dogs? I want to go to sleep, but it's raining cats and dogs. And I just have this mental image of just, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. Everything's bouncing off. You thought the stray problem was bad before. It's like raining cats and dogs. and this madness. So, I'm Dennis, and we're in person. We are. For the first time in well over a year. This is the first time I've seen you in person since a tournament, the first Saturday tournament of March last year. Maybe. I think you stopped by to pick up something. Yeah, I might have stopped and dropped something off. Sometime in the fall. Yeah. Yeah, where we were like... Which reminds me, I do have some Christmas presents for your family that I didn't have shipped to your address, and I'll just give them to you now. Okay. Well, now as in afterward. Afterward. Right now. We're going to open it up live on recording. According to my records, our last in-person record was back on episode 110. That is a long time ago. And your records indicate you last even used your computer for this on 1-115. When Pinberg was canceled. Yes, when Pinberg was canceled. Let's see. Episode 110 was the episode where we talked about JJP moving to Chicago. Hmm. And the 2019-2020 IFPA tournament. and that's when we had one of our really big coronavirus updates talking about all the stuff that had been canceled just before we were canceled. Yep. It got us. We were canceled. It was inevitable. It's pinball's way. It is the way. Everything is canceled. So, well, almost everything. Your last two weeks weren't canceled. No. You've been busy. I've been very busy. You've been a busy little bee. I have been. I know I mentioned previously that I watched season one of Invincible. I purchased the entire series run of the comic, and I read it all in the last two weeks. That's a lot. Isn't that like 100 plus? Yeah, it's like 140 some odd or 150 plus volumes. It's basically three giant graphic novels at about 1,000 pages apiece. So I burned through all of that. I finished Andy Weir's new novel author of the very excellent, you loaned it to me, book The Martian, which is also a very excellent, far better than Interstellar movie, very much better than Interstellar movie yeah, it's not his newest book since The Martian he had a book called Artemis that came out which you did read as well, which I read as well, it was very good the new one is Project Hail Mary and I'm having an internal debate about myself if it's better than The Martian. Because I know you said Artemis was not. Artemis was not. Artemis was good, but it wasn't better than The Martian. And Project Hail Mary might be. It's hard for me to decide because I have physically read The Martian four or five times. I've listened to the audiobook three times. and so far all I've done with Project Hail Mary is listen to the audiobook yeah you really need to see it in the print to truly judge it and I've got it on the way but it's one of those things that I just I'll decide but I'm very happy with it it had a lot of unexpected things I worried when it first started because the whole thing when you read the synopsis on the back It kind of feels like he's reaching back to the Martian type thing. Guy by himself, yada yada. Which is true, but it worked. It worked really well. And it's still better than the follow-up novels. I mean, they're definitely better than the follow-up issues we had with Ernest Cline trying to follow up Ready Player One. Because none of the follow-ups to Ready Player One were anywhere near as good as Ready Player One. not even close. So I was pretty happy with that. I'm trying to think what else I've been doing this time. I'm in some physical therapy because I hurt my Achilles tendon. And I did the stubborn guy thing where I hurt it and I just went, oh, okay, I'll take some Advil and I'll ignore it. And it healed. Unfortunately, when it healed, it stiffened up. So I've been dealing with a lot of pain for the last several months. And it was bad enough I finally had to be sent to physical therapy to work on getting the range of motion back in my foot that I'm supposed to have. When I first went in and checked it, the range of motion in my left ankle was less than half of the range of motion in my right ankle. So much less than what it needs to be. So, yay for physical therapy, which makes me both hate people and thank them at the same time. And then other than that, the only big thing I've done is I shifted from playing Wasteland because a new update came out for Hardspace Shipbreaker, which I've talked about before. That's the game where you basically play as a guy who cuts up spaceships for money. And it's just kind of a nice little mindless game. I like to do it while I'm watching shows or doing other stuff because it doesn't require a lot of in-depth over-analyzing thinking. So it's something you can do while watching a show and not miss out on stuff. They've added a storyline because the game's in early access. And it's one of those early access games I actually bought that has included a storyline, the voiced storyline, and they included the Act 1 of it and made a bunch of other changes and revamps that make the game much more enjoyable, which, considering how enjoyable the game it was anyway, pretty happy with it. So there's that actual story in more than just, hey, you're $1.5 billion in debt. Get out. So that's about all I've been up to the last couple weeks. That's a lot for me. It seems like a lot. I mean, that's not even touching on work, and I've been averaging 10 plus hour days, but I'm a workaholic. Yep, you do love your works. I've definitely not been sitting here while we've been talking before we record continuously talking to people at work because of work issues all morning. Yeah, I did check my work emails this morning, but thankfully I didn't have anything pending. So it's been a fun time with that. But I'm not going to cover that in my last two weeks. I will just focus on gaming related stuff. So I did finish Telltale's Batman Season 2. You are Batman. I was. I was Batman. I then decided to start Telltale's Back to the Future game, which I also have as a game with gold from some point. So you're Marty McFly? Well, I was. And then. Now you're Biff. No. Now I'm uninstalled. Oh. I started it. I was going along. and then I realized I absolutely do not care about Back to the Future, its story, its characters, or anything about it, and I quit it and uninstalled it. Wow. You don't like Back to the Future, or you just didn't like the game? Well. Has it been too long since you watched Back to the Future? No, no, it's just, it's like, I mean, you know, there's only one good one anyway. Three, obviously. And I don't know what all was incorporated. Part of it was, yes, that the going and playing such a modern Telltale game like Batman Season 2 and then going back to one of their much older games was a bit jarring. Telltale's engine has been terrible forever. Yeah. Even the new version. And I was just, it was, I think this might have been a little bit different than their more visual novel style. Like it was a little more interactive. I don't, it just, and it was just going on. I don't know. It wasn't clicking, and I realized it really quick, and I'm like, I don't care about Marty. I don't care about Doc. I only care about Einstein. And it was just like, okay, whatever. I just couldn't get into it. Also, I was brainstorming, and I thought, oh, because I mentioned on the last episode that I went to play Gears 5 because I never finished it. But I didn't find my save. And I thought, oh, wait, maybe I need to move the save over. I thought it was in the cloud, but I thought it should be somewhere. I know it's saved. So maybe it's on my hard drive, and I have Gears 5 on the solid state drive, and I just need to move it over so they're all in the same area. So I went to do that, and there was no save on the external drive for Gears 5. There were no Gears 5 files on the external drive. And then I realized I was playing Gears 4. That could be the problem So that was the issue I never had played Gears 5 That's why I didn't find any saves That was totally new So I went back and I finished Gears 4 And Now I'm ready for Gears 5 But instead of starting Gears 5 Instead yesterday I started A game I have called Call of Cthulhu The card game? No this is actually Done as a I'm Batman style. I'm investigating post-World War I, Lovecraftian horrors all coming up. The card game? No, it's a first person. Oh. I think that's basically what the card game and the board game. I'm sure. Everything is called Call of Cthulhu. I'm sure it's derived from it. Yeah. It's probably basically a campaign concept that's being done in a first person engine. So you're going around. You're mostly solving for stuff. It's keeping track of my sanity. it does checks for like occult knowledge medicine things like that so anyway I only started it later in the afternoon yesterday I played it a little bit this morning I've gotten to the parts now where I'm six chapters in or so six or seven and I'm starting to experience some of the cosmic horror stuff my sanity is starting to break so we'll see how that goes but that's it for me for updates now we will go ahead and move into pinball and last episode we finally saw an end to the drought. Our thirst was satiated with the waters of Fathom revisited. Yes. But now they're additionally satiated because Stern Pinball. Oh, you mean it's not because JJP dropped code on The Hobbit? No, but maybe they did. I thought that was the big news. You know, I never know. I never know. You know, I often like to talk about Hobbit, But today I'll resist the urge. Instead, the big news has been the reveal by Stern Pinball of the Mandalorian Pinball, which, as licenses go, is, I think, both expected and huge. I think it's definitely a very smart choice. And I'm going to try and not go under a rant here right quick, but I do want to open with something because I've heard it come up elsewhere, and I'm not going to call anyone out. Everyone has their own way. But so the Mandalorian, commonly referred to as Mando, for those that aren't familiar with it, as of the pilot episode, you find out that he's got a little green companion. Goblin. It's a goblin. Yes, it's a goblin. It's a goblin. It's a little D&D throwback. It's great. I always wanted Star Wars to go. I mean, it's a long time ago, so there should be like fantasy stuff. You would think. I do think, but it doesn't always happen. So, okay. So initially, the show would reference this in materials as the Child. So some people call it the Child. It was given the name Grogu in Season 2 and is commonly and affectionately known as Baby Yoda. Right. Now, I'm pointing this out because all three of these are acceptable things to call Grogu. Right. and I've heard some people, I'm sure this is probably pretty common in Star Wars communities, who get upset at the use of Baby Yoda as a descriptor. I'm tired of people telling me that I can't call it Baby Yoda. I'm not surprised It's Baby Yoda. by gatekeeping in Star Wars or pinball. It's true for any hobby. I mean, all hobbies have that. You want an example in pinball? It's the people that get upset and start lecturing people not to call them tables. Yeah. That's gatekeeping. That is very much gatekeeping. That's gatekeeping. Now, don't confuse gatekeeping with definition. Like, if you want to correct someone who calls a flipper a flapper, that's understandable. Right. There are terms. There are things. Like, Italian bottom means something. Flipper means something. Scoop means something. Table is an acceptable term, whether you like it. You can dislike it. It's an acceptable term. And insisting on purity on those things is gatekeeping. And it's designed to keep people out of the hot. Right. It's like the pop culture, going for the pop culture reference, when the new Battlestar Galactica came out, there was a large community of Battlestar Galactica fans who refused to have anything to do with it. Because they didn't like the changes that were made. Like Starbuck being a woman. Like Starbuck being a woman. or like there being Cylons who were like flesh and blood. And so there was a whole movement that was just, oh, that doesn't count. That's not real Battlestar Galactica. So the reason why I just wanted to note it is that I may use all three of those terms interchangeably I very rarely say the child honestly because I find it almost pointlessly nondescript It is. Because there are other children in The Mandalorian. Some of which the child eat. But that being said, the show – in Star Wars, fans have often created nicknames and terms for things. The show invited this by not giving us a name for Baby Yoda until Season 2. and I do have a link in the show notes for those that would like to educate themselves where the director of the pilot episode even said that it's okay to call him baby Yoda and that guy is a total Star Wars freak and is actually content creating so I just wanted to throw that out there I call him baby Yoda all the time so people need to maybe chill a little bit about that because it's coming across as alienating so let's move on from that uh to talking about the pinball machine itself. Now, a little bit background spec stuff. This is a Brian Eddy design. Creator of your favorite pinball machine ever. Yes. I am both very pleased by that and unhappy because I had in my secret heart of hearts hoped that he was Godzilla. No! Never. Yes. I can see that. That was my little dream. Was that Godzilla was going to be a Brian I understand. Table. Oh, get out of this hobby. Plebe. Plebe. Not Plebe. Rules by Dwight Sullivan, known for having fairly complicated rule sets. So he did the last Star Wars. And I believe he's a big Star Wars nerd, so that would fit that he would want to do the code. Right. And I've heard that the newest code on Star Wars is really enjoyable. I've been okay with the code on Star Wars. I have to admit, I, like many, fall into the trap of not really knowing how to do it. And I always found it a little – it was very, like, choose-your-mission precision shooting on a very flow-based Steve Ritchie table. And I didn't think that that necessarily played right. Right. I mean, I never had a problem, a huge problem with it. But I've not played it in forever. I only ever played it on location, and I never felt like I got a lot of time before it would always move on. But that's on me. Art is Randy Martinez. He's done Star Wars art before. He's done Star Wars art before in pinball. He did the comic editions. I like the art on the comic editions. So he's a known Star Wars artist. Sound is Jerry Thompson. The call-outs are Carl Carl Weathers. So he plays one of the mercenary sort of contractors in the show, for those that aren't familiar. Though I will hope in my heart of hearts that he does stick in some Easter eggs where he's saying some stuff from Rocky. That'd be nice. Or Rocky 2, at least. Right. I have to admit, I'm one of those guys who was kind of hoping for Nick Nolte. But. Yeah, it would be fun. It would be fun. Just because I enjoyed that character so much. Well, I think he's got a good narration voice, too. Yes. And then he could have stuck in stuff from another 48 hours. Yes. There you go. We'll work something in no matter what. The Premium LE Edition, in terms of some of the highlight changes, It does have a two-flipper mini-flight playfield that's in the upper right corner. It's motorized, so it lifts and moves around. And also the Premium LE Edition does have a magnet in front of the Grogu toy that's in the upper left area. And the Premium LE also has a number of wireform ramps. And then the Pro model, the mini-playfield is still there. It's static, though, and it has one flipper rather than two. Okay. And it's plastic ramps for all the ramps. Right. I'm not a huge fan of plastic ramps. They're not bad. They don't look as nice. They do roll. The ball flows faster on plastics than it does on habit trails or wire forms, however you like to refer to them as. So, I mean, it's sort of a, it's like, yeah, aesthetically, I agree with you. I prefer looking at wire forms. play-wise. If I want speed, I know plastics better. And here, I mean, I've loaded in our internal notes some of the imagery. By the way, for those that want to look, I do have a link in the show notes to This Week in Pinball's deep dive, which has a lot of images and a lot of discussion and a lot of the additional details that we didn't touch on. But Tony, I think all we really need to do is discuss the game. Let's go ahead and start with the art. And in our notes towards the bottom, I have pictures of the Pro, Premium, and LE cabinets. So you can see the translights and the cabinet art on all three in that order. The LE is the one with the silver art package. Right. Overall, it's Randy Martinez does good artwork. There's not any major differences in the playfield art. No, no. I don't think there's anything. So in terms of, yeah, I like the playfield art. It's colorful. I see a lot of inserts to keep track of stuff like the encounters and missions and such. So I like inserts that help keep me from having to look at the screen all the time, so I do appreciate that. In terms of the cabinet packages, Translight-wise, I guess I would say I do like the LEs the best. I think so. I think they work the best overall. And Translight-wise, I guess I probably like the Premium the least, but I like the Premium's sides of the cabinet best, with that whip weapon thingy. Yeah, I do like the side of the cabinet it better there. The LE, I mean, it's got the Razor Crest on the side, which is always kind of cool, but I know a lot of people didn't really like the Razor Crest. I did. I liked it fine. When it comes to the side art, I definitely think the Pro is the weakest of them, but I'm with you, I think, on the premium. I'm not a huge fan of the let's do a character lineup. Yeah, it's just a little too Oh, this is what pinball always turns to Let's have a character lineup Everybody just stand in line There we go If you're important, you'll be forward Otherwise you'll be a little bit farther back So Let's go back to the layout Or maybe the difference Well, let's start Let's do the layout So what do you think of the layout? When I look at this What impresses me is I don't get the vibe of any other Stern I've seen before like I normally do. Yeah. Nor do I get the vibe of actually anything else that Brian Eddy has done layout-wise. So there were a lot of people before this came out that I read that were very much in the camp of, oh, this, you know, after Stranger Things was so much of a, the shot layout entrances were very Attack from Mars style. He's going to do the shadow for this one. And it's like, I don't think he did Attack from Mars or the shadow. I don't think so. I think he did something just completely different. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely different than what I've seen recently from a lot of standpoints. So it looks pretty flowy to me. I mean, I guess you've got a scoop for a lot of the Mission Start stuff, which kind of reminds me of Star Trek from Steve Ritchie, the Stern one. But Man they've got a lot of lanes Up at the top for the child The spell's child So and I don't know that's a little I worry that maybe that's a little Bagatelle-esque Like I don't know how fun that Will be to shoot up in that but I imagine Well it depends on I think It's going to depend upon how You light it I think it's just that they stuck the top lanes at the left Instead of doing them in the upper right Right. It's just there's so many of them. You normally don't go past three or four. Right. So it could be dependent upon how easy it is to get up there and which ways it comes down. I don't know how troublesome it will be. The lack of pops is an obvious. Yeah, those are not in a usual place, and I think there are only two. Yeah, because there's just, what, one on the left? And I think the Razor Crest is blocking your view of the other one on the left. Okay, yeah. Instead of the normal triplet. Yep. Unless there's something else. Nope, it's just two. Stashed somewhere. And hey, I think Brian A did that on Stranger Things. Also got away with, like, he's got some deal with Gary Stern where he gets to not have to follow the three pop rule. Because I know we've talked about it in the past, like, on TNA, the single pop. Yeah. and how having that difference is kind of nice. It's not just like a mechanic that just drops in. It's like, oh, here's three pops. You can change the orientation a little bit, but here's three pops. That's the rule. And I had read secondhand that it had been, at least at one point, a requirement at Stern, purportedly from Gary, that they all have three pops. That was just like, and I don't know if they had to be, I don't think they had to be configured a particular way, but that the notion of you needed a certain amount of mechanical action that pops gave you. And three was the right number for that. And it was just something that was, it was boilerplate. Yeah. You had to have them. So, um, I like that. It doesn't, because again, it gets, it gets in my view, as we've talked about many times, it gets silly. Like I greatly like Stern Star Trek, but those pops are so safe. It's just, it's like the whole point is just to sit there and get a breather and watch the ball bounce around and not have any risk whatsoever. Right. And it's like they used to be risky. I want them to be risky or serve some – and that's where like TNA or Rick and Morty's Pop, that's where that stands out. It's like, hey, look, just provide some level of risk. And, I mean, when it comes to Pops, I freely admit that I have long been a Center Pop proponent. I love Center Pop games because I like the risk and the interesting changes that it makes. and I know that they're gone and we're never going to see something like that again. Yeah, I think that's a bit of a bold move now, Cotton. I don't think we'll be seeing how that one works out. We're not going to see that one. But it's long been one of those things that I've really enjoyed. What do you think about the – we won't really go into rules because we never – Until we play them. I've seen – This Week in Pinball does have a summary of what the plan is. it sounds that there's a number of options in terms of what you can explore in the game, which is pretty fitting with how Dwight likes to code in my sense. So premium versus pro, what are your thoughts? I mean, we already touched on the preference, obviously, for the wire forms. Right, which is aesthetic. Sure. But it seems like the rest of the budget difference seems to be in the decision to have another flipper mech and that ability for the mini play field, which is in the shape of Mando helmet, to actually kind of go vertical almost. Right. In terms of how it moves around. So they clearly put in motorization into that versus, I mean, I guess my thought is this is one of those games when I look at them both and aesthetic aside, it's like this is one where to me it's like If you get the pro, it doesn't, to me, feel like you're missing any major feature. I think so. I think you're right. It feels like, and more likely than not, like a lot of these games, what you are missing is just stuff that slows the gameplay down. Sure. And as you noted, that's typically the case with whatever features get added in addition. But we saw with Avengers, you lost the tunnel lock. Right. That whole mechanism was gone. Here, okay, your mini playfield doesn't move around. You still got to. I'm amazed they kept the mini playfield. Right. You got to keep the mini playfield. All right, you're down to one flipper. But how long are you going to want to be on the mini playfield anyway? Yeah. The other big thing, mech-wise of note, is the decision not to include a magnet at the Baby Yoda on the Pro. Right, which is. That's probably for some staging or something. That would be my guess. And again, in my experience, having played extensively on Walking Dead LE, which has a magnet in front of the Well Walker, and the Pro, which I own, doesn't have the magnet in front of the Well Walker. They both have the magnet in front of the barn. Right. And I don't miss the Well Walker magnet. Yeah, it's not something that I miss. It's not one of the big things that I like more about the LE, like having it on my walker bomb button. Right. But anyway, but that's not a Brian Nettigame, so we'll move on. So, yeah, overall, yeah, I think the differences are really clear. There are a few other shot differences that the LE does. I mean, overall, I do think the premium LE looks more interesting, as you would expect. But I wouldn't have any qualms about getting the – like, with Led Zeppelin, my concern with not having that upper right flipper ramp shot and instead just being a dead end. I still haven't played Led Zeppelin. But that really concerned me that I wouldn't like the pro. Nothing about the layout here concerns me. Even if I might prefer one over the other, I think I would be very happy with the pro. Yeah, I think the pro would be perfectly acceptable in this case. But until I actually play it, who knows? What do you think of what appears to be static Grogu doll? I It's one of those things That I'm sure they literally just Picked up a doll from something and threw it in the air It's supposed to be a custom sculpt Do you wish his little hand had a Magnet and he grabbed the ball A lot of people were real and that's where Expectations were that there would Be a Grogu on the play field and there is And that he would do something with the ball Which Premium LE I guess magnet right in front of him You can kind of count No, you can't. It's not the toy. It's not the toy. I think the concern issue with that would just be the quality control issue of getting it to work and getting it to lock in and that we didn end up with the situation like with the alien head on aliens Right. I can see where locking it would be – it's easier to do it this way. I think a little bit of motion Would have been nice Like a little head shake Or like on the LE and premium That has the magnet Right in front of him that when it locked If he say lifted his hand And then when that magnet Is activated something like that Some motion would be nice otherwise It's just a I mean it's not even really A bash toy it's just No it's just a figure that Takes up space I think it's great from an op perspective. I think it looks great. Because I think kids definitely want to play this when they see it. The sculpt looks good. It ain't got no throwbacks of Avengers and its stupid oven mitt. Right. Oh, my God. That oven mitt. Jeez Louise, guys. Come on. And, yeah, I just, yeah. Again, these are, and this is where I think, and everyone's going to have their own view, of course. This is my subjective opinion that people need to remember that this is a coin op based hobby. And this homeowner stuff should really only go so far before you're corrupting what the concept itself is. Putting in a toy to just move without doing anything with the ball. As cool as the concept is, it's like, but would an op ever want a thing that might break like that? Which doesn't impact gameplay in any capacity. So the only other thing And I agree it would look cool I think that gets a little too far away from what pinball is supposed to be Now if you want to You're saying what Pinball is supposed to be I am But I'm saying it's just my subjective view on it I totally if people want to That's kind of what JJP is doing If people want to go that route There clearly is a market And I think there's a definite difference And you can see the difference Because the dedicated homeowner, the major JJP fans are very clear on what they like and what they want. And it is a very different creature than what Stern gives, especially with the pros and the games that you actually see on location. Right. And my normal approach would have been to say, like a little baby Yoda moving his arm around, LA model only. Yes. Pro shouldn't have that stuff Because by the very structure of the pro Being designed to be per stir Being designed to be operated Things that offer no gameplay difference That might just break down are just a headache Yes, and I agree with that completely If they wanted to do it for the LE, absolutely makes sense I think that people Have more fun with the moving Mando playfield, mini playfield instead Because it's actually interactive Now, the ideas of like Baby Yoda Eating balls and stuff Yeah, I had sort of suspected that, too. Of course, then I think, well, you see, people, I think, in their heads are thinking little hand doing little eggy thing. That is a lot of motion. And that's where I don't think we would have gotten it. This is Stern. We have to remember that they operate within a certain BOM or bill of material. What would have happened, in my view, is we would have only had Baby Yoda's head and everyone been going, oh, this is the Groot toy from Guardians. Right. No, no. It's opening its mouth. And that wouldn't have worked. And that would have been how it would have been executed. Yes. And so that's where I think this is smarter, given that it just looks nice. It does. I think it looks nice. It does look nice. So just let him be Baby Yoda, be Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda, be. Yeah, with his little child, Lane's all ready to be spelled out and happy. Demand is huge for this. We've seen reports already of some distributors selling the LEs for more than MSRP. Yeah, I read that the other day. Also, I've read about some running auction. I read about that one, too. Doing that. And then, of course, there are people offering their pre-ordered one for a higher rate. Which is something we've seen for years. And given the popularity of the license, in no way am I surprised. Interesting change-up for this. though they've done it on the home pin before is stern sold some of the le's direct to their insiders through the website i think that's a good move by stern i uh i don't know if i've talked about it before but i we've seen it with other manufacturers and it in no way will surprise me if we continue to especially as the homeowner approach continues to gain traction that companies move away from the distributor model and start saying why don't we everyone i'm stereotyping a bit. I should say I'm painting with a broad brush, but it's like Stern's probably thinking everyone's calling us for all the tech support anyway. Right. They're not taking the gains into distributors like it's going to the dealership at an auto, you know, for a car to get auto work done. Why don't we just hire some more techs and keep the money because everyone's calling us anyway. It's not the 80s and 90s anymore when things like a distributor, your local distributor made sense at this point in time when i'm sitting at home and it is is easier for me to jump onto amazon and order something and have it delivered at my door in some cases six hours later than to bother to get in the car and go to the store especially in 2020 and dealing with all of the the the the stuff you had to go through going into stores sometimes the distributor model doesn't make sense. I mean, you're not even seeing the big distributor model. When you think about distributors, not just in pinball, but just in general anymore are like car manufacturers. That's pretty much, I mean, even like mattresses are shifting. Yeah. And that, yeah, they're all going away. They're all more going direct sale than they ever were before. Got cut out the middleman. Yeah. Because that's, yeah, it's cutting out the middleman. I mean, the only thing that like with car dealerships that has protected them has been because in a lot of cases, state law makes it illegal for the companies to sell directly because that's where Tesla was running into issues. But with this situation here, I think we'll see it like we're seeing it now. Start with, we might get to a point where it wouldn't surprise me to see Stern or some of the others reserve half of their LE run or their entire LE run. Yeah, they're clearly testing the waters. And JJP did the same with the CEs of GNR. And they'd always been – I mean, I bought my TNA direct from Spooky rather than – because there's no financial advantage. I couldn't get a better deal from a distributor. They're all given – to my knowledge, they're all given floors that they aren't allowed to go below on these games. So there's – it's just – yeah, it's interesting. And I think we're going to continue. Pinball still, for a growing hobby, it's showing its age in a lot of ways. For an example I was talking with someone else about was you take a site for like if you want Gottlieb parts, for example, you go to the pinball resource. no self-respecting modern hobby would have a primary parts supplier that still operated a website in a capacity with no online shopping carts that you're expected to either call in or send a list in an email yeah to do your purchasing and i wouldn't even do business with somebody like that that is the only option is why it's right it's mandatory uh and and where people will joke or almost gatekeep as a pride of a point of pride to you know specify just how if the person's cranky making sure that you you have to do things all in a very precise way because i i get why they require it because their antiquated system it does not forgive mistakes because it's not because they're doing it manually right and i think most of the distributors are doing i mean you can't buy through their websites they do it all it's all call them that's insane But that's how it is. In this day and age, I can literally log onto a website and buy a car, and they'll have a dude drive the car to my house. Why do I have to call somebody and say, I would like to purchase Pinball Machine, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they got pricing on their websites, at least back when I bought Star Trek. You had to contact them if you wanted a better price. The price on the sites were high. Right. And I get that in a way. But again, we're getting into a period where can't we use a coupon code and just get the discount? You know, it's just, you know, anyway, it's just it's interesting because as the hobby grows, these are antiquated things I think are going to be put under a microscope. And all these new younger startup manufacturers are pulling little Teslas and they want to do things direct and they have been. I think Big Dog Stern looks and they're like, if we weren't having to field all the customer complaints, maybe the model would continue to make the most sense for them. But I agree with you. I think that they're – maybe not abandon it, but definitely wanting a bigger piece of the pie. Right. It would not surprise me in the next several years to get to the point where LEs are only available direct. I think that could very well be. Because there's so few. They could manage that. Yeah. I mean, because they're not going to have to do it. I mean, they already have a shipping department. They have to, to ship to the distributors. And it's not going to take a lot to make adjustments to ship single machines as opposed to shipping batches of machines, especially if you're only talking about 250 or 500 machines. That won't take major changes or anything, and it'll, A, let them put more money in their pocket. B, it'll drive more people to them directly. In fact, and I haven't checked, but I want to think that single unit shipping is, I think they've been doing it for years. I want to think when I bought my Star Trek years ago that it was not yet built. Stern built it and then Stern shipped it direct to me. It did not go, the distributor did not take possession of it. They had it. And that makes it make even less sense. They had it direct routed. That makes the whole thing make even less sense. I know. If the distributor calls Stern, you call the distributor and say, I would like to buy a Star Trek, please. And the distributor's like, yes, that'll cost you blank dollars. And you're like, okay, here's my blank dollars. And then they call Stern and they go, Dennis just bought a Star Trek. This is his address. He paid for it. Please ship it to him. And Stern's like, yeah, sure, we'll do that. Why does that guy exist, period? So the logic might be, and I don't know, but I'm thinking the logic, and this would be a shift, though, obviously, from what it used to be, could be that because they make their living selling the games, the distributors have become the marketing network for Stern. They're trying, they're the ones doing most of the pushing of the sales currently, or in theory that they should be, because they need to, you know, where do you see the most, I see more advertising for games from various distributors than I do direct from Stern. Right. But does that save Stern more money in advertising? Probably not. Than they would make? Probably not. Stern wanted to just hire them all as their sales team to go around. Like Nate Shivers, who used to host Coast to Coast Pinball. Isn't that what he did for years for Taylor Guitar? is he worked for Taylor Guitar, but he went around selling Taylor Guitars to places. But he worked for the manufacturer. Correct. I could see that maybe being an evolution as well. It's interesting. But you know what else is interesting, Tony? Video games are interesting. Video games are interesting. Oh, final thing on Mandalorian is Deadflip's reveal stream. I think it's about a week away. It seemed further than normal. Normally, because normally they do the big tease reveal and yada, yada, yada. And within less than a week, there's a thing. Yeah. They must just not have been ready yet or something. Because I'm sure Jack is good to go whenever. So they must have wanted to wait a little bit longer than what – I don't know if it was just they wanted to do their teaser trailer on May the 4th and then do their information to the distributors and such the next week. And then it could also have to do with who they're trying to get as their representatives. On stream for the... Good point. The game release. Who knows? But anyway, it's not yet. So stay tuned for more. All right. So now video games. Now for video games. Just a couple little things in here today. We've talked a lot lately about Xbox Game Pass, which I am part of the PC version, and you have not made the delve into Xbox Game Pass yet. Because it's too expensive. It's the best deal in gaming. It is the best deal in gaming. What caught my eye is that a game is coming out, the Dungeons & Dragons Dark Alliance. It's a third-person, four-player co-op action RPG. Well, like isometric or like over-the-shoulder? Like over-the-shoulder third-person. It's like originally when it was first being announced and things were first being seen, it felt like it was going to be like a Diablo-esque isometric. But no, it's an over-the-shoulder third-person hack-and-slash action RPG thing. But what's interesting is it's being released on the 22nd of June on Game Pass. In addition to being released on the 22nd of June to like everything, both Xboxes, both PlayStations, PC. Through some of the Xbox stuff, it's going to be playable on tablets and phones. thanks to the Xbox cloud computing thing. But when it's being released, it will have online four-player cross-play with everything. But it's available on Game Pass. So they're instantly locking in a huge Xbox section of people to play. And the game, it's interesting. I like Dungeons and Dragons, and I like that type of hack and slashy game, whatever. But the fact that they're hitting it, because they've not, while they've done a lot of big releases, they haven't done anything huge, and this isn't huge, on Game Pass. But the day one launch things on Game Pass has worked pretty well for them in the past. It given them good market shares and it given them good it really helped with the reviews and the coverage of the games So I thought it was interesting to see that this is a route that is continuing to happen because we know the new Xbox still doesn't have anything huge. It doesn't have a flagship title yet. Yeah. Halo Infinite is not. It seems infinitely delayed. Yeah, it's just not a thing. The fact that Microsoft is now talking about Their next big game That they haven't Announced a name for or anything else But they're pushing it hard Makes me wonder how bad Halo Infinite's setting is I'm worried that it might be pushed so far out That it will forget It's like Master Chief, he'll become Viger You won't even know what he was Did Halo Infinite Become The Why can't I remember the name of that game? The new Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem Forever? Forever, yeah. What a terrible name. Forever, Infinite. It's hard to imagine it being that bad. You would hope not. But maybe. But perhaps. If they try, really hard. If they try. But we will hopefully hear some more about these next titles coming from Microsoft and learn more about their future plans for the Game Pass system and hopefully finding the flagship title at E3 this year because they're one of the only people at E3 this year. Yeah, it's very soon going to be EMS. Yeah. They're the big name at E3. We know Sony has been pulled out for a while. EA has been pulled out for years. being fully virtual this year E3 has released some information how they're going to handle it they're going to have an online portal and an app they're going to have virtual booths hosted events you're going to be able to create an avatar and go around and they're going to have whole lounge areas set aside for people to chat and interact and forums and video conferencing and they're trying to turn it into as interactive as a thing. So it's not just sitting and watching a video presentation. I find this interesting because my manager went to a conference, went to a virtual conference earlier this year that had a system like this, where it actually had a map and you had a dot that was your avatar and it had your picture from your badge on it. and as you moved from booth to booth, you could see who else was in those booths around you because they were engineers and it was an engineering group so everybody knew each other but it allowed interaction to where you could like click on somebody and chat with them. If you knew them, you could chat. You could even go to a video chat and talk and it had this whole built-in like model of a fake showroom with fake booths in it where you could move around and interact with coworkers and colleagues and the booth people at the same time. Where it was like moving into, like when you moved into a booth, it was like you moved into a chat room that had the people who were there with you. So I'm wondering if it's going to be kind of like that, maybe not as deep because there's going to be so many people involved, but it's an interesting thing. And they are, including on their app, they have for their presentations, They're going with full interactive overlays, polls during the course of stuff. So even more than the normal set and watch it on Twitch or YouTube like what we normally do. For those people interacting in the app, they're adding stuff so it's more like you're actually going to be in the audience taking part in stuff and trying to create a more immersive atmosphere. And I'm going to be 100% honest. This type of thing might be what could actually save E3. You think keeping it permanently virtual and doing it like a virtual trade show? I think something like that. If they can make it work right and if people can enjoy it, that might be the E3's best chance to remain relevant because they're not. And they haven't. They haven't been. It's a good point. I was at a public health conference this year that kind of did it. They didn't have it as fancy as like showing you a virtual map, but it did the booths and all that. and say what you will about the craving for Wayne and interpersonal interaction live, but it was their best attended conference in the history of the conference. I attended a virtual conference that was nowhere near this fancy or as fancy as that one, but it had the virtual chat rooms that had multiple channels in the chat room so you could talk to. You had points where you could ask questions just directly to the presenter, and that was the only people who saw those questions were the presenter, and then where you could talk amongst yourself, and you could break out into little groups. And when they released their information afterwards, it was their best attended conference ever. And their conferences normally have sets around 20,000 attendees, and they had more than that this year because people could do it while sitting at their desks and just come in and hit just the certain things without having to, I'm flying to Chicago to do everything, and I'm flying to New Orleans to go through everything. And it was good. I have attended that conference in person, and some of the stuff was missing, obviously. Some of the interactions you have and meeting some of the people type stuff was a lot weaker than it is when you're there in person. But I made up for it in a lot of other ways. I got to attend more things and I got to do more interactive stuff directly with presenters than you do when you're in a large thing where there might be like 300 of you in a row. Right. Yeah. So I do have a publisher list. They're a very diminished publisher list for this year. Nintendo, which is going to have their Nintendo Treehouse thing. That's all they ever have. That's all they've had for years. Yep. Xbox is going to be there That's going to be the biggie Nobody else is there Other than that it's Capcom Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Warner Brothers Games And Coke Media That's how far down we have gotten That Warner Brothers Interactive Or Take-Two Interactive Warner Brothers Games and Coke Media Are on the big list E3 has lost so much of its cachet that for years since EA left EA still held their event within five miles of wherever E3 was and normally the day before E3 started it's a month later they don't even care anymore they're holding their event in July the end of July, I think the 22nd of July is when they're holding it. So, we'll see. I think it's going to be a really interesting year since they've had a full year to plan out. Right. It should be better done than last. Yeah. Well, last was a just give up. They had plenty of time, though, to come up with it. And we've seen so many other events do it virtually now. That they should be able to crib quite successfully. Yeah. And with it being as open for all and everything, we'll see. we'll see how it goes while a couple other quick things on there on here Ubisoft made an interesting announcement that while they're continuing their targeted goal of putting out their big budget AAA games they are starting to work on putting out several free-to-play versions of their games. And this has directly to do with just how popular Call of Duty Warzone has been. Because they put out the new Call of Duty this year, and they put out Warzone. Trust me, everybody's playing Warzone. At work, all of our Call of Duty guys, which we have a lot of guys who still are big into Call of Duty, because we've got a lot of people that for them that's the FPS type thing. Right. They all play because it's free to play while still giving that Call of Duty feel. I mean, these guys, they don't like Fortnite or Valorant. They don't like games like that. But these guys play Warzone every day. And that's anecdotal. But their numbers on Warzone are huge. The free-to-play microtransaction has been proven. Fortnite proved it Warzone's proved it I mean all of these different game systems are proving that if you have the right gameplay with the right microtransactions and you find your right target demographic it will make so much more money than a AAA title that it's not even funny they announced that they are doing a standalone free to play version of The Division I've not played The Division The Division has a fairly Okay player base People like it To an extent It never hit what they thought it was going to be Right, yeah Rainbow Six Siege is their big Surprise hit It still has huge numbers And nobody expected it But they are putting out a free to play version Of The Division called The Division Heartland Which, it's Heartland I'm assuming Let's be realistic. Just like when they talk about the Midwest or anything else. That means Chicago. Yeah, it's going to be Chicago. It's going to be Chicago. They're going to be fighting it in the cattle slaughterhouses and all the other stuff that I'm sure is still quite relevant to Chicago today. Yeah. It's always hilarious to me that whenever I hear somebody talk about, oh, yeah, I'm from the Midwest. Oh, where are you from? I'm from Chicago. You're going to. Okay. Environmental kill is drowning someone in a deep dish pizza. Exactly. Is it gurgling? It's more like a casserole. It's a casserole. Die. Die, you East Coast trash. But I think it will be interesting to see because they've got, if they start kicking out a version, a free-to-play version of some of their bigger titles, games, like Assassin's Creed or games like that, we'll see. I think trying a version of this with the Division is going interesting. I'm wondering if it's not an attempt to get more of a connection to people who aren't quite willing to try the Division. Maybe. Oh, yeah, because it's basically you've removed the barrier to entry. Right. Because they've gone, Ubisoft has gone all in on the Division. There's a Division movie in the works. I'm really surprised. novel that's due out before too long. I mean, they have gone they've targeted the Division to be this huge thing. I mean, at least they're sticking with it. I guess that's good. I'm a little surprised that they have as hard as they are doing. Yeah, and it seems a little weird to stick with a game. Especially when they have other, like, with, you know, Assassin's Creed being such a, well, I mean, almost mythologically legendary thing at this point. Trying to go into that more would make more sense to me. On the other hand, how did the Assassin's Creed movie do? I forgot that there was one. But you're right. Far Cry. Far Cry would be excellent for this kind of thing. I mean, it's a well-storied franchise, and it's got a lot of popularity, but again, it's a single player experience. So I think that would also, in some ways, for me, Division's so odd because it was designed to be already multiplayer. Right. But I guess that's what Call of Duty does, too. I mean, nobody's really played Call of Duty for the single-player game except for, like, me in years. But it'll be interesting to see how this experiment turns out for Ubisoft. And I don't actually have it in the notes here. Surprise note. One last thing. I just wanted to float out there that Google came out on record and said, hey, Stadia is still a thing. There's big Stadia things going on, and there's lots of third-party distributors putting things out for Stadia. And Stadia is very healthy and is a very robust gaming environment. Just letting you know. Because, you know, that's what a healthy gaming company has to do, is to put out a press release saying, hey, we're here. We're good. People like us. We've got more stuff coming. Please ignore that we closed down all of our divisions That were making games Before they ever put out a single game And fired them all It's cool, we're still important We're still here I mean, obviously That's what a healthy thing does That's a healthy console right there Ah, Stadia As I recall We were never very much into the Stadia To begin with But plants love it But hey You just take your controller As long as you've got a good internet connection You could be sitting on top of Pikes Peak Playing in your stadia As long as you've got the battery And a high speed internet connection Yay So That's what I've got For today Well that's it Tony we've made it Will there be another announcement in pinball In two weeks? I hope so It could very well be Chicago Gaming come on guys you're close Give us something. I like having meaty pinball news and having stuff going on. And I don't necessarily like some of the third-party discussions because they melt my brain. But it's nice to have something going besides just, well, they're putting out stuff as fast as they can. But because of shipping issues, there are shortages. It gives context to the conversation. Yeah. Very important. Well, if people want to give context to anything we covered today, you can always reach out to us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or via facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We are eclectic underscore gamers on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks covering whatever there is to discuss. Hopefully something big and important. But until next time, my name is Dennis. I am Tony. And I say goodbye, everybody. Peace.