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Pinball Mod Talk Episode 18 - Interview with Chris Turner of Turner Pinball

In Before the Lock Live Streams·video·1h 34m·analyzed·Aug 27, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Turner Pinball's Chris Turner discusses Ninja Eclipse development, cabinet design pivots, and innovative maintenance features.

Summary

Chris Turner of Turner Pinball discusses the development journey of Ninja Eclipse, their first commercial pinball machine. The interview covers cabinet design iterations (from controversial slimline to standard format), innovative glass-handling and lighting systems, and the company's path from prototype at TPF 2023 to production readiness. Turner shares his background in software engineering and describes how feedback at Expo led to significant design pivots while preserving unique mechanical innovations.

Key Claims

  • Ninja Eclipse features a scoop-to-scoop shot mechanic reminiscent of Ninja Eclipse games with a kickback system and upper flipper sword ramp

    high confidence · Chris Turner describing core gameplay mechanics of Ninja Eclipse

  • Turner Pinball iterated from a controversial slimline cabinet at Expo to a standard cabinet design based on player feedback that perceived small cabinets as cheap

    high confidence · Chris Turner explaining cabinet design evolution from Expo to TPF 2024

  • The glass frame system uses repurposed AA battery contacts as a wireless connection system for integrated lighting without requiring wire disconnection

    high confidence · Chris Turner demonstrating and explaining custom glass frame contact design

  • Ninja Eclipse uses Williams/Valley-era mechanics for all internal components to ensure quality despite cabinet size concerns

    high confidence · Chris Turner addressing quality perceptions: 'everything was the same the quality of all the mechs and everything it's all like williams valley mechs'

  • Turner Pinball is shipping Ninja Eclipse soon and had planned Expo as a launch point before the cabinet redesign

    high confidence · Host intro stating they will 'hear all about that today' and Chris indicating production parts procurement phase

  • Brad Duke (Turner Pinball artist/designer) was an English teacher in Japan and intentionally incorporated Japanese cultural details and folklore-based boss battles

    high confidence · Chris Turner describing Brad Duke background and artistic philosophy for Ninja Eclipse theming

  • The single-latch glass pivot system allows removal with just opening the coin door and pushing a center lever, addressing common pinball maintenance pain points

    high confidence · Chris Turner physically demonstrating the glass release mechanism on camera

  • Turner's background includes 12 years at Lockheed Martin (logistics, simulators, training) and 12 years running Turner Logic software company before working with Deep Root Pinball

Notable Quotes

  • “we're just going to show up the tpf with whatever we got because we want you to see what we're working on and we want you to be able to shoot it and just give us some feedback on it”

    Chris Turner@ 19:46 — Demonstrates Turner Pinball's philosophy of community feedback integration from earliest stages

  • “immediately got this response from folks that was like hey what is that like that's not what we're used to seeing and you've destroyed the sacred cabinet”

    Chris Turner@ 20:50 — Captures community resistance to unconventional cabinet design and industry perception that non-standard = cheap

  • “literally, I can unplug three cables and I can take out the play field or take off the back box”

    Chris Turner@ 24:06 — Highlights the practical maintenance advantage of Turner's wiring efficiency carried over from slimline iteration

  • “I don't want to damage my powder coat on the frame not like oh my goodness i might shatter this glass”

    Chris Turner@ 31:07 — Articulates the safety/durability benefit of encapsulated glass frame for both operators and home users

  • “there's really a lot of depth to the story, and there's all of the Japanese characters on the play field and things, they all have meaning”

    Chris Turner@ 17:59 — Shows intentional layering of theme appeal for both casual and culturally-engaged players

Entities

Chris TurnerpersonTurner PinballcompanyNinja EclipsegameBrad DukepersonDeep Root PinballcompanyAlicegame

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Turner Pinball's Ninja Eclipse is in active production phase with parts procurement underway; expected to ship soon following successful TPF 2024 reception

    high · Chris Turner states 'we're kind of where we're at now' in parts procurement phase and host opening indicates 'they're shipping here soon'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Innovative single-latch glass frame with integrated LED lighting system using repurposed battery contacts for wireless power connection; reduces maintenance burden and glass damage risk

    high · Chris Turner demonstrates proprietary glass mechanism with custom boards using AA battery contacts; light frame design adds minimal weight vs. historical heavy glass systems

  • ?

    product_strategy: Turner Pinball shifted from slimline cabinet (Expo) to standard cabinet after community feedback indicated small form-factor was perceived as cheap despite quality components; preserved innovative wiring/glass systems in new design

    high · Chris Turner detailed multi-year iteration: plywood prototype 2023 → slimline Expo backlash → standard cabinet TPF 2024 with 'night and day' response improvement

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Turner Pinball prioritizes maintenance and usability for both commercial operators and home users; glass system designed to reduce spatial requirements and frustration; efficient wiring enables easy playfield access

    high · Chris Turner emphasizes maintenance pain points: 'you take off the lockdown bar and then carefully slide out the glass' and space requirements preventing glass removal; designed hinged removable playfield with three-cable disconnect

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.284

0:30
Thank you. Welcome everybody to In Before the Lock. We've got episode number 18. We're back, Davey. How are you doing, buddy?
3:04
Wow. I'm all right, man. I'm all right. My Wi-Fi has been... Yeah. Yeah, look, it's going to be a little bit sketchy, so I'm afraid, because the internet's been playing up. Hopefully, it will sort itself out. But if I go all over the place and my audio breaks up, then I apologize, guys. Well, we can hear you good. You're a little spotty over there, but we'll let your system get warmed up. So, guys, we're going to dive right in. We've got a packed show. Really excited to have Chris Turner with Turner Pinball. Ninja Eclipse, he's going to be talking about the game that those guys are working on. I think they're shipping here soon, so we're going to hear all about that today. I've got a new game in the garage I want to talk about. I'll give you guys a little preview of that, and then we've got some new footage on Alex. Al is, which is super exciting.
3:57
And I don't know if you guys caught the Friday the 13th that won best game of the show at TPF this year, but Kyle Smet released that game. He sent me a teaser video of a brand-new game that he's working on, so we're going to be debuting that here on the show. And then we're going to talk all things with Chris. He's got a lot of topics that we've kind of bounced off him. He's up for really talking about anything. If you guys have any questions or comments, feel free to chime in throughout the show. We're going to have Chris on, and then we're going to do some mods, too. So let's go ahead and bring Chris up. What's up, Chris? How you doing? Hey, guys. Going well. How are you all? Good. Thanks for joining the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Glad to be here.

high confidence · Chris Turner biographical background statement

Big Trouble in Little China
game
Kyle Smetperson
Rich Grantperson
Cactus Canyongame
Granny and the Gatorsgame
Captain Fantasticgame
Volcanogame
Tommygame
Night Ridergame
Dave Linkperson
In Before the Lockorganization
TPFevent
Expoevent
Medusagame
Rick and Mortygame
Magic Girlgame
Brian Allenperson
Deep Root Pinballorganization
Kanedaperson
Lockheed Martincompany

design_philosophy: Ninja Eclipse theme designed with dual-layer appeal: surface aesthetic for casual players + deep cultural/folklore details for engaged audience; Japanese characters have meaning; artist researched Japanese culture

high · Chris Turner: 'there's really a lot of depth to the story' with meaningful Japanese characters; 'Brad, he was an English teacher in Japan' with intentional folklore villain boss battles

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community exhibits strong resistance to non-conforming cabinet designs even when quality/gameplay is strong; small cabinets carry stigma of cheapness despite premium components; lineup appearance matters significantly to collectors/operators

    high · Community response to slimline cabinet: 'you've destroyed the sacred cabinet'; feedback 'I can't put this next to my other games because it's going to look weird'; hinges/coin door restored despite removable design advantages

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Turner Pinball founder Chris Turner brings non-traditional pinball background (software engineering, logistics, business software) rather than mechanical/design lineage; reintroduction via Deep Root Pinball software work

    high · Chris Turner: 12 years Lockheed Martin logistics/simulators + 12 years Turner Logic software company → Deep Root Pinball software design → Turner Pinball founding

  • ?

    product_concern: Community perception of non-glass materials (polycarbonate) as cheap despite actual higher cost; Turner Pinball abandoned polycarbonate despite lower weight target due to negative player perception

    high · Chris Turner: 'people just, again, they perceived it as cheap. Even though it cost me a lot more to put that in than glass' but switched back to glass-based design

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Strong homebrew activity visible: Alice (controllable spinner system), Big Trouble in Little China by Kyle Smet (Best of Show winner), multiple designers iterating on mechanics and themes

    high · Host debuts new Big Trouble in Little China teaser video; references multiple homebrew projects in production; Kyle Smet footage showing three ramps, drop targets, rollover targets, center pop

  • ?

    venue_signal: Kyle Smet's Big Trouble in Little China will be playable at upcoming Expo in Electric Playground booth; high-profile showcase for homebrew game

    high · Host: 'Kyle is actually going to have his Friday the 13th in the Electric Playground booth at Expo, which I'm really excited to have him there with us'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Big Trouble in Little China licensed for homebrew; film clips and actor audio incorporated; theme represents pop culture IP with enduring appeal; host notes 'people have been, like, asking for for ages'

    medium · Kyle Smet used original film footage in teaser; obtained actor audio clips and remixed them; host indicates this is long-requested title with substantial collector interest

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Turner Pinball sources Williams/Valley era mechanics for component quality despite being new manufacturer; selective historical part reuse for reliability/compatibility

    high · Chris Turner: 'the quality of all the mechs and everything it's all like williams valley mechs' confirming use of proven legacy components

  • ?

    content_signal: Homebrew game development receiving media visibility through live streams, video teasers, and show debuts; In Before the Lock and related platforms amplifying homebrew pipeline coverage

    high · Host prioritizing homebrew content: Kyle Smet teaser premiere, Alice footage from Carrie Hardy, dedicated interview segment; positioning homebrew as newsworthy pipeline items

    • 4:43
    So you got your pinball collection there in the back. We appreciate it. Yeah. What can we see? We got a Twilight Zone creature. They're all hiding back there. um more as well um love seeing the fathom is that a haggis it is yeah nice nice and yeah man um so chris uh you know we're gonna we're gonna cover a bunch of stuff but i got i got the pre-show topics i gotta hit first so we want to bring you in on that so where where do we start oh yeah so yeah so uh this last weekend um i had the honor of visiting i'm gonna turn off the audio on that I had the honor of visiting the workshop of Rich Grant, who's a 40-year veteran in the space. He's been selling machines forever. This machine was super awesome. I think it's called Volcano. It's got this, like, really cool double back glass thing going on. I didn't get to play it, but it's a wide body. I've never seen this one before. I was there to pick up the game, so we'll get to that here shortly. He's got machines all over St. Louis. He's got some machines. This is his second house, and he's got a bunch of stuff in his garage. There's Rich talking about something. I'm not sure what.
    5:57
    But he was really, really honored to be able to check out his workshop and see some of his stuff. He's got these two Granny and the Gators. So that's my dad, Galen, right there. He was with me. He's got these two Granny and the Gators, which a lot of people have probably seen the Pac-Man game where it's, like, pinball at the bottom and then a video screen up top. This, I think, was another one that they did, and apparently these are super rare. I asked Rich why he had two of them, and he kind of shrugged. This is a photo of Rich from back in the day in one of his other setups. But really just cool to see all this stuff. He had an original Cactus Canyon, which is obviously an extremely rare game. This one is called Knight Rider. It was like a trucking-themed game, and I just really admired the colors of it. Yeah, it was cool. Got that one on footage. All these worked for the most part, so we were able to fire up a bunch of them. Here's the Cactus Canyon. Nice. It's got a pretty rare laser-ithic topper up there, as far as I know. And then he had Tommy, which I don't know if you guys have played Tommy before, but it actually, there's these, like, flaps that come up, and they cover up the flippers, so you can't actually see the flippers, which is kind of part of, you know, the storyline. And then this is what I was picking up. So I was getting Captain Fantastic, which is a Valley game from, I think, the 70s. This is his son, Eddie, working on the game. But I got that in my garage, really, really loving it. I got a couple photos of those for you guys. Let's see if I can get it. Yeah, so this thing is beautiful. I don't know if you guys have seen it in person, but it's got a really cool, you know, mirrored back glass. Have you played this one, Chris, or seen it? I haven't. I've seen it, though. It's a really cool game. Yeah, it's a great one. So excited to have that in hand. All right, so it looks like we lost Davey, but we'll keep moving forward. We did have some footage of Alice from Carrie Hardy. We're going to get to Ninja Eclipse here shortly, but let me see if I can find that. Can you see Alice right now, Chris, or did you just see it? I just see the Turner homepage. The Turner. Okay, let me move this one into frame. So Alice is, you know, continuing to get hyped. They're putting out footage on this game to various sources. Thank you to Terry Hardy on this one. But it's got this cool – have you seen this video, Chris? Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, so it's got this, like – there's a mirror on the left, so it's a little disorienting. But they've got these spinners, and I think it's actually on both outways. Is that correct? And they're controllable both forward and backwards by a button. And you can effectively, you know, save or maybe even screw yourself and lose the ball with these bad boys. Is that how you understand it? I think I've seen the same thing on Magic Girl, so I imagine it works similarly. Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, Davey, did we get you back?
    9:14
    Yeah, man, so I'm on my... I've got a mobile hotspot going because the Wi-Fi at the workshop's all over the place. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to ditch that and just go for the tried-and-true mobile hotspot. So hopefully it remains okay. But yeah, so we're looking at Alice, obviously. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, yeah. okay yeah I didn't know that they were controllable back and forth that's really interesting yeah I mean you know on those plastics and everything yeah those plastics I guess those are the we are plastics I don't know the idea of dealing with these things gives me anxiety just maybe they're only on at certain times if you can control it should be good right yeah well I don't know the idea of controlling it every time the ball goes over there I think is what gives me anxiety, but we'll see. Did you notice those, Davey, whenever you got your behind-the-scenes footage? Yes, Melvin posted that to me the other day, and when he sort of took me through the game and sort of gave me a video sort of walkthrough of the game and stuff, those were a feature that he demonstrated. And apparently they work in a similar way to the Rick and Morty, say, out-lane saves, where you sort of have to build up the amount of time you've got on those spinners to then be able to use them. Obviously on this one, and probably a little bit like it is on Rick and Morty too, sometimes you can use them and actually fling the ball into the out lane by mistake. And so I think there's that equal amount of risk with these that you catch the ball on the wrong side of those spinners and it'll fling it into the out lane. But yeah, I think you said that you weren't that keen on them, Rob, But, you know, I think they're going to be good. I think that they're not always going to be on. I think that's probably good. So your audio is fine, Davey, your video is suspect, but you're good. So I got this video or I got a message from Kyle. Kyle is actually going to have his Friday the 13th in the Electric Playground booth at Expo, which I'm really excited to have him there with us. So if you guys didn't get a chance to see that or play that at TPF, You're going to be able to play that at Expo. But he did send me this video. This is a world premiere of a teaser for a homebrew, which is a thing, and it's very exciting. I love how much effort this guy puts into this thing. So you guys want to check this out? I'm going to hit it. Yeah, for sure. All right. Yeah, man. Let's hit it. Now, before we get to the meat of this thing, do you at the present time have any knowledge of the whereabouts of a Mr. Jack Burton or his truck? God, will you leave him alone? Half a city block explodes in a ball of green flame. Green flame? I mean, all hell is breaking loose here. If you're protecting Jack Burton... You leave Jack Burton alone!
    12:16
    And we are in his debt. Do you really believe in magic? You mean Chinese black magic? Oh, absolutely. And monsters and ghosts as well, I suppose. Oh, sure. And sorcery. How can I know that, Mr. Shunt? How? Yes, how? Help me out here.
    12:39
    Please. How? See? There was nothing. That's how it always begins. Very small. It's all in the reflexes.
    13:14
    Awesome. Oh, man, this is one that people have been, like, asking for for ages. So, yeah, very excited about that. I haven't seen it since I was probably 12, I think. but just those clips that they were playing then it's such a good film isn't it? I've forgotten how awesome it is It's crazy, the special effects on it are amazing and Kyle did a great job of incorporating footage into the game so I'm excited to see how it comes out but there has been a lot of I know Kaneda for one has been talking about this freaking title forever so I don't know if he'll be excited about it but at least somebody out there is going to be pumped about it I have seen the layout of this thing, and he'll show it eventually, but it looks great. It's got this controllable thing in the middle, kind of like on Medusa, if you guys know that. It's got a bunch of drop targets, and it looks really cool. He's not going to be shown at Expo, I don't believe, but he does have Brian Allen, who does all the remake stuff for Planetary, the back glasses and the side art and all that. So that's really cool to see Brian get involved in the project. On the Friday the 13th, he actually went out to, like, conferences and got audio clips from the Friday the 13th actors and, like, remixed all the audio to, like, cancel out the background noise. And, like, this guy, it's over the top. So this one should be really cool. So you mentioned Medusa and you mentioned drop targets and stuff. Is it leaning more towards a single-level playfield sort of game? Yeah, it is. It isn't single-level, but there's a lot of, like, there's actually rollover targets, like star targets, kind of like on World Cup.
    15:07
    And then there's a center pop, which he was kind of joking about, like no one's really ever had a center. It's way back in the back, but he was like, there's probably a reason no one does a center pop. and then it's got a couple other things I'm probably disclosing more than he intended for me to at this point trying to hit his bullet points but it looks really cool and there's a reason that it got Best of Show it wasn't just about the fact he did audio recordings this thing played like a dream it looks like a stern this thing looks like a stern out of the box which is really impressive for a homebrew and he does everything himself so can't wait for him to get this one out there it should be cool that's awesome.
    15:48
    So, um, yeah. Oh, here we go. Hey, there he is right there. What's up Kyle? Three mud flats, three ramps, uh, rollovers, some old school, some new school. Yep. It's, uh, it's definitely, definitely a sight to see. I, and I haven't seen any of the, uh, much of the artwork. He showed me some black and white sketches, but it's, it's definitely coming along really nice. It's like, I'm looking at Alan Kyle from, from way back in the day.
    16:12
    Um, so, so yeah, so let's, uh, let's, move on. You guys want to talk about some ninja clips. How about that? Let's do it. Chris, I've been following your story since attending our first show back at TPF 2023. You had the game there. It probably feels like ages.
    16:33
    It's come a long way. We've seen a bunch of iterations. Maybe you can just give us a real high level on what Turner Pinball is and what ninja clips is. I'd love to get a little bit of background. Yeah, sounds great. So Ninja Eclipse is our first game, and we wanted to come up with something unique and engaging. Our artist and designer, Brad Duke, came up with this concept. He designed the playfield layout and did all the art for the game. and there's really a lot of unique aspects of this game. I think that when folks walk up to it and play it for the first time, one of the things that they notice is this scoop-to-scoop shot that the game has and it's kind of reminiscent of old NES Ninja games where you're doing the ninja wall jump and so the ball can go out the left out lane and then there's a kickback that will shoot it up to a scoop on the right, across to a scoop on the left and then up to the upper flipper. And a lot of the action happens on the upper flipper with what we call the sword ramp up there. And it's like essentially you're about ready to drain and then you totally jump up the walls and you're reengaged with the battle. So that's one of the kind of standout features of the game that's unique. Another thing that I think is unique and interesting about this game is that at first glance you look at the art and everything and you're like, wow, it's colorful, it looks nice, but there's really a lot of depth to the story, and there's all of the Japanese characters on the play field and things, they all have meaning, and folks that know Japanese or have traveled there and see things, they'll recognize things in the game, and they're like, oh, I can read that, and this is what it says. And our artist, Brad, he was an English teacher in Japan for a little while, And so he knows a ton about their culture, and he really tried to put that into this game. And so the characters and boss battles are based on Japanese folklore villains, and there's just a lot of thought and detail that we wanted to put into this so that someone can just walk up and see something cool looking and play it at an arcade, or someone that is into a theme like this can have it for their home and have this really unique piece.
    18:54
    Very cool. So we're going to let a little bit of footage here play. So you guys have been working on this for a while. You had an amazing iteration of it at TPF this year. I mean, where are you at on, like, just development? Is this thing getting close to being ready to ship? Absolutely, yeah. So I'll just tell you kind of the journey that we've been on with the game and then kind of lead to the shipping. Yeah. So our first show was TPF 2023. and we took that machine that's right over there and um we really just wanted to get feedback it was a really early prototype i mean that was like um just a piece of plywood like two weeks before the show and i remember like taking pictures of it and posting on social and i i told people i'm just like we're just going to show up the tpf with whatever we got because we want you to see what we're working on and we want you to be able to shoot it and just give us some feedback on it and so I was so happy that we got that together in time for that show and we we got it there people really enjoyed it I think we got a ton of great feedback which really helped us and so that's kind of that was our goal for TPF 23 and then from there we were trying to work towards Expo and I was hoping that that could be our kind of launch point and we had a lot of interesting ideas that were for things that we were doing differently that we thought you know this will be super cool and we talked to mentors and people on our team and we all thought it was great but we didn't share it publicly because a lot of the stuff was like um you know it's like kind of secretive we don't want to just be like oh hey we're doing this thing and uh because some of it's just really unique and so we kept it under wraps and we all thought it was super cool and then we get to Expo and we present our slimline cabinet which uh immediately got this response from folks that was like hey what is that like that's not what we're used to seeing and you've destroyed the sacred cabinet and so uh yeah I want to bring up this photo too because like you'll see like the current and this this is a big deal like the current cabinet um well it's a big deal for some people um it looks like you know what we expect and and I think what you kind of learned was that maybe people just cared about how it looked in a lineup is that it totally makes sense yeah yeah you know i think there's a couple things one i think there is a stigma associated with games in a smaller cabinet that playfield size in that game everything was the same the quality of all the mechs and everything it's all like williams valley mechs i mean everything is top quality the the cabinet was uh all plywood no mdf or anything i mean we did everything the best we could make it but there's still this perception in the industry that a small cabinet means cheap and something that's not good and i think we just we totally missed that and so we we went through uh expo last year and we there were people that would walk up and give it a try and i think all the feedback we got on the layout of the game was great. People liked the way that it shot. The folks that gave it a chance enjoyed the game, but there were some people that would just see it from a distance and they were like, I'm not even going to play that. They had judged it before walking up to it and that was it. And so we realized at that point we probably needed to step back and kind of rethink our cabinet design. And you had mentioned that folks wanted to look good in the lineup. That's something that we heard from a lot of people there. They were like, you know, I can't put this next to my other games because it's going to look weird. And we started to understand there's just, we needed to go back to a standard cabinet. And we had done some other unique things in that design, like the glass frame. We've got a removable glass frame with a lighting system, which I can show you guys while we're on here. and we wanted to keep the innovation that people liked but kind of roll back on the things that you know maybe weren't ideal and so the cabinet we changed the cabinet back to a standard cabinet design we put the coin door back because people really want a coin door which makes it look like all the other pinball machines and i get that we had a removable back box design i thought it was really cool. It makes it more transportable, easier to get upstairs and different things. But it seemed like people really valued the hinges on the back box. And so we went to a hinged back box system And an interesting thing that came out of the iteration of the small cabinet was that we had to make our wiring and everything really efficient with the removable back box and some of the other features And so the good thing is all of that design got carried over into this system. And so like our wiring is very unique and different and like the wires from the back box to the play field. and it's just very different and so easy to work with compared to anything else out there. I mean, literally, I can unplug three cables and I can take out the play field or take off the back box. But it's hinged and it's together just like everybody wants it to be. So we iterated and we had the opportunity to get so much feedback and use that to improve to come up with what you see behind me, which is what we took to TPF this year. and the response was night and day. I mean, it was totally different. Everyone just loved it. They got to walk up and without any kind of preconception of what it was going to be because of the odd cabinet that we had at Expo, they'd walk up and play the game and it got a great reception. It was a super great show and that was kind of the launch point for us to go and start procuring parts and getting ready for production, which is kind of where we're at now. Yeah, it's so hard to reset people's expectations about things, both from an operations perspective and just from a morale perspective. So kudos to you guys for keep pushing through. I mean, if you're looking at the pin side, I was there at TPF. Everything, the energy is there. I mean, the colors look great. I mean, I would love to see that in my lineup. And the gameplay is really cool, too. We're going to talk about licensing a little bit later in the show. We're going to talk about some of your background and, like, you know, what has brought you to make some of the decisions you've made, because you're certainly not new to pinball by any means. One interesting thing you kept in the game as far as, like, unique features was how the glasses were moved, and I know you can show that to us. So I'd just love to see kind of how that looks and, like, why you decided to go that route and keep that. Yeah, that would be great. I'd love to show you. So I can roll over there in a second. But so with pinball, the maintenance of pinball is certainly not the fun part of pinball. And anybody who has to take off the glass to do something with their machine, it's like, you know, you take off the lockdown bar and then carefully slide out the glass. And you're grabbing the sides and trying to put it down somewhere where you don't hit the edge of something and shatter your glass. Fortunately, I haven't done that, but I know a lot of people that have. And that's certainly one of my least favorite parts about maintaining pinball machines. And so I thought, man, there's got to be a way that we can make this better and just improve the overall experience for it could be an arcade operator or it could be a home user. Just make it easier to maintain your pinball machine. And so we came up with a unique design. We've got a single latch in the center, and all I do is open the coin door, and there's a little lever right here, and I just push it to the side. I don't know if you could hear the click over my mic, but cool. So, you know, you get this nice audio feedback. It clicks, and the glass is now released. And so what I do is I can just pick it up here, and it'll lift, and it'll pivot. So let's say I just need to clear a ball down here or something. I could just pivot and clear a ball this way, but I can also actually just slide it forward and remove it altogether. and you'll see that the glass is encapsulated in this metal frame and this is not the first time that part has been done before I mean you guys have probably seen it with other companies there's some old really old I think valley games that do that and then also highway did something like that with their large frame and they I think they had a welded frame it was very heavy and I think that They got a lot of kind of negative feedback overall on just the weight of that. What we did was we tried to make this as light as possible. A pane of glass for pinball weighs about 15 pounds, and our glass frame only adds just a little bit of weight to that. So it's just a little bit more than a piece of glass. Also, what's really unique about ours is this lighting system that we have. So you can see that there's these white pieces of plastic here on the side, and those are actually translucent, and there's a light board behind them. And so the lights shine through that, and it diffuses it out onto the play field. And then we've got a really unique contact system that we've designed. And there's a contact here, and then there's a contact on the cabinet side. And so you don't have to connect wires or anything. And so you get all the benefits of, like, the super cool downlighting system on your game, and there's nothing to fiddle with, you know? like if I needed to lift the play field or something, I don't have to move lights or move things around or disconnect connectors. I mean, literally, I can just take this off and I've got access to lift the play field or whatever. I'm going to set this aside a minute. I'll also kind of lift the play field so you can see underneath some of the unique things there. I know for me, like one of the things that really frustrates me about getting the glass off is like I'll have stuff that the glass hits and I can't actually slide it completely out of the thing. Oh, yeah. Yes, if you don't have space, it's terrible. It's really frustrating. Not only that, but it also dictates the size of your pinball space too, doesn't it? So when you're trying to work out how many games you can squeeze into your garage, each game needs, what is it, two metres, one metre and then two metres. You need a metre in between games at least, just so you can slide the glass off. But a metre is... No, it's two metres, isn't it? Because you need... Anyway, whatever it is, you need that extra space just so you can slide the glass out. But interesting, I thought too, Chris, with your glass system there, like you mentioned Highway earlier did something similar with their glass.
    29:56
    Now, I've always, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, always thought that those heavy glass systems that they had in the original Alien and I believe in the Motorbike game that I can't remember the name of now,
    30:13
    it was just super heavy, super weight, and it just spoiled the look of the game, I think. Yeah. And I know that we don't just play the game because of the way that they look, but I just did, again, I'm probably one of those guys who just don't think it looked right. but you've managed to avoid that with this it looks like it's a lockdown bar it looks like the normal side rails so yeah kudos man it looks really good thank you so much yeah those were kind of some of our design goals right i mean we wanted people to walk up and not even know that there was anything different and so most people when they walk up to play the game they don't even realize that the glass is any different than any other game but the operator the owner certainly does because when they need to take off the glass it's a lot easier and when i handled the glass and put it aside i mean you still want to be careful with it right but that frame is protecting the glass and so like when you set it down and all the stuff i mean you know it's more like i don't want to damage my powder coat on the frame not like oh my goodness i might shatter this glass so i think that's a real benefit just uh can i ask you a really nerdy tech question too please absolutely those those contacts that you mentioned that wire up the lighting system to inside the gallery how did you design those did you have to come up with something custom for that or it's all using existing contact system oh well so the the boards are all custom the contact system itself we actually repurposed contacts that we found that can serve that purpose and so The contacts that we use are battery contacts, essentially, for a AA battery. You'd see a piece of, let's say you have a little tape recorder or something, and it's plastic, and they have those little metal pieces that push down over the plastic and clip in. Yeah, they're kind of strong. Yeah, and that's where you put the battery in. so our boards utilize those types of contacts and we've got like the you know the springy side on the glass and then we've got the flat side on the cabinet and then those mate together but um yeah it's uh it works really well uh we went through several iterations of it to get to this kind of refined design point and it's just kind of one of the the really unique features of of our game and something that we've worked on, like patenting and all that kind of stuff, because it's really unique and something we think that the customers are really going to enjoy.
    32:47
    Great stuff. And it is a glass, like, I think there was a point where maybe there was talk it was going to be plexiglass, but it is a glass. Yeah, actually, the one that's sitting beside it, that's polycarbonate.
    33:04
    So, yeah. But that was other feedback that we got. And I was trying to make it as light as possible. And so that was one of the things. I knew we wanted to get the weight down. And so we experimented with the polycarbonate. And I think people just, again, they perceived it as cheap. Even though it cost me a lot more to put that in than glass, the perception was it wasn't the right thing. And so we just changed it, and we did our best to make the lightest frame possible for the glass that was still, you know, a supportive and rigid and protective frame. Very cool. So a lot of people don't know your background. You've been building pinball machines, been a part of working on machines for a while now. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your journey in starting, you know, the company and what you did prior? Certainly, yeah. So my background is in software engineering.
    34:00
    Straight out of college, I started working for Lockheed Martin, and I worked there for about 12 years working on logistics systems, simulators, training systems. After that, I started my own business as Turner Logic and did kind of web software, business software, a little bit of everything, mobile apps. and have run that company for about another 12 years. And so in my journey with Turner Logic, I worked with a lot of startups in the San Antonio area building their platforms. I worked on some vending systems and software, which led me to a few projects in that space, and then also ended up working for Deep Root Pinball, and designing their software for their pinball machines. And so that's kind of what reintroduced me to pinball. I played some when I was a kid. My dad picked up an old machine at a yard sale, and we fixed it up as an old EM. And I've got fond memories of playing that. But fast forward all those years to probably like 2018 or whatever, when I was approached by Deep Root about working on their pinball software, I was like, wow, I didn't even realize that pinball was still a big thing. And so pinball is really like an engineer's dream, I think, because it combines all the different engineering disciplines. So if you like electrical engineering, it's got that. If you like mechanical engineering, it's got that. If you like software engineering, it's got that. If you're into art and design and video editing and all that, it's got all those features all into one product it's just truly an engineer's dream in my opinion and so I was super excited to get to work on that project obviously we all kind of know how that went and then the the transition from that to Turner Pinball essentially I saw what happened there and I saw kind of all the work that my team and tons of other people had put in to try to make those pinball machines. And it was literally just all going to be thrown away. And my team, my software team, we were subcontractors. And then there were lots of deep root employees, like direct employees. I mean, it may have been 60 to 80 ish folks working on this. And so I was kind of curious to find out what was going to happen to all the stuff we worked on, what was going to happen to the software that my team built, what was going to happen to kind of all the assets that they had built up, the prototypes and different things. And so I explored that through the bankruptcy court, essentially. they um they have like a bankruptcy trustee that is trying to like recover money for the people that lost money in that and so I I talked to them and kind of started to ask questions about like you know what what are you doing with all this stuff and um they they really didn't know a lot about what was there or what was going on I think and I I tried to explain to them I was like well there were a lot of people that worked really hard and we built all this stuff and you know I'd like to see something done with it. And so essentially, that led me down a process to go through the court system and make an offer to buy the pinball assets of Deep Root. And that was, I don't know, it was like a six or eight month process, like very slow and kind of drawn out. But anyway, we went through that. And through the process, it's like a very public thing where, um, you know, they, they have to send out notice to all the people that are involved in like, you know, they're like a creditor to the company or whatever. And it was on pin side. Um, it was like this huge thing. Everybody knew about it. And I was like, for sure, some other pinball company is going to come in and they're going to buy all this stuff. And I was just kind of the guy that tried to help make sure that it didn't get thrown away, you know? And, uh, but lo and behold, no one did and so I was just shocked because I even some of the other pinball companies I had heard like podcasts where some of the people would come out and be like oh yeah we're talking about buying this we're going to buy that and I'm like I was just sure that someone else would come in and do that but none of that happened that nobody else did um that scare you as though you were worried that there was something that they knew that you didn't not particularly I mean I knew what my team built and I knew that if I ever wanted to do anything with that, I needed to have proper ownership of at least our software. And so, I mean, I, I knew what that was worth. Um, but, uh, all the other stuff, I mean, I think they just, people are busy with other things and they just didn't care. They've got their own things going on, you know? And so did you buy a, Did you buy license? You obviously bought some IP characters, which we'll talk about. Did you buy this glass lifting off thing, or was there any method patent type stuff that you bought, or was it just IP?
    39:40
    It was a combination. There was the physical assets and prototype games. There were the IP that we developed internally, so it's like the designs of the plate fields, and the game themes and any of the assets that were built. And then also like the patents that they pursued, for example, like their cabinet, their lifting glass, the pin bar, like all of those things. And yeah, all of that was like part of that package that I bid on.
    40:12
    So did you kind of buy it all and no one else took pieces of it or it was kind of all went to you? So there were two separate parts. One was the IP and the patents and all of that stuff. And that's what went through the bankruptcy court. And then there was the physical goods, which a lot of that went through like an auction that took place at the office space. So like all the equipment was there. And then they had it was an online bidding thing, but you could go and look at what was there and then you'd go and pick it up physically. And so it was a combination of those two things. And so, like, all of the physical stuff, I bought what I thought I needed to buy to be able to make sure that I held pieces together that would represent the IP, which I was trying to bid on. And, you know, there were other things like, for example, like cut playfields or something for Raza. Like, I didn't buy any of that stuff or the metal or any of that because, like, you know, that stuff can be remade. and I was trying to preserve the IP more than anything. Did you cross paths with any of the people that you ultimately would sell some of that to, which we'll cover here in a bit, or did you know anybody at that time, or was it just kind of like everyone was separate?
    41:35
    So do you mean like my team or like Melvin? Well, so, you know, one of the things that you acquired was the designs for Alice in Wonderland, right? and that game is now being brought to market. We'd love to hear the story about what happened with that because I think you did ultimately sell that to Dutch and Melvin. Is that correct? Correct, yeah. Did you know that those guys even were involved? Because he bought this locker that literally had the computer of John Papaduke on it. Did you know about any of those guys at this point or was it kind of all steps? That was much later. So, yeah, that was after that sale had closed. And then I heard about this locker that came up. I didn't bid on that or get involved in that. And Melvin ended up buying all that, obviously. And then later on approached me and asked about the things that I had acquired from Deep Root and had expressed interest in some of those things like Alice and Magic Girl and Raza and things. And so essentially we, through some time, worked out an agreement where he would purchase the IP and the prototypes and assets that I had related to those. And I really think that was a great thing. so when I first set out on this Turner pinball journey I had kind of put out some videos because of like all the stuff that was on pin side it was like they saw this auction process that was going on and they were like what is this you know it's going to be like the next deep root and all this stuff and people were like well is John Papaduke involved or is Robert involved or you know all these questions and so I put out some videos to try to answer that and explain like what my goals were and what my plans were and I kind of told people up front I was like look like this is just me like John Papadou's not involved Robert's not involved um and I don't I'm not going to build Raza I just told people that straight out of the gate and um so my goal was to kind of rescue this stuff from being thrown away and lost. But I also knew that it probably wasn't the right thing for my team to build. With the experience that we had in Deep Root and seeing kind of the history of some of those games and things, I just didn't feel like we were the right team to build those games. But then when Melvin came along and kind of talked about, you know, is interested in Alice and potentially the other things, I thought it was a great thing because, like, I mean, these things shouldn't just get locked up in my garage. I mean, there's a lot of really cool stuff. And so essentially, I thought the best thing for everybody would be to let that go to someone like Melvin. And he has the opportunity to take it forward and let it become something. And I think it's great what he's been doing with Alice. I think the feedback has been super good uh you know i i'm watching all the teasers as they come out of these different things like what we just saw that little little video of um that spinner that you don't like wrong but um it's really cool and i'm excited so i can't wait to see what he does with the game and then who knows what the future holds with those other games you know he hasn't told anybody and i don't even know if he knows what he's doing with it yet but he has the opportunity and i think I think he's going to wait to see what happens with Alice, I think. I think that's a smart thing, yeah.
    45:16
    Yeah, I think what you mentioned before, Chris, just about your team not being right to bring that forward, I think that intuition was right. I mean, even Melvin, I think, has not suffered, but also been subjected to that kind of scrutiny because of the history of these titles and because of the history of Deep Root. and he's got nothing to, you know, like he's in completely another country so you know, the fact that that trouble has, you know, followed him and these projects, it was always going to be that way but it needed to be from a third party who had absolutely no involvement in the original project for it to even have a chance of being successful. I think the fact that, you know, you were involved in Deep just meant that it was a normal starter at least in terms of you know, the, you know, what the, you know, how that would have looked to the pinball community. Yeah, I think this was the right path. You kind of had this, like, almost like the Shaolin record from Wu-Tang Clan of pinball, you know, this, like, super special thing. Was it emotional for you to get rid of it, or were you happy, like, to finally be just done with it off your plate? Well, there's a lot of thought that went into that. I mean, I talked with the team a lot about it and trying to understand, like, you know, are there any of these things that we would consider making? And I talked to Melvin back and forth about it. And, you know, we kind of started out with, oh, I'll sell this. And then it kind of evolved to something else. But I really think it was the right thing. I felt good about it then. I still feel good about it now.
    46:54
    Again, I was happy that I was able to capture those assets and keep them together and then let somebody that wanted to take that stuff forward do something with it. I think that's the best outcome that I can think of for those things. I mean, there's a lot of other ways this could have gone. And in my opinion what I see so far I think this has been a great path So I don don feel bad about it um I wasn like oh man yay I got rid of all this stuff because um the only thing that I think was so great about it was that I think Melvin is the right guy to take it forward with Dutch I mean the history of Dutch and the Big Lebowski I mean it's a neat story and it's a comeback story and And I think with their history and that and now DPX and then them trying to do a game like Alice, I don't know, I think it fits in my mind. And so I hope that it works out. I hope they're super successful with it. And the more successful, the better I'll feel about that and how it went down, I think.
    47:58
    Well, you mentioned that your team was responsible for doing the software for Deeproot. and that's something I didn't know was that your background was heavily in software and stuff so did you take the platforms that you were using to produce those games at DeepRoot did you take that forward into Ninja Eclipse? Are you using the same sort of platforms? Are you using the same sort of board sets? Tell us a little bit about that and how the board sets and the software works for Ninja Eclipse. Yeah, it's a great question. So the software has evolved quite a bit when we were doing the software for DeepRoot, we were under certain constraints based on the requirements that they had for the system. And some of those kind of forced us to write the software in a particular way. And then kind of when I was reevaluating and doing my own version of all of this, I kind of looked at some of those things and said, you know, like, I'm not going to do all of that extra stuff. I'm going to kind of do this other stuff. And so we started out with kind of a stripped-down version of what the framework that we had built for Deep Root was. And that was the version of the code that was running on the first TPF game that we brought. It was kind of like a light rewrite of what we had initially built. And then, obviously, all the Ninja Eclipse code is unique. That had nothing to do with Deep Root. and um but it's the underlying framework it's reusable from game to game and so anyway that's how we started but then at at some point i we've switched kind of like the way that our our ui works and i've decided to like switch languages and kind of rewrite the whole thing and so now we have like a new platform and that is what is currently running and that's just the software stuff and And so it's kind of like a completely new platform that we've built since kind of like just before Expo last year was like when we started rebuilding all that. And then the board set is completely different. So we acquired all of the IP to all the Deep Root boards. I wasn't involved in the process of designing or building those boards. And so I really kind of wanted to do things a little differently and in a way that I thought was going to be better and more maintainable. And so our board set is completely from scratch. My team developed it, and we've iterated probably four generations of our boards to get to our release version now. and um this is another benefit of kind of the uh the cabinet expo not working out it's interesting because i've talked with my team about this but like had that worked out i think that system was well designed and it was really cool if people like the cabinet we could have sold it that way but like we went back to the drawing board on so many things there it gave us an opportunity to take something that was really good and make it amazing and so i think that extra opportunity and the extra feedback, it really helped us get to this point that we are now. So I'm so glad it happened that way because it wouldn't be nearly as cool if we didn't do it that way. But can I flip this up and kind of show you underneath? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So our trough system, let me see if I can – I'm going to unplug here and I'm going to take you over here. So let's see if this works. So you'll see a lot of unique things here. So you can see that our trough system is above the play field. And so basically our balls go right in here. I'll put the balls in. This is, just for everyone watching at home, this is reversed now.
    52:06
    Oh, yeah, that wonder is not on the left. Oh, thank you for that. So the balls actually rest. Don't freak out, everybody. Don't freak out. And so this system, I mean, we've tested this through three shows and, like, our machine out in the arcade and, like, thousands of plays. I mean, this trough is, like, rock solid.
    52:30
    It has, like, really unique jam clearing capability and all this stuff. It never jams anyway, but, like, we purposely try to jam it, and then we have, like, all the software can handle just about anything. So it's super cool. But that's kind of unique. So you lift the glass off, and you can access the trough directly. And then, I mean, you can just take the balls out of here directly instead of having to, like, you know, use your finger to activate your coil plunger and get them out of there. And I'm going to flip this up, and now I've – my mechanical engineer game is kind enough to hold my laptop. So we lift it up like that. We've got these nice handles built in. Now I'm just going to pull it back into the service position. We've got smooth sliding plastic sliders, and then when you lift it up, you can kind of see just what's unique and different about ours. So our system that we've designed, essentially we've got a large board that acts as a wiring harness, and we've got modular boards that any of the failure-prone components, literally these are all modules that you just take off and you could change it out if something failed these are our coil drivers this is our switch and led board our power supply unit and everything can just be unplugged and changed out and plugged back in all of these are standard williams valley components we buy our stuff from pinball life and but our board system completely unique and things that we've worked to patent and protect because we think that it's new, it's novel, and it's, I think, one of the most easy-to-maintain machines on the market today.
    54:19
    So there's also some really cool features. I can't get into all the details because I have to show you in the menu and everything, but we've got some crazy diagnostic features on these. I could literally short out any of these coils, and my menu will tell me there's a shorted coil. It won't even blow a fuse. It'll just disable that coil.
    54:38
    Even if a coil is just unplugged, it'll tell me that coil's unplugged. Just some really, really great features for anybody that has to have ownership of a pinball machine. I mean, pinball machines, you have to maintain things. I mean, over time, you're going to have to service your coil. The coil sleeve's going to go bad or something. You're going to have to lift this at some point. But we want the experience of being able to change out a component on this to be as easy as possible. And so I'll lower this now, and I'll show you in the back box.
    55:11
    So there are like three cables here. You see one, two, and three. That's all that goes between the back box and the cabinet. And then if I open this up, you can see our board system in here. I've got the lights off intentionally. There's a switch. We can actually turn them on and off. So this is all that's in the back box. We've got our main driver board, our PC, our main power supply, our power filter board, and just those three wires that run down.
    55:46
    And, again, all this was about trying to make the machine as simple to maintain and as reliable as possible.
    55:56
    And I will put this back in. and then I want to show you how this glass goes back on. So we talked about those contacts. So Gabe, you can kind of see the contacts down there. And then you can see the mating side right here.
    56:20
    And then this is the latch that holds everything down. And so I'm just going to put this on. So the nice thing is it's got these little sliders on the top. You can see those. And so when I do this, it's like you kind of just pivot it off your body, and it makes it pretty easy. But you just rest it on the side of the frame on the cabinet, and then it'll literally just slide into place. And then when you rest this down, you firmly press in the middle, and it locks, and that's it. And then the lights come back on.
    56:50
    So in terms of getting into a service position or getting the glass off or even just clearing something in the trough or somewhere else on the play field. I mean, I don't know how we could have made it easier than kind of what we've come up with here. Thank you very much, Gabe.
    57:08
    How are the speakers? I do like that glass. Do you have better speakers in your competition? So this is interesting. So that's a great question. In terms of better than the competition, I think we tried to focus and spend the money on things that we knew that added value to the machine. And so we went with this other machine here. You can see we've got like a crossover circuit with a tweeter and a woofer on both sides. It was like, oh, and that's a 17-inch LCD in that game. And that's what we went to the first TPF with. And nobody even noticed that the screen was bigger or different. I don't think anyone cared. And the speakers, nobody cared that it was a unique, crossover, complicated design. And so I think going to the shows and presenting this taught me to value the things that my customers value, essentially. Just because I think it's a good idea doesn't make it a good idea.
    58:12
    It needs to be something that the customer wants because they're the ones that are going to spend their money on this. And so we tried to put the customer's dollars where the customer, where we believe, based on customer feedback, the customer wants them. And so we got good speakers. We got a good display. But if you want to go and upgrade to, like, ultra-premium, you can totally do that, right? People love to mod their machines. I mean, that's what you guys are all about, right? So we don't want to strip away those opportunities. so our speakers are good speakers and I think for the majority of users that will be all they need but there will certainly be people that want to go put bigger, more expensive speakers in there Nice, nice Yeah, it would be interesting to know how many people like, you know, what percentage of Stern users take their pros and premiums and upgrade their speakers on them you'd have to think it would be less than 10% of users So, you know, chucking money at those kind of features when only 10% of users are going to appreciate them, you know, isn't money well spent. I mean, that's the reason why, you know, we've got these different pricing brackets for LEs and stuff is for those people who want to spend that money.
    59:28
    You know, but, you know, obviously certain things are red lines, aren't they, that, you know, the majority of people want. but that board that you showed underneath the playfield was super interesting Chris it's a really novel way of keeping down the playfield wiring you know I didn't understand what all the wires were when you first showed it that must be the biggest PCB that you can possibly get fabricated right on the upper bounds of PCB manufacturing it depends on where you go but yeah it's on the upper end so what's uh what's the timeline look on you know i want to talk i want to hear a little bit about the future of turner what as far as ninja clips goes like what are your goals in terms of getting out these i think it's just limited to 100 is that correct that's correct yeah we're making 100 of these we've got a lot of them sold already and i think as we start to ship i think the remainder of the units that are left will sell pretty quickly um we when we went to uh tpf uh in March, we told people that we'd be shipping in the fall and, uh, we are on time for that. So, um, we are getting our parts in. Um, we've got some metal coming in this week, uh, a few more like wiring harnesses and PCBs and things. Um, we should have all that here shortly. And then we're going to start building these machines. And, um, you know, at the, at the beginning, I think, um, it's going to take a little bit of time to kind of get into the flow of, uh, a smooth process for building these and getting them out the door. But I've been telling folks that I think that the first machines are going to go out right around Expo, Chicago Expo. And so we're going to be up there. And we kind of talked about putting the customer's dollars where I think that they're most important. And I think one of the things to mention in that is, like, the price. That was another big change from Expo 23 to TPF 24. and that's going to be one of our focuses going forward as well and that is that we want to bring great value. And so we were at around a $9,700 price point when we went to Expo in terms of based on what it cost to build that machine and what we could sell it for. And we brought that all the way down to just under $7,000. And that was kind of a big push for our team And kind of seeing the market, seeing what people wanted out of Finball, we felt that we really needed to get something at a Stern Pro price level. And so being selective about where we spent the customer's dollars to get to that was like a big part of that equation in developing the machine behind me. And so I'm really happy that we were able to get there. At first, I was like, oh, man, I know this is a huge milestone goal that we're going to try to hit, but can we get it? but I'm so happy that we got it. And so we're going to get these machines shipped. And then kind of as we go forward, I think it was at Expo when we had done the small cabinet that I talked about kind of our future tier edition, like the three tiers that we would offer and the price points and all that kind of stuff. And if people go back and listen to that, we're keeping a lot of that same structure that I had initially presented. We're going to have three tiers, similar to what people are used to from other manufacturers. And just to be clear, is this for your next title you're talking about, not for Ninja Eclipse? Correct. This will be future titles. Okay. And so this game as it stands, we call it our first edition, and it's limited to 100. Everything is badged and numbered, and it'll come with the things that people expect from a limited edition, the certificate of authenticity and things like that. Also, the colored powder coat will be on our top end tier.
    63:27
    We're trying to make it so that it's intuitive based on what other manufacturers have done, like what comes with what tiers. And so I think it's going to be very familiar to people. But like one of the things I can tell you all here today is that with the value being so important is that for our future launches, when those eventually come, we want to keep our top tier under 10K. That is our goal. And so we were working towards that goal. And this game as configured, although we're selling it at that $69.94 price point, that is just because this is our first game. This is not like, we call it our arcade edition, kind of the pro tier.
    64:12
    This is not the configuration that you would see for that. You would get the black powder coat. We're going to keep our glass frame lights, just like we have for all of our editions. But this game, in our new pricing model, will cost quite a bit more.
    64:28
    Just, again, we're doing this as our first game. We wanted to pack in a bunch of features. We wanted to make it limited, and we wanted to bring extremely good value because we want to enter this space, and I think that's what it takes right now. But going forward, we're going to focus on quality and value and really try to deliver great products. Yeah, I mean, no one's really filling that space as far as a $7,000 machine that's checking boxes, right? Yeah. Quality, which a lot of people will have to see if you have it. I would say, design and build. You know, you've had the experience. Where do you add on licenses? Because I know there's a lot of challenges with that, especially with a new company. Is that something that you've got goals for in your next couple titles, or where does that fall? Yeah, so the licensing conversation is an interesting one, and I've sought mentorship from folks like Roger Sharp, who do this for a living. and um i it's hard as a new company to get good licenses because you're not proven right so the licensors if it's a good ip that you want to license they're going to be like well why should i give it to you like who are you and so that is a challenge as a new company and so to there's kind of two things that I'm trying to balance here. One is the ability to be established enough to get a license that is good and that pinball wants. And then two, our ability to produce and deliver based on the space that we have, the number of team members that we have. And so I've got to work those two together. Let's just say, for instance, that I could get Back to the Future, which a lot of people have talked about, and they hope that it comes out soon. That is going to be a huge theme. I think everybody agrees with that. If we had that theme and we sold a number of machines that they, whoever builds that can probably sell, I don't think we'd be able to deliver them in a reasonable amount of time. And so that's probably not a good thing for us to jump into. So we are going to work on trying to get licenses. We will try to find ones that are appropriate for what people want and also appropriate for the level of scale that we can achieve as we try to grow in a slow and controlled manner. So we're releasing 100 of these, right? I know I can do that here in this small space that I have. Can I make 500 of those here? Maybe, but it would be hard. So I need to just be careful about kind of what titles we pick. And I think it's going to be about picking the right growth trajectory so that we can grow slowly and be just reliable in delivering and meeting our promises.
    67:18
    Yeah, yeah. Speaking of growth, you know, a lot of us have been following along with what's happened with Haggis. And as I watched some of the videos, like with Kerry Hardy, it seems like they way overinvested in making everything, like, super nice and building stuff there on their own and made a lot of mistakes that ultimately time, you know, doesn't allow for those things to happen if you're not selling games. Like, what are you guys doing differently from a communication strategy perspective, from a deposit strategy perspective as you go over, just to build trust?
    67:50
    Yeah. So with all that's been going on, especially with the Haggis stuff coming up recently, I think those kind of situations make it super challenging for any new company. it's particularly bad because you know people that come out with good intentions and they say the right things up front and they say they're going to do this or that but then when it comes time and things get hard they don't follow up don't stay good to their word I mean what can you do with that that's just a terrible thing and I feel like reading the stories on the haggis stuff I think that's what people believe has happened and that's a terrible story so for us personally I sat down and I thought about, okay, what balance do we have to strike here with taking deposits? One, I'm investing my money in this company. And so I want to be a good steward of my own finances. And so I can't go to my wife and say, hey, I want to go buy parts for 100 pinball machines. And she might ask me, oh, that's great. How many have you sold? And I'll be like, well, I haven't sold any, but I'm going to sell tons. And she's like, you might want to mitigate that risk a little bit, right? And so for me, that's what deposits do. I don't think that any pinball company, or I mean, there are companies that do this in other spaces, but I don't think any pinball company, especially with what has happened in the pinball space, should be kick-starting their company based on customer deposits or money. It doesn't make any sense, and it is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen in so many instances. And so for me, I structured the deposits so that I put them in a separate bank account. I don't touch that money. Literally, like when you go to my website, you check out with Stripe, and you make your $1,000 deposit. It goes to a bank account that I don't use for anything else. It's just for that. And so my operating funds are in my main account, and I won't pull any of those funds over until I've shipped the machine that those funds go with. And I won't ask for any money from anybody, any additional money beyond the deposit, until I've got their machine in a box ready to ship. So I'll warn them ahead of time. I'll just let them know, hey, we're working on your machine right now. I'm going to have it in a box in about a week, so make sure your finances are in line kind of thing. But I don't want to take any additional funds from somebody until that machine is ready and in a box. So I think those two things are important. Don't kickstart with customer dollars. Don't take full payments from machines until they are in a box and ready to ship. and also even with established companies we have seen that you buy a pinball machine and like it takes two years or more to get it and like I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to put down a deposit and then be like oh yeah you'll get your machine someday like that's not good enough like there should be something on the manufacturer side that says you know if we haven't built this machine yet and you're putting down a deposit you're going to get it within 12 months so that's what we put in our policy Now that number could be whatever people are willing to accept I think 12 months is a long time and certainly the upper end of what people should expect But it shouldn be two years to get a game or something you know like what how many other games are going to come out in that time that they might want and like wish that they had their deposit back to get the new game instead of the game they've been waiting on for the last two years. So that's kind of the third piece is that I think the deposit should be refundable if the manufacturer doesn't fulfill their end of the bargain and deliver within a certain reasonable time frame. And so I've set up our deposit structure so that we stay true to those three things. But ultimately, when it comes right down to it, it feels like some of these other companies have probably, well, I haven't seen people do the refund in a certain amount of time. But like, you know, people said, oh, we're keeping this money separate and then things go wrong and all the money's gone. I don't know how to solve for that. I mean, I know what I'm doing with it and it's hard to go, oh, well, I know those guys weren't trustworthy, but trust me, right? Yeah. So when it comes down... There was some pushback on the thread, I think, too. Yeah, and rightfully so.
    71:59
    Yeah. I totally get that. It comes down to trust again, doesn't it? You know, like... It does. How do you prove that those funds are separated? How do you prove that you're being a good steward for those deposits? It's a tricky one. I think that the answer is that you've just got to do what you say you're going to do. And so, you know, we have told people the way we're going to do our deposits. We have told people how we're going to deliver our machines. And we've got to prove that. We've got to do it. And I think that that trust, that kind of trust, is trust that has to be earned. And so that's what we're prepared to do. And I am super thankful for the people that have took a calculated risk by placing a deposit because that has helped me justify the personal financial risk that I take with this to say, I'm going to buy the parts for these 100 machines. And that's exactly what I've done. You know, we've received enough deposits for me to go, oh, OK, like we're going to build these 100 machines so I can buy the parts confidently. That's what I needed personally. So that's why I did it. you know, respect the companies out there that don't have to do that, that can go raise money in other ways, or they've got enough money to just say, hey, I'm going to take the personal risk and I'm going to buy all these parts. And, you know, if we don't sell them, that's fine. But I don't have room for 100 ninja clips in my garage. So I really like to know that somebody wants it before I build it. And so that was what the deposits were about for me. That was the structure that I thought was fair.
    73:32
    But it all comes down to trust, and I think at this point we'll be thankful for the customers that have trusted us, and we will prove that we're trustworthy by continuing to do what we say we're going to do. I think that's what we have to do.
    73:47
    Very cool. So Davey and I are always trying to figure out how to make these systems, make our mods do cool stuff. Is there going to be any kind of – can we get some power at least from you pretty easily? Yes.
    74:03
    You can definitely. For sure. So the computer has USB plugs right on the top, right? So obviously you can connect to the computer. And we have extra power plugs on our power filter board so you can pull power from that. And we have designed our system to be able to support toppers and things. And so if you guys were interested in making one, maybe even for Ninja Eclipse. Cool. We could even put a few of those together. You'll let us know when a light's lit or whenever a mode's happening? Is that something we could? Yeah, because this is. Oh, I mean, absolutely. Yeah. Like, we could totally incorporate that into our coding framework so that we have, like, a little library that we give you. And then when you put that in your code, you'll get events from our system. and then you can do whatever you want with those events. Make your talker super cool.
    74:59
    This is the promised land, what you're describing right now, and something we talk about quite often on this show. Hey, let's build it. We would love...
    75:11
    She's like, let's do it. Well, getting game data is like the thing. So, you know, and the more manufacturers that we can get talking about it and discussing it and being open to it,
    75:25
    you know, the more harmonious a relationship, you know, the modders and the manufacturers can have, then, you know, it certainly makes our lives easier and it certainly makes, you know, users who do want to mod their games, you know, it makes the installations easier.
    75:40
    You know, there's less risk. So, yeah, you know, it's an awesome thing, you know, to be thinking about. Very cool. Chris, you're checking all the boxes. I mean, like, the price looks great. The build quality looks there. Everybody loves you. Like, we want you to succeed. You're not, it sounds like you're doing the right things with the deposit stuff. For me, like, I'm so excited to see, like, what's to come. Obviously, you've got a lot of work to do to deliver. But if you can keep going and, you know, do some licensed stuff in the future, I mean, like, the space needs a company like this that's just, like, at the right price. point because it's missing right now. And unfortunately, we're seeing your direct competitors doing weird stuff with these IPs where they're not actually taking the time to get the assets and they're putting out stuff. And frankly, who knows even where those companies even exist. So you're also talking and you're putting yourself out there. So we're honored to be a part of that story with you. Thank you all so much. I appreciate it. We'd love for you to stick around and talk about some mods with us. Are you up for it? Yes, let's do it. All right. Awesome. All right. We're going to, we got, we got some mods to come. We got, we're a little bit deep in this one, but let's do it.
    77:06
    God, God, I love that video. Okay, guys. I mean, it's amazing. What do you got for us? I'm just, I'm just, I'm just switched to my, my Osmo. Didn't fix your internet. No, it didn't. Is it still really bad, is it? Yeah. It's really bad. But we love that you actually have the mod there in front of you, so let's see what you got.
    77:30
    Yeah, yeah. Well, let's focus on the one that we can see first and foremost. Now, what's this, guys?
    77:36
    A pin snake. A pin snake, yeah. It's a pin snake. I have seen that thing online, and it looks super cool. Uh-oh. Oh, no. Yeah, man. That was me. All right. Okay, good. Oh, we lost you, Davey. If I cut out, oh no, if I cut out, I'm so sorry, guys. So for anybody that hasn't seen this thing, right? Yeah, same guy. For anybody that hasn't seen this thing, right, this is a new mod that's been released by a guy called AnthonyPFX,
    78:04
    who, I'm not sure if he's done any mods before this, but essentially it's a cleaning tool for pinball machines. Now, one of the, you know, we talked earlier from Chris about these maintenance issues that we all face with pinball machines and how difficult it is to do certain things. Well this is a mod that was designed to solve one of those problems, which is how do you clean the ball paths that go underneath ramps and in sections that your arm can't reach essentially. So this was designed, let me just put this down so I can demo it properly.
    78:46
    Let's see, okay, so essentially it's like an articulated sort of 3D printed thing, so that you can sort of bend it and it can move around corners. But the beauty of it is, it has these sort of these Velcro tabs here that enable you to stick on this custom built cleaning thingy, which you then spray with cleaning fluid or whatever, and then stick in your game. I'm actually using it. It looks like Andy has been using his. He's got one as well.
    79:19
    And, yeah, it was one of those mods that just sort of blew up almost immediately because it's a problem that everybody has in their face. It totally does. Like, I got a flathead screwdriver with, like, a cherry cloth towel. Like, I'm the dumbest person in the world trying to fix this thing. I'm sure it's fine so I haven't actually used it yet just because I'm so busy doing everything else but I'm really looking forward to using this and I reckon it's going to be super satisfying when I do, so yeah, if anybody has faced the same kind of problems as we have with cleaning their things, jump on Pinside, check out the Pinsnake really great tool, beautifully designed Anthony, I guess his name's Anthony, is super receptive to On The Thread and will answer any of the questions you have. He's posting up loads of videos showing you how to clean different types of games like T2 and a bunch of other ones. It's just one of those products that comes out and immediately strikes a chord with everybody. So, yeah, jump on and check it out. I think this is the first mod maker that doesn't need a lolly board from me, Davey, so that's pretty good. yeah so that's the only free promo that he's going to get until he makes it when you see it you immediately know you're like oh dude that totally makes sense you know it's like one of those things I think that's why I took off because everyone sees it and they're like whoa yeah so okay so we've talked a lot about the bonds which I always forget what the name of that ramp that was designed for the up kicker, the scuba kick. That's it. The scuba kick. Yeah, the scuba kick. Ramp. The bond kick. The cheater mod. Yeah. Cheater mod. Yeah, yeah. It was like, you know, caused a massive furor on pin side. Do you know about that one, Chris? I haven't heard about that one. Bond has this kick on the left, and it kicks out of the play field, and somebody designed this, like, this loop, very well done, and it kicks it into the left lane. Oh, I see. It basically eliminates this thing that people early on complained about, but it basically sets up all these shots for you every time. Right, yeah. It's called the Cheater Mod. That makes sense. It's a bad. We celebrated it because I bought it and I love it. But, yeah. Anyway, we got more Cheater Mods? But basically, yeah. Well, no. No, these aren't Cheater Mods. But, yeah, I mean, look, that scuba kick ramp kind of, okay, so they released that. Lovely guys from Oz. I think one of the guys lives in maybe Sydney and the other guy lives in Adelaide or something like that, so they live miles away from each other, but they sort of work on these projects together. And when they released that scuba kick ramp, it sort of kicked off this massive thing on Pinside with people, yeah, accusing them of being cheater mods or whatever, and it sort of created this terminology, I suppose, which was cheater mods. So, essentially, mods that change the game. Is that a kick out of the pipe or all that pops up? It looks cool. I mean, you know, the things that change the flow. Beautifully designed. I guess people don't like that. Oh, yeah. Always, always. Yeah. These are those guys. They're always going to be controversial. Yeah, these are those guys, yeah. So, that's right. All right. So, Morals Pinball Wireforms is the name of the company.
    82:49
    And they sent me one of their rams. This is for Venom. Now this, I think it goes that way, but essentially that sits on Venom to give you a better... The original wireform, I think, had all of these wireforms sort of continuing down there. And so this one sort of gives you better visibility of the back of the playfield and that... I can't remember the name of him now, but the guy that you shoot and goes up the ramp on Venom.
    83:21
    I can't remember his name now. my Marvel Venom lore isn't up to scratch. But essentially, this gives you much better visibility over that section of the play field. But have a look at the engineering sort of quality of those wire forms. Is this quite publicly announced yet?
    83:41
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all available on Pinside, so you can purchase them. I think it's like... I can't remember what the name of it is. I should have had my information... Yeah, we're well prepared here. How do you spell the name of that?
    83:57
    This is the other thing they sent me. This is the other thing they sent me, too. Oh, look at that. Oh, no, man. So a custom-designed 007, I don't know, wire form, I guess. And this gets mounted, I think, on the back panel of Bond, possibly around where the flasher is, I think, or elsewhere, depending on where you want to mount it. But, yeah, beautiful stuff. Always love receiving stuff from them. I've got the Bond scuba kick ramp on my mod shelf as well, ready to be installed whenever Bond actually gets here.
    84:37
    Chris, how do you guys do your wire forms? Who does those for you? So we initially did, like, the prototype wire forms, and then once we get the flow of them, like we have all the engineering drawings made and then we send them out of house and have them manufactured. And then like the chrome dipping and everything. I mean, I can't do that here. Yeah, why would you want to as well? Yeah. Okay, just quickly, J85M.
    85:06
    We've talked about these on the show a couple of times already, but they just arrived the other day as well. These are his Jaws spinner toppers that he's worked with in conjunction with Precision Pinball.
    85:18
    These get mounted on top of the Precision Pinball horizontal spinners that John's designed to make those spinners spin a lot more freely. Apparently it was by design that they don't spin very well on jaws. Interesting. But a lot of people, you know, yeah, interesting is the right word, why those spinners don't spin as much as they possibly could, but John from Precision Pinball created some machined aluminium spinners, I guess, and also with his bushings to make them spin quicker, and then John has worked in conjunction with him to produce these toppers for those, which are nicely 3D-printed, looks like PA-12, and then painted to look like a fisherman's reel and then again for the upper play field where the boat is, you know, the boat's steering thingy. So yeah, those are great. Steering thingy, is that the technical term? We didn't know the name last episode either. Steering thingy. Yeah, steering thingy. Cool. What is it? What is it called? It's not a mast, no. I don't know. Steering wheel? Can you call them steering wheels? Sounds good.
    86:38
    Steering wheel. Somebody in the comments, help us out here. Yeah, come on, guys. What are you doing? Don't just sit there like workers. Tell us what a steering thing is properly called. We did have a question about where to find the 007 rail. Oh, yeah. So, actually, I think they might be out of production on that. But it is called the Scuba Kick Mod. All right, what do you got here, David?
    87:03
    What do we got? Oh, is this the topper? Is this the topper upgrade? This is the topper upgrade for Godzilla. by Jas Boucher.
    87:13
    This just arrived the other day as well. So this is essentially a bigger version of the original Atomic Godzilla for Godzilla that's meant specifically for the top, where he's got a brand new pose.
    87:27
    And included as well is sort of an upgrade on the cloud. So the cloud sort of looks like, I don't know, a marshmallow kind of cloudy thing. But anyway, this sort of sits behind that marshmallow cloud to make it look a lot more sort of Atomic Godzillary. Obviously the plastic is still on that acrylic there, so I apologise for that. It could look a bit better, but the whole upgrade just sort of really improves the look of the stock stern topper to remove that lacklustre Godzilla that they included, not only on the playfield, but also on the topper. And then Godzilla's triggered.
    88:16
    So it's running one of my lolly boards, and his spines are all lit up. They play a pattern, and then we're using a light sensor on the cloud itself so that when the cloud fires up, his spines play in a different pattern to make it look like a teeth sort of, you know, triggering that cloud.
    88:35
    Yeah. And so Paul's – Erica wants to know if there's going to be a topper for Ninja Eclipse. Yeah, as soon as Rob and Davey work on it.
    88:47
    I mean, like, I'm loving that I can actually do stuff with it. So I might have to make that happen. Yeah. Who knows? There may be something in the future, but it just depends on the demand.
    89:00
    Ship steering wheel. It's a helm, baby. There we go. Helm? No, come on. Good work. The steering wheel is called a helm, or the place that they do the steering is called the helm.
    89:15
    I have a question about that. What does the stern topper cost? Oh, please, go on. It was $1,000. $1,000, okay. One of their more... But then, so, the more what? Affordable? One of the more affordable ones. Oh, man. So it's okay because we have to mod the $1,000. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so this is the thing, right? So we, and I'm quite close with Paul.
    89:40
    You know, we do a lot of work together. My boards are running in the Atomic Godzilla and stuff. And obviously there's a lot of other things we could do for that topic too. We're like, oh, the tanks need work and the buildings could have something better and stuff. And it's like, but at what point are people left with any of what they originally spent that $1,000? That's what I'm wondering. So, yeah. Oh, man. So, you know, how much is too... Like, you can't really do much more than replacing the Godzilla, because if you did, then suddenly, you know, people are going to be making those calculations in their head, and it's just suddenly not going to be, you know, worth it. So, yeah. But luckily, there's another very good Godzilla software option out there. Good options out there, yeah. We're going to be showing our latest upgrade with the four screens at Expo. So we're going to have the black and white Godzilla and the color.
    90:30
    And that's going to be the ultimate version. So if you're still holding out on Godzilla Topper, there's going to be a chance to see it. Did you have anything more, Davey? I want to show your Lebowski. Please do. I'm going to install this soon. We're going to get everyone past all the pixelated horribleness that you just put us through.
    90:53
    But, yeah, this thing is cool. I'm joking about it because, well, I was joking about it. It's like a topper for the building inside your Lebowski. Like, this thing is, like, intense, Davey. Oh, my God. There's a lot of shit here. I didn't even know that the lane was there. But this sits on top of the building. There's, of course, a ton of wires that make this thing sing. But really loving what I'm seeing, Davey. So I wanted to show this today because I've got to commit to actually installing this for our next show, which we do. I think we're going to do this again in two weeks, right? It's going to be our last show. Yeah, we're going to do it in two weeks. Our last show before Expo because we're going to have to take a little bit of time off. Davey, any teasers on what to expect in a couple weeks from us? Well, you know, I'm hoping as well that my big Lebowski topper from you is also in the mail, isn't it? It's not moving. It's stuck in Chicago.
    91:57
    It'll get there. What's happening in Chicago at the moment? It's a hub of not movement. That's so terrible. I think that happens everywhere. It's a helm. Everything that we do in the game is a helm. Yeah, so you'll have that and I'll have this. but are you going to get some inside info on this game no one will stop talking about? Are we going to see it easier? Yeah, look, it's going to be shown all about Alice in the next couple of weeks.
    92:30
    So we're going to talk, Melbourne's promised me a couple of extra sneak peeks, so hopefully we should have a little bit of video, we should have a little bit about still images, we should be able to reveal a little bit of information, hopefully about the Topper as well.
    92:47
    And then a couple of other bits of information that should be really exciting to reveal. So it's going to be a bit of a deep dive into Alice and we'll probably focus on our own stuff a bit, the black and white Topper, the black and white Godzilla mods that will be coming out for the Tokyo Neon range. there's a lot of focus on the black and white stuff I think Jazz Boucher might have something to show off as well so it should be a really packed show full of lots of fun stuff absolutely well Chris thank you again so much for being here we'll have to do this again sometime and we're looking forward to seeing you at Expo you guys will have a booth right? for sure and you're going to have a couple of games to play or what can we expect as far as Ninja Eclipse goes? that's the plan And actually, there are several of our customers that are allowing us to use their games at the show. And so they'll essentially, we'll ship it up there, and then they'll take it home from the show. And so I think a majority of the games that are going to be there are probably going to be sold already. But we're only making 100 still. Yeah.
    94:00
    We'll look forward to checking it out. And Dave, you're going to have to talk about this topper situation. Get something going here. Yeah, let me know what you guys want to do. All right. Well, everyone, thank you so much. We ran a little long today, but we had a great time with everybody. Thanks to everybody who chimed in with questions. And we'll see you in two weeks from this Monday. Have a good night, all. Thank you. See you later. Bye, guys. Thanks for joining in. Cheers.