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BDYETP 85: John Wick, Abba, Funhouse Remake and Blues Brothers and oh so much more

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 24m·analyzed·May 18, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

John Wick pinball reveal analysis: licensing controversy, playfield design critique, and pricing tier justification

Summary

Buffalo Pinball hosts Kevin Manning and Nick Lane discuss Stern's new John Wick pinball machine reveal, covering theme licensing controversies (missing guns from playfield art due to Lionsgate restrictions), playfield design impressions, pricing tiers (Pro $7k, Premium $9.7k, LE $13k), and early code feedback. The episode also touches on upcoming games including Funhouse remake and ABBA, with discussion of industry pricing concerns and the secondary market downturn affecting collector sentiment.

Key Claims

  • Lionsgate classified pinball as a video game with PG content restrictions, preventing guns on playfield art but allowing them in LCD video footage

    high confidence · George Gomez explanation relayed by hosts; Stern's official position on licensing restriction

  • John Wick is Elliot Eisman's first pinball machine design

    high confidence · Official game credits stated by hosts during reveal breakdown

  • Stern walked away from The Hunger Games license due to overly restrictive licensing terms

    medium confidence · George Gomez mentioned this in podcast interview; relayed secondhand by hosts

  • John Wick playfield is a fan layout with no standout mechanical differentiators

    medium confidence · Nick's personal assessment based on early reveal footage and streams

  • Secondary market downturn is driving increased resistance to new pinball machine purchases and scrutiny

    medium confidence · Kevin's observation on community sentiment correlation with market conditions

Notable Quotes

  • “Stern was surprised that Lionsgate didn't allow them to have the guns on it. They were surprised. However, they proceeded to make the game still, and they were surprised by Pinside outrage because they had kind of forgotten all about it as they were making the game.”

    Nick Lane @ ~19:45 — Explains the disconnect between licensing restrictions and community expectations; reveals Stern's post-reveal realization

  • “I think that there's a compelling case for the Pro on this version because the things that are on the premium don't grab me as being a great upgrade.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~35:20 — Directly questions premium tier value proposition; suggests cost-benefit analysis favors lower tier

  • “Imagine that something from your dream theme is missing and I think you can understand why those people would be upset or concerned.”

    Nick Lane @ ~15:30 — Defends legitimate thematic criticism as separate from Second Amendment debates; frames empathy as key to understanding valid design concerns

  • “If they can't get that right, then what else did they butcher or get wrong in this game, right?”

    Nick Lane @ ~13:45 — Articulates cascading doubt effect from a single licensing-driven design omission on overall game quality perception

  • “Sometimes I'm like, if they're kind of churching these things, hyping these things up, it's like, are they trying to cover for the fact that there's not anything really interesting in the game?”

    Kevin Manning @ ~36:15 — Questions marketing emphasis on buzzwords (4K video, AI) as potential compensation for lack of distinctive mechanical features

Entities

John WickgameStern PinballcompanyElliot EismanpersonGeorge GomezpersonLionsgatecompanyNick LanepersonKevin ManningpersonBuffalo PinballorganizationPinstadium

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's licensing negotiation leverage questioned; George Gomez revealed willingness to abandon projects (Hunger Games) when terms too restrictive, suggesting contentious licensor relationships; John Wick gun restriction may indicate weak negotiating position or IP holder cultural concerns.

    medium · Gomez disclosure of Hunger Games abandonment; hosts' criticism that Stern should have negotiated harder given cultural ubiquity of guns in John Wick marketing; Lionsgate's inconsistent PG classification logic

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinside forum revealed hostile discourse environment during John Wick reveal, with conspiracy theories and anti-opinion rhetoric drowning out legitimate thematic design critique.

    high · Hosts' extended commentary on thread devolution; characterization of 'lunatics on both sides'; frustration that valid criticism (missing iconic thematic element) conflated with political agendas; Christopher Pinter quoted as dismissing criticism

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Missing guns from John Wick playfield art generated extensive Pinside forum debate conflating thematic disappointment with Second Amendment politics, with unhinged takes on both sides undermining legitimate design criticism.

    high · Extended discussion of Pinside thread chaos; hosts' characterization of conspiracy theories mixed with valid fan concerns; Christopher Pinter's hostile response to nuanced critique

  • ?

    design_philosophy: John Wick playfield lacks mechanical standout features; reliance on LCD video content (4K, AI) and lighting effects to create 'world under glass' impression suggests design-by-supplement approach rather than playfield-first innovation.

    medium · Nick's assessment of fan layout with pop-up area (comparing unfavorably to Kiss); expression lighting framed as required aftermarket upgrade to achieve desired visual impact; hosts' concern about tech buzzwords masking mechanical simplicity

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.433

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got the reveal of John Wick pinball, Funhaus remake, ABBA, and a new segment called WTF is American Pinball Thinking. All that and more coming right up. Double Super Jet Pod!
0:30
I need a room. I want a party back again. I need to go. I need to go with you. I've got a life. That's right.
0:49
And now, the Hall & Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Whoop-boom-shakalaka. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode 85 of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball? I'm Kevin. That's Nick.
1:05
How's it going, guys? Sorry, it's been a hot minute. I mean, I think the last podcast was in March, but life gets in the way. So here we are, and a lot has happened. I'm excited to catch up with everybody and what's going on in pinball. We've got a lot to talk about, you know? Yeah, that's the good part of not doing this for a month is like, oh, there's actually a whole bunch of news to talk about, and we don't have to try to make that up. That's your bullshit. Yeah. Full time and outrage. We got all that because that's a fan's favorite. Nick will always have his outrage. There's no way not to have outrage in this hobby because things are outrageous, right? I mean, that's kind of how it works. Not like I want to outrage. Something's outrageous, and how do you not acknowledge it? Fair, fair. All right, so let's kick it off by thanking our partners. Nick, take it away. I'm happy to do so. Can you put it on the screen for me, Kev? I can't see your production screen. I can't because I can't share my screen. All right. I see. All right. So, all right. Shout out to Pinn Stadium and Flippin' Out Pinball. They are our premier partners. And coincidentally, they've got the giveaways this month. So get those entries in if you're watching live on Twitch. But Pinn Stadium lights, lighting kit for your pinball machines. For whatever reason, even though pinball machines have a ton of lights in them these days, they're darker than ever, especially during games. So highly recommend the Pinstadio Neo Atoms from Pinstadio. Works with an app, iOS, Android control. You can take 10% off when you use coupon code Buffalo. So get that discount. Grab it. Thanks to Pinstadio. Kevin, what are we giving away from Pinstadio, by the way, while we're talking about them? We're giving away this set of Pinstadio Neo Atoms, nearly $400 value. So everybody watching in Twitch chat, type hashtag win, and you'll get in to win those. We'll give it away at the end of this show, along with two other things coming up from Flippin' Out Pinball, which we'll show. Thanks to Scott at Penn Stadium. I mean, Scott is almost every month, he gives away a $400 set of these. So just absolutely remarkable. Good guy, great for the hobby. And then speaking of good guys and great for the hobby, we've got our other premier partner, Flippin' Out Pinball. As they say, as Dr. Ben Crane once said, once you go Zach, you never go back. That is where I buy all my pinball machines from. No question about it. Zach will take care of you. He's best service in the industry. He even sells American Pinball barbecue game for some reason that you kind of had a stroke and you want that game for some reason. He will sell it to you. He will ask you, are you serious? Do you really want this game? Are you under duress? But he will sell it to you. So check out Zach flipping out pinball. What has Zach got for you? Zach has an official Jaws pinball banner, Serum Pinball Jaws. Looking good. That's about $125 value. And then if you want to take your beautiful pinball machine and cover it up so you can't see it, he's got the officially licensed Serum Pinball glass slash dust cover. or unconfirmed if it leaves a bunch of stuff on the glass like the pin shields. But you can try it and let us know. Don't blame Zach. Blame Stern. That's a good point. And if you do end up seeing those guys at a show or buying from them, thank them for being a sponsor of Buffalo Pinball. They go the extra mile to help out the stream and make it happen every month. So thank you to those guys. And quick shout-out to our other just as important partners. We've got Comet Pinball, long-standing partner. That's for pinball lights. You want to add LEDs. You want to change things up. You want to add spotlights in your game. That's Comet Pinball. It's Titan Pinball. Of course, they're silicone rings. And when I have to replace the pinballs in my pinball machine, I always get it from Titan Pinball. They're always high quality. The pinballs are good. They're not scuffed up scratch. So complete confidence in them. And we've got a newer sponsor, Playfield Protectors. I love PlayField Protectors for any classic game I own, and I highly recommend it. It makes the games play better because it's a smooth surface, obviously, on classic games.
company
Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
Randy Martinezperson
Charlie Benanteperson
Robert Blakemanperson
Tim Sextonperson
The Hunger Gamesgame
Jawsgame
Christopher Pinterperson
Fox City Pinballperson
Pinsideorganization
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Lionsgate imposed PG content restrictions on John Wick playfield art, prohibiting depiction of guns despite allowing violent weapons (knives, nunchucks) and gun imagery in LCD video footage. Logic appears inconsistent with movie marketing standards.

    high · George Gomez explanation relayed by hosts; Stern's post-reveal clarification; rationale that physical playfield visibility requires stricter content rating than LCD-based video

  • $

    market_signal: Stern emphasizing 4K video resolution and AI features as marquee selling points despite displaying on standard 720p LCD; hosts interpret buzzword emphasis as potential cover for lack of distinctive mechanical features.

    medium · Kevin's criticism: 'Why do they keep on going on about that? It's just really weird'; concern that mechanical innovation is absent and being compensated for via tech buzzword marketing

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Elliot Eisman is a first-time pinball designer tasked with John Wick; no track record provided; playfield assessed as generic 'fan layout' with no standout mechanical differentiators.

    medium · Official credits; Nick's design analysis noting lack of interesting/distinctive features; comparison unfavorably to Jaws' mini flipper innovation

  • $

    market_signal: Premium tier ($9,700) lacks compelling feature set vs. Pro ($7,000); hosts note expression lighting kit ($500) not included on Premium but comes standard on LE, suggesting Pro + aftermarket parts ($500 shaker motor) may be superior value to Premium.

    high · Kevin's detailed tier comparison: 'hard to justify a $2,500 bump'; mechanical upgrades (ball locks, pop-up target) questioned as meaningful gameplay improvements; LE lighting standard makes Premium positioning unclear

  • ?

    product_concern: Ball lock mechanism on Premium/LE physically locks ball but slows game pace; hosts question whether mechanical 'upgrade' actually improves gameplay or simply increases cost per tier.

    medium · Kevin's analysis: 'ball locks also slow down the game a little bit, which can be a negative'; questioning whether lock mechanisms matter given Pro's lack thereof and early code stage (.8 version)

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Secondary market downturn correlating with increased resistance and scrutiny toward new Stern releases; collectors less willing to purchase speculatively given poor resale value trends.

    medium · Kevin's observation: 'it feels like people are looking for excuses not to like a game' since market stopped holding value; noted contrast to earlier era when secondary market confidence drove pre-orders

    • 5:18
    The light inserts kind of divot, and it will protect it from additional wear. You want to protect those games. Also, Pinside.com, great place to just go and have Second Amendment debates and say how you hate a certain state or not. It's just basically you can pretend you're morally superior to other people while also showcasing that you're a lunatic yourself. Pinside is a great place for that. And last but not least, Multimorphic. They've got their newest game coming out of Princess Bride, which will be streaming soon. Yep, it'll be party time at my house when that shows up. So thanks, everybody. Yeah, don't forget, hashtag win. We'll get you in. We had a chat wanted to confirm that it was working. Let me just show you. Look, look, look. 26 total entries. A quick reminder, if you're seeing, well, it says 26 entries, but there's only 19 unique entries. That's because if you subscribe to us on Twitch, you get double the chances of winning. So you get two X entries if you're a Twitch subscriber. So here's the thing. I know we're not streaming as much anymore, but you can still get that Amazon Prime sub. So give us the Amazon Prime sub, then enter, and you'll get two entries. You know? You've got to do that every month, unfortunately. Yeah. They make it hard. But, you know, that's an easy way to double your entries and still support the stream. So thanks, y'all. In the meantime, let's talk about some news. Here's a pin. Shout out to Marco. It's the latest pinball news. So hot. It's on fire. Oh, sorry, Tim. That's okay.
    6:43
    It's so hot it's on fire. All right, you go. No, I just want to shout out to – sorry to interrupt that. Shout out to Marco Poe. He said he bought from all the sponsors and he just subscribed with Prime. So great call to action. Good job. I appreciate it. That's how you do it. Thanks, everybody.
    6:59
    All right, so we're going to kick it off with the latest pinball news. and kicking it off is the big guy, Stern. They announced their brand new John Wick pinball machine.
    7:10
    Let me give you the rundown. The pro is $7,000. The premium is $9,700, and the limited edition is $13,000.
    7:21
    Game design is by Elliot Eisman. This is his first pinball machine design. Mechanics by Robert Blakeman. Software by Tim Sexton. art by Randy Martinez. You may remember him from Mando, right? He did Mando and Stern Star Wars comic book edition, I believe. And then music by Charlie Benetante. He's the drummer from Anthrax and Pantera. They also have like movie sound and stuff. I don't know. I haven't heard much of it, but that's what I know. And what are your thoughts so far on what we've seen of John Wick?
    7:57
    Oh boy. Here, I can share what's going on. I think I'll start off by saying that this is a theme that appeals to me. I've seen all three movies. I haven't seen the fourth one yet. I own it. I just got to get around to watching it. Somehow that movie is three hours, even though it's like the same thing over and over again, but it's still awesome. It is. It is very much. I don't know if I've seen four, but I think I watched the first three, and you're right. It's like, if you want to see a bunch of people getting killed, that's basically the movie, right? And we're getting revenge for his dog, yeah. I think a movie like John Wick, which when I saw the first John Wick, it was not on my radar, and I watched it, and I was really impressed by it. They're all great, fun movies.
    8:34
    I think these movies are kind of like gun porn and violence porn. I probably just got demonetized for saying the P word, but sorry. I can't keep up with the algorithm. You can say guns, but not porn. Yeah, insane. I probably said both at the same time. Oh, God, it's like the double whammy. Yeah, all right, I'll go. But I think these are like musicals for men because they're choreographed fighting. You know, instead of like dancing, you've got them dancing with guns and shooting people. And there's music always playing. But, yeah, they're fun guy movies, I would say. But, yeah, this appealed to me because I like the movies. I like that Stern was making kind of a more, quote, unquote, adult game. I mean, he goes on kind of this murderous rampage. And who doesn't like Keanu Reeves, right? So a lot of things line up. Music in the movies are good. So I was like, okay, this is a theme that I can get behind. And for better or for worse, and I think this is for the better,
    9:33
    most of the themes that come out from any manufacturer don't really naturally appeal to me. So when I look at a game, if the game is good, I'll get it, irregardless of the theme. And I like that because a lot of times people have an emotional attachment to a theme and they just want the game whether it's good or not. They buy it, they hope the game's good, and if the game is kind of mediocre, they'll try to back into justifying why the game's good. This is a game, though, that I really want to be good. So I care about this game maybe more than any other game that comes out. And also I'm really sick of, like, the comic book games are just a negative turnoff for me, so I'm glad we've got something more adult. All right.
    10:15
    Kevin, that's my initial kind of, we'll dive into this more as we kind of go through the aspects of the game. But what's your take or opinion on John Wick as a theme? Yeah, like I said, I watched the movies. They were never – I was never like, oh, that's amazing. If a pinball machine comes out, I'm definitely buying that.
    10:37
    But it's also not a negative in my mind. You know, it's like I enjoyed it enough. If the pinball machine's good, I'll enjoy it. You know, it won't, like, detract from my enjoyment of the game because it's a theme I don't like or something. So it's a pretty neutral to me theme. I think it's a good fit for a pinball machine. You know, action movies kind of lend themselves naturally to a pinball machine because there's lots of action going on. You can kind of equate what's happening in an action movie with a lot of what's happening on the play field. So I think a lot of that kind of like checks the boxes for like, oh, yeah, this is a good theme. And I also like that it's modern too because Stern does occasionally mix in these modern themes. So, you know, you'll get stuff from the 60s like Batman or Munsters or The Beatles. And then occasionally you'll get a Stranger Things or, well, I guess most of the Marvel. Well, Marvel's kind of like new and old. You know, Marvel's been around forever, but it's modern, popular in more modern times. And then you get stuff like this from John Wick, which is, you know, a nice departure from the Marvel themes that they tend to lean really heavily into. and I mean I'm a Marvel fan but there is like a point of exhaustion like okay we've seen that there's talk that another theme coming up might be X-Men 97 which is like we already did X-Men I like X-Men 97 it's fine but it's like okay that's enough but they probably saw well that's why they keep doing them right yeah sure sure sure so there was a bit of a controversy with this game that, you know, we can't really have a podcast and not talk about it a little bit. So the way that Stern does their reveals, for better or for worse, I think I see the pros and cons of this, is that they kind of draw it out over the week. So they'll start on Monday with maybe like a teaser trailer, and then on Tuesday they'll show kind of like a gameplay trailer, and then they'll show like maybe throughout the week like more maybe flyers or features, and culminating on Friday where they would do a gameplay stream, and the gameplay stream we got the premium.
    12:47
    And what ended up happening, if you're not paying attention and you're not on pin side, which might be a good thing in this case, is that when they showed the play field of this game, there were no guns on the play field or the cabinet whatsoever. And if you're familiar with John Wick, like I said before, This is like gun P word. I mean, this is like, and it's really, to be honest, it's really cool. Like, I don't know, Kevin, if you ever saw the video of Keanu Reeves when he's doing like the gun course training.
    13:25
    No, I haven't. You should look up that video or anybody that hasn't. Like, he's legit like can, knows his way around a firearm. He goes kind of through like a gun course, like swapping out, swapping the guns, running through and shooting the targets. Like, it's very impressive what he can do. So, you know, but when I think of John Wick, obviously, you know, John Wick can use anything as a weapon, but I think guns. Go look up any movie poster for John Wick, and one movie poster is even just aiming the gun right at the viewer, right, or he's got a gun in his hand. So people kind of, and I think kind of rightfully so, lost their mind when they saw the, and became concerned when they saw the play field and cabinet and there was zero guns on it. It was very bizarre. Like, the main picture of John Wick in the center of it is him with, like, a nunchuck. And it's just like, what? And it looks like the Bruce Lee pose. We're like, exactly. It was very weird. So somehow you can have knives and nunchucks, other things to bludge and kill. And by the way, I'd rather be shot by a gun than beaten to death with a nunchuck or stabbed to death. Like, it just seems more merciful.
    14:34
    But it's not on there at all. So, you know, the pin-side thread devolved into an absolute mess. It got into, like, a Second Amendment debate, and both people seemed like lunatics. Like, there was some, like, lunatics on both sides of it. But I am very much supportive of the folks who were kind of passionately upset about that and concerned, because this is all we really know about the game so far. Stern's goal by showing this is to get people hyped up for it. and if you really, the reason that you do a themed game is because people have an emotional attachment to a licensed property, and then you look at this property, and the main thing you think of is John Wick and guns, and there's no guns, you're just like, what the hell is going on, right? Like, if they can't get that right, like, it's just really bizarre. If they can't get that right, then what else did they butcher or get wrong in this game, right? So I get that sentiment. And what's frustrating in that thread is that a lot of people gave those people a hard time. And it's like, dude, just think of any game. Maybe you don't like John Wick, but just think of any game or your dream theme and imagine something when it's revealed is fundamentally missing from that game. It doesn't matter if you're pro guns or not guns. Just discard that. Imagine that something from your dream theme is missing. and I think you can understand why those people would be upset or concerned. That's all I'm saying. Now, this turned out to, it's not a nothing thing, so we can talk about what happened.
    16:13
    There are plenty of guns in the video, in the LCD, but then it becomes really confusing. Why on the LCD is Sean Wick, you know, they have like 40 minutes of the movie footage. Why is that okay but not on the play field? It's really weird. And also think about this, too. Art is very important in the pinball machine to various degrees to different people, right? Like, some people just love how a pinball machine looks, and they'll buy it on the theme and the art. So if you get that wrong, it can hurt you a little bit.
    16:44
    I'm not saying that's for me. I'm disappointed that there's not guns. It's not going to prevent me from buying the game. But I understand somebody else's opinion.
    16:54
    Kevin, before I go on, I mean, we could talk about later George Gomez appeared on Flippin' Out's podcast, and he talked about this, and we'll dive into the reasons and understanding. But when you were reading about this and looking at this, what was your impression or take on it? There's a couple things that come to mind. First is, like, it always seems like when a new pinball machine gets revealed, there has to be, like, something that everybody freaks the shit out about. Like, you know, when you're talking about Dream Team's missing something, you think of, like, Jurassic Park. Oh, it doesn't have the movie assets. I really love the movie. And again, it's a fair critique, but that still ended up being a great game and people ended up really loving it, right?
    17:39
    I think especially with the current market the way it is, it feels like people are looking for excuses not to like a game.
    17:47
    Because, you know, when games were coming out and they held their value, it's like, all right, you know, I'll buy it and I can sell it and maybe make a little money or at least get my money back. So I'm not going to freak out. But now that the secondary market has been tanking, it just feels like along with that, there's been a resistance to new pinball machines more. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's kind of the impression I get.
    18:10
    And the other thing is just, like, it's like, everybody relax. Everybody chill. It was weird that they would, like, Stern had to know, like, there were no guns in this art. That was not, like, coincidental. You wouldn't put a whole John Wick art package together and not have guns in there and be like, oh, I was surprised that people had a negative reaction that there were no guns in this. So maybe you would get ahead of that and kind of cue up some of the video footage of him and say, like, yeah, look, the guns are in there. They're not on the art for whatever reason. If it's a licensor thing, that's what George Gomez ended up kind of getting into, whether you want to believe him or not. But, yeah, the guns are in there. They're just not on the art for whoever knows what reason, right? Yeah, so Christopher Pinter, I guess he's taking issue with my comment, but he quotes, understandably lost their mind about this as an interesting take for grown people claiming things like, quote, unquote, agenda pushes are trying to take their guns away. Look, like, there was lunatic takes on both sides of that. I expressly said this is a not interested in the Second Amendment debate. I'm talking specifically about the people who John Wick is a theme that really appealed to them, and it puts in question how that theme was handled, right? Like, I understand that.
    19:33
    That's not, like, that will have no bearing on whether I buy the game or not. I'm actually interested in this game, right? But I can understand another person's opinion even when I don't, I'm not fully on board with it. And I think that so many people in those threads just fail to understand somebody else's opinion. It doesn't mean you have to agree with it, but you can understand where they're coming from. And, again, like there's just unhinged lunatic takes on both sides of it. That's just embarrassing. An embarrassing amount of time that people have spent on both sides of that just arguing over it is just, I don't know, man. It's betterhelp.com or whatever needs to jump in and sponsor Pinside because it's just, It's just crazy. I think one of the worst takes that I see popping up once in a while is people on there saying that you're not allowed to have an opinion. That is the craziest thing, too. Even crazier than, like, the conspiracy theorist who says Stern has an agenda. It's like, you can't have an opinion. Dude, it's a hype thread. Of course you can't have an opinion. As unhinged as your opinion is, you can have that. It's art. Yeah, you're supposed to have an opinion about art. Yeah, you're supposed to discuss it. That's when, like, Stern is, again, Stern's intention is to get that out there. You have discussion. Hopefully you're hyped. It wasn't a good reveal.
    20:52
    And, you know, George Gomez later talked about it, and he said that Stern was surprised that Lionsgate didn't allow them to have the guns on it. They were surprised.
    21:08
    However, they proceeded to make the game still, and that they were surprised by Pinside Outrage because they had kind of forgotten all about it as they were making the game. So I think Stern could have mitigated that if they at least – I can't remember the trailer if they showed the LCD more and John Wick clips of him shooting people left and right. I think that would have been mitigated a little bit. But I understand why the first impression of this game for people who are looking at the theme and wondering if it got butchered were disappointed. So the explanation that George gave, and I really like George Gomez. I mean, he comes across great on podcasts and he's passionate, is, you know, Lionsgate, the way they look at it is it's like they classify like pinball as a video game. It's like unrated, right? Like, you know how games are rated like mature and stuff. I guess pinball machines aren't, so they have to kind of just go with this PG thing visually because if it's out in the middle of the public, somebody sees it and somehow they see it. The logic is still stupid, right? Just bear with me. This is the explanation. But they can't have a gun on there. Somehow they can have knives and nunchucks, which is stupid. It's still violence, right? Like, okay, whatever.
    22:26
    But they can have the gun on the LCD because somebody then is consciously choosing to put money and play the game versus they're not, like, the game's just out in the public. They see this game, and they see a gun on there, and, you know, they're kind of not choosing to see it. It's really weird. I mean, I also think of, like, well, didn't Lionsgate have movie posters in movie theaters where, you know, some kid's going to see some G-rated movie, and he sees John Wick with a gun? It just makes no sense. Yeah, it really doesn't. This is the world we live in. You know, and does Stern get criticism for maybe not being better at the negotiations when it comes to a license and saying, look, this is John Wick. Here's our market. This is very important. I mean, it really should be on – if you're a family arcade operator and you're buying John Wick, maybe don't put that in your arcade. But most of these people are going to be homebuyers or going to a bar with adults. Like, it's really silly when you think about it. But anyways, maybe that's the criticism that should be fall on. Uncertainty should be better negotiating.
    23:34
    George Gomez said that they actually have walked away. I don't know if you heard this interview, but he said he's actually walked away from a license before. They were going to do the Hunger Games, I guess, and the licensing was so restrictive that they just abandoned the game. So, you know, it's got to be a real pain to deal with licensors, especially when it's just sort of like very illogical to us when we look at it. So, again, I understand why. I mean, Stern was surprised by it, right? They were surprised. I understand why people who are really interested in the game, and not the ones that are conspiracy theorists or just lost their mind, but looked at it and said, what the heck's going on, right? So that was the debate. I saved everybody a lot of time and headache from looking at that unhinged pin side thread. But there we are, Kevin. We can kind of proceed with our impressions of the actual gameplay and everything else in it. Yeah, and I think what's going to happen is, like, you know, over the next few months, people are just going to forget all about it, and then you'll just get into playing the game, and is the game good, and, you know, if you want guns, they're in the artwork. And you're going to be able to buy plenty of little 3D-printed guns to put all over your John Wick, I'm sure. So don't worry. The mod market will take care of you, as it always does. But, yeah, let's talk about our impression of the play field and things like that. what was your overall first impression of how it looks and the shots? It's our first design from this new designer, Elliot Eisenman. What do you think of his first take on a play field? Yeah, so my first impression was there's nothing really interesting, right? It's a fan layout.
    25:09
    You know, I always look at a pin and it's like, okay, what differentiates this pin from any other pin? And sometimes you just want to look for something that, oh, That's, like, interesting, like, what Jaws has done with that little mini flipper in the side shot, right? Like, that was kind of interesting. So it's fan layout.
    25:25
    You've got, like, also this pop-up area that's on Kiss, which I'm not. I don't love that area. But the art looks pretty good. I like the art style on it.
    25:36
    They use these plastics that kind of, like, kind of have this neon greenish tinge. It's pretty cute that they're selling that as a feature. It's like, oh, we put plastic detectors on there.
    25:48
    I know. Some of the things that they try to sell as a feature is disappointing. You know, they've kind of got a world under glass where they've got a little building and stuff. I like that. I think it looks pretty good. I like it. They're going to allow you to have, what do they call it, the expression lighting kits, right? Yep, yep. They're going to have that on. You can buy it aftermarket and put it on the Pro and the Premium, and it's going to come standard on the LE. So I like that. You know, Jersey Jack obviously is the king of, what do they call their lighting?
    26:21
    Hot rails. Yeah, I like the expression better. But, like, their hot rails are way cooler. But still, I like it. I mean, lighting can really accentuate certain moments of the game, help make the game, help create that world under glass. So I think that's cool. I've watched some gameplay footage now.
    26:40
    Obviously, their reveal stream and Fox City Spinball was doing some pro stream. and everyone seems to say that it's a fast game. And I do like that it's got shots in the game that come back at you like the car. I don't know if you saw the car. Yeah, the car was cool. I didn't realize this at first. I thought it was going to be static, but it's actually kind of like a kickback thing. So I like that. It does actually something on the Pro. That's the Pro right there. Yeah. I think that there's a compelling case for the Pro on this version because the things that are on the premium don't grab me as being a great upgrade. Like the car will swing out, which is cool. It kind of drifts out. I'm not sure how much that really affects gameplay in a meaningful way.
    27:23
    There's bizarrely a stand-up target that's blocking that pop-up area that's on the premium, but not on the pro. I mean, I don't know why you just don't put it on there. It's not like an expensive part. there's John Wick's gun case that it's like it's on the right side there's like a bash thing and then it pops open to hit a scoop shot so again does it matter that it's in there or not on the pro I don't know and then you know there's the medallion on the premium that just opens up and reveals license site like yeah seriously who cares like it's nice but like and And the Premium and LE physically lock the ball where the Pro doesn't, which, again, it's kind of like, yeah, ball locks are cool when the game's saying ball one locked and it doesn't actually lock. It's a little weird. Ball locks also slow down the game a little bit, which can be a negative. So this might be, again, I'm interested in this game. It's all going to come down to the rules, right, and how this game develops over time because it's only like at .8 in the rules right now. It's very early. So it's really how it comes along. But, like, it looks like a fun game. It looks like it could be a little maybe tougher game, which I like. I love hearing that. It's a fast game.
    28:45
    The music sounds pretty good in the game. They hype up that. This is really weird, too. They hype up, oh, they're using 4K video. Like, 4K video on, like, what is this, 720p screen? Like, why do they keep on going on about that? It's just really weird. Like, they're also hyping up, like, AI, too. You know, they're just checking all the buzzword boxes, basically. Okay, Stern, all right, that's fine. Industry first, then whatever, yeah. And I'm a little worried that they're kind of hyping up these quasi-features. And maybe they're great. Look, I haven't played the game, right? This is just, this is, first impressions, everything, right? Maybe it is cool. Maybe it isn't. But sometimes I'm, like, if they're kind of, like, churching these things, hyping these things up, it's like, are they trying to cover for the fact that there's not anything really interesting in the game? I don't know, but it looks fun. And I was watching Fox City's pinball. He was giving his impression of the pro after he's played, and I respect his opinion. He's like, it's a fun, it's a fun, fast game. He likes it. And he said, what's in there in the code, even though it's super early, is not bad. So, yeah, mark me down as probably a pro buyer. I'm just deciding now if I'm going to upgrade the premium, but it's hard to justify a $2,500 bump, especially because, you know, if I buy the game, I'm going to want the expression lighting kit, and it doesn't come on the premium. So that's another $500 you've got to lay out. You're almost better off just getting the pro, getting the lighting kit, and a shaker motor, and then I upgrade the speakers. Like, if you do all that to the premium, you're way over $10,000. Yeah. And that's, that's, this is not, uh, uh, I don't think this is an amazing game. I think it's a game that I'm moved by the theme and it's going to be pretty fun. But time will tell. Yep. Uh, we look forward to playing it and hopefully you grab one and then I'll just come over and play yours. Yeah, sounds good. I understand that, so their schedule is that the pros are shipping now for locations which is cool. I like how they do that. And then premium and LEs are going to start to ship. So the pros for the general population won't come out until August. So it's months away. August seems very far away right now, even though the summer goes fast. At the same time, this game seems, to me To me, when I hear .8 code, that's super early, right? So I'm not missing out on not having this game. I want to see how it develops and how it goes. Yeah, I think you've got time. I do like that they got Ian McShane, though, for the call-outs. Huge plus, huge win. Great call, sir. Ian McShane's got a great voice, great character from the movie.
    31:17
    I guess you're going to hear call-outs from Keanu Reeves, and I did see, like, one scene in the game where he's talking, but it's very, right now with the code, like, there's not a lot of movie speech and not a lot of Keanu's, which is, again, hopefully that changes drastically because you want to hear his, you know, his quotes like, yeah, I'm thinking I'm back, right? Like, all that good stuff.
    31:41
    Right now, the only Keanu in Toy Story 4 is Duke Caboom. They got to have their game, you know? No, I'm excited. This is a theme I really emotionally want to be good, right? And I want a tough game. I want a tough game that will be a good fight.
    31:58
    Cool. We'll report back more after we have a chance to play it. In the meantime, we have a bunch of other pinball machines to talk about.
    32:07
    I guess we'll go to this one next. It's ABBA by Pinball Brothers. So this is their third game, Alien, and then Queen, and now ABBA. they're hyped on this I guess I mean ABBA was a huge band before my time not my genre so this is not one that I'll be itching to buy also it's kind of weird because the original Pinball Brothers are no longer with the company now I guess so that adds another layer of what's actually going on over here as a current Pinball Brothers machine owner an alien I don't have the greatest confidence in build quality and uh uh their support seems okay but you know that there's weird things like they don't have manuals for their games and schematics and things like that so if you're a huge abba fan maybe go for it the art also looks kind of it kind of looks like ai generator like really bad it looks it looks ai-ish to me um and it's kind of plain i don't i know nothing about abba so i I don't know if, like, this is an iconic look that all ABBA fans will resonate with that look. But it's kind of like, oh, here's some geometric shapes on the side. And they put the ABBA name in Helvetica font. And there you go. We're done. It's an AI-generated ABBA people. And, yeah, there you go. There you have it. It does have a cool, like, the helicopter mech looks pretty cool. The balls lock in there. I gotta say it looks a little like how long until this thing breaks it looks a little flimsy yeah and I don't know what else to say about ABBA they did a reveal party stream thing and the quality of the gameplay video was really bad so you couldn't really hear or see what was happening and the people they had playing were just kind of random people at the party so not necessarily somebody who could talk through the game and explain what was happening or get far into it and really show you what was up. So, Nick, any thoughts on ABBA? I think the most positive thing I can see about – is it ABBA or ABBA? I have no idea. I was calling it ABBA, whatever. You say ABBA, I say ABBA.
    34:30
    Yeah, whatever this is, the thing is, like, every other theme is Mark Stave from Pinball Bros. So, I'm perfect. I'm glad that they chose ABBA, ABBA, whatever. and care less about this game. The worst thing is, Kevin, is, like, if there's a theme that you like, and, like, Pinball Bros does it, or American Pinball does it, or, sorry, guys, or even Spooky does it, you know? Like, if you have a theme that you love, my priority is this, Jersey Jack number one, and I'll settle for Stern. I do. That's it.
    35:02
    Yeah, so it's like, yeah, they can work on that. I've got to say, I am a fan of Alien. I like it, but that really wasn't their game. And they just picked that up from Highway and started making that from them. So based on Queen and ABBA so far, like Queen was a hot mess. I talked to – so spoiler alert, I sold my road show, and we'll talk about that more later. But the person that bought it, he was a Queen owner, a huge fan of Queen. I was like, oh, what did you think of that? Because I played it at a show, and it was kind of like whatever. He's like, it was a nightmare. I had to basically tear the whole machine apart, put like 60 hours into it to get it to work. And then, like, once he got it working, he realized how bad the code was. And he got to a point in the code where there's, like, nothing there. And it's like, proceed with caution on the Pinball Brothers games. If you like Alien, the game is complete. It's all there. It a delicate flower so you kind of know what you getting into parts But yeah I would say proceed with caution I don know Like to miss fair enough comment First time chatter says this is definitely a risk but I like variety in the world That that we are in a world where pinball has enough manufacturers to release an ABBA, we add. Okay, I just kind of read that verbatim. And Wildcat says, makes sense for a Euro company. They're positively massive in Europe. So nice to have that perspective. and yeah I think that why I knock and I make that comment about I'm glad that you know they're not picking Pinball Brothers is not picking things that I like is because universally I hear that you know these games are just like falling apart right like to your point Kevin of what you said you know our friend Dave Souza he's got an alien and he's just like he's like the second or third owner of it. So somebody's already gone through and fixed a lot of things, but he's like, every time I play it, like, I'm afraid another screw's going to fall out or, God forbid, one I'm going to fix. Now, you know, every pinball machine has some gremlins here and there, but, man, not like this. This is on a whole different level. So you've got build quality issues on top of the fact, like, let's be honest, they don't have the deep bench of coding and talent that, like, Stern or even Jersey Jack has. So, yes, it's nice that people get to scratch that itch, but also I feel for people who are fans of these themes, I mean, Queen is like a massive band, right? And somebody finally makes the Queen theme, and unfortunately it's this C-level tier pinball manufacturer, so you've got quality issues, you've got, to Kevin's point, having to spend an ungodly number of hours to get the game working and then only to discover that the code is garbage. Like, that's a real – I feel for those people, right? Like, it's really too bad. That's where I come from on that. Yep, I'm with you. I get that.
    37:59
    All right, so I think we got ABBA covered. Who knows if we'll ever get to play it. But if we do, we'll report back. Who knows if we'll ever talk about it again. Yeah, that could be it.
    38:11
    All right, let's move on to another new thing. This is a new old thing. it's uh so there's a couple things going on here we got fun house uh joining the list of bally williams games being remade uh but this is being done by pedretti so now apparently pedretti and also chicago gaming are doing remakes so you've got two different companies doing remakes of uh 90s bally williams games uh they just uh pedretti decided to make fun house their first one and they're doing it in two flavors. This is the limited edition version you're seeing with art by Brian Allen. And then they also have a classic version, which is, you know, just basically a reproduction of the old school Funhaus. Except it's got the full LCD screen in the back instead of the segmented displays. And it also has the on playfield screen above the scoop because both versions have the 2.0 code in there, the Rudy's Nightmare. as well as the classic rules and things like that, which in theory is like, that's cool. Like Funhouse is a good game. I like the idea of adding the new rule set to it. The one time I had an opportunity to try to play the 2.0 rule set, it was at the, we were in Texas,
    39:33
    and it was the coffee place that has a bunch of pinball machines. I can't remember the name of it. Maybe, was it What's Brewing? Maybe. And it didn't work. That was not a good sign for that. I put a dollar in, and nothing happened. So not a good experience with that. Because I wanted to try the Rudy's Nightmare Code just to see what it was like, because I like Funhaus enough and was curious to see what they did with it. But I don't know that I love it. Like, the art's fine. Like, it's good art, but I don't know if I love it. Like, it's, like, super weird. I think this is Brian Allen. I think Brian Allen's incredibly talented. I've got his disc golf disc that he made with pinball art. But yeah, Bloody Cactus says, I dislike the new backless art. I think, first of all, Funhaus is kind of an iconic pinball machine, so you almost want the original art. And I think, again, I fall into the category when things get too busy, even though it's, like, really kind of interesting. It might make a good poster in your game room or something.
    40:45
    The art is super busy for me, and I just tend to dislike busy art. It's kind of overwhelming. But that's me. I mean, don't ever come to the Buffalo Pinball for Nick's art takes. Yeah.
    40:56
    Yeah. I agree. Like, you want that classic look. I think in that case, Chicago Gaming does it right. They emulate the original art. Sometimes they put little flares into the overall package, like with the new topper or things like that, but usually they stick to the classic look. To me, this feels like we want to charge, what is it, $10,000 or $11,000 for a fun house.
    41:22
    How do we get people to spend that much for a game that doesn't sell for that much usually? Like, remakes made sense when it was Medieval Madness, and Medieval Madness was upwards of, you know, $12,000, $13,000, and they were able to offer it for, like, $7,000 or $8,000 or whatever they originally came out with. That's why people lined up and got their wallets out and were like, yes, give me a Medieval Madness. Now they're kind of, like, going deeper on the bench of the Bailey Williams games and are trying to find the games that people will pay for. And, you know, like we mentioned earlier, the market is not what it was a few years ago. So this is a much tougher sell now than it would have been a few years ago. Yeah, and I agree with everything you said, Kevin. And in chat, Wildcat says, why does it have assets from other games on it? I mean, that is a good question. It's a weird choice. So, look, I wish them luck for all the people in the pinball hobby and market that are excited by this. I'm glad. Back to Victimist's point, like, we're at a nice point in time where we've got so many pinball machines to choose from. All these ones are not going to survive. It's a tough market out there. But it is a nice time to have that choice and to get a lot of these opportunities. So that's a thing you can buy if you want. I got another thing you can buy if you want.
    42:40
    Hang on, I got to load up the page properly. I got to present this in the manner in which it deserves.
    42:47
    Ladies and gentlemen, one team that has not been marked safe, If it's the Blues Brothers, it's been picked up by Home Pin, who you might know for the critically renowned Thunderbirds. And what was the other? Oh, Spinal Tap is their other one. You know, everybody universally loved and adored Spinal Tap and Thunderbirds. They are doing Blues Brothers. Who's buying these games that they continue to be able to manufacture and make them and get licenses? It's kind of crazy. Yeah, it is weird. And what is extra weird about this is they're billing it as the world's first open source commercial pinball machine. So, okay, so here's what it says. HomePin is pleased to announce the release of our new Blues Brothers licensed pinball machine. It is a full-size mechanical machine that runs on open source software that can be played as supplied from the factory or changed at will by end users. The recommended retail sell price for the incredible Blues Brothers pinball machine is $4,950 U.S. dollars. That's $7,700 Australian. Buyers will be able to register on the dedicated HomePin Blues Brothers forum and discuss software changes. Even those with no programming knowledge will be able to get different versions of the software that have been tested by the moderators to try in their own Blues Brothers machines. yeah so let's take a closer look at this beauty so there's Spinal Tap on the left and Blues Brothers here on the right and then there are some closer up photos here the world's first this flyer holy shit Nick Lane look at this flyer if this flyer doesn't give you confidence in this project I don't know what will I can make that flyer Yeah. Like, they opened up Microsoft and did some hot word art on this flyer. And it says, the world's first open source pinball machine with a really bad drop shadow behind pinball machine with an exclamation point.
    44:49
    Let's see. Full-size mechanical pinball machine using industry standard construction. Game ships with factory code ready, quote, unquote, ready to play. Includes mechanical knocker as standard. Open source code is Arduino based. RRP of any pinball machine on the market. So it's retail price, I think, is what that is. 100% made in Taiwan, made in Taiwan by 100% Australian owned and run company.
    45:16
    Online forum available to owners only and will be tightly moderated. So there you go. Let's go with this flyer. I'm going to print that out and just hang it up on my game. That's like the best looking flyer I've ever seen.
    45:31
    Okay, here's one that shows the play field. Again, it's like, oh, this is prototype. But it's basically they took stars and they slapped some really bad Blues Brothers art on it. It's so washed out, right? It just feels so terrible. They leaned way into the blue of the Blues Brothers. It's basically just solid chunks of blue with flat black, the Blues Brothers, really huge on the bottom. and the panel art around the speakers is police cars and yeah, it's just bad. It's terrible. It's like they had three colors to work with and this is what they came up with. I wonder, like, how does a licensor agree to an open source pinball machine? You almost gotta wonder if they have the license, right? You almost have to wonder because it is so terrible. Yeah. Yeah, because somebody could, with an open source theme, you could put whatever you want on this machine. And would a licensor want their machine associated with things that don't have anything to do with the movie, right?
    46:40
    You know, because Stern fights those battles with people doing the pinball browser stuff. Like, the licensors don't like that stuff. And then there's that. And then there's also, like, is it just an excuse so they can get away with doing shitty code and be like, oh, well, the community will code this for us and we don't have to worry about it. Somebody go verify. Who owns the license to Blues Brothers?
    47:04
    Yeah, we need to know. I don't know. Anyways. This is a time when you want the licensor to say no. You want the licensor to be – there is a method to the madness of a licensor trying to protect a brand. I get that. It's like a dance. I think Lionsgate went way overboard with John Wick, and we're seeing the repercussions of that, and some attorneys are some crazy people who are just oblivious to how the world works. And then you have this, and my God, how much money is the licensors of Blues Brothers going to make on this game? It's very bizarre. Yeah, like how many are they going to sell? It can make sense, Kevin. I can't. Some things in this world I cannot justify or have make sense, and this is one of them. It's the Blues Brothers, ladies and gentlemen.
    47:56
    The game we will not be buying or ever playing. Yep. Hopefully, you know, I was going to say, you know, well, Pembroke's not going to come back, so maybe if they get back up to where they were, someday we'll be able to play this at a Pembroke in the future. But otherwise, if anybody in the western New York area ends up buying a Blues Brothers, let us know. We'll come over and we'll stream it. If you ever find like a 10 minute radius I'm not 15 minutes Out of the question Alright fair If that wasn't enough I have yet another Pinball machine I don't know if Nick Williams has seen this one so this will be a good one to show off It's uh Tilt Bob Pinball Shares new video of upcoming game Road Trip Uh I have not seen this Yeah So So, shoot.
    48:45
    I want to make this bigger, but I think it's going to blow out my hair if I do it like this. Then we'll be able to see it.
    48:53
    Okay. So, soak it all in. It's Road Trip, an original team pen by Bob Knees. Built by Pinball. This is a prototype and beta test that we're seeing.
    49:05
    And he's flapping it around. It looks like he's going to have a prototype pop of targets. There's cow pop-up targets. Look at that. Boom. Yeah. He's got a screen in the play field, some big old loopy-doopy rams.
    49:23
    He's got some top-secret confidential stuff in the top corner. I have a few little pop bumpers up there. Yeah. Top-secret pop bumpers.
    49:34
    There you go. So this is another new pinball company. It's just what the market needs right now is more pinball startups. Crazy. With original themes that are going to be a hard sell. But, I mean, the layout looks kind of interesting. Yeah.
    49:52
    So I guess we'll see. We'll see. I mean, it's like, you know, the art is, I mean, it's, you know, it's not bad. I mean, like, they tried to do some interesting things on it. Like, not remotely interested, not taking a chance on a new pinball company like most people. But, you know, I mean, it's as a first effort or whatever you want to call it. Like, it's kind of, you know. Yeah. Not for me. Not that I'm probably going to sell well. But, like, it's cool. There's some cool things in there. For everybody who says they want original themed pinball machines, here you go. Here's another one. Which is not me. Another one you're not going to buy. There it is. You can't hold me to that. Yeah. I'm not.
    50:35
    All right. So, yeah, we'll see. Something to keep an eye on. I got better vibes from that than I do from Balarama, so they're already off to a better start.
    50:44
    So we'll keep an eye on the development of Road Trip, and we'll keep you posted. Yes, they want original teams, but not that one, says Arlen, and that's very appropriate. All right, Jersey Jack update. They've been crushing out a bunch of software updates, finally.
    51:03
    Guns N' Roses, not in this lifetime. Pinball got the biggest one. I think all their games got updates of some sort, but this was the big, big one they've been working on. So this is updated to code 3.0. It's got a bunch of scoring changes. So they went through and rebalanced all the scoring throughout the game.
    51:20
    Changed the scoring and the rules for Slash Solo. That was one of those modes when people got to it, they would just time it out because it wasn't worth the risk. It was a super risky mode and not a lot of scoring. So that was one that needed some work. some bug fixes, a bunch of lighting displays and things of the like. They also added a biggest loser champ for uncollected song mode jackpot, which I kind of love. So if you play through the song and get a massive jackpot and don't cash it out, they have a high scoreboard for that now. It was great seeing there was somebody on Facebook crying about how sad it was. Why are you rubbing this in my face when I lose a big jackpot? It's like, well, collect the jackpot and then you don't have to worry about it.
    52:02
    Stuff like that is fun. So, good on them. And apparently, Godfather is up next for code updates, so looking forward to that. And I do kind of wish I had my GNR still so I could try this, but I think Dr. Ben still got his, so maybe we'll go over there and play his one of these years. So, good on that.
    52:28
    Let's see. Up next, we got a bunch of updates from Multimorphic. they have started shipping their upgrade kits. So this was their public update as of May 6th, so about a week ago, a week or two.
    52:46
    A few months ago, they promised they did this full quality review on their machines and found that there were a few key parts of the older P3s that needed upgrades. and by doing the right thing, they offer this kit to existing owners for no charge. It's a $250 kit that includes – let me see if I've got a picture of it here.
    53:11
    It's somewhere. It's not in the – oh, yeah, I heard it. No, that's the back box thing. There's a picture of it if I go here.
    53:19
    I can show you. But it's a power supply. it is a some aluminum upper flippers it's improved end of stroke switches and flags some pivot points for flippers that are the welder improved on things like that and the power supply for overall quality upgrades so my P3 personally is playing great so this will be something that I have mine on order it should be here with them the next week.
    53:53
    And I'll just keep the parts around, and if something breaks, I'll swap it in, but otherwise I'm just going to keep playing my P3 as it's playing well. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it is my motto. You know what I mean?
    54:08
    In other P3 news, Dungeon Door Defender launched a new update. I streamed it a week or so ago, but they added an entire new mode on this. that includes artifacts. So if you know this game, it's kind of like a tower defense game in pinball form. And so now there's a whole new mode that has all these upgrades and power-ups you can get that affect the way the game plays. And it does make the game a little easier if you get a good run going. So if you've played Dungeon Door Defender and it's been too hard for you, give the artifacts mode a shot. I was playing this game like non-stop it's so fun, the artifacts because it's got that one more game if I play again now what are the artifacts I'm going to get this is going to be the run where I put it all together and I get the artifacts that I want so it's got that kind of hook of these roguelike games that keep it coming back so highly recommended check out Dungeon Door Defender especially if you've got a P3 with the heist playfield, it's also being ported to the Princess Bride module, which is kind of a natural fit for this medieval theme. So I'm curious to see how it'll work on there, but I think this will be a good game between this and the Princess Bride. That'll be a great one-two punch for that playfield when it comes out.
    55:35
    Yeah, check out Dungeon Door Defender with Artifacts. That's a no-cost upgrade. If you already own the game, this is not a DLC thing. You just get the update, and you get this whole extra mode in there, which is awesome. Shout out to Michael Ocean for that update. Kevin, you know one thing that's not on our list to talk about, but it just occurred to me. So I don't have many details on it. Let me just mention it quickly. Maybe you know more than I do. But I guess Stern is going to be going to Spike 3, the third iteration of their board. So we're going to get a new board set. It's going to be a cabinet redesign as well. I'm not sure what this means, right? Some people suspect we're going to get maybe a bigger LCD. George Gomez you know briefly mentioned that he didn't want to give anything away to take away from the hype of the release but sort of better everything and I think they've reached their limits on Spike 2 in terms of what they want to do and there's fixes that they want to make to Spike 2 which will be done in Spike 3. It's still going to use the node board system and allegedly the rumor is that the first game to be on Spike 3 is going to be Metallica by John Borg. I have no idea if he's just redoing Metallica like he came out in 2013 now, and just redoing that, maybe with obviously stereo sound, obviously better lighting, better video, or if he's going to just totally have a new Metallica game with a different layout. So I find that interesting. Yeah, it's kind of weird. I got to agree. Kind of weird, yeah, kind of weird. The other thing, too, and this came from Nap Arcade, and this is like in the same article, he was saying that Stern had license for Indiana Jones, which I want an Indiana Jones machine. I really want a Jersey Jack to do it. But I digress because that's like my favorite theme, one of my favorite themes. And I guess John Borg was working on that, but he got pulled off of it. So I don't know if that means that, and again, this is rumor and speculation, right? I don't know, Nate. So I don't know if that means that if indeed he was working on it and they just flat out abandoned it or he just switched gears and is going to work on Metallica and then come back to that. So really interesting. But if that is, let's say that hypothetically that's true, I love John Borg, but after they messed up Indiana Jones in 2008, he should not be allowed to touch that theme. Oh, I forgot he did that one. That game was so bad. I love John Borg, but that was such a miss. Maybe he wants a redemption, but, like, give it to Elwin or give it to JJP to do is all I'll say. And definitely don't let Lonnie Robb do the rules. Absolutely not.
    58:07
    We're going to run the bathroom, the first bathroom break. Kevin, Ninja Eclipse, all you, buddy. No, I'm still, we're not through with the P3 update, so I'll keep working on this. All right. So it seems kind of soon for Spike 3, doesn't it? I don't know.
    58:24
    So let's jump over here. We've got a few more updates in the P3 realm. Let me take a look at my rundown here. So we've got, let's jump over here. a new game has been teased by ian harrower games and it's called blood bank billiards for the multimorphic p3 uh details are very limited at this point so i'm not going to say too much more because i do know more about this i've played it um super fun game and we're going to be doing the launch stream for blood bank billiards right here on buffalo pinball on june 1st at 2 p.m eastern so tune in live. If you miss it live, it'll be archived on the YouTube channel if you want to see Ian's latest game. So his first release was Birdwatcher, which you'll probably remember from us doing the reveal stream of that. It's super stoked to have Ian coming back. He's going to be with me in person. I've got some friends coming over. They're going to join me. We're going to show up with his latest game. I was trying to get Nick Lane to come over for this one, but he's going to be out of town. That's why we haven't done a lot of streaming lately because our schedules don't keep missing each other and they don't think up. So I'm going to go ahead with Ian and some friends and we're going to show up Blood Bank Billiards. And it's a fun game. I think you guys are going to dig it. So stay tuned for that.
    59:54
    Nickelene Blood Bank Billiards, new P3 game coming out. We're going to be launching it here. and then the last excuse me the last thing for the p3 right now is this is a cool thing that pinball life just launched yesterday and I kind of had the inside scoop on this from Scott and Denise he showed me some really early work that he was doing on this with when I went down for the final resistance stream so he has developed a low profile button box system for the p3 so So one of the things when people step up to a P3, it's like, oh, it's got these weird button boxes on it. And that's different from a traditional pinball machine. So it's like an instant, oh, this is different sort of thing. So this is one more way to kind of, like, reduce that initial, like, weird this is different reaction when people start playing it.
    60:48
    It also adds a switch, and it has a stacked leaf switch in there so you can stage flip. So if you turn on all four flippers to fire at the same time with the red buttons, if you push them in halfway, they will stage like a traditional pinball machine now instead of just constantly always firing. So it gives you that more of a traditional feel for playing a P3 game. If you're used to stage flipping and you have that, that's definitely an advanced pinball skill. But if that's one you use and like, you can do that with the P3. And if you want to switch back to using the upper flippers on the secondary buttons, you can just flip a switch and do it. You don't have to go back into your software and change it. So really cool upgrade. I do have a set on order, so I'm looking forward to trying them out for me in person. But this is cool because he basically reworked everything. They had to remanufacture buttons that are, like, super low profile. He did some really cool work on that. So I think it looks really good. And I personally don't mind the button boxes, especially now that I've had my P3 for a while. But I think this is a nice upgrade for folks who want a more traditional feel on their pinball machines.
    62:02
    It's not wood. The P3 button, traditional button boxes, are plastic. But they're modular, so they have a connector in there. And you can see that on this picture here.
    62:15
    There's just a single connector. You pop them out. You screw the new ones in. And, you know, all this was designed to be modular. so it's cool to see a lot of this getting taken advantage of. They did have, for Cannon Lagoon, for example, they did a single-button box because that's a Redemption-style game, and they did this big, huge button on it because it was supposed to be for, like, if you put it on location at a Dave & Buster's or something like that, kids would know to hit this big button on the side. And, again, those are modular, so you just swap them out.
    62:45
    Scott's fighting the good fight of silencing all the haters, I think, between his design of Final Resistance and these button boxes. He's doing some good stuff, so excited to see that and excited to try those out. Jeff, do you know why it's called the P3, like what that stands for? Physical pinball platform.
    63:05
    Okay. I see why they went with P3. Yeah, exactly. So if there's a P4, you'll have to come up with another P. It's for the fourth P.
    63:17
    Preliminary, I don't know. There's got to be something good in there. Chat room will figure that one out. What's the fourth P if there's a P4?
    63:26
    Okay. All right, Nick, you made it back in time for Ninja Eclipse, so I'm happy about that. We never got a chance to talk about this last month because they launched it after our podcast. Yeah, that's right. Wow, that's so long ago. So long. Ninja Eclipse, they learned their lesson when they launched that weird, goofy home pin looking machine at, was it TPF last year or Expo? And everybody was like, oh, that's gross looking. I don't want that. They went back to the drawing board and put it into more of a traditional cabinet design. It looks, it's pretty much the same as a standard modern Stern with LCD screen. Very similar cabinet design.
    64:08
    With a few notable features, it's got LED strips, kind of like Penn Stadium is built into the glass that lifts off as one entire piece. That was originally Plexiglas, and they changed it to actual glass, which was a good move.
    64:22
    But, you know, the game itself, the art is really, really good. The same artist that did the art for Looney Tunes for Spooky.
    64:33
    He does a really good job. Interesting layout. Again, it's like, is there a market for this? There's also something weird, like, yeah, I think you have to sign up for their Turner connected platform, their pin access platform.
    64:47
    So who knows, like, what's going on with that? Because it kind of feels like they want to get everybody in on this for some reason. So that might be why they lowered the price. So the other thing was they lowered the price to $69.94, so basically $7,000.
    65:03
    I estimated it to ship beginning in fall 2024. for. So, again, this is another proceed with caution. New pinball manufacturer has ties to Deep Root, which has its own sketchy background. So, even though they said they're not connected to Deep Root, they launched on DeepRootPinball.com or whatever it was, and that weird game thing.
    65:27
    Yeah. Another proceed with caution on these guys, I think. But, at least they took a step in the right direction with pricing and the cabinet design itself. So there you go. That's Ninja Eclipse. Yeah, imagine listening to feedback from your potential buyers. Did you play that at Pinbrew or no? It wasn't there. Ah, boo. I was hoping to get some first impressions. I'd love to be able to form a real impression of it, right? Like give it a shot. I think our buddy Dave sees that I played it at TPF and said it was okay. Like pretty good, you know. So not a ringing endorsement. It honestly looks better than what American Pinball is putting out. Oh, totally. Looking at it, which is kind of insane. Like, that should not be the case, right? Yeah. That should not be the case whatsoever, but here we are. Yeah, so Barry O's barbecue came out basically the week before, and then the week after they showed this, and everybody's like, oh, this looks way better.
    66:27
    So I think that's – I don't know what that says, but it says something. All right. Speaking of sort of pinball manufacturers who have been around for 11 years or so, it's Dutch Pinball. Dutch Pinball, this is on March 14th, so this is right after our last podcast.
    66:48
    They said they're very happy and proud to say that they have finally, after all these years, finished paying our old debt. Early achievers are done. So not so early achievers, 11-year early achievers. Today we built and boxed the last EA. Tomorrow they will be transported to the U.S. It's a long road, blah, blah, blah. wanted to thank them special thanks to coin taker they got all this like goodwill like look at all this engagement on this post they're like oh great job you did it we're really proud of you guys amazing to see it's like you guys took 11 years to build these machines that you took money from 11 years ago it's crazy i mean it beats the alternative i guess which would be not getting your game but giving some company an interest for your loan for 11 years doesn't really sound like something I want to do, but I guess people are happy for them and good on them for turning it into positive spin for themselves. It's funny, too. I mean, that, like, in what, it was, like, 2014, like, that is a game that was kind of, like, if it came out and had a good launch in 2014, would have been, like, ahead of so many games. But now it's kind of showing its age to me. Totally, yeah. And just like content, rules, and everything else. It's just too bad. Every time I think about that, I just think it's too bad because, again, that's a theme that I absolutely love. But I don't own that game. And the price just keeps going up and up and up on it. It's like a $14,000 game or something like that now. Yeah, I went back to check. I was like, when did this game get launched?
    68:20
    And this is December 27, 2013 on Himmel News. Dutch Fanball Secures the Big Glubowski License. So this was back when they first started promoting this. Oh, I bet this has the price in it, too. Oh, no, this is just saying they got the license. Oh, no, here it is. Here we go. Here was the early promises. Machines will be made in the Netherlands at a new Dutch pinball facility with the first units due to ship in the second quarter of 2015, approximately 15 to 18 months from that announcement. The cost of the game was 75, 50 euros. so $8,500 in the U.S. plus tax.
    69:04
    Yeah. So there you go. Hope you didn't need that $8,500 in the past 10, 11 years because they were using it. They were busy with it. So there you go. But they did it. They came back and they finally gave everybody their games.
    69:20
    They had one other announcement, which was this. So a couple weeks later, Dutch Pinball welcomes a new brand, DPX, Dutch Pinball Exclusive. So obviously here's a company that really has it all under control. They've got it all figured out. It took them 11 years to ship all the big Lebowskis, but let's launch a second brand. What could go wrong? So building on its respected presence in the pinball industry, Dutch Pinball is pleased to announce the introduction of DPX, short for Dutch Pinball Exclusive. this new sister company marks an extension of dutch pinball's existing portfolio focusing on producing limited editions of high quality pinball machines for collectors uh let's see they're they're catering to a niche market dps right but presents a commitment to the craft of the pinball machine creation combining the renowned quality of dutch pinball with a focus on exclusivity so basically they're gonna make a really expensive limited run pinball machines, is what it sounds like. They sound like a glutton for punishment. I mean, it must have been brutal for them over the last 10, 11 years of stress of trying to get these things done. Good on them for finally making right. That doesn't take away their major mess up.
    70:39
    But, yeah, okay. Yeah. This is the bottom of it, apparently. The rumors are that it's Alice in Wonderland? which would be J-pop like yeah you try to do so they're not only are they you know sketchy in their own right they're hitching their wagon to another sketchy figure in J-pop if that's that design maybe it's a different Elsa Wonderland design but alright you know throw your money out if you want I guess go right ahead make yourself happy speaking of throwing your money away what a segue it's Haggis Yeah. So I thought this was interesting. So we talked last time about how they were, quote, unquote, recapitalizing the business and blah, blah, blah. They put out that email that was full of bluster.
    71:30
    So I thought this was interesting. Pinside user Grantman has been keeping a list of known customers waiting for their fathoms. So they did fathoms, and then they also did Centaur, which apparently was going to be their second game.
    71:44
    So he says, this is just people that have posted here in the past few months, and one person that contacted me privately that also paid in full. This is obviously not a complete list. There are plenty of people that read this and don't post or are not on Pinsight. So U.S. customers, so there's one that paid in full in May 2022.
    72:03
    That's two years ago now. So two years ago paid in full for his Fathom has not been built or shipped Another user in February 23 not built or shipped April 23 not built or shipped Paid in full May 23 not built or shipped Paid in full October 23, not built or shipped.
    72:24
    October 23, not built or shipped. Two Australian customers, September 23, November 23. Seven owing to the UK, paid in full May 2023. and then another one paid in full April 2023 for France, not built a ship. So, yeah, I think this is not looking good for Haggis. And, you know, I haven't been keeping – I'll go in that thread every once in a while just to see what the back and forth is, but this feels very, like, I don't know. It's like it's not going to happen. And it's in the – the ship is sinking, and everybody who is in on it is trying to say, well, you know, I think they're going to pull through because they want their games to come, right?
    73:14
    And some people have the reality check of, yeah, this is not looking good. And I think this is an interesting data point as to why it's not looking good.
    73:26
    Any thoughts on Haggis, Nick? I mean, all I can say is this is why Buffalo Pinball, or you can talk pinball, hammers on, you know, these like boutique or smaller or new manufacturers because it's a tale as old as time. We just talked about Dutch Pinball before this, and now we're talking about Haggis and people losing their money or people putting deposits down.
    73:48
    I mean, I feel for these people, but at the same time, don't only buy a game when it's ready and it's there. That's all I can tell you. You do it from confidence with J.J.P. and Stern because they have a track record of, you know, decade, or at least over a decade for J.J.P. and decades for Stern, right?
    74:09
    But, yeah, I mean, that's why we hammer on them. That's why we give a hard time. That's why we point out these issues is because we don't want to see anybody lose their money to these manufacturers that might not be able to deliver a product, or even when they deliver a product, it falls apart. So that's our PSA. We tried to do it. I think people who listen to our podcast have heard us say that before and are better educated and don't do that. But anybody new, this is our PSA that we're trying to help everybody here. Yep. And, all right, so this is our next new suggested segment for the show. Oh, let me just do one thing. I'm sorry. My mind's jumping around. I saw an interesting post, by the way, when we get into pricing in pinball. It was in the John Wick post, right? So I'm going to jump back a little bit. Bear with me, guys.
    74:59
    So somebody kind of posted, you know, price increase per pinball model, and I thought that was really interesting, right? We talk about value and money in pinball and the pinball market, and it's an interesting time, right, when manufacturers seem to be selling less because the economy is pretty tight right now. So here's the – this is since May 2020. This is by Kappen12 from Pinside. So he says the pro prices. Okay.
    75:30
    Since May 2020, pro prices are up 14%. That's not bad, to be honest. Yeah, with inflation. Because that's when the money printer went brr, okay? And we printed basically 40% of the money supply in the last, like, four years. It's insane. All right, just think about that. So 14%. Premium is up 26%. LE is up 42%. Yeah, yeah. So I'm seeing a lot of people saying they're not buying the LE. Like you take our friend James who used to buy LEs on question, like not getting them anymore. I think that's going to be a tough sell at $13,000-some for the MSRP for the LEs, which have gone up way more than the pros in price, but also are absolutely tanking in price on the used market. So I guess a really interesting thing, I just wanted to bring that up. I thought that was a really good post that somebody did on Pinside. So I joke about Pinside a lot. I obviously love Pinside. I spend time there. But there is good content and smart people who are actually posting things that are interesting and helpful. So thank you for that post. Right, yeah, same with that Haggis thread. It's like somebody takes the time to put the data together so they give you a better picture of what you're looking at. All right. Do you want to lead into the American Pinball segment, Nick, and set it up for us? Yeah, so American Pinball, man.
    76:53
    God, they've really come on our radar in the last year in just kind of WTF are they doing. So our new segment, we need a jingle. Steven Silver said he might do something. He offered me these graphics. We need one. Yeah, we might have to have a game on some graphics. He might not do this one because it's taking shots at the other manufacturers. Yeah, that's true. So if somebody wants to have, just reach out to us. But American Pinball WTF. So this one. Let's start with this one. Let me click on the link here. I think I have to open it up. But maybe you bring it up. You'll see it on this one here. All right. So I had to laugh at this. And it's like this is maybe we'll call this nitpicking. But this is kind of like, you know, in a legit, sophisticated, smart organization, Like, everything you put out and communicate is important, right? You want to get it right. You put a lot of thought into it. And I think because if you start putting out things where there's errors in it and bad thought, then that extends to, well, how does that – what's in the product itself, right? So what we're looking at on the screen, and this was posted on American Pinball's Facebook in the last week, is it's an order now for Hot Wheels. And I'll just read what the text says, and then I'll talk about the picture. So American Pinball's Hot Wheels pinball is on the production line now, starting to be boxed and shipped next week. Okay. So, by the way, there's already a grammatical error there. Yeah. They say American Pinball is about an apostrophe. So come on, guys. Like, I mean, this is the whole company. There's, like, no thought or care or attention put into this. Like, it's embarrassing, right? Like, you guys should be better than this. You've been making pinball machines since, what, 2015? Like, come on. All right, but, like, I take more issue visually with what we're seeing in the scene. So in the scene, for those not able to look at this, and you can, for those watching the live stream, you can try to guess in your head what is Nick going to say. Let me know if you're right. We have the Hot Wheels pinball machine. It's in there. that we have, like, maybe, like, a mom and a child.
    79:08
    And it's, like, almost like a child's game room, it looks like. This is, like, the Silver Spoons, Richie Rich kind of kid's game room. And in the game room, the kid's got, like, well, he's got, like, a Mario background, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but whatever. He's playing with, like, a $20 Hot Wheels ramp toy, okay?
    79:26
    The pinball machine is turned off, okay, that they're trying to promote. So the mother and child have their back turned to the pinball machine, and instead they're playing with a $20 Hot Wheels toy.
    79:42
    Just think about that. If you were going to try to promote a game, wouldn't you think that you would show these people with the pinball machine on playing the pinball machine, not bored by it and turned off and forgotten about and playing a $20 toy instead? Like, just think about that for two seconds. There's not anybody in the company that says, hey, guys, why are we using this picture?
    80:05
    Why don't we show them having fun? And by the way, on every Stern game now, we've got Josh Sharp's kids playing Stern pinball machines, having fun, like, oh, this is a blast. This is a good time, right? Like, that's how you do an ad. You just see what anybody else is doing and just copy that. It's insane. I like when Toyota puts a car ad out and it's, you know, nobody's even looking at the car. The car is, like, over in the parking lot, and they're off, like, playing Frisbee in the field or something, you know?
    80:33
    Yeah. It's just so, like, there's no thought. There's, like, no thought. It's embarrassingly bad. Yeah, I mean, it's not even a nightlight. RLM says it's not even showcasing that it could be a nice nightlight. Yeah, I mean, this is a cool setup for an ad, right? Like, this room is really neat, lots of Hot Wheels stuff. I would lose all of the other brands and IPs that you're incorporating like Mario and Ninja Turtles but have it in a room full of Hot Wheels things show that like you know people are super into Hot Wheels you know if your family is one of these families that is obsessed with Hot Wheels this is the great addition to your game room you know they were like almost there it's not hard it wouldn't have been that hard this is not even like a layup like come on alright so So, I said WTF was what they think of. We've got more, though. Yeah, before we go to that, though, I want to touch on the sale that they're having right now that we talked about earlier. So, they're having a Memorial Day sale on all their games except for Berrios. Because, hey, we all know that's the hot new game. You can't discount that one. But if you want an American Pinball game, while everybody else is pushing prices higher because, you know, prices on literally everything are going up, American Pinball is cutting prices, slashing and dashing, doing the Memorial Day mattress day sale on their Rimmel machines, $500 off, you too can get your own Houdini or Oktoberfest or whatever, because for some reason they're still making those. For some reason. For some reason somebody's still buying them. I don't understand. I don't know the market. I don't know anybody personally. We know so many collectors. We play in league. I don't know anybody that owns an American pinball game. It's kind of amazing. Yeah, yeah. I thought of that. We have, what, like six or seven amazing collections in our league that not a single person, like we all have Cerns and Classics and JJPs and Multimorphics and Smookies. Even Pinball Bros. Even Pinball Brothers. Exactly. Not a single person has an American Pinball game. That's crazy. I know there's people who like them, and they do, but I don't know. I don't know how they can exist. We've got more, though.
    82:50
    WTF is American Pinball Thinking. I almost forgot about this. How could we forget about it? American Pinball Marketing sent this out to their distributors. I'm going to read this, so bear with me. I'm going to read it as is and maybe highlight some questionable things in there if the text is wrong. Here we go.
    83:09
    With summer quickly approaching, we want to take advantage of the time of the year to promote and sell American pinballs. I saw the apostrophe there, so. They got it. New Game BBQ, and BBQ spelled out. That's not even New Game. It's Barry O's Barbecue Challenge.
    83:24
    Hot Sauce and Hot Rots. Yeah, it's like the longest name in pinball. It's insane. Don't ever forget the full name. We should have some new assets to post on your website soon, as we are constantly looking for new material. That's a weird way to phrase it, but okay. What we would like you to do is forward us any information regarding BBQ restaurants. BBQ restaurants is all capitalized, which is where the restaurant is capitalized. It doesn't need to be. In your area that possibly could house a BBQ pinball game. Again, that's all capitalized. That's not like a proper name. It's insane. And also, what does it mean house the game? Fine. I guess we've got to get through this. I can't take this too far. our marketing and sales team can help reach out to these establishments to help add sales to your business. So let's pause right there. We're not even done. This is going to double. So they want their distributors to say, okay, we got Jimmy Bob's BBQ in our place and report back to American Pinball. Why can't American Pinball just use Google? I'm really trying not to swear. Why can't they just use Google to figure out what's in an area? Like, why do they need to give a homework assignment to their distributors who are probably struggling to sell these games to begin with? This is insane. We talked about this before. Their plan is literally to sell this game to barbecue joints, which is, again, another level of insanity, right? Like, anyways, with BBQ still less than two months on the market, the market's capitalized. I have no idea. No idea. This does not need to be capitalized. Capitalize. For God's sake, get somebody who can fucking write.
    85:01
    We want to push and drive the sales for this game to the highest level they can be. So send me your, again, locals capitalize, local BBQ joints. That's all capitalized information. And let's get these BBQ pinball games all capitalized all over your town. Get them all over. Let's get them. All over. Yeah, they're going to be just all over everywhere.
    85:23
    By the way, we're not done. But if you're a listener and, you know, if you see one of these games in your BBQ joint, if it's housed in your BBQ joint, to use their terminology, please send Buffalo Pinball a picture. We would like to see evidence. We would like to see this.
    85:42
    And also, by the way, I know Kerry Hardy did like a skit about calling a BBQ joint, but even before he said that, I wrote to our group. I wanted, I really wanted and was tempted to do this. I know you guys probably love this. I wanted to have a stream where me and Kevin take turns cold calling barbecue places and trying to sell this game.
    86:06
    Dialing for dollars. Just the reaction and the awkward conversation. I would need to be drunk. And I've been doing sales for 20 years, and I just can't fathom the uphill battle of trying to call up a barbecue place and sell this. It's just insane to me. Yeah, because you're going to get whatever frontline worker is just trying to get through their day.
    86:28
    Weirdos call me about pinball. I got all these orders to fill. I can't. I was just going to say, send me something in the mail. Send me a brochure. That's the quiet way to tell you to go after yourself. Yep. Okay, let's get back to this. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to AS. Okay? Let me ask. There's no period there. Okay. Okay, so again, just sloppy, no review, no thought, have a wonderful day, period. Okay, that's it. Yeah, there you go.
    86:59
    This is the death of a pinball machine company. Rest in peace. It's like, again, we talked about outrage or we're going to get outraged over, you know, in quotes, and it's like something that's outrageous. This is outrageous. That's pretty outrageous. There were people, like, you know, there was, like, the hype thread on Pimps. And, again, I come back to an earlier point where there's a number of funny people in there just kind of dunking on American Pinball. And there's, like, at least maybe a couple people in there, and they're, like, trying to tell you that you can't have a negative opinion on this game or poke fun at it. It's like, who are you to regulate that? Like, it's hard to make fun of something that's not funny, right? But when something's ridiculous and funny and to comment on it, fair game. Fair game, my friends. And it's also like not going into the owner's thread and then like not being an owner and making fun of them. I mean, God help those people. I mean, they're going to have a rough time as it is, and I feel for them. No one's doing that, okay? But in a hype thread to talk about it, total fair game. Literally nobody is in the owner's thread, so nobody owns this game. There's like five posts in there. So this is the segment we asked Steven to give us an intro, and we don't have an intro for it yet, but we're going to keep doing it because you keep sending us submissions for mods you don't need.
    88:26
    The hot new Brody Even Talk Pinball segment. This one I found, though, and it's kind of amazing because there's been almost as many crickets in this thread as there are in the barbecue owner's thread. So this is, what is this called? The Pinball Media Club. modernize your pin. I was like, what is this?
    88:46
    So it's our media player and editor are finally out of beta, so let's talk about them. I would love to hear your feedback, and if you're planning on creating your own DMD action pack, make sure to share your progress. Sync videos, images, sound, and external devices. With our pinball media player, media pinball player, you can easily modernize your pin by synchronizing actions shown on your DMD to video sounds and external devices. We now support up to three video displays. Below you can see an example of where I've added to my display, and I'll get this going while I'm talking so you can see what's happening.
    89:23
    Added a display to my black glass where I've added a mini display to the play field. Out of those two implementations, adding a mini display was definitely the easiest as it didn't require any play field modifications. If my getaway pin wouldn't have had a topper already, I would have added a video topper as well. Video topper. here's the video where you can see both displays in action so Nick astutely pointed out that this was from using clips from the movie Baby Driver just kind of randomly inserted in there when things happen on the play field and there's also text overlays that say you know lock is lit there's a little animation of the car pulling up to donut heaven and And for some reason, they took the back glass and cut a big hole out of it and stuck a LCD in there. So you have this LCD above the DMD showing random movie clips.
    90:20
    Yeah. So I guess if you really want baby driver video clips in your pinball machine, your getaway pinball machine, you could do it.
    90:32
    Yeah. I don't think he's got a price in here. Oh, here. Let's go there. live and see. Okay. Here we go.
    90:45
    Where's the price? Just give me the price. No price. That's not a good, not, oh, we have to register? Oh, I'm very confused about it. Oh, here we go.
    90:59
    $39.95, one-time fee and installation, online features, a monthly fee. No, absolutely not. File it under Minds You Don't Need. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. There's a monthly fee? Yes. All basic features for the premium. There's a basic offline version, too, for $40. So, dude, you're using Baby Driver, which you don't have the rights to, and you're monetizing that. I don't think that's legal, my friend. I don't think they got the rights to do that. It's one thing when people put that stuff out there for free and don't charge. I think that's like, I don't know, that's probably still not right, like when people do the Jurassic Park thing. But like, yeah, profiting on it, though, I know is a huge no-no. So, yeah, you stole, monthly fee for stolen clips, movie clips is what Ketchup John Mustard said, what a great name, in chat. Yeah, dude, like that is, yeah, not only this is a mod you don't need, but you're stealing. Pinball, and he's trying to do this to operators? Yeah, dude, this is absolutely not. I need this. Honestly, this should be in some kind of violation of – he's posting this on Pinside or advertising it. If you're trying to sell copyrighted stuff, you should just be taken down. I don't know. It's insane. I like that. So there's, like, six posts in this thread. They're all from the OP. There's one question in here that says, what do generic pictures of parking garages and urban traffic have to do with Steve Garicci and driving fast? I think that kind of sums it all up. And then literally there's zero inches from everybody else. So this one feels dead in the water. I like that. Look, like there's a lot of technically talented people out there in the pinball community who have the desire to contribute or add to it. And I respect a hell of a lot of that. That's not my skill set. My skill set is being creative in different ways. but I would say to these people that you need to partner up with somebody with maybe some business sense or marketing, right? You need a partner in this. You've got the technical know-how, but you're just, you're, you're, you're, you're not approaching this the correct way. Right. And, and this is when it's like somebody who could do the technical stuff, but just, this is what they come up with. Something that the market probably doesn't care or want. Then they're stealing assets. Like, no, try to use your, I'm glad you get your talent, but figure out how to use it, but find somebody who's got a good business and marketing sense and can actually create something that the market wants here. Yeah, well, it's like the pin vision mod that I have in Tron, right, that puts the screen in the back.
    93:40
    They did it right. So it's like the school mod. It replaces the backboard. You don't have to cut a hole in your machine or anything like that.
    93:48
    And it uses original animation. So Steven Silver from Multimorphic did all the animations for it. they integrate with the theme, right? But it's not stealing movie clips and dumping it in there. You know what I mean? So if you're going to do it, you got to do it right.
    94:04
    Yeah, don't just steal movie clips. All right, one more mod you don't need. It was a double whammy this month. This one was a submission.
    94:14
    Actually, there is a third, but it's not really a mod. We got the cheaters club too. The cheaters club, yeah. Did we talk about in the Cheaters Club the shark eating ball mod last time? We did, yeah. Yeah, we roasted that one already. I've got more to say on it, too. All right, well, we'll definitely cover that then, too. Thank you, thank you. But this is for JGP's The Godfather, and I had seen this, and I was like, you know, it's not really a mod because it's just somebody doing a thing to their pinball machine, but then somebody else also sent this to me, so I was like, all right, fine, we'll show it. So this Pinside user got little mini custom bobbleheads done of Eric Minier, Jack Winery, and some of the characters from The Godfather. And he just kind of like, you know, stuck them in his Godfather. Let's check that. Look at that. There they are.
    95:09
    That does not, I'm sorry, like that does not add to the game. It's creative. I mean, the fact that you can create that is cool. But even if they look silly to begin with, but, like, why don't you just add more characters from the movie? Like, people don't want Jersey Jack employees in the Godfather game, and then it's weird that they're in there to begin with on the LCD. Right. Why are you doubling down on that when people don't like it to begin with? But, again, do what you want. It's cool that you've got that skill. I respect the hell out of that. But, again.
    95:42
    Yeah. The chopper chopped in half and mounted on the bottom. Also, that's another bonus feature. I think he had a ceiling that could not accommodate the topper, so he cut it in half and put it on the sides, which is kind of creative. I've got to give him that.
    95:59
    But there's another one in here, too, that I don't want to have go unnoticed. A little bit further down, he made a – so we've shown pinball glass covers a few times. This one's kind of okay. It takes the play field and puts it on a big, basically, mouse mat. And then you look at the mouse mat of the play field instead of the actual play field. So I guess if you're going to cover up your machine, do it this way, because then you can still kind of see what it looks like, even if you're not actually seeing it. It's the best of the worst right there. Again, I understand people who have cats and stuff. That's, like, my favorite. it, or if, like, there's some construction going on or something, like, all right, I'll give you that. But here's the thing. Those, especially the Jersey Jack games are, they have Invisiglass. You put these things on there, these dust protectors, which who cares about dust, right? When you put these on and take them off, that's the good chance you're going to leave marks or scratch that glass. So the irony is you're probably going to do more damage, you know, trying to protect it from, you know, the insidious dust monsters out there, right? But, like, again, if you have cats, I get it. I understand. But if you don't, I just, I don't know, man. But, yes, that is, like, the best. It's the best of the worst. I'm still against these things, but that's a smarter way to approach it. Yeah. Yep. Okay. All right. Do we want to do my cheaters club first or your cheaters club?
    97:34
    Let's show this one first. Okay. Because I have a foot with this. So this was our friend Matt sent me this, who's a Space Shuttle owner. He owns my old Space Shuttle, which it's been a while. But if you haven't watched the Brody Even Pinball, you know, the one where we all get together and play pinball, go on YouTube. Look for the episode where we play Jay on Space Shuttle. It's, like, probably the best episode. We peaked early on Bro. That was an amazing episode. So go back, watch that one, and then come back and check this out. It's Space Shuttle. So somebody has a space shuttle, and they didn't like how many trains they were getting on the left out lane. So they just decided to go ahead and drill a hole in the play field and add a boost. Big oof. We got to get that oof meme come up. Yeah. Oof meter. My favorite part of this is this sentence here. It says, we honestly see that Left Out Lane is so egregious that it had to be a design flaw. Oh, okay.
    98:38
    Okay, whatever you read, just, what a baby. It's so egregious. Get better, baby. That game could be a long-playing game, too, by the way. Yeah, you just shoot the spinner over and over. Yeah, it's a pretty, I mean, it's a pretty long-playing classic, I've got to say. Yeah, watch Eric Stone play it from the summer open. Oh, yeah. For like two hours. Yep. It definitely needs that. It's got three down votes, though, so people are not agreeing with that post. So there you go. That's our entry into the cheaters club. Nick wants to talk about the ball shark eating mod thing, though. I just want to say about the space field, one of the worst things when we talk about cheaters mods in the game is when somebody drills into the play field. Like there's no going back from that. That's it.
    99:21
    It's one thing if somebody puts in an extra ramp and they're a cheater, I have no respect for that, but at least you can go back to the way it's supposed to be. But this is, you've done it, you know. You've really done it. Okay. Yep, you ruined the game. Good job.
    99:38
    So, yeah, I guess we, I can't even remember, I guess we talked about the ball-eating mod on Jaws. Can you bring up a picture? Oh, yeah, I'll try to find it. It's been surfacing recently. First of all, I'll say this again. The people who are creative and have the ability to do this, I'm not criticizing your technical skills. It's not can you do it, it's should you do it.
    100:03
    And granted, if there's a market for you and you're making money, then you're giving the market what you want, and I will also grant you that. So I want to – people always forget, like, I say these caveats and they want to go after me and, like, they act like I don't say that and they criticize me. It's like, no, no, no, I'm acknowledging that. But now, like, on the premium, they've put this.
    100:27
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's worth talking about again because it's so bad. Look at that. Look at how amateurish and ugly that is. It has no lower jaw. The jokes in the Pinsider are pretty great. Instead of jaws, they call it jaw.
    100:46
    Oh, my God. Look at that. There you go. Everybody wants this shark to eat the ball. There you go. You know.
    100:57
    So here's the thing about this game, which I own Jaws Premium. That game has a lot of returnable shots, which I call safe shots. When you hit the shot, it returns it to the flipper, which makes it safe. You know, there's a few shots in the game that actually come back at you that are more dangerous, such as hitting the shark, the standard shark on the premium. where you hit it and it ricochets back at you. Now, it's not super dangerous, but, like, you know, it can lead to some drains. And the rules on the game make it a risk-reward because when you're about to start a mode, the shark will come up, and you can choose to hit the shark so that during the mode, the shark stays up, and you can hit it again to extend the time or get points on it or, like, double-scoring in that mode. So, again, this is introducing the risk-reward. Do I want to risk going for a shot that's going to be a little more dangerous and puts the ball out of control or play it safe and ignore it, but I forego extra points. So by implementing this hideous mod, what they're now doing is they've changed the way the game is designed, and when you hit it into the shark's mouth, it safely returns it to the right flipper, and that's not the way the game is designed from a rules perspective. Like, you are absolutely cheating. You've made your game ugly. I think the sculpt that they have in the game looks great, that Stern did. It looks really good. It looks threatening and menacing. This looks like, I don't know, man. It looks like Baby Shark. It looks like that game from the 90s where the shark attack chases you around. It's so comical and childish looking. Like, it absolutely ruins it for me. And I was really, again, go listen to George Gomez's interview on the Flippin' Out podcast from a week ago. He was commenting on this and talking about it. And he was just saying, like, look, they could have easily had that, had Jaws eat the ball. I mean, they've done it on Jurassic Park. It's not a question of can they do it. It's he didn't want the game to work that way, and the game is not coded for that.
    102:59
    So, George Gomez, he's like, he's kind of, like, just aghast at it. And he quote, like, he's like, we were kind of snickering at it. So, they think you're cheating. They think it's silly. Okay. You guys are butchering your games, and you're making it easier. You could be fine with that. Do what you want with your game, but I don't know, man. It's just a level of insanity to me. This didn't happen 10 years ago in the hobby. This is a recent phenomenon. Everybody sort of lost their mind in COVID in different ways, and this is a post-COVID world we live in where people are modifying their game and cheating. Yeah, so I didn't know how much this mod would cost, but I knew it had to be expensive. So it's $475 plus shipping. So you're going to be out about $500 to ruin your Jaws pinball machine by putting this in. Not to mention the fact that you can't read the navigation at the top because the colors don't work. So, all right. Do what you want with your games. By the way, too, the rules in the game is there's like a machete shot, which will double at least 2Fs the next shot. So when you hit the shark, and it's not supposed to do this, but it returns it to the flipper, you're cheating, right? Like, you're getting access to that increased score shot. Like, it's so stupid. It's so stupid, but whatever. Look, I understand. I respect an opinion that, like, you wanted the game to eat the ball. You were surprised that they didn't implement it. Again, that's fine. But come on, guys. Like, either accept the game for the way it is or don't buy it. And if you don't want to buy it on principle because that's important to you and you value that in the game that doesn't eat it, then fine. It doesn't bother me. I think it's fine. I trust in Keith. I think the game plays great the way it is. But this is worse. This is a knee-jerk reaction to this. So, I don't know. Buffalo Pinball doesn't endorse cheating in pinball. Yeah, Borgadog asked if we covered the Bond Scuba Kick mod, And I think that may have been the first entrant into the E-Cheaters Club that we did. So, yeah, we definitely covered that one. Yep. Do you want to kick off game room updates? I'm going to go until my second bathroom break is predicted, and it's all coming. Yep, there we go. Everybody take a shot. All right.
    105:18
    All right, so I guess I'm going to talk about my game. So first up, I've been playing and loving Alien and really kind of, like, hooked on that game, man. It's really good. And especially the David Thiel sound package is awesome. But as a result, I've been doing a bunch of mods to it. It's kind of got me hooked on the mod front. I haven't been doing a lot of mods on my games lately,
    105:40
    but Tron is one game that I modded, you know, all the way out. And I'm kind of going that way with Alien, too. So one of the first things I did was I got this, speaking of expensive mods, I got this Lior sculpted Art of Pinball frame for the screen. on the play field. It looks really good. Like at least, you know, this is one where it looks really good. You're not changing the, the way the game plays. You're just making it look better. I think that's, that's a good mod in my book. Um, so super happy with that. Uh, yeah, he does, he does really good work. Um, so I did that one. What else did I do? I did the, so here, here's a good, uh, story. So I ordered this alien, the Ripley version with the, loader battle on it. So this is on the way.
    106:30
    And so I ordered this back in like early April, I think. Maybe even been February. But, um, so I ordered the frame and this. And I got the frame and I was like, hey, where's the Translate that I ordered? And they're like, oh, it's on the way over, you know, because they were shipping over from Italy. and it'll be here in a week or two. So I was like, all right, cool. So a couple weeks goes by and I don't have it. And so I followed up with them and they're like, yeah, so we had a big box of these come over with a number of machines that got shipped over from Italy and they got lost along the way. So somewhere between Italy and the U.S. there's a box of alien Ellen Ripley version translates. Just kind of hanging out. Somebody's enjoying that box of translates. So it's going to be even longer for me to wait for those.
    107:26
    So that's on the way. I also did, which one? I did the backboard illumination from Measle Mods. So here, the before and after is kind of good. So it's just a light strip that goes kind of on the back of the little piece of wood that hangs under the back box. Lights up the back of it nicely, which I like. and there's also I did the fire scoop mod which is right here it lights up the scoop with like a flame color which is cool too so I've been doing a bunch of mods on that what else I sold my roadshow which I hinted at earlier so roadshow's out I wasn't planning on selling it that soon but I was in the northeast pinball thread on pinside and somebody was like hey anybody got a roadshow for sales I was like I sent him a message gave him a price He said I take it And our good buddy Rob shout out we give a plug to Rob of Hall and Oates Pinball Shipping, Northeast Pinball. If you live in the Northeast US, you're going to need a pinball machine ship. Check out Rob. He's got a thread on Pinside.
    108:36
    He just bought a brand new van. So he does a great job wrapping it up. And if He used to use Fast Eddie. Fast Eddie retired. If you're looking for somebody to kind of take his place, Rob's your man. He's in our league. Good dude. Does a great job wrapping them up and takes care of the machines. And the recipient of Roadshow was happy with the service. So shout out to Rob. Made it super easy. It was perfect. I got the money from the guy that bought the game. Rob came to my house, took it away. It's like one of the easiest pinball sales I've ever had in my life. So I recommend it on that.
    109:18
    What else? Oh, I got my final resistance back. So I've been playing that a bunch. I had lent that out to one of our league members. We do P3 module swaps occasionally. It's one of the benefits of the machine. And I let him borrow it for a few months. So I've been enjoying that since it's been back. And there's allegedly a code update pending. And I told Nick once that code update drops, we should stream that because we haven't done a bro show on it. We did do the reveal stream, but it'd be cool to get the bros out to play that one. That's a super fun game. And that is it for Game Room Updates for me. Nick, what's up with you?
    109:54
    What is up with me is indeed Kevin. All right, I've got some updates. Let's see what I've written down here. So I want to give a shout out to the Wormhole Pinball guys. I was in Houston for work at the end of March, and I had met Tim Hood a year ago and really impressed with what they're doing. Tim Hood's a great guy. He's the owner of Wormhole, and he's got an amazing pinball collection. I'll talk briefly about it. You can go to their social media pages, and you can see kind of – I think they clipped when I was on there. But the Wormhole space is amazing. I really love what those guys are doing. They were fans of Buffalo Pinball, and they were really appreciative of what we've done over the years, which is nice. And I think one of my favorite things in the hobby and one of the things that doing Buffalo Pinball has allowed us is that we can travel and we have access just meeting really other cool people in the space. And those guys, Kevin, are super passionate. I'm saying we should go down there later in the year and play at some of their events when they do the week of Whoppers. But just a really good time. So shout out to Tim Hood and John and Jamie and Donovan and Travis, who I met down there. Saw Matt Quance, who we knew from Rochester, which was just a surprise.
    111:12
    Tim Hood's opening up a – I shouldn't say anything. I think this is public or not, but I won't say it. I'll be careful.
    111:20
    But he just has – he has one hell of a collection, so I won't steal any thunder if they haven't said anything.
    111:26
    What else? Let's see. Went to Pembroke. So Pembroke was awesome. Just such a good time. I love that show. It's the show that's easily accessible for us. Look forward to it every year. Great tournament. Had a good time playing in that. I finished, I think, third in B, which, you know, for the amount of competitive Pembroke I play these days, it sounds about right. I'm happy with that. But great show. Got to play barbecue, which we'll talk about a little bit later in this never-ending show. So got to play Alan John, which we'll talk about later.
    112:02
    Yeah. So Keith does an amazing job. God bless him and his family for doing this. Attendance was definitely up. I think the tournament was a well-run tournament. It was even better this year. So I can't recommend that show enough. Just had a great time. All right, what else we got?
    112:19
    I bought a Jaws premium, which if we had time, we would have done probably a review of Jaws. so probably next month we can review that game.
    112:30
    But we'll talk about it in impressions. I'll save it for that. I also recently – so I've been wrestling with some of my games that I've beaten and that are long playing, which are specifically beaten Rush, beaten Led Zeppelin. I like both those games. I've really always been partial to Led Zeppelin, as some of you guys are known and frustrated by because you can't fathom why somebody would be. But it's like how do you handle a game that you've beaten, and that's also a really long player, where it's like you want to play it and like it, but you just don't have the time to do it or maybe the motivation to get through it anymore. And what I ended up doing, and this is kind of was prompted, not that this is a genius move, I should have known this, but this was prompted to shout out to Dave Smith from Canada, who listened to our last podcast about me possibly trying to solve Russians and suggesting to me I just open up the outlanes. And he did that and found it way more enjoyable. So I started with Led Zeppelin first because it was easier to move those outlands without taking apart ramps and stuff. That's the one pain in the ass part of moving outlands. So I opened it up, and now I've just turned it into this non-long playing game. It's, like, super aggressive. Shots are so amazing. I ramped up the difficulty on the ball save, ramped up the difficulty on starting multi-balls, ramped up the, yeah, turn down the ability to get extra balls. And I can now, you know, if I want to play pinball and I don't want to stay there for an hour, I can just go and play that game, and I'm having an absolute blast of it. I think that game is just – it's super fun. It's maybe even more fun for me now.
    114:05
    Just a real kind of – it can be an ass-kicker. It can be exciting. And I think the thing with pinball for me is that, you know, there's so much content in pinball machines these days that they make it kind of like way more forgiving if you miss a shot, way more safe shots. They've got the outlanes closed on a lot of games.
    114:24
    There's so much content that you kind of need to do that, and you've got to feed the player extra balls. But if you kind of get through the game and beat it, it's over an hour playing some of these games. Like, Rush is like over an hour. And what that does, unfortunately, is it makes you kind of play a game in autopilot where you're not worried about saving a ball. You don't have to do wild save moves. You can kind of play it half asleep. And there's something to be said for that. Every game doesn't need to be your heart rates pumping and all that. But it can also be boring. So I kind of fixed that on Led Zeppelin. So anybody else who's in that boat, I highly recommend doing that. And I went ahead and posted Rush for sale. It's on Pinside now.
    115:06
    I don't know. I might take that down. I'm wrestling with that. I want to change the outlanes on that and see if I can go back to enjoying it and having fun on it. But moving the outlines on that game is way more of a process. I hate doing it. I hate tinkering with games. I hate spending my free time doing that when I just want to relax on a weekend and have fun. So, I don't know. I'm wrestling with it. I think I'm going to do that. I think I'm going to try to keep it, but we'll see. And what else? So, I bought a Steam Deck. Nice. Got it this week. Love it. I like it, man. Love it. Yeah. Love it. I was never, like, in the market for anything like that. I've been traveling more, so I like the idea of getting it. But also, like, I work from home, so I'm always on this computer, always looking at the screen. And I don't, after work, I don't want to look at the screen anymore and play video games. So I can go over to the couch and play Steam games on it. It's powerful. It's like basically a PC, like laptop. So cool. Highly recommend it. Steam games are always on sale and cheap. So, yeah, I love that. I absolutely love it.
    116:07
    I can give an update on the co-op. Yep. Right now it looks like we're on track to maybe getting that open the end of fall. So major shout-out to Matthew Taylor. Without him, this would not be possible. He's doing all the heavy lifting because he bought the building. He's going to be our landlord. So the walls are up and framed. He's got a toilet installed now, which is always – Huge milestone. Got electricity up. We're kind of planning where everything's going to go. I'm pumped, man. We're going to be so back. we're going to be so back when that happens. Buffalo Pinball has been one step back, two step forward so I cannot wait for 2025 we'll be coming hot out of the gate baby and then what else? I think that's it that's a lot of updates, a lot of time has passed yeah we did a lot let's do some rapid fire first impressions of some of these new games we got to play so why don't we kick it off with Jaws that's the one we've played the most I think between the two of us I got some pictures here that we can show while we talk about it. But as the owner of the game, why don't you take the lead on this one? Yeah, all I can say about Jaws is that, you know, I never seen the movie. The theme did nothing for me.
    117:22
    I actually don't own any Keith Elwin games. I like his games. I respect the hell out of them. They're good. They're fun. No, that's a lie. I have Godzilla. Yeah. But I don't love Godzilla in the way that other people love it, even though I gave it a good review because of some of the parts. I mean, the individual parts of that game are all great, but emotionally I'm not as, like, loving as other people do. That's all I'll say.
    117:45
    So, yeah, I remember I watched the gameplay video. I probably turned it off after five or ten minutes. The game just did nothing for me. It did not have it on my radar. Went to Pinbrew. They had a ton of pros and premium setup, which was great. Played the pro. Loved it. I was like, oh, my God, maybe I'll just pick up this pro. Maybe I'll get that. Played the premium a little bit more And like the more I played it the more I liked the game And I was really wrestling Whether to you know save money at the pro Or get the premium but I ended up liking the game So much that I went with my default If I like the game so much I think it's a great game Then I'm going to want you know the full version of it So like a day I was down at Pembroke for a few days the next day I messaged Zach Flipping out and I was like I've got to get a Jaws Premium so I have it love it It's my favorite L-Wing game.
    118:36
    And to me, what I found happening at Pinbrew is that it just had that one more game feel. And I don't get that with every pinball machine, you know.
    118:48
    So, yeah, it was taken by surprise. I think it's just a ton of fun. The code is, like, impressively, there's a lot to it right now. Good code, and it looks like they're still early on. I don't even know if it's, like, .9 yet. I don't think so. So it'll be interesting to see what else they add, but I think this is his best game. I like it much better than Godzilla.
    119:09
    I don't know. It's really fun. I had a blast when we had our bro show the other week and you guys came over. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, I like this game a lot too. Kind of surprised me.
    119:21
    I mean, it shouldn't, right? Because, like, trusting Keith, Keith has a great track record, amazing player, amazing designer. He puts together interesting rule sets. with layouts that do interesting things. I'll kind of like checking all the boxes. This is the first machine with an upper play field, but it's not an upper play field where you just black knight it and put it up there and play safely for an hour. You get it up there, you get a shot or two off maybe, and then you're back on the main play field. You're back to it. So lots of great smooth flowing shots.
    119:55
    You got, if you haven't ruined your game by adding a ball eating shark mod, It's got the dangerous boat on there to keep things interesting. I really like the cross-playfield shot with the mini-flipper and the little... Yeah, I love it. The flip-trap design is neat.
    120:10
    Yeah, lots of cool stuff. Super fun game. Highly recommended. And it's funny looking at these pictures, too, seeing, like, all the blood and guts all over this game. And then you've got John Wick where they're like, well, that licensor wouldn't let us put guns on it. So stupid. It's okay if sharks are killing people That's fine we can put that all over the pinball machine But not guns on a John Way I don't know I'll just say the one frustrating negative thing about this game And you can see me losing my mind on the stream Is the chum line plastic So There's a design flaw in that The plastic bends When the ball rolls over it And it kind of skips and hops Over it and the ball turns Airborne You get air balls on that game.
    120:58
    There it is. Which, you know, it sucks because then you're missing out on an important shot in the game, but you're also potentially breaking plastics. So what's really frustrating to me is, you know, this is an April build of the game. The game was out in January. Stern, there's no way that when they were making this game, there's no way that Stern did not know this because everybody's having this issue to various degrees. And Stern's just like, you know what, we're going to ship it like this and pass along the problem to our customers, which is really, I'm sorry, it's really shitty and disappointing. It's too bad that that's their attitude because there's somebody at Stern at some point that just said, ship it like that. Yeah. And that's not being customers. I know Stern does a lot of good things and we always acknowledge it, but come on, guys, that's really bad. So what you end up having to do is I had to go out and buy, somebody had to create a mod, of course. These are the good mods. Somebody created a chum line suppressor. So I had to buy that. That's $20. And then, you know, I put it in there, but I also wrestled with getting the plastic perfectly level, which was annoying. And I struggle to do it more so than most probably the average person does because it's me. And I don't know. Sometimes I struggle with things, guys. I don't know. The physical realities of life, right?
    122:12
    And then you still maybe like that swallows maybe 95% of the air balls, and there's still a little bit of it. and then Chrome Candy makes another kind of like plastic on top so you can – like it would deflect an air ball. I picked up that too. So I'm already like $40 into the game to fix a problem that Stern decided to pass along to its customers. So really shitty Stern. You guys should do better. It's too bad. I just want to buy a game, Kevin. You know, this is – and just not have to spend all this time fighting or feeling frustrated. That's all. Yep. That's all. Someday it'll happen. I don't know when, but someday your dream will come true. But, yeah, fun game. Check it out. Buy it if you really like it. They got all the – Go ahead. Timbal says, is it surprising? No, it's not surprising at all to me. They got a ton of assets in it, so lots of movie clips. So if you're a fan of the movie, I think you're going to like everything that's in there. They don't have the one guy on the play field, which is weird, but he's also in the clips. So, again, back to weird licensing things. You know, you got two of the three main characters on the play field, but all three of them are in the movie clips on the back. So, I don't know. Licensing, bro. Oh, yeah. As Wildcat points out, the coil stops. So, Cernan has had bad coil stops for, like, more than ten years now, and they continue not to give a shit about fixing it. So, I actually had a – I ordered, like, $40 worth of coil stops the other day just to start replacing them on my game that are broken. Like, just come on. You guys can't – like, George can't go on. I mean, I love George Gomez. You can't go on and, like, you're always the good guy when somebody is allowing that to happen and not correcting it. Like, you're not perfect. Like, there's things that need to be addressed, and you guys deserve some criticism. That's something that can be, can't say the licensor did this. Like, you guys are doing this. You're not caring, so please fix that. Fix it. All right. You got to play Labyrinth, right?
    124:05
    Yeah, Wormhole had it. I played it a few times. I mean, it did nothing for me. I don't know you know sometimes like you step up with the game and sometimes you're surprised like Jaws where it wasn't on my radar and you just love it and you hit the start button and then sometimes you step up with the game and this game never appealed to me and playing it a couple times didn't change that yeah I got to play it didn't feel great like the flippers aren't strong and snappy and I don't like I don't know what the play field is made out of but it's got a weird sheen to it or something like I don't know Or the lights on it. It just doesn't do anything for me at all. That's funny. That's my hot take. Yeah, I went out to James' house and played it last night. And I had the total opposite reaction. I had no expectations of this. I don't know if I had ever seen the movie growing up, but I watched it when they announced the game, and I was like, oh, that's a pretty fun movie, whatever.
    125:01
    But I was kind of skeptical given the history of new manufacturers and it's on the fast platform, which I don't have a lot. I think it's on fast, which I don't have a lot of experience with, so I wasn't sure I was going to play or feel.
    125:15
    And, man, I was really surprised by this game. I didn't expect it to kind of like divert and trap the ball as much as it does.
    125:24
    The ramps felt really good. The caveat to all of this is that I played James's, which he spent a bunch of time fixing and dialing in and making it play really nice. because apparently the upper flipper loop is quite difficult to make out of the box, and his is really nice and smooth.
    125:42
    I felt the kind of like, quote, unquote, world under glass effect of it was really good. You know, he said the owner of Barrels of Fun, this was his dream theme, and I think that comes across. There's a lot of detail in there that, you know, if you're intricate knowledge of this movie, you would put all of these things in there, right? Um, so I don't know. And I, I also have the benefit of, uh, um, James kind of walking me through what I needed to do and what the rules were. And he was explaining things and I, I kind of loved it. It was, I gotta say, I was very surprised. Um, so yeah, yeah. Two differing opinions on this one. Uh, I would be curious. And the flippers, I expected the flippers to be weak and crappy based on what I've seen on the streams and they were strong. And I was, I was comboing the ramps. I got like a five-way combo, and I was like, well, this game feels good. So, I don't know. We'll have to get you out there to play James' and see what you think of his. Sure. Yeah. Look, that's – I always say it's an initial impression, right? Yeah. And I don't like the theme of the game. Like, I've never seen the movie, but I don't like Muppets and stuff. Fair. I don't like most 80s things. Yeah. I'm a child of the 80s. I don't know. So it doesn't make me want to try to like it. Yeah, no, I understand that. Yeah. All right, but here's what everybody's waiting for. Yeah. You don't have any impressions. I mean, there's all out in jumble. Let's get to – Oh, barbecue. There he goes. Barbecue challenge, hot sauce and hot wings, or hot rods. Hot rods, yeah. By the way, you know, I had talked before how, like, you know, most themes don't ever appeal to me. If I was like a billionaire, maybe just $100 million, a cool $100 million, the game I would make, and this makes me think of, is a Berrio's Barbecue Challenge. This is not for commercial appeal, although I could sell more games than this theme did. I want Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers. You know that? Have you seen that show?
    127:46
    Oh, my God. I like the name. Watch the Righteous Gemstones, but Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers. I fucking love Walton Goggins. He's like, do you know who that guy is, the actor? Nope. fucking love that guy, man. I guess I haven't seen it, but if people are watching Fallout, he's a guy with no nose in that.
    128:06
    He's a great actor, man. He's hilarious. That's the game I want. This is the game we got. Barry O's barbecue bullshit.
    128:19
    So listen, at the end of the day, no matter these bizarre decisions in terms of theme and the bad LCD that we can see. The question is, is this game fun to shoot? Is it fun to just play the game? There's something to it that there is fun to be had. Even though the theme and everything else and the price point, I wouldn't buy this over a Jaws Pro, which is the same price.
    128:45
    There were two games at Pinbrew. They were on opposite walls on different power banks. I cannot tell you, Kevin, the flippers on both games that I played were so weak.
    128:58
    Like, it was just so hard to make shots, and you had to, like, mentally try to compute where to then hit on the flippers, and you were getting rejects on the ramp, and then you're just wondering why the hell they put a spinner on the ramp. Like, it is so bad. I couldn't even get to, like, what makes the game bad in other ways when it's a non-starter, when you can't even get the flippers correctly. These are on two games. They're set up by people trying to sell these games. And it played piss poor. I mean, just absolute terrible flippers.
    129:32
    It's so baffling, man. Like, he's got – AP has been making games since, what, 2015? Yeah. When did the game come out? I'll look it up. Like, you know, I posted about – I gave a feedback and review on the game. My impression has been that Pinsides Forum and, you know, LloydL2G was just like, oh, you can turn up the flipper strength in the menu. It's like, what game have you bought, Kevin, from Stern or even JJP, where people complain about the flipper set? That's the first thing you have to do to make shots. That's insane. That is the remedy. There's something fundamentally wrong. And as you pointed out too, Kevin, they were bragging about how they made their own board. They went from the P3 board. So they're using their own board, allegedly, in this game, and it's worse than other games that they had in there. So they now have a downgrade. Yeah, this is their big debut of their new board set. And they, if, why wouldn't you make the default higher? If like, you know, just update the code and make that the default, the higher flipper power. And if people want to lower it, they can. But if like the universal feedback that you're getting is that the flippers are too weak and it could be solved by increasing the flipper power in the settings. Why wouldn't you just do that by default? I don't know. Especially when you're coming out with this machine that has this original theme, has all of these barriers of entry already. that people are skeptical about, you're going to hit them with some weak flippers too. So I can't even tell you how the game shoots other than I couldn't.
    131:04
    It's a walk away from the game kind of terrible. I finished the game out, and I played several games. I tried different ones. The other one that was there, same thing. So I don't get it. This is just really, really confusing how you can't get it. I'm at a loss for words of just how bad this thing is. And other people were saying that they've played this on other locations, other shows, and they've had the same experience. So this is not just these two games at this show. And there's not another game at the show that had weak flippers except for the AP games, by the way. Even GTF, the flippers felt maybe a little bit better, but still, like, weak.
    131:47
    But, like, better. Better than that. And they were using, obviously, the old P3 board. So better than that. It's still weak compared to, like, JGP or Stern.
    131:57
    It's still weird, man. I can't say anything else about this. This is just – this game is complete fucking trash. And it's so weird that some people on the forum will be like, oh, I played a game and the flippers were great. It's like, well, what accounts for this variance? Like, I don't get it. Are they cranking it up? Are some games shipping – I digress. Let's move on. This game is just worse than I even thought somehow.
    132:25
    All right. We got one more for hot first impressions, and then we're going to do a giveaway. So if you haven't, hashtag win in chat to get you in. We got three giveaways, two from Flippin' Out Pinball, a Jaws banner, and a CERN glass cover, and a set of Penn Stadium Neo Adams from Penn Stadium. Nearly $400 value there. So hashtag win in chat. An Instagram impression, right? Yeah, when we're going to do Elton John. After we do Elton John impression, we'll give away stuff. It's only if you're in the Twitch chat. You've got to be in the Twitch chat to win because that's where our robot works. We've both played this game, so why don't you start with your impressions? Dude, this game crushes. I love this game. I played it again yesterday. I had zero expectations for this game. The theme was whatever.
    133:11
    I'm like, you know, I was interested to see what Steve Ritchie would do when he came to JGP. just because, you know, new designer at, you know, experienced designer at a new company. Let's see what he does over there.
    133:27
    Shots flow great. It might be my favorite Steve Ritchie layout. Before this, it was probably Spider-Man, which, you are not going to be surprised at all by this layout. It is very Steve Ritchie. But I think it nails it in a way that his other games, it's like, takes it to the next level. Every shot is super smooth.
    133:51
    The total experience is there. Like, it just makes you feel like you're crushing it when you're playing it. It's like a really good, really good, fun game. So, really surprised me and really happy with getting some time on this game.
    134:07
    Yeah. It seems that people are coming around to this game after they've gotten to play it. And I asked Zach with the banality. He's like, yes, sales have definitely picked up recently for it. And if you go to the owner's thread form, of course, most owner threads are like this, but people are actually going bananas about how great this game is. And I played it at Pinbrew. And, you know, as many people are saying, and I agree, this is the best in terms of this moment in time, the best presentation in pinball. By presentation, that means the audio, video, and lighting and all that stuff. is just very, very, very, very impressive. If you just want a pinball machine that just will wow people, this is it. This is the state-of-the-art definitive pinball machine to impress. It is always tough, Kevin. I remember when I got Jaws, prior to that I was playing a lot of Godfather because I was thinking that we would review that for the podcast.
    135:05
    To go from a JJP game that just came out to a String game that just came out, it's a little rough. Yeah, there's a disparity there for sure. There's a disparity there. And you adjust pretty quickly.
    135:18
    But man, JGP and their presentation, there's something to be said. So hopefully Stern's new spike can catch up to where they're at.
    135:26
    But yeah, I can see why people love this game. I kind of wanted this game too. I didn't walk away wanting to buy it after playing both of them. Obviously I chose Jaws. But I was trying to get Martha to buy it for a little while. I told Martha this is a good Martha game. I'm afraid it might be a little bit of a baby game. I can't tell. It might be too easy and I might be able to blow through. Of course I can move the outlanes, but yeah, it's definitely a game I want to play more. I think this is definitely a hit for Jersey Jack. Again, the pinball market is not in a great place in terms of where it was a couple years ago. $12,500 is a steep price point, but they crushed it, man. They definitely crushed it. Yeah, if this was a theme that I loved, I would probably own one already, but for that amount of money, you've got to nail it on all the fronts, and I'm hoping if the rumors of the Matrix are true that that'll be the one that does it for me next, so fingers crossed. Yeah, so Den of Pins says you will beat it in the first couple of weeks, Nick. I agree. I got that impression. I was setting the GC on that game and was getting over like 200 after about my second game. I guess 200 million at the time was probably pretty good.
    136:38
    And they said it's more for casuals, and I get that as well. I think this is a great game for maybe not really experienced pinball players, really not hardcore. Maybe it is for experienced, too. I look for them to chime in, but great game for casuals. A great, huge win. I could see this game doing very well for JJP. Yeah, it's a great game if you just want to step up and flip and have a good time. This is that game, for sure. All right. I think we did it. We got to the end. No review this month because we had so much news. Some hot first impressions for you. And let's go ahead and pull a winner. So if you haven't yet, we will do the pin stadiums last, and we're going to start with the – we'll start with the stern Matt from Flippin' Out Pinball. Hashtag win in chat. You can still get in if you're in the Twitch chat. Hashtag win will get you in on there. A reminder, if you're a sub, you get two extra entries. So thank you very much for everybody who subscribes. And, all right, let's go ahead and draw our first winner for the CERN glass cover. Bloody Cactus. Bloody Cactus, are you here and do you accept? I recognize that name. He's around quite a bit. I imagine he's here.
    137:55
    Yep. Sweet. All right. So we'll go ahead and we'll give you the – I should have announced that in chat. There you go. Boom. You have won, and he accepts. And I will private message you on Twitch to get your information to get to our partners. All right, so next will be the Jaws banner from Flippin' Out Pinball. Here we go for the Jaws banner.
    138:20
    Kyle Bossa. I know he's around. He's going to want that. Jaws banner for Kyle. Congratulations to Kyle. I'm going to go ahead and say he's accepting that yep sweet and there he is okay and last but not least the $400 value pin stadium neo Adams pin stadium.com to get those all right here we go drumroll please draw it's rebel guitars rebel guitars congratulations there you go you got yourself a set of pin stadiums thank you to everybody who entered who watches and enjoys the show. I will follow up with all of you to get those to you, and we'll go from there. Yeah, listen, take a second, if you're watching on YouTube, hit the Like button. Obviously, these things, Kevin and I are now aggressive about asking for this, but these things matter to help promote the channel. If you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. If you want to support what we do every month, obviously there's work that goes into this. We give our heart and soul. you can subscribe to Twitch or you can just donate directly to us via PayPal at buffalpinball at gmail.com we'll get 100% of the proceeds that way so thank you there's several ways to thank us if you appreciate what we're doing we appreciate all of you guys in the chat I'm always trying to read the chat and also do a show I love this format because you guys get to participate as well in it we'll try to do a show in June which I know that people have been asking for a review of pinball machines like I said that we've got. I think I could do a great review of Jaws. Kevin and I can both do a really good review of Godfather. And then, you know, there's more games we're going to try to stream. That's a little harder, but we really want to try to, you know, we're trying to balance work-life. We're both busier, but we're going to keep the train going, right?
    140:12
    We're getting close to 10 years of streaming for Buffalo Pinball, and I love the podcast more than anything else, man. And here's to 10 more years. But thanks, everybody, for listening. Yep. Yeah, don't forget to follow us on all your social media channels. You can review us on your podcast platform of choice. And don't go away because we do have a brand-new episode of Topper Talk. Episode 23 coming up next. He's going to talk about the $2,000 Foo Fighters topper. I left it out of our rundown because I knew Goran was digging into that. So if you want to drop $2,000 on a topper, Stern has got you covered. Until next time, we will see you. I'll stream here and there occasionally. So hit those follow buttons and have your notifications on, and when we go live, you'll be there. So have a good one and enjoy this episode of Topper Talk. We'll see you guys next time. It's Topper Talk with Goran right now. Let's all have some fun. This is about plastic on top of your pin. Go and buy one now. There's a topper here and a topper there. You're a topper, they're a topper, everywhere a topper. It's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Goran.
    141:40
    Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Goran, the part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Now for today's episode, we'll be talking about the Foo Fighters topper from Stern Pinball. So let's head into the office and talk about that now. Okay, so here we are in the office. Let's dive right into the Foo Fighters Foo Bot Pinball topper from Stern Pinball. So here it is on the left-hand side of the screen. it's a really neat looking topper. You have the Fubot in the middle surrounded by the band members and kind of that proscenium stage. Fubot is a three-dimensional piece, but the rest of the topper is flat plastic. I've seen it in person. It looks really cool. The plastics are staggered in a way to where it does look three-dimensional, but the coolest feature is Fubot. He moves left to right and follows that action in the game, which is super neat. the topper has fully integrated RGBs, which is nice as well. That interact with gameplay, so that creates a really neat effect. A lot of people were comparing this topper to the Black Knight topper, which is a bit cheaper than this topper, actually. And it is similar to the Black Knight topper, although I wish it had forward and back movement to simulate talking, like the Black Knight topper does. The topper is $1,999.99, which I will say is on the top end of Stern Pinball topper pricing. It's quite expensive. It does look nice on the game, but it is an expensive accessory. There's some additional interactivity as well with game progress. The different band members will light up as you collect them throughout the game and get closer to a multiball. We can see some footage of the topper. there it is I did close up and it does look really great up there especially with the RGB lighting it also does have custom call outs as well which is a really nice perk getting that bonus content as well especially with the price that you pay for it it's interesting that it's marked as coming soon I thought it was already for sale. I saw one in person at Allentown Pin Fest, so I don't know what's up with that. But, yeah, overall, really neat topper, expensive price, but does look great.
    144:06
    Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Topper Talk with Gorin. Tune in to the next podcast for another episode, and as always, get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk.
    144:25
    you