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The Pinball Show Ep 180: From Birth To Retirement

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 39m·analyzed·Aug 26, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.023

TL;DR

Production updates, Star Wars rumors, and Pinball Brothers pricing confusion clarified.

Summary

The The The Pinball Show hosts discuss Stern Pinball production updates including upcoming Jaws 50th Anniversary runs (sold out at Stern, last build in December), rumored Star Wars announcement for September, and new code updates for King Kong, Dungeons & Dragons, and John Wick. They cover Chicago Gaming Company (Remake Merlin Edition) shipping in early September and the Cactus Canyon (Remake) kit rollout. A significant portion focuses on Pinball Brothers' controversial direct-sales announcement for Predator/Alien machines with confusing pricing that media misinterpreted as undercutting dealers, which the hosts clarify actually matches dealer pricing when tariffs and freight are accounted for.

Key Claims

  • Jaws 50th Anniversary is sold out at Stern Pinball as of September; final run ships in December, then production ends forever.

    high confidence · Host Zach states based on distribution orders; confirmed sold out to new orders.

  • Star Wars (Episodes IV-VI) is the rumored Cornerstone game to be announced Friday with full reveal the Tuesday after Labor Day.

    medium confidence · Hosts speculate on rumor persistence; no official confirmation, but pattern of accuracy noted.

  • Medieval Madness (Remake Merlin Edition) by Chicago Gaming Company begins shipping the week of September 1st; 1,000 units planned through February 2026.

    high confidence · Official announcement to dealers; Zach confirms from distribution communications.

  • Cactus Canyon (Remake) kits (Lyman F. Sheats Jr.) also ship starting September 1st, with estimated 1-2 month production and shipping timeline (much faster than game builds).

    high confidence · Zach reports conversation with Chicago Gaming Company new salesperson Mia; kits feature pre-assembly to minimize installation time to approximately one hour.

  • Spike 3 uses Raspberry Pi Compute Model 4 as the main processor, contrary to earlier implications of custom-developed hardware.

    high confidence · Dennis cites Pinside discussion; board discovered in Star Wars (Home Edition) sold at Costco; includes dual HDMI ports and onboard Wi-Fi.

  • Pinball Brothers positioned Predator/Alien direct sales with confusing pricing that appeared cheaper than dealer options, but actual net pricing to customers is identical when tariffs and freight are included.

    high confidence · Zach (Flip N Out Pinball distributor) clarifies after detailed analysis; manufacturer offered same adjusted pricing to dealers; media misreported as dealer undercutting.

  • Pinball Brothers claims only 150 Predator units remain and production ends December 31st; no reissues planned.

    high confidence · Pinball Brothers announcement quoted directly in episode.

Notable Quotes

  • “They vaulted a number of games. I guess. I didn't think it was that long. Maybe not. They said we're done with these games at minimum. Even if we wanted to make them again, we're not going to make them for at least two years.”

    Zach (Host) @ ~18:00 — Establishes Stern's vault strategy and timeline for discontinued titles; directly relevant to inventory scarcity.

  • “Well, there's a discussion of it on Pinside where they went into the Spike 3... this is not a powerful system... Maybe on the last episode you were making it sound like they were spending all this time like custom developing this intricate board set with all this power. This is not a powerful system.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~35:00 — Corrects earlier overstated claims about Spike 3 hardware; reveals off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi basis, tempering expectations.

  • “They positioned it in a way, Dennis, that made it feel like if you order direct from us, you don't have to worry about all the stuff you're going to have to worry about with dealers.”

    Zach (Host) @ ~75:00 — Key insight into Pinball Brothers' marketing strategy—identifying how messaging created false perception of dealer disadvantage.

  • “So they positioned themselves well to get more orders than dealers... The sneaky little thing they did here was... They presented it as $11,995, boom. And before people were adding up, but wait a minute, we got $1,000 in tariffs at 10% and then $500 for air freight, so it was $1,500.”

    Zach (Host) @ ~80:00 — Detailed breakdown of Pinball Brothers' pricing obfuscation; explains how base price appeared lower while actually bundling freight/tariff costs.

  • “So dealers didn't lose any money. That's what media is getting wrong. Media is like, oh, they're screwing dealers because if I go through a dealer, it's like bad advertising because it's misinformation too.”

    Zach (Host) @ ~82:00 — Direct correction to industry media's misinterpretation; establishes that dealer pricing parity was maintained despite confusing messaging.

  • “I don't like this move because I don't like how they're presenting this. I don't think it's clear. I think it's purposefully unclear. And I think it's unclear with them not trying as well.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyChicago Gaming CompanycompanyPinball BrotherscompanyFlip N Out PinballcompanyZach SharpepersonDennispersonMiaperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Medieval Madness Merlin Edition and Cactus Canyon Remix kits begin shipping September 1, 2025; represents major fulfillment milestone for Chicago Gaming after parts delays.

    high · Official announcement to dealers confirmed; Zach received direct communication from salesperson Mia with shipping dates and production volumes.

  • ?

    machine_intel: Star Wars (Episodes IV-VI) rumored as Stern's September Cornerstone announcement; teaser expected Friday, full reveal Tuesday after Labor Day; rumor persistence increases credibility.

    medium · Hosts note rumor has persisted and not been shut down over time; pattern suggests smoke/fire logic applies; represents typical Stern announcement schedule.

  • $

    market_signal: Jaws 50th Anniversary sold out at Stern; final December run, then permanent discontinuation; creates urgent acquisition window for collectors.

    high · Zach reports partial fulfillment of distributor orders; remaining allocation December; explicitly stated 'never again' after anniversary run concludes.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball Brothers bundled freight and tariff costs into base price ($11,995) for direct sales, creating false perception of dealer disadvantage despite identical net pricing when adjusted.

    high · Zach's detailed breakdown: original $10,995 + tariffs (10%) + $500 freight = ~$12,500; new $11,995 includes bundled costs; dealers received same adjusted pricing retroactively; media misreported as dealer undercutting.

  • ?

    industry_signal: Multiple pinball media outlets misreported Pinball Brothers' direct-sales announcement as anti-dealer move; Zach clarifies actual pricing parity and corrects record.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.066

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:30
We're back with another episode of the pinball show episode 180 as I am interrupting Dennis's thought process. What were you thinking there, Dennis? Nothing. I was just contemplating introductions and how you don't like certain traditional approaches, but you like other traditional approaches. I try to get off the launch pad and sometimes I hesitate. Hey, it's a little stutter stop, but you know what's coming up? We were talking about the famous horror film Halloween. We were talking about that and Labor Day. Have you seen the pumpkin spices out yet? I still feel like it's the heat of the summer, but wow.
1:21
Yeah, all the suburban moms out there are just frothing at the mouth. They want their little cardigans and they want their lattes, their little pumpkin lattes. That they can sip in front of their live, laugh, love signs with the latest fall foliage all around them. Oh, I love my wife in the fall.
1:46
I like watching her through the seasons. It's wonderful. I love fall Nicole. Fall Nicole is the only Nicole. That's what Zach always says. She really is a nice fall girl. So there's probably another joke there, but we're going to move into pinball. Have you been good? Everything been good with you? Yeah. Okay. Great? Good? How would you classify? Yeah, good. I'd say good. Great? Great? You've got to really get like a lot of things have to align for greatness. True greatness. Wow. Okay. I would love to have some examples. Greatness is a sometimes food, Zach. You don't want to overindulge. I don't know what reference that is. It's a reference to Cookie Monster who eventually had to start telling people that cookies were sometimes food because it's not actually healthy to encourage kids to just eat a bunch of cookies. Cookie Monster damn near got canceled.

Stern Pinball vaulted games are now completely out of stock: Deadpool (Pro), Star Wars (Comic Art Pro) (Spike 2), Foo Fighters (Pro), Iron Maiden, Rush (Pro)/Premium, The Mandalorian (Pro)/Premium.

high confidence · Zach reports based on Stern Pinball inventory communications to distributors.

  • Stranger Things (Pro) has no future production builds planned at Stern, though not formally vaulted ('quasi-vault').

    high confidence · Stern Pinball inventory update to distributors.

  • King Kong V.85 code update ('Big Apple update') is driving increased sales of King Kong machines.

    medium confidence · Hosts observe trend but note they haven't detailed mechanism; described as 'big' update.

    • Zach (Host) @ ~95:00 — Zach's critical assessment of Pinball Brothers' communication strategy; indicates trust issues with manufacturer despite pricing parity.

  • “They only got 150 units left. They're selling direct. And that once December 31st is up, you can't get any more, any anymore. This is your final shot at owning a predator or alien. After this year, both will vanish from production.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~70:00 — Pinball Brothers' end-of-life announcement for two major IP titles; FOMO-driven marketing language noted by hosts.

  • “They offer this to us as well. They said, hey, all of the orders that you currently have, we can adjust pricing to reflect this new amount that we are presenting to the public direct.”

    Zach (Host) @ ~84:00 — Reveals manufacturer's offer to adjust dealer pricing retroactively; demonstrates actual intent to maintain dealer parity despite confusing public messaging.

  • “Mia, the salesperson, indicated to dealers, she said, look, I'm proud to report that I was able to successfully install the mech myself despite having never worked on a pinball machine before.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~52:00 — Third-party validation that Cactus Canyon kit installation is accessible to non-technical users; directly addresses previous concern about complexity.

  • “So these will be much, much quicker. She didn't give a definitive timeline. I would guess one to two months they should all be produced and shipped out.”

    Zach (Host) @ ~57:00 — Establishes expected timeline for full Cactus Canyon kit fulfillment, contrasting with game production's multi-month schedules.

    • Star Wars
    game
    Jaws 50th Anniversarygame
    Medieval Madness (Remake Merlin Edition)game
    Cactus Canyon (Remake)product
    King Konggame
    Dungeons & Dragonsgame
    John Wickgame
    Spike 3product
    Raspberry Pi Compute Model 4product
    Predatorgame
    Aliengame
    Lyman F. Sheats Jr.person
    The Pinball Showmedia
    Pinsidemedia
    Costcovenue
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Joelperson
    Jaredperson

    high · Zach explicitly states: 'That's what media is getting wrong... misinformation too... Dealers didn't lose any money.' Hosts acknowledge media hunger for content led to jumping to conclusions.

  • ?

    technology_signal: Spike 3 uses off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi Compute Model 4, not custom-developed hardware; includes dual HDMI, onboard Wi-Fi; challenges earlier implications of extensive R&D investment.

    high · Dennis cites Pinside discussion; board discovered in Star Wars Home Edition sold at Costco; cost-control approach (off-shelf) may explain component sourcing during supply chain constraints.

  • ?

    product_concern: Spike 3 Raspberry Pi boards run very hot; Stern covered logo area with heat sink; potential thermal management challenge being addressed.

    medium · Dennis notes compute boards are known to run hot; cover-up suggests heat-sink implementation; potential testing focus area during development.

  • ?

    community_signal: John Wick code updates (V.97 'Jobs Reworked, Allies Return') driving improved community reception; Patreon members reporting increased appreciation despite host's personal indifference.

    medium · Hosts note Patreon community discussing positive John Wick changes; represents potential gameplay improvement and code maturation cycle.

  • ?

    code_update: King Kong V.85 ('Big Apple update') is described as major update driving sales trend upward for the machine.

    medium · Hosts note update is 'big' and 'so big that it's helping trend the sales up'; no specific rule details provided but impact observed.

  • $

    market_signal: Multiple Stern vaulted games completely out of stock: Deadpool Pro, Star Wars Comic (Spike 2), Foo Fighters Pro, Iron Maiden Pro, Rush Pro/Premium, The Mandalorian Pro/Premium; only dealer inventory remains.

    high · Zach reports Stern inventory communications; games unavailable for new purchase once dealer stock depleted; creates secondary market opportunity for previously available titles.

  • $

    market_signal: Stranger Things Pro in ambiguous 'quasi-vault' status—not formally vaulted but Stern indicates no future production builds planned.

    high · Zach characterizes as 'safety deposit box' status; may be produced if demand warrants but not actively planned.

  • ?

    business_signal: Chicago Gaming Company's communication has improved with new salesperson Mia; Cactus Canyon kit messaging clearer, including confirmation that non-technical users can successfully install.

    medium · Mia's personal testimony that she installed kit without prior pinball machine experience; represents positive shift in CGC transparency versus historical opacity.

    • 2:37
    They were like, look, Cook, if you don't at least do gluten-free chicken. With a child's obesity rates, Cookie Monster's messaging had to be reworked at least a little bit. I do like a fat kid, though. Yeah, I mean, given choices, give me a plump kid over a skinny kid any day. I was a skinny kid, but I got a kid, what's his name, Fletcher. You got like four kids.
    3:07
    He's scrawny to a point where I'm like, people may think that I'm neglecting you. Like, could you eat a cheeseburger, please? He might not like cheese, did you ask him? I like the fat ones, though. I like the chubby ones. They run funny. I just love them. Those are the ones I like the most. I also like, would Stern Pinball be a chubby toddler?
    3:33
    They'd be fit. I mean, looking at the new board set for Spike 3, I'll tell you what, bulking up power is not their approach. They'd be like, hey, guys, it's me. Stern Pinball Production Updates courtesy of the Pinball Show.
    3:52
    Now you can get this information over at the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. I know you guys love talking production updates over there. Yeah, I'm just like, why did you just, like, they aren't going to hear about any of this. This literally may be. All I say every Eclectic episode is nothing happened. If it's not a new release, I do not care. We squeeze blood out of a turnip over here. Well, you as a distributor, you have all the production update information. I don't I don't rehash that over there. It's not my knowledge. And stay tuned later in this episode, listener and viewer. We are going to have some information that most all of media has been getting wrong lately. What?
    4:36
    We're going to clear a lot of that up. We're going to give you the goods here on the pinball show. But we start with Stern Pinball, of course, production updates over the last couple of weeks. And I say viewer, Dennis, because we are on video again. Are we? We are. So check us out on YouTube, youtube.com slash at the pinball show, I believe is how you have to do that. Or you can just follow the links on our socials and you'll find it there. And for the Patreon members, Dennis, they got video. They got exclusive video last time. Oh, yes. I didn't go back and watch it, so I guess I just assumed you'd still give them the video. Since we kept it running. Like an added benefit. They're already paying the same amount, but we're giving them more now.
    5:22
    Some people in this hobby, you pay for something, you get less over time. We're giving them more. Now, contractually, we're not obligated to keep that. Maybe we don't do it. But for now, the going is good. The past couple of weeks over at Stern Pinball, they've been making and building Dungeons and Dragons. Again? Mm-hmm. Wow. People were wanting some more. We were out at Flippin' Out Pinball of both for a little bit of time. So it's welcomed that they make some more. Metallica Remastered Premiums they were making as well as Uncanny X-Men Pro all over the past couple of weeks. And last episode, Dennis, we did tell people August was going to be a very busy month for Stern Pinball. So they've been building all of those. Upcoming September, we're close to September, they're going to make that coveted Jaws 50th anniversary Pinball. The other run. Keep in mind, that's already sold out. Already sold out. Now, sold out with Stern. Meaning, in other words, I put in an order for distribution for flipping out Pinball and I did not get my entire order that is being built in September.
    6:33
    So, they're going to give me part of the order in September and then the remainder is going to fall into December, which is the last documented run of that title. And then never again. Ever, ever? Anniversary.
    6:48
    Yeah. So no more Jaws 50th anniversary after December. But what I mean by sold out is Stern is not going to have any extra in September to sell anybody. And we still have spots open for Jaws 50th. So you can still order one if you want a September run. King Kong Premium in September as well as Stranger Things Pro. And I would think the new Cornerstone game is going to be built in September as well. We are guessing this Friday, depending on when you're watching and listening, this Friday we'll probably get a teaser and then the following Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Is that what that is? I think so. Maybe we will get a full reveal. The rumor is Star Wars. Again? Yeah, oftentimes we get rumors and then they get shut down over time. This one has persisted, so it makes me kind of think where there's smoke, there's fire, where there's fire, there's smoke. What do you need? Thunder and lightning or lightning and thunder? Can you have thunder without lightning or lightning? No. Simple enough. Star Wars. And the thought right now is episodes four through six on Star Wars. That's what they did last time. Totally fine. Different operating system. Nobody cares about the operating system. It's a reason to redo it. I would have been fine with the whole... Revenge of the Sith or whatever that was called. I've been good with that.
    8:18
    The children, the fat ones too. I don't remember that. That's so mean. You remember the tale of the Billy Goat Gruff?
    8:30
    I do not. You don't remember that? I remember Billy Gruff, but I don't remember the story. The goat goes over the bridge and the troll comes up and is like, I'm gonna eat you! And he's a fat bastard. But he's like, and then the goat's like, don't eat me, eat my brother. He's bigger and stronger. He's like chicken. And then the brother comes over and he's like, no, don't eat me. And then the third one is a big bastard. He bucks that troll right off the bridge.
    9:01
    Where was I going with that? I was talking about. I don't know. Something about the baby. That's right. Yeah, the rolly kids. I picture that. Like the toddler comes up. Don't eat me. My teenage brother. He's he's even fatter. Don't eat me. My dad. Good genes.
    9:28
    We're topical here. It's a good genes reference. I love it. OK, man, we're good at this late October into November. Another remastered game. Which one? We're hearing The Walking Dead remastered. I know, but it doesn't make much sense. Coral! Coral. There should be. If they add a mode, it will be worth it. They add a mode where it's just coral jokes. Coral. They need to do that like the frenzy modes that they do it for Stranger Things. Bullshit. They need to do that for Coral. Oh. Your mom's dead, Coral. I know, I killed her. Spoiler alert. I hope they have video of that. If they have the meme of Coral sitting there after he done killed his mama and then his dad's right in his face giving a dad joke, Coral.
    10:27
    Oh, fuck, I love video format. This is great. Okay, December, I said that last run of Jaws 50th and in January we'll get that. The 2026 cornerstone, the rumor is Pocket Monsters.
    10:41
    I did want to give an update. There are many games that are out of stock at Stern Pinball, the vaulted games especially. Remember, what was that, like six months ago maybe? They vaulted a number of games. I guess. I didn't think it was that long. Maybe not. They said we're done with these games at minimum. Even if we wanted to make them again, we're not going to make them for at least two years. Right. But because of licensing and stuff, good possibility never again. But they still had some in stock at Stern. As dealers, we could still purchase them for our inventory and sell them to customers. But there are a number that are out, gone. Never again are you going to start, not in the next couple of years. Never maybe.
    11:22
    You know, never such a strong word. I mean, Rush is probably done forever, but. I believe so, yeah. Deadpool Pro, Stern's out of them. They're gone. So whatever dealers have is what you're going to get for if you want a new Deadpool Pro. Star Wars Comic Pro and Premium, the Spike 2 edition, Foo Fighters Pro, Iron Maiden Pro, Rush Pro and Premium, as Dennis said, and The Mandalorian Pro and Premium. All of those are vaulted games that are no longer in inventory at Stern Pinball. So if you want one of those titles, you have to go to a dealer. And then once the dealers are done with them, they're gone. And then they'll do the Aerosmith thing where now they're expensive again and all of that. They also have the following catalog games out of stock. Stern, Jaws Premium, and 50th Anniversary Jaws. King Kong Premium, Metallica Premium, Jurassic Park Pro, and Stranger Things Pro. They even indicated that for Stranger Things Pro, they really don't have any future builds planned. So not fully vaulted. Right. It's a quasi-vault. A quasi-vault. It's in the safety deposit box. Mm-hmm. It's crypto. That's crypto. No. It's not crypto. You may get it. You may not. Who knows? I don't know. I hate banks. I don't trust them. Yeah, so let's trust crypto. It's great. I don't trust them either. I'm like the mattress guy. I'm telling you. Yeah, just put that shit in the mattress or dig it in a... I'm like, yeah, Cousin Eddie. He's got jars in the backyard. It's like you're safe against so much with the mattress thing, except for, of course, your one nemesis, Big Fire. That's right, Big Fire.
    13:03
    New code, Stern Pinball. And these were big ones, Girthy's. King Kong V.85. We call this the Big Apple update. This is a big one. It's so big that it's helping trend the sales up of King Kong. It is. Are they replacing all the art with the city?
    13:24
    No. They don't need that. Oh, okay. Dungeons and Dragons V93. We're calling this update Trinkets. Is that because it comes with a bunch of mods?
    13:37
    Oh, God, no. Trinkets, there's a whole thing. I'm not smart enough to understand D&D. And new code for John Wick V.97.
    13:50
    This is called Jobs Reworked, Allies Return. Are you saying he's back? Well, reworked, and I'm back.
    13:59
    People are liking this. On our Patreon, people have been talking about the John Wick. It's starting to, again, still not a game for me. I haven't played the new code, but can't get into that game. Don't know why, but more people are like, I'm telling you, Zach, it's great. I don't know. We also talked about earlier, but we'll talk about it more now. The first look at the Spike 3 operating system from Stern Pinball, we get a sneak peek. Someone found it inside the Star Wars Home Edition that's being sold at Costco.
    14:35
    So it's got like the big one for media people's HDMI out. So before you had to get the Alibaba thing or you had to get the whole. Yeah, I mean, back when we were doing TPN, there was a whole thing about that stuff. And, you know, Stern was looking at doing export boards, and then they rolled that back, and it was all very messy. We've been in pinball so long and media so long that there was a controversy surrounding the connector boards that involved us. Like, we've been in this a while. On the Spike 3, it should have two HDMI ports. I know that one of them looks to be an outport because they tested it. And, yeah, you can just display easily the video on that screen. Onboard Wi-Fi.
    15:22
    And, Dennis, you had some choice words to say about the old Spike 3 system. Well, there's a discussion of it on Pinside where they went into the Spike 3. But, yeah, no, it's using the Raspberry Pi. It's the Compute Model 4, it looks like, Raspberry Pi. That's a cheap board, which is good. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, I'm just saying like maybe on the last episode you were making it sound like they were spending all this time like custom developing this intricate board set with all this power. This is not a powerful system. Unlimited power. I mean, it's not like a computer. But the pies, I've used pies to update board sets in older games. This is more powerful than the pies I've used. Computer adjacent? What's wrong with this? You're more of a rhubarb pie kind of stuff? No, no. Actually, what would be wrong with it, in my opinion, would only be is that they all of a sudden say, oh, look, for now the Spike 3s, we just – we got to have this big price increase because, you know, we had to do all this R&D. And I'm like, no, this is an off-the-shelf board. But using an off-the-shelf board, if they're not doing that, that could be a very good way to control pricing. And it can do, I think, all of the stuff, most of the stuff you would think. Again, some of this gets beyond my knowledge. I know part of the discussion was going into like the graphical driving, like where is that going to be coming from to push the video assets and such because – 4K, baby.
    16:51
    But anyway, it sounds like they've covered up the board so you don't see the Pi logo on it immediately. But I think that's to provide a heat sink because I've heard these the compute for boards run very hot. So that would be my initial concern. But if they're putting in additional heat sinking, that's obviously to try and address that issue, which could have been something they were spending a lot of time testing.
    17:13
    But, hey, it's an easy to get board. So, you know, we remember during the pandemic, all those shortages, those F-150 chips that they needed for their spike system, spike two system. So, yeah. And it would also explain some of the output capabilities. Chicago Gaming Company.
    17:30
    Yes. Old Grandpappy. The manufacturer who takes quite a while to develop and produce their games. Big announcement this last week. Announcing to dealers and to the public that Medieval Madness Merlin Edition starts shipping the week of September 1st.
    17:50
    Next week. Depending on when people are watching. That's huge news. They talked about the parts they've been waiting for finally arriving, which means that they're going to be assembling, testing, packing these things up. Now, games are going to start shipping in batches that first week of September. But the 20 people messaging me saying, where's my game?
    18:14
    They expect to build 1,000 units over the course of now to like February 2026. So in CGC speak, April, you know, we'll probably get off the ground in October. Now, I do think that they're going to start shipping some here in September, but I do think it's going to take quite a while to get them all built. Why doesn't CGC ever do interviews?
    18:42
    Who's their – I don't know who they would interview. I mean there's Doug Duba, but he's not the most socially engaging persona.
    18:55
    Yeah, but neither am I, and here I am talking to you. Fair point. Maybe they feel like they don't need to.
    19:02
    They've got a new salesperson, new – they've been there before, new position. Mia, I don't know if I've met her in person though. I'll ask her to expo if I see her.
    19:15
    So Medieval Madnesses are coming. The CCR, the Cactus Canyon remake Lyman Sheets kits. I hate that name. Is that what they officially call it? That's what they're kind of calling it. I call it the Enhancement Kit, the Upgrade Kit. It's got numerous names. Those are also starting to ship September 1st. Wow. Long awaited that people have been waiting for those. I guess the line's fully staffed now. Fully staffed. Kits are being built, tested, packed. Each kit's going to include a full-color step-by-step instruction installation booklet as well as a full-color promo booklet explaining all the new modes. They usually do a good job with all of that. And for those wondering about the difficulty of installation, that was the big people are like, It was going to take a couple hours to install, and then they went back and tried to minimize what it would take and try to pre-assemble a lot of things. And now it is much more minimal, invasive to have to do that. I think they said an hour maybe install? Oh, that's really not very bad. It still seems kind of long to me. Does it? But Mia, the salesperson, indicated to dealers, she said, look, I'm proud to report that I was able to successfully install the mech myself despite having never worked on a pinball machine before. Now, that does say a lot. So I do like that.
    20:46
    What I think it's honestly going to, and I have no clue, but we'll be able to see Joel at Flippin' Out. He's doing a YouTube video instruction on how to install one of these. Why?
    21:00
    Because it's helpful. He's a helpful fella. Well, it's already coming with a full-color step-by-step instruction booklet. Dennis, some people don't like to read, and they would rather watch. I was elected to lead, not to read.
    21:17
    And look, would people read the transcripts of this podcast, or would they rather watch it? I don't know. You know, that should be the next step, is post the written version of the show. So for those people who want to read it, have you heard the last EGP? On a scale of 1 to 10, how good was my Patrick Warburton?
    21:43
    It was okay. It depends on what era. I'm looking for a number. A number? One. Give the listeners a little flavor. I don't want to. Okay. See, that's my point. I was like, you're making it sound okay. That has not been the initial reaction. Three and a half. Not everybody can do pun. Anyway, my Schwarzenegger is not much better, and hence why I didn't even try and do it with the elected to leave thing. So anyway, just an aside. Hopefully everybody starts getting, I don't know how long they're going to take. They're going to start shipping September 1st. The floods of people asking, hey, am I in the first batch? We don't know how many are in said batch. Hey, what month am I going to get mine in? We have no clue.
    22:33
    I think that – no, I did talk to Mia, and I said, are we looking – like, is this going to be something that takes as long as the games?
    22:42
    Are they – like, as long as a game production run would be? Are we looking to – these kits are going to take from now to February to ship and produce all of them? And she said, no, no, no, no, not at all, no. So these will be much, much quicker. She didn't give a definitive timeline. I would guess one to two months they should all be produced and shipped out. How many are they making? Do you know? They didn't say. I think that's just an open thing. They sold a ton of them.
    23:13
    They sold so many, viewer, that it piqued my interest on, damn, did they sell that many Cactus Canyons? It's like it was an awakening for me. They really must have sold a ton of Cactus Canyons because, yeah, a lot of people ordered that kit. So they should be coming soon. And if you want to watch gameplay of that, this week on Flippin' Out Pinball YouTube, Wednesday night, you can watch Joel and Jared play. Play, I mean that's the plan as of right now, play some upgraded kit, lineman sheets kit, enhancement packet, whatever the hell you want to call it. And he's loving it over there. Well, I know Joel is a big fan of Cactus Canyon. He does like it.
    24:04
    I've been waiting too because I still have my Cactus Canyon. I like it as well. Pinball Brothers, Dennis.
    24:11
    Oh, that company. What's going on? Tell me, is everything coming up, brothers? I see what you did there.
    24:22
    It's coming apart at the seams. Yeah. The seams. I was going to go with it appears. Well, not as bad as American pinball, but anyway. Oh, we'll get that. Yeah, so spoilers. So individuals, I had heard. What did you hear? They made an announcement and a change in terms and they've not done the best job at communicating.
    24:47
    Thus a lot of people are misinterpreting what this recent announcement was Surprise surprise They have a new pitch The Pinball brothers came out with this new pitch to the public to emphasize new terms and to emphasize purchasing direct to avoid freight and tariffs on Predator Kind of.
    25:10
    So the media ran with this, media meaning podcast streams. We hunger for content, Zach. News, blog, article stuff. We all hunger. They jumped out in front of this, the media and everybody, and they were like, wait a minute.
    25:26
    So at surface level, I see where they're getting this information, but it's incorrect. They're jumping out and saying, so Pinball Brothers is shitting on their dealers. They're selling direct, and they're selling cheaper than what they were selling it to dealers for, Or what dealers were selling it for. How dare they?
    25:48
    But there are finer details that suggest they're not entirely doing that. Now look, it's not like I'm up here trying to look up for Pinball Brothers because there are parts of this new pitch that I don't like. And it might be more advantageous for me to just keep my mouth shut. And let people really think that Pinball Brothers is doing that. Because you guys know what I think about once a manufacturer sells direct, they then become a direct competitor to their sales force, which I'm not wild about. So here's what happened. The inside scoop. They pitched this publicly. They say, look, we've only got 150 predator units remaining. And once they're gone, they're gone forever. Forever, Dennis. Forever. Yes, because they have to return to their home planet. Production ends December 31st. Three exclamations. Wow, that's a lot of exclamation. It's not grammatically correct, but. Well, 110%. Maybe it's okay in Dutch. Maybe they use the exclamation in different ways. I know you're freaky deaky Dutch exclamations. As we update our licensing agreements and clear the way for the next big titles. What would it be? That's one part of it. One part of it is that they've only got 150 units left. They're selling direct. And that once December 31st is up, you can't get any more, any anymore. This is your final shot at owning a predator or alien.
    27:30
    Both. After this year, both will vanish from production. No reruns, no second chances, no take backsies. And if you've been on the fence, now's the moment to lock one down. Put a ring on it before they disappear into pinball legend. I don't know if that's the right term, but I'm getting the QVC vibe here. So how many payments of whatever 1999 do I have to make? This one slip away.
    28:03
    This beanie baby is about to be retired. I think of more of the, what is it, like the Shazam, the Lolo Rags. ShamWow. ShamWow, yes. Wipe it and squeeze it. Yes. All right, so games are going to be ready to collect or to distribute. Mainland Freight is going to be added straight from the U.S. headquarters in, is it Dubois? I think it's Dubois.
    28:30
    Dubois. Dubois, Pennsylvania. We'll continue to work with select U.S. partners. Oh, no. Not the Justice League of dealers. Are you not aware of the Justice League stuff? Oh, no!
    28:45
    The select U.S. partners, but adding direct sales from our own headquarters is the best way for us to serve the U.S. market right now.
    28:54
    Okay. So, people are getting hung up on that. They're getting hung up on the price, too. Because the original pricing was $10,995. Then you could add the trophy package and all that. But this new pricing, they're putting it out there and they're saying, here's the price. There's no air freight, no tariffs, one price direct from Pinball Brothers. You don't have to worry about a darn thing.
    29:19
    So most customers thought, well, shit, I'm going to do that. I'm going to order direct. So they positioned it in a way, Dennis, that made it feel like if you order direct from us, you don't have to worry about all the stuff you're going to have to worry about with dealers. Right? Okay. I see it. Yeah.
    29:42
    So they positioned themselves well to get more orders than dealers. So is this new pricing with the trophy package?
    29:51
    No. Sorry. I didn't add that in our notes. It's still plus $14.95. So what they had done was, so you see this thing was like $11.995.
    30:01
    But you still have to add. It's $1,000 more than the original pricing, but you didn't have to factor in the air freight, which was $500 more anyway. And then whatever the tariffs would be. Tariffs were going to be 10% now. We know they're 15%. So it's going to be pretty costly, 15% of the total price.
    30:18
    What people aren't realizing, the sneaky little thing they did here was. What's so tricksy about it, my precious? People are identifying that they did add $1,000 to the price to cover those air freight and some of the tariffs.
    30:36
    They presented it as $11,995, boom. And before people were adding up, but wait a minute, we got $1,000 in tariffs at 10% and then $500 for air freight, so it was $1,500. So now it's 12. Profi Pack is $1,500.
    30:56
    So you add that plus the tariffs. So you're more than a thousand tariffs. You're getting higher up. Now 15% would be even more. What was tricksy about it is they fooled people to think that the price was kind of the same, but now they wouldn't have to pay for air freight or tariffs. That's what they did. And they encouraged people that if they did it direct, then they don't have to worry about those fees if they go through a dealer. But the truth is, and the fine details, the pricing for dealers is the same. So they offered this to us as well. They said, hey, all of the orders that you currently have, we can adjust pricing to reflect this new amount that we are presenting to the public direct. So dealers didn't lose any money.
    31:49
    That's what media is getting wrong. Media is like, oh, they're screwing dealers because if I go through a dealer, it's like bad advertising because it's misinformation too. So that's why I want to clear it up. So you can go through a dealer and pay the same as this new deal that you're going to get through Pinball Brothers. It's the same thing, going through a dealer or going through them.
    32:09
    How they went about this, very strange, very odd in that I messaged them and I was like, okay, so wait a minute. This whole release has been so damn confusing. All of these different prizes. Now, with us at Flippin Out, we capped the tariffs that we were going to do at $600. That's just what we chose to do.
    32:30
    So a lot of our customers, because we've been billed for a third of our orders, a fourth of our orders, in full. We had to pay deposits. But we've paid in full for, you know, some games. So I had to go back to them and be like, wait a minute, I've already paid, so how do I do this? And they were like, they gave me the option, which is so strange. They were like, well, you can continue with the terms we have now, or you can utilize the new terms. And I crunched the numbers. I was like, why is this even an option? Like, the new terms are better. They save me money. They're like, yeah, but it's still an option. I'm like, well, okay, that's fine. I'll have them shipped to Pennsylvania and then I will take care of Pennsylvania. A lot of customers are also realizing that that's not to your door, that price. You still have to pay for shipping from Dubois, Pennsylvania to your home. Was that always the case though? That was always the case. But when you market it as we're going to ship it direct to U.S. customers, I think some people just aren't thinking of that. The only reason I bring this up because we have a couple of customers that have paid in full. They came to me and they're like, well, wait a minute.
    33:45
    Surely, what are you going to do? Because they were kind of heated. Like, what are you going to do? It makes more sense for me to buy direct. And I'm like, read the finer details. It's the same price. There's no difference. There was a difference between like, it's like $100 difference because we were capping at $600 tariffs. So we sent them all a refund for $100 and they got the refund. They're like, wait a minute, Zach. No, no, no. So it said I don't have to pay air freight or tariffs. Now that should be $1,100 because you told me air freight's $500. You told me that tariffs are capped at $600. That's $1,100. You only gave me a refund for $100. I'm like, no. If you look back, the price, they changed the price too.
    34:26
    And then people are like, oh. It's just very confusing. I can see where they're getting mixed up. Sure, yeah. And I've had to check it three or four times because I'm like, am I missing something here?
    34:39
    It's been very confusing. I don't like this move. Just because of the confusion factor? It's been like this from the gate. And I just don't know what to trust. And I don't like being in business partnerships when I don't feel 100% trust. You got to trust your gut. I don't like that gut. I like the brain. The brain's better. I don't like gut decisions. Those are emotional. I don't like this move because I don't like how they're presenting this. I don't think it's clear. I think it's purposefully unclear. And I think it's unclear with them not trying as well.
    35:19
    Like only 150 units remain. They didn't sell that many Predators. Yeah, what was the limit count on it? I'd have to go back. I'm supposed to be a good dealer. I don't know what it was. That was like 800 something. I was like, wow, they've really moved a lot more years than I realized. Even at 750, they didn't sell 500 of them games.
    35:43
    I don't know. Very confidently. What if Europe stepped up? They didn't. Oh. One thing I hadn't considered. I just don't like that they're presenting things in a way that, I don't know, maybe it's just marketing. Maybe it's sales. I don't know. It just doesn't feel. Why do you not feel like they know what they're doing? No comment.
    36:06
    But I know that they didn't sell as many as – basically, here's what's really going on or what I think is going on. I don't know. I think the license runs out December 31st, and I think that they think that they could probably build 150 more between now and then on top of what they have ordered and feel comfortable enough. I think that they know that based on the initial orders, they're smart enough to know we're not going to we're not going to we could probably make 300 more, but we're not going to get that many sales. Let's make it feel more limited and say we only have 150 more.
    36:42
    I think that's what they're doing. I also don't like that they're selling direct and kind of they're not breaking the terms with dealers because they've done this before where they set up this whole U.S. website thing and they're like, yeah, we've always sold direct. But then I talked to the salesperson prior to that and they're like, we don't sell direct. It's that kind of shit that I'm like, I don't feel good about this always.
    37:08
    Yeah, I didn't like any of that. What else didn't I like? Oh, the phrase that they put here, I don't like this. They put, quote, but adding direct sales from our own headquarters is the best way for us to serve the U.S. market right now. I don't like that statement. That is the best? I don't think, yeah, I don't think that's true. Adding direct sales, they're putting into the consumer's ear by purchasing direct from us. That is the best way to serve you. I think it's very inaccurate, and I think it goes against my company and other dealers that have helped serve them for years. Would you agree, disagree? Am I? Well, the anytime a company emphasizes selling direct, I think it's hard to think of anything other than undercutting the use of the dealer network. So from that perspective, yeah, I understand where you're coming from on it. And I'm not entirely clear either how it's necessarily advantageous to the customer. It's not. I mean, ask the Haggis customers which one was better served buying through a dealer such as flipping out pinball who refunded every fucking penny versus the shitty manufacturer that went under and hosed everybody. I mean, I totally understand the efficiency of the direct sale from the manufacturer's perspective, but if they want to do that, then it's sort of, to me, I don't care for people having their foot in both ponds. Like, either you want to use distributors and offload all of that tech support and everything, or you don't, and in which case you need to have a very robust ability to help all the people buying directly from you. And they'll make more money in the latter model if they want to go to the trouble of staffing up for it. But no one ever wants to do that part. So it's like that's why I think so many turn to the turn to the distributor network. But but I think in their case, when they start doing moves like this, to me as an outsider, it looks like they are so struggling for profitability that they're looking for whatever few extra hundred dollars or whatever that they think they can get by cutting out the middleman. As they call it, got cut out the middleman.
    39:20
    Yeah. And that's what I think that this language, it allows them to technically keep their middleman, but they're trying to steer everyone who's still on the fence to it, to goose sales here. Yeah, I don't, I knew that this is just how business works. Whenever I mean whenever we get to the point where manufacturers feel a little more tight than they want to, the first place that they're going to probably look is the blame game. I could see the argument for Pinball Brothers saying, well, we wouldn't have had to do this had dealers sold the units that we wanted them to sell. I see that argument. My argument would be, I'm not so sure it's the inability of the dealers, more so maybe the presentation of the product, the product itself, etc. Well, but I mean, from their perspective, the sales aren't happening. So in theory, if you were better, you could make you could even sell a turd.
    40:20
    But you're failing to. Sometimes we don't trust selling turds. I mean, there's multiple facets to the die that we're casting here. The last communication I had with Pinball Brothers was because prior to this coming out, I was told mid-August we should get our first bundle shipped.
    40:41
    Then they came out with this over the last week or so, and I was messaging management there and saying, hey, what does this mean? So they clarified all of that. And then my last question was, okay, now that I'm purchasing direct from the U.S. hub instead of Sweden, is this going to alter the estimates that you gave me for the first shipment, which you said were two weeks ago? No response.
    41:09
    So, yay business. I don't know. Some of these manufacturers get squirrely and just the way it is. That's why if there was a complex luxury item like this, I mean, I'm a dealer, so of course I'm going to say it, but I think you would probably want an extra person in your corner. But maybe not. Order direct. I don't care.
    41:34
    Speaking of companies that are squirrely, American Pinball. Hedgestone, RIP, question mark? Rip. Are they dead? Only mostly dead. There are rumblings of them forfeiting their trademark company name, American Pinball. I saw a screen grab of it. Wow. Yeah, I saw it on NAP Arcade. I think that's where I saw it too. Yeah. And some insinuations from media outlets that they're done. There will be no Cuphead, or should I say Cup Dead?
    42:11
    Ha! All I had to do was change one letter. I know, but it's done. Just the bottom of a letter too. Just a little curl.
    42:22
    It's clever. So we may not see Cuphead anymore even though people have played it and seen it. We may not hear of American Pinball anymore. Are they going to sell the rights to that company? It looks like maybe things in their emails now say powered by Orbit Games.
    42:39
    And then there's like this little, what are we going to call him? Are we going to call him Orbi? It's like a robot. Yeah, powered by Orbit Games. It is an astronaut that's doing this.
    42:53
    It's from GTF. Leftover art. So what do we make of this, Dennis? If I could quote Curly Bill from Tombstone, well, bye.
    43:13
    I like that quote. They're having a Labor Day blowout sale right now. They always have a sale. All they do now are sales. I mean, I'm sorry. Why do you even put this in here? Are they the Kohl's of pinball distribution?
    43:29
    Everything is always on sale all the time. The furniture store that has gone out of business. Yes, they are Benchmark or Dan's Mattresses. The mattress king. Funt up. Remember fun's up? Shutting her down. Time to get out of this game. Shutting her down. They have been for over a year now doing incessant sales. They have a Valentine's Day sale. Like, everything's always on sale. As soon as Labor Day is passed, there will be the Halloween sale. The pumpkin spice sale. The pumpkin spice. Pumpkin. I can already imagine the ad. They don't have anyone to put it together, but where it's like, you know, Nothing goes quite like pumpkin spice and barbecue. Buy yours today. 2,000 off. Be a suburban mom sipping barbecue sauce. Yes.
    44:23
    That's fantastic. With a picture of a hot rod on the cup. Barbecue. They'll change the foam to barbecue color. Looking like she's sipping a cup of suey, but... Suey! But, I mean, anyway, I don't... Not to... I mean, the sales are a little frequent, is all I'm saying, but... I think the signature of GTFs are down to like... This... In the 7,000. But is this in any way surprising? I know people, there have been some people that have been insistent, well, no, Cuphead's right there. They just need to get across the finish line. But I had been hearing other rumblings that while Cuphead's design was done, that the code wasn't and that it wasn't remotely close to being done. And this was several months ago, around the time when David Fix left. And so it's like they don't have anyone to drag anything across the finish line. And then there, of course, was the rumor. And again, it was just a rumor that they had, you know, Amtron from on high, which said, we ain't doing any more games until we sell out of the stuff that's still in our own warehouse. And it's like, well, that ain't ever going to happen. So that's what all these sales have felt like to me as an attempt to just liquidate what because the sales, they're not minor sales. These are actually pretty significant cuts to the games. Yeah. Yeah, they absolutely are. And it does feel like that. It feels like they're selling off all their games. And I think the best thing for them and what they probably are doing, they're selling everything off. We probably won't see Cuphead. These are just guesses for me. I have no clue. We won't see a Cuphead and they will contract manufacturer stuff or assist in the manufacturing process for companies. Not just Pinball, most likely non-Pinball arcade stuff. We see them doing that already for some arcade outlets. Didn't they have a Flying Dutchman thing they showed off years and years ago where they clearly wanted to do more than just... Ironically enough, it didn't get off the ground. It did not take flight. No. They might do little things like that here and there. I think for Amtron, this is the right decision to go into contract manufacturing.
    46:36
    Here's the thing. They don't have the creative. They still have the creative aspect of this stuff. They don't. The thing that always felt, and it's a weird, because who knows, I didn't talk to all these individuals behind everything, And they clearly brought in some pinball people, but it always felt to me like it was, you know, in so many instances, like even you talk about like Jersey Jack and getting bailed out by billionaires, the billionaires who bailed them out were really into pinball.
    47:05
    Amtron didn't ever feel to me like they really cared about pinball. It was they were making electronic circuit boards and then realized pinball was buying a bunch of these things. And they were like, hey, maybe we could get into this space. It would make sense for us. And then maybe it was just because when they launched off the ground the idea of American Pinball, it was immediately with J-Pop. And so it's like clearly they didn't have any knowledge of the hobby whatsoever. You're starting with a guy who was in the midst of lawsuits regarding all of his Zidware stuff. So I'm just saying it felt like they didn't really know the pinball market. They brought in competent pinball people. Their first few games resonated to varying degrees. You know, I think the community gave them a lot of kudos for Houdini turning out as well as it did with the short development time that ended up happening for Joe Balser. I know some people love Oktoberfest, but nothing has been a hit. But they were respected for their build quality. Were, yeah. Just there's no point in my mind. There's really no point in continuing the American pinball experiment. Like no one, everyone at this stage is so untrusting of its survival that there if you're uncomfortable with the idea of maintaining the game without the company being in business already. There are people that I see who see the sales and they're like, I would like to get GTF, but I don't trust that I will be able to buy parts from American pinball part. Yeah, that's why we haven't been inventorying much of anything. So they're already behind that eight ball and without a success, a big hit, they'll never get in front of it. Who knows how long the license arrangement exists with Cuphead? Instead, it's like, you know, they just, they made so many, they made so many mistakes, including pre-fit, like their obsession with unlicensed themes. I know Hot Wheels had the legs taken right out from under it because of the pandemic but you know and then they went all in It felt like they blew the entire company budget on GTF They took them all out of Hot Wheels 2 But a game that deliberately campy You look at the pricing they sell those for now new versus what they were selling for at the time the decision everything I still think GTF could have worked. I think there was potential, but they leaned into the wrong things, and it was too much. I feel like you saw the same behavior from GTF in barbecue. It was just more grounded in barbecue, but also more because it was so grounded, it was more frustrating in all of its failure. But I mean, I'm still, Zach, I'm still hung up with this. Let's have a game that the upper end folds into a tank because people just love to constantly fold their games when they're done playing them. Let's do a classic sci-fi 50s, but deliberately campy. But we're going to make it so campy that you'll actually see the actors reading the cue cards. And then we're also going to just drop it all with dubstep, which has nothing to do with the 50s, and have a single ramp game, which has not been popular since Avatar, the first Avatar from Stern. So I'm just like every decision they made. But couldn't you argue that – here's one of the glaring issues I see. They bring in seasoned veterans of the pinball industry, but they're super seasoned. And what do we know about some piece of meat that's super seasoned, right? And then they brought in, so not of current times. And then they also brought in the other subset of people who were super new to the industry. What do we know about meat that's uncooked? They didn't have anything in between. I mean, nobody that – no current people. It was people that were kind of out of touch that knew the 80s and 90s of Pinball and people that were so new that – and they were great thinkers and they could potentially be the new face of this company, but they're not there yet. They needed management in between that knew how to organize and say no when they should say no and yes when they should say yes. I do think you have a fair point there. I mean, it's tough to say because, you know, you kind of get what you get in some regards. I think the biggest issue kind of prefix post fix was Balser understood the manufacturing side. And after he left, I felt like they didn't really have a lot of people who understood manufacturing. Now, they had some engineers who were experienced, but, you know, when your head or your VP or whatever the title is doesn't know the manufacturing side And is also coming in with some very outdated philosophies about licenses and what games will sell and still thinking like this is, as you noted, the 80s or 90s and that arcades are your audience. Like just all the strategies were like not necessarily the worst choices, but they were not good choices. Like, well, we'll just we'll just get our game at a, you know, at 50 shows a year and then people will fall in love with it. And I was like, that'll work with like a TNA, but that's where success is defined with 550 sales. Like it's not – Didn't they rumor to have the He-Man license and messed that up? Yeah, there was some stories that they had had that and then let it go and it was like – and even Hot Wheels. Like I still shake my head at that one, Zach, because it's like – it was – again, it was like someone who was reading about licenses and love for licenses And they were like looking at it all on paper and didn't know in practice what any of it meant. And they were like, oh, Hot Wheels. Everyone knows those from when they were a kid. It's like, yes. And there's no story with it. It's just cars. It's not there, but we don't know. There's not. Yeah. That that idea that there's like this this nostalgic view for playing with Hot Wheels. It's not the same as like remembering watching Goonies. It's not the same. There's no story there. I mean, I get that Hot Wheels now has a story because as a YouTube show. But no adults know that.
    53:48
    The other thing is that they were going to, like if they do this contract manufacture, I think it's probably the best idea for them. And they can sprinkle in their own little products here and there if they want to. The problem is their build quality as of late, everybody's like, oh, they're known for their build quality. They should do that. They were. I'm a little hesitant on that. Like there's a reason that, like you were saying, why don't I inventory games as a dealer more? Well, because I know that I'm really good at my job and if something comes up on a game, if it's like worst case scenario, I'll refund the game or I'll swap them for a brand new one. And if I inventory too many of those games and then they no longer support them, who's going to be left supporting them? Now, a lot of dealers would be like, hey, sorry, tough shit. Like they don't support the games. They don't support games. What do you want me to do about it? But me as a dealer, I know that I take care of those people. And to me, that looks like a very, very big risk, huge risk that I, frankly, there's a couple of manufacturers that right now, I don't want to take that risk anymore. I'll sell their product if the customer wants it. I'll support that product, but I don't want to take too big of a bite because I'm afraid I'll choke. And I don't think that manufacturer is going to be there to Heimlich that bad food that's lodged into my throat. Now this is surprising to me, but I have been forecasting American Pinball going out of business for years now. Here's the other issue I'm having.
    55:19
    And their reason, I guess I can, I'll say it, I don't care. They were like giving us updates on games, what's in stock, what's online and all of that. They were like, look, I know we retired Oktoberfest, but hear us out. Oh no. Did they un-retire it? They un-retire it. Well, not officially. If we can get enough interest. I'm guessing I'm back. Give me a beer. We'll be guessing I'm back. That's right. Oh, look at the little wiener dog. I guess he's like 15 years old. He's barely getting up them steps. Look at the little beagle. He gets shot. So if they get enough interest, we've got the parts. Maybe we make one more run at this guy. Oh, you've already retired it. How many of those barrels do they have lying around? How many autos do you have?
    56:19
    Wow. I was waiting for the 10th anniversary Octoberfest. So they're going to be like, limited to 100 because that's how many of the inappropriate monkey black glasses we have. And we're going to sell the controversy ones. The crab ass edition. Like, woke is dead. We're back. I'm just like clearing out every little broom closet full of crap that they have with this stuff. And you know what? Speaking of squirrely manufacturers, Pinball Brothers, did you guys read? This is your final shot at owning a predator or alien. Now, Dennis, I don't know how many fucking times they have said aliens are done. These are the last Ripley's. We're done making it. I think they sold me the quote unquote last one. And then I was like, well, it'd be cheaper if I got two to inventory for your shit. Oh, what's that? We've got two more. We've got two more that we'll ship in. I was like, oh, okay. I ended up canceling one of them because they were going to throw a tariff on me and they weren't going to support that tariff. And I was like, no, fuck that. No, I don't want I was being nice inventory your games. And now they were charging less on their website that they were charging me as their dealer. And I said, are you high? No, I'm not doing that, guys. And I said, no, just and I had already paid for it, but I'll give them credit. But I asked, I said, give me my money back or transfer it over to Predator. And they did do that. So I won't give them too hard of a time. But fuck, I don't know. Some of this is just not hard. It's just really not. They make it seem pretty hard, Zach. It's super. I've become arrogant to a degree that now when I hear people say making pinball is hard, I'm like, I mean, I think it is. But it's really hard for some of these people. Maybe it's not quite as hard.
    58:26
    I still, even post Deep Root, Zach, I still push a little bit on that. It's manufacturing. People build more complex things than pinball machines in this country. I think the problem is that you have a lot of people that just get in without having any sense whatsoever about what they're getting into, and then they do their stuff, and then they piss off and go make hydrofoils. Yeah, I think it's very hard. I think that the margins are just not there from a large base manufacturing niche kind of thing. It's reliance upon too many parts dealers. It is hard. But some of these people are just not good at what they do. So it's going to make it hard.
    59:14
    Yeah, no, I agree with that. Jersey Jack Pinball. Speaking of hard, hey, can you tell me what I'm going to get my Harry Potter?
    59:23
    That company. What about them? It's just still a mess. Well, they lost Ken, and I think that he was their shipwright who was keeping him straight. And now they're adrift, lost at sea. They didn't utilize Kinn. We've never even talked about that publicly. No, it's been a dark secret.
    59:43
    They had gold there, Jerry, and they didn't mine it. They didn't mine it. That's their loss. But Jersey Jack Pinball, they have still the hottest pinball machine on the market. People are loving how Harry Potter plays. They're still selling extremely well. Still a mess with management and allocations and the communication process. They just now since we've talked last viewer, it has gotten better. I've been given some information that does make my job easier, but only to a certain extent. It still does not go beyond the expectations and the standards that I and any other buyer should have. It's like I'm trying to think of an analogy when somebody is doing really bad at something and not being fair with something. And they're like, well, yeah, but I OK. It's like somebody that needs to quit smoking. I don't know a better analogy right now, but we'll use this one. And they need to quit smoking because they're killing themselves and they're killing everybody around. They're blowing smoke in the fat in their fat baby's faces. And they they come back and they're like, look, I know Patrick. Swayzean 40 a day. But, dude, I'm down to 10. I'm not smoking 40 a day. I'm only smoking 10. What do you want from me? It's like, I just want you to stop blowing smoke in the fat child's face. That's all I'm asking. Is that too much to ask, Dennis? Probably not. Yeah, so the frustrating part is here's where I'm at right now, a little sausage making for people. And we talked about this on our Patreon last week titled Dark Tales of Pinball Distributor. We talked about, and you guys have to go listen to that, patreon.com slash the pinball show. We talked about the ends and that. People really like that, didn't they? I was surprised at how interested they were. But I guess I hear it so often from you that that's why I lose touch. You've seen all the giblets of the sausage. I've seen a lot of the... You're a vegetarian. I can't help it with the little tiny hand. It's full of the penises and the vaginas. Darnies. Take my baby hand. I'm sorry. Scary Movie 2, not the first one. That's the second one. It's the second one. It's the best one because of the tiny hand. It's just going to... Stop the shit out of it. Stop it.
    62:17
    Hiya Latha! I forgot Hiya Latha. He takes his mole off. Bam! I wonder how ad-libbed that scene was. Chris Elliott is the best. Oh, he's so good. Okay, where was... Did you ever see the movie Cabin Boy? Yeah.
    62:43
    So long. It's so long. I'm a fancy ponce law. Oh my God. Sorry. All right. Okay. Back to the. All right. So Jersey Jack, sausage making. Thank you. At this point, like it's tough because I would like to, as a dealer, I'd like to inventory Harry Potters. Right. So put yourself in my shoes. I'd like to inventory some Harry Potters. I would like to extend my order even greater than it is now.
    63:18
    But I'm having a hard time doing that because if I were to extend my order, I would like to know how that works. If I extend my order, does that then go into the lineup of what my current order is amongst all the other orders? Does it go at the end of the order? I would kind of think it would go at the end of the back orders currently. Let's say I bought 10 Harry Potters. And I said, where are they going to go? And they're going to say, well, all the existing orange we have right now, they'll go with the back of that. So that could be probably like, I don't know, winter, spring. I would say right now they probably have enough to build throughout the winter, maybe into the spring. So your 10 go at the back of that, Zach. All right.
    64:00
    So what if Pete down the road orders one? Does that go after my 10? I don't think so. Okay. Isn't that something I should be able to ask?
    64:12
    I would think you wouldn't even need to ask that. I wouldn't need to. I do, based on history. Lord knows I do. So I ask that and I don't get an answer. I'm not sure. Don't know what to tell you. It's a very strange sausage. It's a calculated measurement of when do other dealers have stuff in stock? Because they messed up that hell allocation thing too. So maybe other dealers are going to have some in stock before I will. Maybe I will before they do. It's a damn mess. At what point do you allow – because I'm thinking to myself, I don't want this to go on too long because then people are one out because they see the new shiny stuff. Between now and when they're done making Harry Potters, even at this rate, there's likely 10 or more pinball machines that will have released. So as a dealer, I got to think to myself, how many of these people are going to want out of these orders? And they're non-changeable. They're non-refundable. But if you tell people no and you keep their money because you're actually going to keep my money, otherwise I'd just be losing like $2,500. I can't afford to do that. Then they're likely going to be angry at you and they're not going to want to order from you in the future. So if I make them mad on Harry Potter, I'm compromising my brand and my business on future games. Non-JJP games. There's a new Stern game coming out in a week or two. There's a new Stern fall game coming out. There's a Barrels of Fun game coming out. There's a Spooky game coming out. CGC's making games. Stern's going to have another game in January and then a follow-up Cornerstone in probably March or April. And the hits keep coming. Another remake. So at what point do I tell some of these people that are on our Harry Potters, like, maybe we allow you to switch your deposit from Harry Potter to something else? Because I know when that's coming. I can calculate that. I'm not giving an interest-free loan to JJP to sit on for eight months.
    66:15
    These are all big questions that I have. When do you cut off orders? Do you just keep ordering? Do I just keep ordering into eternity? Do you think you're going to be on to keep taking orders on Harry Potter when you cut those off and say, I don't even know when we'd get them?
    66:31
    It's like this balancing act that I'm doing right now because there's no, in my opinion, no organization for these orders. Certainly no prioritization or, hey, this person's buying a lot. That means a lot to us versus the person's only buying a couple. But still a mess. Sorry for the rant. That's the stress I've been dealing with.
    66:59
    I'm hearing continued rumblings of Sonic the Hedgehog as the next J.J.P. game. That's what media are talking about. I'm seeing it in articles. I'm seeing it on podcasts. Steve Ritchie designing Sonic the Hedgehog. We've we've talked about that as a possibility in the past. Sure, and of course there's always been the American pinball rant that David Fix had a while ago where it was like, well, we wanted to get Sonic, but another company stole it from us and it wasn't Stern.
    67:30
    So, I still think Top Gun would be a better build for Steve, especially if it's his last game, than doing Sonic. Last game? There's been some rumblings. Well. There's a designer there leaving soon, and he would be the most logical given he's into retirement age already. Oh, yeah. Well into that. I know Steve Ritchie's next game is a good one. I know that. Not that I've seen anything, but people are going to be very happy with Steve Ritchie's next game. Not only the license, but the game itself. It's a Jersey Jack. They're doing well. They're doing very well right now. They are trending in the right direction. And if you're interested in getting on that list, let us know at Flippin Out Pinball. Email myself or Ken or Greg.
    68:21
    Spooky Pinball. Right now, they're shipping around Game 390 for Evil Dead. So they're producing at a high rate right now. Really coming in quick. There's a shotgun handle mod. I don't know if you've seen this. They announced an official mod or an accessory from Spooky Pinball. $449 for a die-cast metal and real wood handle for the plunge, the automatic plunge. It's fucking cool. I shit on mods last week because some of them are just atrocious and they actually anger me. I shouldn't be angered by 3D printed filament, but I am.
    69:04
    When I smell the burning of plastics when I turn on my game, that's a problem. But this is not that. This is actually a freaking awesome mod. And, yeah, the only thing that sucks is I can't sell them. They're doing it just direct.
    69:21
    It wised up. It's easy to support a shotgun handle mod. I think the bomb in that's probably pretty expensive.
    69:30
    The bug scream and stream. Oh, before I talk about that, shout out to Gonzo's Pinball Flipperama. My Enzo over there interviewed Bug on their YouTube channel. And I got to say, that was a damn good interview. That was very – interviews sometimes are hard to sit through, the whole thing. Not this one. It was fantastic. It was good. I skip – actually skip a lot of interviews at this point. Lately, I have too. Yeah, but not – this one, I did my due diligence to start it to see what they – no, it was a good one. So nicely done. Enzo. What does Enzo always say? The game's a slap. Isn't that what the kids say? They slap. I'm old. I don't.
    70:13
    The Bugs Scream and Stream. This Wednesday, they may have some special guests. Wednesday night. Up against Joel's stream? Thursday. Thursday? No, Wednesday. Shit. When is that?
    70:28
    Oh, Joel. Bugs are going to take you out. No, it's not Wednesday. Shit. Man, we'll have to figure that out. Because I thought basically I'm going to be up there. Greg's going to be up there. We're going to be up there. Oh, you're competing against Joel too? Oh, my God. It's like competing against my own sales now. Oh, my God. Here, let me do my impression of Zach. I'm dripping with arrogance, and I'm the greatest distributor that has ever lived. And every move I do is smart, and that is why I'm taking out my own channel stream.
    71:02
    My name is Zach. By this world, I can take you out. I'm not the best. Well, I guess that's subjective.
    71:11
    All right. What are we going to give people exclusively this week? The people are asking. We've got to give them what they want. They've been asking. The numbers came in hot and heavy last week. They liked the Tales, the Dark Tales, the dankest of Tales, the pinball distributor. We talk inside Pinball. So I think we get maybe we give them a little bit more horror as we continue to peel back the hobby sausage in the dark tales of a pinball dealer. Part two. Part D. I just got to give them more. I had there was a what do we do that one? We got a lot of great feedback on that one like horror stories with customers. Yeah, you had one where the customer was shipping a game, like they were really slow to ship the game back and it came back in maybe less than new condition. Like rolled it down a hill after playing an entire weekend. That was one you shared with them a while ago. Oh my gosh, people loved that. And they were appalled. They couldn't believe that there are humans out there that do what they do. But if you thought that one was bad, this one may take the cake. May take the cake. Let them eat cake. Is it real? Is it cake or lie? I don't know. There you go. Portal reference. Oh, my gosh. It feels like we went back into time for that game. Is that still a game? Yeah, that was. Oh, OK. There's been so much stuff this year. It's easy to forget that that was the hotness at TPF. It was to a lot of people at one TPF. Are they building them yet? I thought so, but I don't follow. I don't know. But yeah, you guys have to listen to this. We're going to talk about some. And as a reminder, if you guys like the dankest of tales of a pinball dealer, all you've got to do is message us on the Patreon some questions. If you want to hear the answers to a question that you have about pinball distribution or sales or behind the curtain kind of stuff, ask and I will answer everything that I can. And I'll probably get in trouble for some of it, too. So here's your chance. And then we'll do some of that on Patreon. Dennis, how can people sign up if they want to hear all of this stuff? Oh, I think they can go to patreon.com slash the pinball show. Absolutely. And you get all extra goodies as well, like a private-ish Discord channel. You get some swag and stuff. You might even get a nickname if you're high enough up the list. We also have a meeting, a happy hour hangout coming up. We had to alter the schedule a little bit. It's going to be Monday, the 25th. Yes. So probably the day this comes out. Yeah, so tonight potentially 8 p.m. so come check it out. We also have to thank some people. We would be remiss if we did not thank goats.
    74:01
    The only favorite people ever. Like Rodney, him's a bobcat. I don't know what we would do without Rodney. Oh, shoot that fucker! We'd probably just thank Rob.
    74:13
    Thanks Rob. The panther. Snarly. Thank you so much, Rob, for the continued support. What about Mr. Frank? And that's Mr. Falcon to you.
    74:27
    And Charlie. Thank you, Charlie. Ding dong and thank you. What wonderful wonderful bells you have Big bells You got a nice set of bells there I not going to lie William you our dude
    74:45
    Never get there. Thank you for the continued support. William, I'm trying to think. William traded in some stuff.
    74:55
    What's William trading in? He just needs to add another addition. I think he's trading in a couple of LEs maybe. He's prepping. He knows what's coming. He's a screaming goat. Come on. They know all. He knows what's coming and he's making some room. How about that? One of our newest members, Adam, thank you so much for the support. Adam, you getting any sleep there, bud? Fasha! Get the coffee out. You are like Papa! I do love coffee.
    75:28
    That's so good. It almost makes me want to make our next member Fat Bastard. But no, that wouldn't be too kind. And Dennis, we kind of teased it earlier on, and we're having a tough time just keeping a straight face here. But we do have a new Screaming Goat level member. And oh, man, this is there's been some time. We've wanted this for so long and we have the opportunity now to name our newest Screaming Goat Club member here at the Pinball Show. We do first, before we announce your nickname, we want to thank you. Truly thank you, Brian, for coming and joining our group. Hell yeah. Now, Brian's already utilized messaging us privately. Yep. He's been well informed. Mm-hmm. Well informed. We even give them guesses if we don't know the answer. Like, here's what we think. Don't know.
    76:28
    There are so many things that we could have nicknamed old Brian. I don't want to say which ones because we were waffling.
    76:37
    And then at the last, right before we started recording, we felt good about something. And we've been wanting to add this for a while. So Brian from here on out will be known simply as the pinball show caretaker. I'm the caretaker. Welcome aboard Brian.
    77:01
    May I ask which one your strong hand is? I better use my strong hand. I cook it with all the giblets, the penises and the ginies. Never have I wanted to add that one so much. Bam! That just kicks it up a little bit. We've had the screaming pug that we were, but there's nothing like that. Kaya, take us. I like when he gets into that tit and tat back and forth with the comb over guy, the handicapped guy with the wheelchair. I'm just going to walk away. Walk. If you guys have not seen Scary Movie 2, do yourself a favor. Please do yourself a favor. It's almost as good as Kung Pao.
    77:48
    So Brian, whether you like it or not, buddy, you're the caretaker with your cute little hand. I hope you can make some mashed taties and some turkey for Thanksgiving because it's coming up. We've got a couple months to prepare, but we're expecting nothing but aces over there. I'm making that turkey and your pie.
    78:11
    Bye, Jeremy. All right. Okay. Reminder. Yeah. Happy our hands. Nice. Oh, Ansel. That'll do it. It's that time. You hear it. Does everybody hear it? Uh-huh. The one. The only. It's none other than PINBALL MARKETRANCE!
    78:35
    You feel that one? I like your style, dude. Got my throwing hand out for it. My top hand's upset. Basha! Probably peeked that mic out too much. Use your other hand. There's a lot of clipping now. Your edit's going to be bad. It's okay. Training up this week is quite notably.
    79:00
    August is usually like the most tame month of the pinball year for new products and for things like that. And it has shown. Sales have been down in August. They have been. But what is ramping up and what is very much trending up, a lot of the messages I'm receiving right now is interest in not what's out now, but what's to come. Trending up is the next spooky pinball machine and the next Stern pinball machine. Those are, that's what everybody's talking about. That's all they ever talk about.
    79:32
    More so some months than others, but August, it's heating up for that September release of the next Stern. And people are already talking about whether or not that next week is going to sell out. This is August and they're talking about a sell out of a November game. What?
    79:48
    Get out of town. I think it's going to sell out now. I don't know. It's pretty good. So trending up are what's coming. Do you think? Oh, I know the answer, so I can't answer. But do you think we see anything new between now and November from another manufacturer? Other manufacturer than who? Than Stern and Spooky.
    80:20
    From now to Expo, do you think we see anybody else release a new game? No. It's for the video people. So, get a watch. All's trending up this week is the baby. It's not that fat baby. It might be a fat baby. I don't know.
    80:41
    Trending up is fat children in general. I love them. But what I love more is what happened, was it last week? Maybe it was last week before. We were having our flipping out stream on YouTube. Wednesday night. Joel and Jared. They were playing Jurassic Park. I don't know how we got into it, but one of the chat people, Dennis, made some kind of inference that their spouse was about to have a baby or something. We're like, oh, congratulations.
    81:13
    And then they mentioned, like, dude was like, no, like, I'm in the delivery room right now, and my wife is going to be having a baby. And we're like, why are you watching a pinball stream when your wife is like, what are you doing? And it's like, oh, it's OK. And we thought, damn, that is quite odd where all people watch pinball content. So I was just, you know, being who I am. And I said, I tell you what, I'm a giver, you know, coin givers, what they call me. And I thought, what better than to give somebody a nice giveaway in chat if they can come up with some weird places in which or situations that they are watching our live content or even our content in general. So I said, look, I'm going to give one of the best giveaways ever. If somebody ever is in a situation where they're having a child and they shoot a picture of themselves watching in the delivery room, watching a flipping out stream or video or anything. And damned if within five minutes I got a ding on my phone and I look at it, Dennis, and it was a picture of the guy and his wife, his wife laying on the delivery table with the phone showing the live stream. They were watching as that child. And the baby crowning. Yep. It was a pointer. And they were showing all of it. Oh, my gosh. A little tear. Ran down my cheeks. So you know what I did? Fucking gave him a topper. That's right. Gave him a topper. The kiss topper? Not the kiss one. Maybe. Of course not. You're too busy signing up $4,000. But I didn't give him a cheap expression lighting topper. I went total Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles topper. Like a $1,000 topper. Free of charge for being so awesome and sending us that picture. So you never know what we're going to give away over at the Flippin' Out streaming channel. YouTube.com slash Flippin' Out Pinball. Do it. So training up is that couple because how awesome was that? Man, if you guys want free cool shit, do cool shit and you'll get it. Training down though, unfortunately.
    83:43
    I wonder if anybody would send... Oh, that's too graphic. I can't say that out loud. You think we could get a mid-coitus picture of watching the stream?
    83:55
    I think Joel might quit if that happened. Maybe animal coitus. Is that fair enough? Like your dog just going to town on a pillow? If you get that and the little snapshot of the stream by them when that's happening, you'll get a giveaway, baby. You're going to be a good one.
    84:17
    Poor Dennis. I wish people could watch this. They are watching a lot of them. Trending down this week. I gotta do it. I'm sorry. Those squirrely manufacturers and their select pinball distribution channels. Yeah, they're Justice League of pinball dealers. It's Pinball Brothers. Been a little squirrely. Not communicating the best. Changing terms of something mid-stream. Come on, man. I've got to trend them down, right? It's only fair.
    84:49
    Still love you. I'm still waiting to get to the chopper. But until you lose my games, get to the fix. I can't believe they've sold 500 of those already. There's only 150 left. I promise. Scouts on the... They advertised the red polo. Like, what the hell, man? I guess they can still show it, just not his head.
    85:17
    Can they show his bicep? Yeah, he probably doesn't have a light disclaim to the shirt. All's trending down is retired games that become unretired. What are you doing? Is this an Oktoberfest reference? We already retired Alien in Oktoberfest. Don't go back to the well, Timmy. That dog don't hunt. It's Lassie. She's got rabies. You gotta take her out back. And shoot her.
    85:47
    She's dead. We've got a new dog. We're calling it Orbit. That's an ugly fucking dog, too. Let me tell you.
    86:02
    Shit. Have you seen the new Superman? No. Turning down Superman. What are people seeing in this movie? Man. Not a good movie. Nope, not a good movie. It was like, I don't know, like taking Superman and thinking that they were going to give it the Guardians treatment. And it wasn't that. I don't want my Superman like Star-Lord. I want my Star-Lord edgy and sexy. I don't want Superman saving squirrels. Like, we're good. I don't need any of that. And the bowl cut guy, not funny. Not good. I'll give Peacemaker Season 2 a chance. Also trending down this week is lowballers. I don't know what it is with these people lately.
    86:48
    Look, there's always been lowballers, Zach. It is bad right now. And they get mad if you tell them, no, we're not interested. When somebody says or best offer, Dennis, it's like a percentage of what's acceptable as a range of what that offer might be. If I'm selling something for $7,000, why would I sell it for $5,000? Why are you wasting your time? They might think that you're saying or best offer means if their offer is in fact the best one you get, you will accept it. Really? Mm-hmm. They're very literal, these low ballers, very literal. So I feel bad when I have to explain to people, okay, so if I'm selling something for $7,000 and you offer $5,000, before just losing $2,000, what I'd probably do is I'd probably in four to six days reduce it $200. And then I'd only be at $200. And if it doesn't sell over a week or two, I'd probably reduce another $100. That's typically what I do. Why would anybody ever be like, yeah, I'll take $2,000. And then they get the balls to be like, it does include shipping too, right?
    88:05
    Why not? Let's just include it all. Air freight and terror. All for one rolled together, friends. Yes, that's right. That's what we want. That's what we've been taught to expect. The Dutch taught us this. I just don't know what's wrong with people. They just started looking for a deal in these trying times. Markets dead. Sell your dead game.
    88:31
    Speaking of dead, some of these mods. We're coming back to it. Trending down are more shit. Mods. People are asking for it. I'm going to give it to you. An example of something I experienced this last week on my own game. It was my own beautiful creature from the Black Lagoon. Move your car. I've got my movie or call. Can I have a kiss? Maybe.
    88:58
    It's such a weird game, but I love it. But I have this restored one. So beautiful. I love this game. I just basically like the nostalgia of it more than the gameplay or anything. If I get the pin sound, that's a great mod. And it's got all the old-timey, one, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, right? It's got the 50, like, it, I love it. It's before my time, but I love it. But there was a mod that stopped working on it. It was the holomod, SP mod thing. It replaces the hologram creature with the screen, the LCD screen. But it's not the, oh, there was one, but it's not the one. It's like the secondary one. Anyway. I've heard of it. It's the LCD screen one, right? And it's by holomods. It's not by the Mike D. It's not the Mike D one. It's the other one. Which is fine. It was a cool mod. So this is a quasi-hading on this mod, but it's just, if shit's not easy to set up or configure to troubleshoot, get that shit out of here. You shouldn't be able to sell products if you have to be a coder just to get this thing up and running. The thing was working fine, I moved the game, and now it doesn't work, right? So then you go troubleshoot all this shit, all right, maybe it's a bad HDMI cable, check that. Maybe it's a bad this, I checked that, or monitor, I checked that. Maybe it's a mis-pinned connection or something, checked all that, all that's working out. So I basically traced it back to it's either a bad Raspberry Pi as we were talking about because those things do get very hot. That's like 50 bucks to replace 40, 30 bucks, whatever. I can try that. But also I figured like the firmware, maybe it's like a corrupt file or something, just needs the SD card. I need to re-burn the SD card, right? Should be a simple process. You download the little code and you guys know me. I don't like doing the whole code thing. Anyway, you should be able to just download the code, put it on an SD card, re-put it back in and should be tried.
    90:50
    No, no, no, no. Can't do that. First off, you got to translate the damn bad English and all of this stuff. And then once you translate the bad English, it's like, no, we can't give you the up or here's the updated firmware. I download that. Then you got to win RART, try doing that in the Mac and be happy afterwards. So then you got to download another program, do that, allow it to do that. I figured all this shit out, download it all. Then I'm reading through it. Okay, how do I get this to this? It won't let me open it because it's locked. I'm like, why do you have this locked with a password? What? Why? What the fuck is the reason? You have like a five-year-old mod that nobody buys anymore. Why is it password protected and locked? Maybe it's in the read me files. Nope. Go on the forum. How do I unlock this fucking thing? And the person's like, contact me. Oh, not this guy. Like not a guy that you have to contact every time you want fucking permission to use a thing that I paid money for. Fuck. So I email this guy and hoping because he's overseas, hoping I can get a good response time. He does get back with me. He's like, what seems to be the problem? I said, well, in the per my last email, I just need a fucking password so that I can try to reburn this thing. His response explained to me a little bit about what's going wrong so I can understand. I'm like, he's just trying to help. I said at this point, I hate your mod. I want to burn your fucking mod. I just need a password because for some god awful reason, you password protected this whole thing. So can I just, is there any way I can get that password? If not, let's rip the fucking thing out. I'll be done with it anyway. I don't care. Then he comes back. I'm simply trying to help you. Can you tell me what the, and I'm like, all right, that's the password. Password's piece the fuck out. This thing's getting ripped out of my damn game and I'll buy something else. These mods, people. What are you, the fucking gatekeeper of mods? No. Just, if I'm spending $500 to $800 on something, can I plug it in without having to do electrical engineering or programming? Please, just.
    92:50
    Deal of the week this week, Star Wars Comic Home Edition. We got in on trade. Buy, buy, buy. Couldn't sell it at $42, so I slashed it to $4,000. Couldn't sell it at that, so I'll take another $500 off. $34.99. Just get rid of this damn thing. It's like new condition. Shit. Pinball bounty? I want something restored and beautiful without God-forsaken mods on them that need passwords that you have to email somebody overseas just to get to work.
    93:16
    I hope it's a raspberry pie. What are the odds that it will be? I don't know. And as always, I'm just here to report the facts and just telling you all the truth. I don't want you hurt. I don't want you harmed. If you get retired, I don't want to pull you out of retirement. Numbers don't lie. Neither do I on Pinball Market Tramp.
    93:37
    That's right. Where can people catch you? You can always email the collectivegamerspodcast at gmail.com. Or you can reach out to the pinballshow at gmail.com. Email us there as well. Just gmail.com.
    93:50
    Sorry, the way you said it. The pinballshow at gmail.com. And then all the socials too. Please follow like Facebook, but honestly YouTube at this point, you got to watch us on YouTube. We got a lot more views on the YouTube. We need more subscribers on YouTube though. That's what we need. Patreon.com slash the pinball show for all the goods, TikToks, Instagrams, all of that. Straight down the middle of video series where we got some real cool stuff coming up between now and the end of the year. A lot of really cool stuff, multiple cool stuff. So follow us on YouTube and the socials. The sponsor of this show is proudly Flippin' Out Pinball. When I buy my pinball, should I buy from Flippin' Out? From toppers or place videos, I've got it figured out. Flippin' Out, figured out. When I make a pinball, I make Flippin' Out. Flippin' Out, figured out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flippin' Out. Flippin' Out, we've got a product showcase. I should just make it, if you've got a Harry Potter in order and you want the new shiny stern, You want to translate? I'm not going to do that. It's still non-changeable? Question mark.
    95:03
    Don't make it enigmatic about what you're doing with your deposits. Well, I'll join the club of everybody else. Oh, you buy a product? When do I get it? I don't know. Let me see. This is my magic eight ball. Time will tell, but not today. Sorry, buy yourself a Harry Potter. It's a damn great game. It's so good. It really is unbelievable. King Kong, the trending up game. Buy that. Jaws, Dune. Get yourself a Dune. Don't you like sand, Dennis? Pretty sure you like sand. It's gritty and it gets everywhere. It's a sandworm thing, I guess. Wow.
    95:50
    2025. Pre-owned games. Buy yourself a pre-owned game. Yeah. Flipping out Facebook page for all of those. I think I've got four or five coming in this week. So get one of them. I listed my Fathom Revisited. Oh. Yeah. It's got the custom Flipping Out logo on the apron, but I also have a replacement apron so you can have that. And this big old, we ran out of money because we do shit like this where they printed off big old plaque and stuff. Commemorative plaque. It's just a stain for me. Every time I walk in our showroom and I see that thing, I'm like, man, fuck you. Fuck you. So hard. And I just want it gone. So I have a price to go. Please, somebody buy that thing. It's beautiful and awesome. It's just, you know, I got thrown out with the bathwater on that. So no matter how hot she is or how fat her baby is, she's dead to me. So games, accessories, purchase from us. We would really appreciate that. Truly appreciate that. And I promise we'll give you the best service, the best support in the business. So it's kind of a no-brainer.
    96:59
    All right. What else? Oh, flipping out media. Joel is going to be streaming that Cactus Canyon remake the new code this week, ideally. And he's also going to have a tutorial for Cactus Canyon, that updated remake, an installation video for that, I think we got a Jurassic Park tutorial coming. Flipping Out Pinball Podcast. If you haven't subscribed to that, go listen to it now. Subscribe. Ken and Greg over there doing Episode 6, Pinball Confessions. That one, I laughed twice out loud, and that's rare for me. But if you haven't listened to it, Dennis, yeah, you need to go listen to it. It's pretty good. People wrote in and gave their confessions that they haven't told many people. So, and some of them are really, really good.
    97:48
    Until then, Dennis, these people need to know something. Well, I think they need to come with me into a special world where sight and sound are different. A world where Oktoberfest and Alien are unretired and available for your purchase now. Please buy only in the 2025 pinball world. And always practice safe pinball. But not Cuphead. Because it's Cuphead. Cuphead! And always practice safe pinball. And if you act now, there's 150 more episodes of the Pinball Show. 150, and then we're going to retire this fat baby. Once retired, this thing's going to go up, up, up in price.
    98:35
    What price is that? You're going to be able to retire. I'm trying to do, there's this baseball card guy. Yeah, you have to go back and watch the baseball card guy doing the QVC stuff and the Beanie Baby stuff too. He's selling these Beanie Babies. I'm telling you right now, I don't even know how we've got these things. I don't even know how the beans got in there. Can you cook them? I love you guys. See ya. I just have to occasionally look into its dead lens.
    99:11
    You know this camera? Ah, it's like a doll's eye. Like a porcelain. Black and lifeless. In Haddonfield.
    99:21
    The deepest and darkest of holes. The dankest and darkest. Dankest, dankest. Yes, danky.