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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 64 - Were games better 20 years ago?!!

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 34m·analyzed·May 10, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Triple Drain covers Stern Factory visits and deep King Kong gameplay analysis.

Summary

Triple Drain hosts discuss their recent Stern Factory media event where they conducted extensive interviews with Keith Elwin, Chuck Ernst, Jeremy Packer, Gary Stern, and George Gomez, which became their most-listened-to episode. The majority of the episode focuses on King Kong pinball, debating Pro vs. Premium/LE configurations, analyzing the gong mechanic, praising the layout's shot design and flow, and emphasizing gameplay quality over theme immersion.

Key Claims

  • The Stern Factory media event episode (ep. 63) is Triple Drain Pinball Podcast most-listened-to episode ever across 64 episodes

    high confidence · Joel states: 'I would be surprised because it's easily our most listened to episode ever. And this is now we're on episode 64.'

  • King Kong Pro has identical shots to the LE/Premium versions, making it a strong value proposition

    high confidence · Joel: 'the fact that Keith designed it in a way that the pro, the shots in the layout are identical... if you're a pinball enthusiast, I think Kong pros are going to sell incredibly well'

  • King Kong log diverter was a later design choice added because the upper left flipper wasn't being fed enough

    medium confidence · Joel: 'Elwin even made a comment that initially that flipper was just floating, and they realized it wasn't being fed enough. And so it seems like that diverter was kind of a later design choice'

  • King Kong drop targets are the most important drop targets in a modern game since Avengers Infinity Quest or Rush

    medium confidence · Travis: 'I don't remember the last time that drops have really mattered this much since maybe Avengers Infinity Quest or Rush'

  • Godzilla and Jaws require Premium tier due to substantial mechanical differences that justify the cost

    high confidence · Joel: 'I do think what is in a Godzilla premium or a Jaws premium is a substantial difference worthy enough that I think you kind of got to go premium when you own those games.'

  • King Kong gong mechanic is safer to navigate once qualified and can be backhanded without kickback

    medium confidence · Travis: 'once you've qualified it, I did see that I could backhand it... It will actually just feed through. So it was safer than I was'

  • King Kong layout allows shots to flow and combo in ways not seen in recent games, creating high ball times

    high confidence · Joel: 'Our ball times were pretty high... because the layout once you find the shots it just flows so well'

Notable Quotes

  • “I would be surprised because it's easily our most listened to episode ever. And this is now we're on episode 64.”

    Joel @ ~10:00 — Confirms the Stern Factory media event episode as a major success and milestone for the podcast

  • “the fact that Keith designed it in a way that the pro, the shots in the layout are identical... if you're a pinball enthusiast, I think Kong pros are going to sell incredibly well”

    Joel @ ~25:00 — Key endorsement of King Kong Pro tier and prediction about market reception

  • “this game makes it to where you can stumble into greatness”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~65:00 — Encapsulates the philosophical appeal of King Kong's gameplay design

  • “The way that it shoots is insanely good. And if you want to save money, you're going to get that and you're going to get that same experience with a pro.”

    Joel @ ~20:00 — Articulates why King Kong Pro is viewed as exceptional value

  • “I don't remember the last time that drops have really mattered this much since maybe Avengers Infinity Quest or Rush”

    Travis @ ~55:00 — Places King Kong in historical context within modern pinball design

  • “when you play something and you start hitting the flippers you start hitting shots you just go oh yeah this is this is what pinball is”

    Joel @ ~80:00 — Describes the visceral appeal and gameplay excellence of King Kong

  • “All these releases, you could justify getting a premium over a pro a lot of the times. Then you could also go the other direction and justify why you can live with a pro and not have to worry about the premium and be perfectly happy with it.”

    Joel @ ~30:00 — Acknowledges the nuance in Pro vs Premium purchasing decisions across the Stern lineup

  • “We are two idiots with mics and we got Tom.”

    Joel — Self-deprecating humor about the podcast's format and hosts

Entities

Joel EngelberthpersonTravis MosemanpersonTompersonKeith ElwinpersonChuck ErnstpersonJeremy PackerpersonGary SternpersonGeorge Gomezperson

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Episode 63 (Stern Factory media event) achieved record listenership for Triple Drain across 64 episodes

    high · Joel explicitly states it's 'easily our most listened to episode ever'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: King Kong layout praised for shot flow, comboability, and accessibility across skill levels

    high · Joel: 'I think you step up until Godzilla... a novice can walk up... understand pretty clearly... once you find the shots, they're repeatable and consistent... the layout just flows so well'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern intentionally maintained Pro parity with Premium/LE on shot layout but differentiated with exclusive mechs (gong, spider, Kong animation)

    high · Joel: 'Keith was kind enough to not remove' key shots from Pro; 'all of that in the game is incredible'; Pro is described as 'absolutely loaded' with mechs

  • $

    market_signal: King Kong Pro tier expected to see strong sales despite lower price point due to gameplay parity and cost-consciousness among buyers

    medium · Joel: 'Kong pros are going to sell incredibly well because fine. Okay. You don't want to fork over the money for premium, but like, if you got the room, I could see this game fitting in everyone's collection.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Hosts emphasize King Kong's success stems from intuitive shot design and flow rather than theme immersion alone

    high · Joel: 'I've played plenty of games... because the layout isn't very fun, it doesn't matter how much theme immersion there is... I want something that's tactile. I want to feel it when I'm playing.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.284

0:00
We, we, we're three guys who like to talk and ball. So we came up with the cloud for a name. We're Joe and Travis Diamond Talk and Ball. And we call ourselves Triple Train, Triple Train, Triple Train. We're Triple, Triple Train. All right. Right. I have been told that apparently you want the beginning of a YouTube video or a podcast to be engaging. You want people not to click away. So being that we already played a theme song, you probably already clicked away. But if you haven't clicked away at this point, I don't really I don't care about either of your days. I don't want to catch up. I just want to dive right into I just want to dive right into the hot topics. Right. We just there's no reason for us. Hot banter. It's getting hot. Wow. Yeah.
0:54
Hot topics. Joel's golf cart caught on fire. Oh, my God. Golf cart. I got a new golf cart. I sold the old one. I got a new one, and it is excellent. Excellent. Which is a hot topic. I mean, we could really dive in there if – no, that would – yeah. Okay. So let's talk about – this is dumb. Tom, how are you doing, man? I'm good. Thanks. Thanks, Joel. You're just – Just skip over it, Travis. No, the reality is if people have listened or watched this podcast to this, you know, they know. They know what they've signed up for. I think our intros are fine. I know what Joel's referring to here, Tom, because we've talked about this. All I was referring to is I've noticed a pattern that every single podcast we have, at least recently in the past few months, is Joel apologizing for us not doing a podcast before. we just need to get you since we have our own youtube channel now joel just release like an apology video every other week between we have lives people it's it's we just don't sit in front of the camera all the time 100 and sure there there's there's enough there's enough stuff that i could understand i could understand how people do a podcast a week or even two like i could get it there's enough little stuff but the reality is if we were to if we were to talk about something once a week, I would hope our podcasts are less than 30 minutes. Otherwise, you're just repeating yourself. You're just repeating yourself. Why? That's all content creation is, Joel. It's just all of us knuckleheads repeating ourselves in different ways. If you guys want to know, everybody watching this, listening to this, as a content creator, I will tell you the secret to content creation. We all say the same shit. We just all say it in different ways.

A Stern representative described King Kong as a game that 'makes it to where you can stumble into greatness'

medium confidence · Travis: 'somebody from Stern... said something to me about Kong... they said that this game makes it to where you can stumble into greatness'

@ ~12:00
Zach Sharpe
person
Matthew Greerperson
Stern Pinballcompany
King Konggame
Godzillagame
Jawsgame
Jurassic Parkgame
Iron Maidengame
The Avengersgame
The Pinball Companyvenue
Pinball at the Zoovenue
Triple Drain Pinball Podcastorganization
  • ?

    gameplay_signal: King Kong gong mechanic initially perceived as risky/chaotic but revealed to be learnable and well-integrated into rule set with multiple game-play functions

    high · Travis initially 'scared' of gong; now reports it's safe once qualified and serves multiple rule purposes (mode qualification, multiball ball locking, combo execution)

  • ?

    design_innovation: Log diverter on King Kong was added late in development to fix flipper feed issue, creating unique upper playfield control mechanic with three exit paths

    high · Joel: 'initially that flipper was just floating... they realized it wasn't being fed enough... seems like that diverter was kind of a later design choice... it makes such an impact'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: King Kong's drop targets represent the most meaningful drop target integration since Avengers Infinity Quest or Rush

    medium · Travis: 'I don't remember the last time that drops have really mattered this much since maybe Avengers Infinity Quest or Rush'

  • ?

    product_concern: Some reports of mechanical inconsistency across King Kong units (gong rejection, left ramp issues mentioned but characterized as isolated)

    low · Travis: 'we've heard reports... like the gong might be like that area might be rejecting or somebody's left ramp... I've heard that a couple times but by and large everybody we've sold the game to have all reported back that yeah the game's playing great'

  • ?

    event_signal: Stern Factory media event exceeded expectations, generating extended content opportunity and spontaneous interviews with multiple key personnel including Gary Stern

    high · Joel: 'we're like, we're just going to interview Keith Elwin... all of a sudden we're interviewing like most of the people at Stern... we literally stopped the production line because we were interviewing Keith'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Keith Elwin and other Stern designers actively engaged with media/content creators at factory event, providing design rationale and technical explanations

    high · Keith engaged in extended interviews, corrected player misconceptions about shot difficulty, and explained design evolution decisions like the log diverter

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community initial skepticism about gong mechanic being 'bash toy' appearing to shift as players gain familiarity and understand its integrated role in rule set

    medium · Travis: 'I'm not scared of the gong... I think that's something that... I could learn to work with it. So I don't look at it as a negative anymore'

    • 2:40
    Well, yeah, but do we? Yeah, we probably do. I mean, we record we've gotten to the point if it's not obvious at this point, we're kind of looking at once a month, once a month. We'd love to do, you know, once every three weeks or reacting more to the news. But the good news is, I mean, there's been a lot of pinball that's that's happened. And so the fear is always you record an episode and then, you know, two days later, a game's revealed or something like that. But anyways, here we are. We'll just go ahead and start off with last episode. Last episode. Yes. Let's talk about last episode. which is exactly what you don't want to see. I was going to save it. Hey, you did. You saved it for the first four minutes. Good job, buddy. I mean, you know what? I'll put a pin in it. No, no, no. You've opened up Pandora's box. We'll come back to it. So, Tom, we did this episode at the Stern Pinball Factory, right? It was an amazing experience.
    3:34
    It was something. First, we're like, we're just going to interview Keith Elwin, And then all of a sudden we're interviewing like most of the people at Stern. It was it was pretty awesome.
    3:46
    We were just running through the hallways, just pulling anybody in is what it became. It was it was awesome. I mean, the truth was we all knew we were going to the media event. So we're like, hey, bring the mics. We'll go ahead. We'll try to record when we're there. And they set it up really cool this time where, you know, there was like, you know, factory demo or factory floor tour. And then there was Keith and the team spoke about the game. And then they had set up time where each content group or content creator could have one-on-one with the game for like 15, 20 minutes. And then there was just a big block of time open outside of that. And so we're like, hey, bring your stuff. We'll record an episode. And the goal was let's just plan on recording a quick initial impression of King Kong. That was our thought. And we've had Keith Elwin on before. It was it's one of Travis's favorite memories because of how horrific it went for Travis and his technology. So we knew we wanted Keith on again. So Zach Sharp was there and we're like, hey, we're going to record. Do you have a place we can set up? And he's like, hey, take the conference room. Like, that's awesome. You know, so we set up in there once again, thinking it was just the three of us. And he's like, do you need anything? You need water or any of that? It's like, well, we we were planning on actually talking to Keith for a little bit. And he's like, oh, I'll go I'll go get him. He's out on the floor. So Keith came in. Once again, we thought we'd talk for him for 15 minutes. We literally stopped the production line because we were interviewing Keith. We all halted everything. We hit the big red button and nothing moved.
    5:12
    But that was the thought. 15 minutes of Keith, maybe 30, 45 minutes of us talking, call it a day. And long story short, we interviewed Keith. It went great. Then I made a passing comment. Hey, Keith, is there anybody else we should talk to? He's like, you should talk to Chuck. We end up interviewing Chuck Ernst. He was awesome. 30 minutes of, once again, not trying to take too much of his time. 30 minutes of him. We finish up with him. Hey, Chuck, is there anybody we should talk to? Hey, Jeremy Packard's trying to leave the building. So we stopped him from going home, talked to Zombie Eddie for 30 minutes. And then after that, I thought we were done. And no, Travis saw Gary Stern walking by and somehow brought in Gary Stern with Matthew Greer. Is that it? Geyer? Gear? Something. Close enough. Yeah. That was cool. That was a, I don't know about you guys, but it's like, what this podcast is, for the three of us to be sitting down in Stern across the table from Gary Stern, I didn't think that was going to happen. I did not see that on my bingo chart. I tell everybody, we are two idiots with mics and we got Tom. Yes, yes. That's what we are. So somehow just fell into that one. And then, so here at this point, we're two plus hours into interviews and it's like, well, anybody else? And I was like, George Gomez is always good to talk to. And Gomez was an hour. We talked to him and we could have talked to him more. So we ended up not doing our initial impressions at all. We just had this amazing three hour plus conversation with that group. Super fortunate to just be in the right place at the right time. I think Dwight was actually mad at you, Joel.
    6:46
    Oh, for not bringing him in? No, you were holding up his game. Oh, that's right. He, yep. Yeah. He had a, there was a game afterwards. He did a, not a board game, but it was kind of a game. Travis played it, but yeah. I did. It was a good scene. But I'm not going to reveal any secrets to that. Yeah, you had to be there. You had to be there. That's what it is. So it was awesome. It was an awesome experience. And then, honestly, we got a ton of feedback on that episode. Multiple messages, everything. So thank you for everybody that listened to that, enjoyed that. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. I would be surprised because it's easily our most listened to episode ever. And this is now we're on episode 64. So it was awesome. And honestly, I'd love to, I'd love to do it again. So maybe we'll have another mega episode like that again down the road. So thanks again. Okay. Now. All right. Now that we've kissed Stern's ass, now we're going to get to the bottom. Now we start with the hot stuff, right? The hot topics. This is what, how many minutes are seven? Okay. Now we've already, anyways, King Kong. It's right here behind me. I have, this is Zach's LE that he's let me borrow. I streamed it the other night. Travis opened one at the pinball company. He's played a bunch of it. Tom had his one at Lumberjack Johnny's, right? Or where is it that you have one? I don't. I thought you played it. No, I explained this. I explained this in our chat.
    8:11
    How'd I miss this? Because you don't read. Well, you've played it. I read. And then I played it at pinball at the zoo, and that was the last time I played it. I swear I saw a picture of, it looked like you were on location and somebody was, Oh, you were playing. You were playing with the whole audience right now is seeing the real Joel come out. We talked to him on these chats and yeah, he's just like, Hey guys, look at the rims on my new golf cart. Like this is awesome. I think we're like, I think I said like one thing about a golf cart, like one time outside. There's a selfie of him, like driving with his sunglasses and his dog. Yeah, it must have made an impact, Travis. I get those pictures every day. Of course they do. I actually said I was going to get an LE, and I changed my mind. Yep. Where'd you end up going with Tom Graff? The Pro.
    9:10
    And why did you do that? We can start from there. Because I like money. No. You like money. So you're going to resell the Pro? Oh, it's going to skyrocket in value. Is that what you're saying? No, no. You know, I really thought long and hard about it for about a week. And really, I was driving down to pinball at the zoo, and we had just finished up at Stern. And I was like, you know, I think I like the pro better.
    9:42
    And, you know, after some long debates, playing it more at pinball at the zoo, uh i just decided yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna get the pro i think i'm just pretty happy with that i bought the last this will be my fourth pro in a row so uh but uh yeah so who is this who is this person i know joel is in shock well so i think honestly i i think it's a good purchase And what I mean is, let's dive into it.
    10:18
    Godzilla. Godzilla, in my mind, in my mind, you got to go premium. You got to go premium because of how much the, there's so many changes to that game with the building, the diverter in that building, the Mechagodzilla. I think you got to go premium. Do you guys agree? Premium or no? Do you think?
    10:37
    I prefer the premium. I prefer the premium, but I could live with that for a while. yeah as somebody that sells the games i want people to buy everything but if somebody asked me i'd be like yeah the premium to me is the more fun game yeah jaws jaws uh premium gotta go premium yeah i think you gotta go premium um jurassic park uh funny funny thing is i had a pro for a while and I upgraded to the premium for Jurassic Park.
    11:11
    And it's not to say I might not do that for Kong. Not that Joel's true. I mean, I got this behind me. You got the 30th. But I mean, I like the Pro, though. So I've also had an Iron Maiden LE, but I downgraded to an Iron Maiden Pro, which I have now. I had an Avengers LE, which was like my Grail pin, but I played it so much, and I have access to it at any time at work. So went ahead and let that go. And I could get an Avengers pro. I was going to do that as well. But, you know, that game, I think, is just fine as well. So I think you could go either way. I mean, it's it's like anything else. All these releases, you could justify getting a premium over a pro a lot of the times. Then you could also go the other direction and justify why you can live with a pro and not have to worry about the premium and be perfectly happy with it. Sure. And I OK, so just to be fair, yes, a Godzilla pro, a Jaws pro is better than a lot of games on the market. But I do think what is in a Godzilla premium or a Jaws premium is a substantial difference worthy enough that I think you kind of got to go premium when you own those games. If you disagree with us, write a comment on the you know, tell us why we're wrong. But you're right. I think Iron Maiden, a pro, is great. Personally, I think Jurassic Park, a pro, is great. That's kind of the vibe I'm getting with King Kong. And it's nothing against what's here because I have the LE here.
    12:42
    It's just what's amazing, in my opinion, what's absolutely amazing about King Kong is the shots. The shots in the layout and the fact that Keith designed it in a way that the pro, the shots in the layout are identical. And like, if this is one of those, I just feel like if you're a pinball enthusiast, I think Kong pros are going to sell incredibly well because fine. Okay. You don't want to fork over the money for premium, but like, if you got the room, I could see this game fitting in everyone's collection. This game is incredible. The way that it shoots is insanely good. And if you want to save money, you're going to get that and you're going to get that same experience with a pro. now with that said I like the gong I really really like the gong and this is something the three of us have already been giving each other a hard time for Travis hates it he's scared of it and because it fights back and it can lead to some nasty drains like that is something I literally saw you drain on it yes when I tried to backhand it yep no when you forehand that necessarily yeah when you forehand it well yeah Joel Well, we see you drain all the time, buddy. I'm just, I'm numb. I'm numb to it. I, but, hey, I blew it up at the end of the stream. Here's my only issue with the gong, right? Okay. It's not that it's a bash. Like, that's fine, right? It adds something to do. I just very much, I like the Iron Maiden skeleton of the rule set, right? Or the framework of that rule set, that you've got to hit various amounts of shots in order to light your modes, your scenes, whatever. So the fact that I see that on the pro for Kong, like for me, it lends me to pay more attention to that rather than just hitting the same shot twice in order to get to a seat, which is what you're going to do on a premium and in the LE. But that being said, if I could get a premium and be able to set it to where I start the modes like I would on a pro or qualify them, then to me, that would be perfectly fine. I would much rather do that personally. That's just my personal taste. So it's not the gong itself. It's just how the game reacts in terms of getting you or how the game gets you to qualify a seed. That's my issue. Yeah. Okay. I would say the gong, it's not as chaotic as a pop bumper. and it's not as like brutal as like um the one of the kickback shots like the rocket shot rocket raccoon on on guardians or um what is it on f-14 the the you know what i'm saying like the shot on the left like it's not saying we're just going to see if you're going to actually get it out there's no way the kicker um it's not as dangerous as that but it is i now that you've said it you know to qualify a mode on a premium or le of of king kong you you're you're having to hit a dangerous thing. So it'd be the equivalent on Godzilla as like to start a battle, you have to aim for the pop bumper, hit the pop bumper three times, you know? So I understand the chaos, but I would say at least on mine, the way that mine set up, I felt, um, you just, if you're prepared for it mentally, it's like, okay, I'm going to, I'm aiming at this shot. I'm not going to backhand it. I'm going to forehand it and then be prepared to react. But once you've qualified it, I did see that I could backhand it. I could backhand the gong because it's not going to kick back at that point. It will actually just feed through. So it was safer than I was, than what I experienced at media day, media day. It was pretty brutal. So, um, I don't know. I don't know if that's set up my particular physical mech or if they've changed something in the code to make it. I don't know. I don't know, but I, I'm not scared of the gong. I think that's something that, um, I've been, You can learn to work with it. So I don't look at it as a negative anymore, and I think that was something that some people were, if they were between pro and premium, they're like, well, I don't want to deal with the gong kind of thing. I mean, it ultimately, again, just depends if you view it as a bash toy. I think it's very easy for the end consumer or for whoever's playing the game not to view that mech as a classic bash toy because it doesn't look like a classic bash toy. No. Yeah. Right. When you compare it to like the well walker on Walking Dead, that's very prominent. It's out there on its own. When you see something like the gong, it's obviously an entrance to something else. So it's very easy for people not to make that connection that it acts as a bash toy. Right. And then even when you hit it because of the direction it's at, it's always guaranteed to come right back at you at the flippers. It's somehow right. It's not going to hit off there and ricochet over to the left side or ricochet over to the right or anything like that. So I think that's the main thing is just people wrapping their minds around that and their heads around that. I don't think it's going to be a detriment at all. I think the mech is just fine as it is. I think the main thing is, is just making sure that it's used in a way that makes it fun for people. And I think they're they do that well afterwards. Like when you start a scene, you got to go back through there to add on 15 seconds. Or if you're in a multi-ball, the King Kong multi-ball, you got to hit it twice to add a ball. So there's reasons to use it. And there's even like at the end of one of the modes, I think it's save and it starts to hurry up there at the end too. So there's all kinds of ways that they could incorporate it in that it's fun in general. And I think that's what we'll see as the code continues to mature. Yeah, I think it's a great mech. I'm enjoying that. And other mechs that are unique with the premium in LE, the spider, like the spider, my son, that's what he saw. And he thinks that's the coolest thing ever. I think it is cool. I think it is a cool thing. Does it really affect gameplay one way or the other? No. But it is a cool mech. And if I bought a pro, I would assume somebody is going to make a mod and I could see everybody pro or premium one day ending up with some sort of spider over that magnet. I'm so grateful that the magnet is still included in the pro because it is cool when it when it grabs the ball and holds on to it. The pros absolutely loaded. If you look at it, if you look at it from this from the standpoint, the point of view of mechs and what mechs are, it's absolutely loaded. And we've talked about this before off podcast that I think a lot of times when people think of mechs, they think of it beyond drop targets or beyond magnets, beyond anything that interacts with the ball. Yeah, that visually they're used to seeing on other games. I think people some people out there tend to think of a mech as having to be something that's so innovative that they've never seen before that does something to the ball that they've never seen. And that's where they draw the conclusion that, well, a game must not have that great a mech if it doesn't have that.
    19:35
    So I think, though, as a pinball player, if you look at how King Kong is, especially on the pro, it's it's got a lot to it. I mean, it's got four flippers. It's got two spinners. It's got drop targets. It's got stand-up targets behind there. It's got the magnet. Button-controlled diverter. Yes, exactly. The log diverter. Maybe one thing I think a lot of people, when they talk about mech, they want a mech that's unique to that game. So that's why pop bumpers don't get credit, flippers don't get credit, ramps typically don't get credit, because it's like, well, there's ramps in every game. you know, but they want a unique, what's the unique thing. And just to finish up the, the King Kong on, on, on premium and Ellie, the King Kong moves, he moves. My son thinks that's awesome. I will tell you when you're playing it, you don't really notice. You don't really notice because it is back there in the corner, but it is an amazing mech for everybody else to enjoy or watch while you're playing. And then it is a cool moment when he wrecks the train. But I also, To me, it's like I could understand why people would be willing to give that up for the pro. That's why I think the pro, you said it, Travis, is so loaded because the shots are all there. If the log diverter, let's talk about the log diverter. If the log diverter was not on the pro, that alone would be reason enough that I would tell people you got to go premium. The fact that Keith was kind enough to not remove the biplane ramp, let's say that thing was out. Let's say the ramp in the back that feeds over to the upper flipper. If some ramp, if something like that would be removed from the game, I tell you right now, you got to go premium. But the fact that the pro has all of that in the game is incredible. The log diverter, the fact that you as a user can control when you want that ball kind of, I'm saying upper play field. It's not an upper play field, but that upper left is such a unique pathway to feed that ramp or to shoot the drops. and the fact that you can control when you want to do that, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. And I think Elwin even made a comment that initially that flipper was just floating, and they realized it wasn't being fed enough. And so it seems like that diverter was kind of a later design choice, and it makes such an impact on the game. Well, yeah, not only that, it gives you access to that far left ramp, which is the cliffs ramp. It gives you access to extra awards. It gives you access to control river awards how you want to by letting the ball bypass the diverter and go down and feed your left flipper. It allows you to treat that upper area like a mini play field. Right. And it's it's not a classic mini play field where you're just stuck there grinding out. You could be in and out pretty quick and you can choose to exit there by three different ways, either going up the ramp, letting it fall down back to the flippers or letting it go through the river area. So you could do those three things. And then also, not just the diverter part, what I really love about that area that I think is brilliant is that the drop targets themselves, not only where they're at, the location of it, but the fact that this game up front has made drop targets matter. They matter greatly because they lead to lighting your locks, qualifying your locks up the middle for the Kong multiball. They lead to you having a sweet combo that you could do that's such a unique combination that I don't know about you two. I can't think I've tried to think of any other game that's had something like that to where you could sweep drops and lead all the way back around to an upper flipper to hit a side ramp with it. And I've I've been digging and digging and digging, and I can't remember any game from a long time ago that's done that. Any modern game? I don't know if any listeners out there can remember. I don't know. Right in. Yeah, that that right there. And then on top of that, you have to when you're in Kong multiball, what else do you have to do with the drops?
    23:32
    You guys remember? Hit them? Hit them to do what Isn that how you You can lock a ball again Well you use that to light your jackpots Ah So not only that you can also use them to qualify your Kong combo So there's just so much that goes on with those drops that really make things matter. And I don't remember the last time that drops have really mattered this much since maybe Avengers Infinity Quest or Rush. you know because in those games the drops did really mean something if you wanted to go down that road so i'm very curious to see how they really flesh out the drop targets even more on this game um yeah yeah um tom do you feel difficulty wise i know you said you only played it you only played it a few times at the media event pinball to zoo difficulty wise where do you feel that this game lands in the realm of an elwynn design with just a layout uh i think at first maybe a little harder but then as you get used to the shots maybe slightly easier i think there's just so much good flow in the game and everything that it uh i i think all levels of players are going to enjoy it kind of thing.
    24:55
    I, I personally think that's well put. I think, um, I think you step up until Godzilla and it's not, it's not rocket science on finding the shots. Like you can find them all. Maybe the hardest shot being the scoop. Um, but a novice can walk up to Godzilla and go, Oh, okay. Uh, same with jaws, because jaws, you know, is kind of open layout in that sense. I think you can walk up to Jaws and understand pretty clearly, like, OK, these are the shots. These are how to hit it. But yet there are shots on Jaws that are challenging, even for, you know, when you've had the game for a long time. Like there still are more challenging shots. My initial impression of King Kong at media day was it. I thought it was kind of a harder layout because it wasn't so obvious what to do. But now that I've had it in the house, once once you know where the shots are, they're repeatable. And they're consistent. I remember making a comment at Media Day that the back left orbit shot was a challenge. And Keith goes, really? That's actually one of the widest shots on the game. Now that I've had it in the house, yeah, it is. Like you can really find these shots. And once you find them the way this layout's designed, you can combo so much. And so I was actually surprised when I streamed it the other night with my brother. Our ball times were pretty high. and that's just because the layout once you find the shots it just flows so well um so if the question is is it easier than godzilla travis do you think it's easier than godzilla i would probably venture to say yes if you the way that you approach it because i mean the game's not clunky like that's the reality of it it's not clunky i'm sure i mean we've heard reports you know of some areas like you know like the gong might be like that area might be rejecting or somebody's left ramp or something like that i've heard that a couple times but by and large everybody that we've sold the game to have all reported back that yeah the game's playing great i know the one that i have the specific copy i have that sucker just flies like even if you hit the center spinner and you go down the river during the rapids holy cow like it feels like a hundred mile an hour fastball coming through there. But at the same time, and I mentioned this on a YouTube video that I have coming out, uh, here pretty soon, but somebody from Stern, I won't say their name just, just for their sake, but they said something to me about Kong that was so profound to me that I was just like, yes, that's the exact phrase that I've been thinking this whole time. I could never conceptualize it. And this makes so much sense. And they said that this game makes it to where you can stumble into greatness. And after hearing about what you did, Joel, on the game. Dude, that's how I roll, man. I mean, pretty much the game makes you feel great when you play it. And that's the feeling I got when I first played it. That's why I gave it the raving review I had outside of the theme, outside of the art. Like those can be whatever opinions people have, but when I'm looking at it from a very specific gameplay standpoint, do I feel good stepping up, hitting a shot? Do I feel good about the shots from left to right? Do I have fun exploring the play field? And this game checks all those boxes for me, unlike any game that I can think of in recent memory. Just, I mean, all games can be fun, right? We can play pinball. We've all done it before at TPF, where we go find one of the oldest, most beat-up games on the whole entire floor and the three of us just laugh our asses off playing sure right it's fun right pinball's fun but then there's a time that you step up that you're just like when you play something and you start hitting the flippers you start hitting shots you just go oh yeah this is this is what pinball is and that's that's the way i feel about kong well and i haven't felt that way in a long time about the layouts that have been around yeah yeah i think i think you're saying it's bringing it's brought meaning into your life again that's what it was that's the word Were those the words? Yeah. Sorry, Monica. It took the King Kong layout to do that.
    29:02
    Yeah. Or them. Yeah. I have them too. Yeah. He's never, he's never leaving the house. It's just, it's just, it's a fun game, right? It's just, it's just straight up. It's just fun to play. And you know, when I, when I play pinball, I don't know about you guys. Okay. So there's kind of, and we can kind of segue to the next talking point about this. When we talk about pinball themes, right? Okay. Yeah. I've played plenty of games. I'm not going to call them out, but I played plenty that I'm like, yeah, this theme is great. And then I start playing it. And because the layout isn't very fun, it doesn't matter how much theme immersion there is. I'm just not having fun because the shots just are not fun. You know, if I want to have theme immersion of something, I'll just watch a YouTube video with it cranked up to 100 on the volume in a dark room and close my eyes. Right. So I want something that's tactile. I want to feel it when I'm playing. It's very like a haptic feedback. So something like that, that's the way I look at it. That's what I look for first. And if it happens to be a theme that I like, that I enjoy, that makes it just so much better. But I've bought tons of games, though, that I don't even care about the theme. I mean, I have a freaking EM right over there with like two women just standing there next to a clown called Jumping Jack. You know, like it's not a theme I enjoy, but it's the busy on that. Yeah.
    30:35
    My expression lights on King Kong are unplugged. I unplugged him for the stream, so they're not broken. So I'm going to plug these in. But keep telling me how fun. Oh, go for it. Well, I mean, okay, like, Tom, do you have any games in your game room where you're just like, this theme is just so freaking goofy that you just don't even care? It's just fun to play, though. Yeah, stars.
    30:57
    Yeah, stars, right? I mean, I'm looking at one behind you, Paragon. You know, that's pretty much like, if you're a pinball fan, that's what it is. Yeah. I mean, you don't play classic games for the theme. I mean, at least. Yeah, otherwise Hulk and Spider-Man would be selling like crazy, right? True. Yeah. True. I mean, yeah, some of the artwork might grab you, but, you know, you play pinball to play pinball. I don't, like, I don't get all the, like, there's been a lot of, like, naysayers about the artwork. and I just don't see it. Yeah. Like, maybe because, you know, what, like 15, 20 years ago, we were getting, you know, Photoshop art.
    31:57
    CSI. Yeah. 24. NASCAR. I mean, sure. I mean, they were decent games, but, I mean, this is way better artwork than a lot of the games out there, At least that's my opinion.
    32:16
    No, Tom, you're right. You're 100% right. Because it always goes like this, and we talk about this all the time, guys. If anybody has an opinion over something, you always want to ask, compared to what? Right. What are we comparing it to? Are we comparing it to early 2000s Sterns? Are we comparing it to even early 2010s? Like the ACDC and the Kiss Art? Some people like that type of stuff. Some people don't. Like ACDC had what Angus's face like smack dab in the middle of the play field. So, yeah, it's just it's just all dependent compared to what there's.
    32:52
    OK, yeah. And maybe this leads to maybe this moves forward. But in the conversation, but I mean, long story short, King Kong's incredible. It's easy. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback. it's easy to be you know it's everybody everybody's allowed their opinion everybody's allowed their opinion and we have them too I mean it's not we absolutely do I mean and mine is no more valid than Tom's or Travis's like everybody's matters on this podcast more than anybody let's be honest yep yep and there's another pinball manufacturer doesn't even exist anymore thanks to Joel in his lunchboxes holy shit just chopping them down But what I just don't understand and I'm kind of getting sick of in a way is just like the constant opinions of how a manufacturer should have done something, how they should have licensed it, how they should have included this. They should have done that. What a fail. What a miss. And OK, that's your opinion. Like, I understand there are people that apparently would have preferred King Kong to be to have nothing but assets from the original movie. they wanted old timey art which i don't understand i mean i has anybody even seen a king kong movie i mean what what what movies are we talking about but do you remember what happened with the black and white one yeah which by all means if we're if you think we're idiots right now make a comment on youtube video email us at triple drain at gmail.com but to me it's like because Stern went the way they did and made this essentially unlicensed, that gave Keith and his team complete freedom to do whatever they want with modes. And Keith's talked about that before, where it's like in Jaws, sure, they have four movies of assets, but theoretically every mode that's in Jaws kind of needs to fit within a scene or a situation of the movie. So it is restrictive in a way. And yeah, the assets are there, but somebody has to go and clip those assets and synchronize those assets and everything. While I think Keith told us and others that like, if they just are like, yeah, I'm going to do a, I'm going to do a, um, uh, this is what the mode is going to be. Then they can let the creative team, the art department actually make something cinematic for that experience. So there's pros and cons, but I'm just, to me, I'm like, if you are going to leave a scathing review on how terrible King Kong is, I really hope you've played the game. Without even flipping it, right? Yeah, I really hope you've played the game because I'm telling you, I don't think you'll care that the gong is on the right side of the playfield. When the jungle scene's on the left, then why is the gong on the right? Because the right's supposed to be New York City. If you play the game, I don't think you will care where the gong is because it shoots so well. It shoots so well. It's an interesting critique. I've heard that from several people. And I think really what it boils down to is that anybody that has an opinion, I think it's perfectly valid. If you want to be negative, be negative. If you want to be positive, be positive. But the key thing to understand is that everybody that's on Facebook, on YouTube, that work outside of the pinball industry, they're not in the pinball industry as somebody that works. So they don't have necessarily intimate knowledge about what how this all works. Right. Their knowledge only goes as far as whatever source that they have. So that's why a lot of times you'll hear like the game's not selling well. Well, that's because your source there, they're not selling it well. That's really what that means. It doesn't mean it's industry wide. So when you look at this, everybody has an opinion. We got to remember the opinions come from a place that has no budget restrictions. The opinions come from a place that has no license restrictions. The opinions come from a place that doesn't have to basically oversee a full on manufacturing company and oversee a bunch of employees and make sure that they can go home to their families with a paycheck. They don't have to worry about distribution networks. They don't have to worry about those relationships. So it's very easy to create this reality in your head about what a game should and shouldn't be, which is perfectly fine. We all do that. When you look at something, you critique. It's like, well, you watch a movie. You're like, well, that was a piece of shit. Why didn't they do it this way? I mean, we all do it. But it's just I think that's the key part to understand that if you are somebody that that absorbs a lot of content, I'm a firm believer. We are always a summation of the main things that we bring into our inner circle and the fight like our friends and the things that we consume. So if all you're consuming is like, yeah, negative, negative, negative, it's going to be awfully hard to really just see what's what's real, what isn't real. Right. And some some of the critiques are valid. They really are. I mean, that's perfectly fine. Nothing's 100 percent. Some of the critiques are valid. Like, I get it. If you're confused why a gong is on the right side. Sure. Instead of the left when the river's over there. Okay, cool, fine. If you're confused why there's New York in there, okay, cool, fine. I mean, that just is what it is because it's just an opinion. But at the same time, I've seen plenty of other games that are like this. And it's just because it's a pinball machine. At the end of the day, you can only fit so much in there. That's just the reality of it. Yeah, it's not a two-scale accurate diorama of something. Like it's, it's gotta be a fun toy. You gotta play the max. And I think it's when I've listened to some critiques about scale or like the layout doesn't make, you know, the artwork, why is the artwork here, here, here? Um, Mando, Mando actually. And the reason Mandalorian popped in my head, I have, I have, um, somebody that reached out to me that said they actually started, they've been listening to triple drain, but they went back and started at episode one and they've been listening through, uh, first off the audio quality was garbage. It was so bad.
    39:03
    But I, so I went back and I started listening to episode one. In episode one, the three of us, this was off the record, on the record, is what we were calling ourselves, because we weren't officially part of TPN yet. We were talking about Mando, and the Mando reveal had happened, but there wasn't a stream yet. So the three of us were talking about how we think the game's going to shoot. But one of the things that was discussed was, like, think about the Mandalorian layout. The Razorcrest is small. Grogu is huge. You have an ice cavern in the back left. You have a Mando helmet that's moving up and right, you know, in the right. Like the layout of the way the artwork is laid out down below, there's, you know, it's just images. Like there's nothing cohesive about that world under glass being consistent from front to back. Same thing with like X-Men. There's nothing cohesive about it. X-Men just looks like comic book panels all on the play field. So it's Joel. Where do you even want to start? We've even alluded to that. You know, he he wanted to do an Empire State Building with Kong on it. And he was like, it just it doesn't work in the space. You know, so do you want this like little miniature like, like, oh, yeah, you know, building with Kong on it? Yeah. You know, well, we can go as far back as like, um, walking dead, for instance, if we're really going to talk about assets in a game and where they're located and why they don't make sense. Walking dead legitimately has on the left orbit. That's the barn. Yeah. And right next to it, the left ramp that CDC. Yeah. And then the ramp opens up in the girl's head is the same size as a barn. And that's like, yeah. underneath the CDC ramp is bicycle girl. Last I checked, that was not by CDC. Last I checked, Herschel's barn was not next door to the CDC. Can you imagine people today losing their shit over them? Let's not even get into the sound or the call-outs or the fact that there's nothing from the TV show on it. I know. Oh, man. Those are the things where it's like, okay, fine. And that's my view at this point, where it's just like, if pinball pisses you off this much and you want to sit there and say how much Stern or whatever manufacturer did it wrong, then just don't buy the game. Don't buy the game. Wait for the next one. I think it's okay. I love those people. It's okay. Keep buying and keep complaining. Keep buying, keep complaining. You're a customer. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. You can buy the whole factory and complain. That's the freedom of being in America, right? We can say whatever we want pretty much and just, you know, that's the opinion. I think it's perfectly fine. It doesn't mean like us that we have to watch or anything. It doesn't mean it's correct either. Sure. No, we're not. We're not trying to. I'm not trying to come off as like, I don't know. Well, look at Godzilla, Joel. Look how positive we're being. No, you're right, though. But let's look at Godzilla, right? At some point, you're off of Earth, right? Yeah. But yet there's still a freaking building. like why doesn't the building just completely disappear off the playfield when you're doing planet x yeah how's our skyscraper on planet x my god my god um gomez has talked about that that what is it like brilliance comes from restriction or like design like if you are working in a sandbox like you have to work you have to have some sort of restriction or or some sort of parameters to work in to fuel creativity yes so obviously at the end of the day it is a physical box of lights. And to me, I don't know, maybe I just, to me, if you look at Gong and all you see are the things you've done that were done wrong, sorry, if you look at King Kong and all you're thinking is all the things they did wrong, boy, are you missing an amazing machine. Because they did a whole lot right in that game. And if it's hard for you to see that, then that's unfortunate because you're missing out. You're missing out on an incredible, incredible game. I think really what it is, guys, is that there's just people out there that have it in their head what pinball should be. They have it in their head that they have the answers, but it is not based in reality that can actually be done financially, that can actually be done with respect to the license, that can actually be done with what's going on. Now, we got to think of things that are actually actionable, right? Okay. Going after the art in a certain style might be actionable. It might be. It depends what the licensor wants. They said that. Remember, Jeremy Packard said, you can do anything you want with King Kong, but it can't look like the King Kong from the movies. It can't look like the King Kong from whatever. Exactly.
    43:52
    That's what he was saying. No, Deadpool. Remember Deadpool. Deadpool, Deadpool especially. Anything you want with King Kong, but it can't look like the comics. It can't look like the unreleased video game. It can't look like the movies. Deadpool right now. Deadpool. It's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So here's your here's your I made your sandbox. Now, you know, do whatever you want. Let's talk about Deadpool, for instance. Right. I remember back in 2018 when it came out, everybody was complaining that it didn't have mechs to them like they were so mad. This is like we're not crossing new ground right now, fellas. Like this has been for the past decade. You could go back on chat GPT and ask it to scrape like a lot of four. No. Yeah, like a lot of forms of message boards. I think I showed you guys the data I went through. It's the same exact freaking complaints in 2002. Yeah. Like price. There's no max. It's not worth it. Yeah. Somebody was like, this is $3,500 for a new inbox. This is what a rip off. Like they're never going to survive doing that. Like it's too expensive. It's true. It's the same thing. And well, let's, you know, let's, let's steer this around. So sorry if we're coming on. We had one time that we ranted. I don't apologize for anything, Joel. I know you don't apologize, but there was one time we ranted about something, and I don't remember what it was. And I remember there was a comment. It was a piece of me.
    45:10
    Oh, no. It was probably – it might have been Avatar. I don't remember. We ranted about something. Was it Wick Cells? Somebody commented, like, this is not what I want from this podcast. This podcast is normally very lighthearted, and we have a lot of fun. So I hope you just – that's what's tough is I think people are missing – with this reveal, people are missing the greatness of this game. And if that means we're shills, I don't, like, I'm not, I mean, I don't make money for saying this game's good. This game is good to play the game. So I think there's a difference. I think there's probably a lot of people out there that agree that the game plays good, but I think they're just pissed off over the theme and they're pissed off over the art. Yeah. Which means they enjoy pinball completely different. They're not a pinball player. They are. That's like an art collector. And they're out there. Sure, sure. Believe me, we sell LEs to people that they go into 10, $20 million homes, and they sit there and they get played maybe 30 times total. Like Joel will play the game more times on a Wednesday night than they will in a year. That's fine. And this is actually the thing that I want to turn to, which is – Okay, let's turn. Where are we turning, Joel? I want to – when people talk, we've heard, no, this is online. This is other content creators. There are, you know, why can't games be like X? Why can't they be like they used to? They used to be so great. They used to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One game that gets referenced a lot is Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings pinball. There are a lot of people that feel like Lord of the Rings is like an epitome of what pinball was. It was loaded. It had everything. And so I actually had an home use only Lord of the Rings that Zach got in on trade, and I streamed it the other week, and I actually had a few weeks with Lord of the Rings, and I have opinions. I have thoughts on it. I have thoughts on Lord of the Rings. So I want to first just talk, I know this is 20 years ago Lord of the Rings was made. So I'm curious your initial impressions of Lord of the Rings. But then what I want to do is I want to compare Lord of the Rings to what we got right now We got Evil Dead and we have King Kong or even we can compare it to Godzilla But initial impressions right off the bat Tom Lord of the Rings have you owned Lord of the Rings Do you own Lord of the Rings? What are your thoughts on Lord of the Rings? Yeah, I used to own Lord of the Rings. I think it's a great game. I mean, don't get me wrong.
    47:37
    But compared to today's games, with the layout and the coding, I don't think it compares. I mean, it's a classic game, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it holds up to games of today. Sure. Okay. You know, it's, like I said, I don't want to piss anybody off because, like I said, it's a great game but to me it's just multi-ball, multi-ball, multi-ball all the time and there's not a lot of other things going on you have the gifts of the elves and some modes on the ring but I don't know depth wise it's just not the same I think those are all incredibly valid points. Travis, your thoughts on Lord of the Rings? I don't like it I'm just not a fan of it I like the movies just the gameplay style, I don't really care for the rules, I don't really care for but the reality is even it being a George Gomez design, it's just not something I've been drawn to but you know what design i am drawn to by gomez that's old school is nba fast break like i love that game it plays super fast right it lives up to its name it's definitely like to me everything on there is well implemented so it's just kind of like i feel like when i look at lord of the rings it what it does really good is just take whatever mech it has and it's very thematic right so we're talking about more like a thematic mech with the balrog that comes out what is that the upper play field what is that called i can't think of the dead souls or something yeah yeah so that and i think isn't there like some type of return that looks like a sword or am i just thinking that's just a shot on the right we'll lock a ball there's uh the moving tower in the back there's a diverter on one of the shots to go to the path of the dead yeah another tower the shire the well let's talk okay so i mean it's it's fine i just like obviously people enjoy it it's not like my personal thing if i see it in a game room i wouldn't coin drop it i would pick something else that's just my personal personal thing so i think when when some people talk about the epitome of what what pinball used to be uh they talk about they mention lord of the rings and they typically mention Tales of the Arabian Night. They mention like these games that are just loaded. Oh, they're so loaded. What a world under glass.
    50:34
    Don't get me wrong. I had a blast. I had a blast playing Lord of the Rings. I think it's really fun. But when I actually really looked at the game, I'm like, what is in this game? There are like 15 little figures that are essentially glued all over the play field. Besides that, unique mechs. The unique mechs were you have a tower that shakes in the back corner. um you have the ring magnet front and center which is cool um but obviously that's you've seen that in rush now um the balrog which swings out that creates a really cool moment a really cool mode but you mentioned something there travis the thematic toys these are not toys like the balrog you really don't interact with him unless you're playing the fellowship of the ring multi ball or there's one other hurry up yeah this is the only time you interact with that toy that's it that's the only times you interact with that toy besides and then the back the back um tower the only time you really see that really do anything is there's like one or two little moments but besides that the ring the only time you interact with the ring is to start a mode it holds the ball or the destroy the ring destroy the ring moment incredible but the destroy that's it That's the only time you're really interacting with these toys. The path of the dead is just rollover switches. You're not, that doesn't move. It's not a physical thing. So I'm looking at this and I'm like the mechs that in this game aren't ungodly great. Like they're, they're okay. No offense, George, but I'm like, but I, in my head, people were like, just go the game, the game. Then I have it. I was like, it's okay. What I think the best, my favorite thing in Lord of the Rings is the Legolas ramp. that ramp is so smooth. That, that is the most satisfying part of that game. Every single time, in my opinion, you hit that Legolas ramp and the way it comes back, it feels so good. So I have to step in and point something out here because the obvious, the obvious is happening right now. And Joel, this is what's okay. I'm going to compliment you here. So whatever, but this is, this is what has been fun doing a podcast with you for, for the past several years is the fact that we've seen, the evolution of you as a pinball player. And what we've got to remember is that a lot of opinions that are out there on these games of the past, they're based on these people that play them. More times than not, they don't have a wide array of data to choose from. A lot of mental representations from games of all eras. And that's not a diss, that's just a fact. It's a limited scope on games that have been played. So therefore, according to whatever limited scope that they have, it's easy to draw back and say, okay, this is fun. This is great. Again, totally valid opinion, totally valid. But I think what we're seeing with you is you've played so many different games over the years. On Wednesday nights, you get games that come in. You've played all the modern games. We've all gone to shows. Tom, you know this because you own a bunch of games. You've played in a ton of tournaments. we have all probably collectively played more games of pinball across more different eras than 99.9% of the entire earth population. So we have a wide array to draw from. But what I'm getting at is, is that you're saying one of the fun parts to Lord of the Rings is how a ramp fills, how that shot fills. And so that's where it becomes, that's where the divergence comes. That when you start playing so much pinball, you start noticing shots. You start noticing the differentiation of how a ball feeds back to you, the combos. You start seeing ramps as the toys, which Stern is very upfront. That's how they view it. That's why they have the helix. That's why they have the different wild returns and everything. And even when you look at J-pop games, they did something similar, right? Tales of the Arabian Nights, you see the ball doing all kinds of wild stuff on there. So this isn't anything that's new necessarily. It's just kind of the way that people form their opinions based on the mental representation that they have of games. So Joel, with you playing so much, I guarantee you that's kind of where that's coming from. You have so much to draw from that now you're able to compare all these other modern pinball machines against Lord of the Rings. You're able to compare what's fun, what's not fun. And I think that's the key part that some people miss out on that. And that's why I highly recommend people to go to expos a lot and not just like just talk to people nonstop. Go play. Play the weird games. Play the games you haven't seen before. Play the solid states. Play the EMS. Get a feel for that. What I was I just think for that to be the bar for people to be using Lord of the Rings as the bar. What is Lord of the Rings do really well? The call outs, the music, the call. It's the fact that they have so many different call outs. Yep. They have all the characters voices. That immersion is fantastic. I think so. The overall the audio in that game is great. Sure. If we want to say visuals, the DMD, I really love the DMD animations. But if Stern was to modernize Stern, if they were to bring it into today, could you copy paste the game, but then add all the LCD? Sure. I bet if they could get movie assets, that would be pretty awesome. Um, but I found myself one, like once again, uh, realizing how much I appreciate LED and inserts, because if you stack a mode and a multi-ball in that, it doesn't, it doesn't handle it well. Like you don't know which shots are for your mode or which shots are for the multi-ball because the inserts either on or off, there's no color coordinated choreography. Um, the modes in Lord of the Ring, there's six, but they, they feel very same Z like they didn't really stand out. The one that stood out to me was War of the Ince, and that's because I could then shoot straight at the tower to go up to the Path of the Dead. So I found myself just choosing that mode. When I would start the game, I'd just choose that mode to help get towards that multi-ball. My entire goal when I play that game is destroy the ring. And my main takeaway was, like, if I want to go George Gomez to George Gomez, I much prefer Monster Bash. I think Monster Bash has better mechs. I think the layouts are very similar. but I think when overall immersion and whatnot, like even the code, even though monster bash code is more shallow monster bash is like, to me, I would, I think that is a, that's that game. Um, but what I wanted to compare was for so many people or to think like, why can't we like, or to be looking in the past, like, you know, we're there, we cost cut so much now and the games don't have what they used to. It's like, let's compare. Let's not even talk about. I think that's just human nature. I really do because like Travis was alluding to before you see that in movies and stuff like that. I just think not that people want something to complain about, but they're always they're always going to look at something that came before it and go, well, you know, I have a memory from this.
    57:35
    And, you know, why can't it be like that? Yeah. I mean, so. No, I kind of like if, if those games are doing so great back then, how did like star Wars episode one come out? How did revenge from Mars come out the way it was right? Like why was, why don't stick with it? Yeah. Why was it being reinvented at the time? Well, you know, it's just, it's one, it's easy to look back 30 years later, you know, later and look back and say, well, yeah, those are great. Like maybe they stood the test of time and that's really all it is, as a few of these games did. But let's face facts too. These games were not designed with the home user in mind, right? They were specifically designed to go into an arcade, give you one or two easy things to do to convince you to take three quarters or two quarters and put it in the coin mech. That's all it was. And to make you feel good about doing that and then try to make you do it again. That's really all it boils down to. So now what we're seeing is, it's just like, you know, If you want games to go back to being like that, I think you're going to be very surprised about what that would look like today. I think people really would, because you're talking about shallow code. You're talking about repeating the same exact thing over and over again. I mean, that's what, like, Joel, we were talking about Medieval Madness the other day, right? It could be a fun game. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy playing it like five, six times a year. but man i would like i would want to run into a wall if i played that a hundred times in my game room like just the same thing over and over and over again just because i just don't find it that interesting in terms of the layout and what happens compared to today because now we're you know in the dynamic layout era with multiple flippers and multiple pathways true yeah so it just you know it just depends like but i could see why something like that because people remember that if they've been in pinball for a long time, they remember what it feels like back then to go to the arcade and they're nostalgic about that. So I am very sensitive or I care a lot about what my friends and family or how they enjoy a game. And I was surprised when I had, I know you do, but when I had Lord of the Rings, like it was, my wife thought it was cool when the baller rock came out. Like, that's what I told her. I had to help her get to that multi ball. And she's like, all right, that's cool. For the first time she sees the ring catch with the magnet. All right. That's cool. But once she had experienced it, you know, she played whatever, two, three games on it the entire time I was here. You know, like check, you know, so I get it. It's a moneymaker. It would have that operator would have got their dollar out of out of her. And that's it.
    60:18
    But, yeah, there's no draw there. Well, I'm very curious. I have a medieval madness remake on on order. I'm planning on getting one. And I'm super curious of how that's going to be received in the household. Is it going to be liked more or less than Cactus Canyon? Because Cactus Canyon is still the most played game in my collection because that's what all my friends and family are drawn to. It's got exactly what you're saying, like easy to understand, instant satisfaction type of thing.
    60:46
    But what I want to do is I want to compare Lord of the Rings. Unless you think it's better, we could do – oh, we'll stick with Lord of the Rings. Let's compare Lord of the Rings to Evil Dead. We won't even pick on Stern. Evil Dead. let's go let's go category by category which game does it better right okay so right off the bat art which game does it better evil dead or lord of the rings evil dead evil dead does better all right so the art has improved in 20 years way to go chris for franchi well uh sound design sound design evil dead or lord of the rings I mean it wasn't White Star I mean okay I would say the sound if you're talking about sound design it's probably better on Evil Dead if you're talking about the actual like call outs and everything I'd probably have to go with Lord of the Rings but I'm like I'm leaning heavily towards that, but I also am pulling a Joel and I'm very much fence sitting right now. No, I think a wash is a good, is a solid answer because that's what I said was one of the best things. One of the best things with Lord of the Rings was how good the sound is. But I also think the sound package in Evil Dead is really well done. You rip the spinner and you hear a chainsaw. It's pretty. So you're talking about like the sound effects are well done. Well, that's kind of like hearing like band music, you know, the band pins always win the twippies. Oh, true. So it's like, okay, you got this epic motion picture, and then you have the Evil Dead, which is kind of like a cult classic.
    62:28
    It's like comparing apples and oranges, I think. Okay. Well, let's do this then. Mechs. Which game between Evil Dead, because Lord of the Rings is known for its World Under Glass. I'd have to give Evil Dead.
    62:43
    I agree. I think Evil Dead has better mechs. Well, there's just – Probably have to go to that. Yeah, I mean, you've got stuff popping out underneath the play field. You've got a subway.
    62:55
    You've got the lock with the house. The hand. The cabin. The cellar door. The shotgun bullet things. Oh, yeah, the shotgun shells. Thank you.
    63:09
    Yeah, I mean, they certainly put a lot into that game as far as mechs and toys. Lord of the Rings, you got the sword lock, you got the magnet in the back, you got the Balrog.
    63:24
    That's pretty much about it. I mean, you got the path of the dead. Well, if we think of games that are beloved with their mechs, so Medieval Madness, you have the castle, Theater of Magic, Tales of the Arabian Nights. Is there another game I'm thinking of or missing? Monster Bash. Monster Bash sure okay Monster Bash do you think Evil Dead or Monster Bash which one has better mechs tough question I mean I if you want to say better mechs I think I prefer the Dracula like going back and forth than I do Frank lifting up and like being a bash toys kind of cool but I mean that's But, like, again, it's... It's a product of its time. Yeah. But, I mean, to me, Monster Bash shoots better, though. Well, I was going to get to that. That's the difference. Yes. Yeah, I mean, the difference is, it's like, do you like Michael Bay or do you like Quentin Tarantino? Right?
    64:30
    Do you just want to see a bunch of explosions? Because that's what happens when you put mechs on a play field. It'll cover up a lot in terms of geometry. It'll cover up a lot in terms of, like, how the shots actually are. And that goes for, like... Why can't you like balls? That's not just Evil Dead. That's anything.
    64:44
    I mean, who would be that director then? Why can't they work together? Has there been a game to where it just shoots like butter and it is absolutely loaded with mechs? Like loaded, loaded. I think if you put 100 people in a room, you're not going to get... Everybody would have a different answer, but I think that's like the Moby Dick that we are all in search for. I think Godzilla Premium is your closest bet. And that's probably why it's typically number one. One or number one. And the only reason I say that is because the Mechagodzilla Mech and the Building Mech are – Is Evil Dead still number one on Pinside? I don't know. I'm going to look right now. The reason I wanted to talk so much about Evil Dead – and, Travis, you mentioned it earlier – is thematic mechs. Yeah, that's the difference. That is one thing I love about Evil Dead. Well, that's Godzilla's number one and Evil Dead's number two. Think about that. Godzilla has that too, right? True. You have a building that starts collapsing, and then it changes the direction of your shot. Well, we got the rotating thing, targets. That's a shield. Yeah, we all have that. That's a shield for Mechagodzilla. It makes thematic sense. What I meant by thematic mechs is this is something, like I said, with Lord of the Rings, there are certain moments in Lord of the Rings where you are now really focused on a mech, like the Balrog, bashing the Balrog during that multiball. That's one thing that I think Evil Dead does exceptionally well is there are different times where all of a sudden that mech is the main thing that you're working at, whether it's the hand. There's a certain mode for the hand. There's the cellar doors. It's not like an avatar.
    66:27
    You go to that lower play field a lot, that lower play field in Avatar with Jersey Jack. But yet the lower play field on Evil Dead, there's only two real modes that you use that lower play field. and that's why and they make it a moment because of that and that's so i think that's something that evil dead does really well is they have unique mechs they got a lot of unique mechs but then they also highlight each mech at different points in the game and how that blends in with the code and i think i just think that's they they do that really well yeah i mean i think it just goes to show that there there are certain themes that lend itself to being able to incorporate mechs associated with said theme a lot easier than others right like for instance let's look at dune oh yeah like you got the sandworm so that automatically like you know you can kind of treat it like it's coming out of the play field because that's makes thematic sense the way that they use the pop bumper as a thumper that makes sense right so there's like certain things that you could look at that you could do that if you look at like the uncanny x-men right as much as i absolutely hate that they break away the wire form yeah the giant hand it makes sense if you look at it as a bridge and the thing's a city right that's just you find ways to do something like that but that's you know you can't do that with every theme though right right you're right it's really it's really impossible to do i mean like cactus canyon for instance yeah they're having they added in what the the doors saloon doors yeah the saloon doors afterwards like that wasn't there before And I think the best mech that they had on there before was what, like Bart's face? That you just hit it and it just falls in front? Or like a train that just kind of goes across the top of the play field? Yeah. I mean, the mech that I really like on Cactus Canyon are just the pop-ups. The fact that those pop up and they're not popping up all the time. They make moments when those pop up. You're talking about just like the drop target shootout guys? The quick draw. The quick draw events. I love that. But I don't know. I just really, maybe to wrap it up, but it's like with Lord of the Rings, don't get me wrong. I had a great time with it playing. But it was when it came to code, Tom had mentioned multi-ball, multi-ball, multi-ball. To me, every time I stepped up to that game, it was I want to destroy the ring. To destroy the ring, you have to play all three multi-balls. You got to qualify them and play them. So, yeah, I was really just pursuing the game to get me to that point so I'd have an opportunity to destroy the ring. in the two weeks I own it I destroyed the ring three times I was proud of myself that's fantastic Joel we're proud of you Joel step though was thank you thank you theoretically though I saw everything in that game except for I did not see there and back again I was one shot away from starting there and back again and then if that's the thing if you do there and back again there's a whole lot more I would have had to do to get to that final final wizard you wouldn't have done it don't worry about it Maybe if I owned the game a few years, maybe. Maybe if you were doing a glass-off tutorial for three hours, you would have made it. Maybe. But I understand. To me, it's like when you put a wizard mode in a game that's going to be that hard to qualify, I just don't even myself. It's like, I don't know. It's almost like it's not there. I just, eh, that's not. It's out of my skill. It's out of the skill range of 99% of people that touch that game. You play modern pinball now. You can play it right at the start button now. Challenge mode. I have some questions.
    70:01
    Oh boy. Cue the Tom Talks music. Wait, let me here we go. Tom Talks. He's got something to say. Tom Talks. He's got nothing to say. Tom Talks.
    70:15
    Tom Talks. I got nothing. We have no video for that. So you're just going to see the three of us just grinning. Joel your hour and a half's done I was just thinking about a couple things actually we were talking about Evil Dead Harry Potter's coming out do you think it was a mistake that Spooky limited the number of Evil Deads and do you think that uh, JJP is making a mistake by right now doing unlimited CEs LEs of their Harry Potter That coming up
    71:07
    No, and no, and no, I was going to, I was going to say yes to the first, the first one. And then actually I think I'm, I'm yes and yes, but then again, I'm an idiot and I'm not in sales and marketing. So Travis probably is right, But this is Tom Talks. So, Tom, let's start with your opinion. Okay.
    71:28
    I think as far as Evil Dead goes, I mean, obviously they sold out. They could have possibly sold some more.
    71:38
    So I would say yes to that. But, you know, it's one of those things, how do you know? You know, and that's a hard part of not knowing what you have, I guess. but uh plus they they probably have other stuff coming down the pike so they they don't want to limit themselves to just making one game uh and then harry potter yeah i think it's a little odd that they're having unlimited collector's editions because isn't the point of collector's editions to have some kind of number in mind to limit it scarcity scarcity yes collectability ability imagine but uh those are my thoughts i'm out of here everybody see you i love it tom graff excellent
    72:45
    I got nothing. Thank you. We're not worthy. So, there we go. Wow, we're going to play it again. You're that excited, Joe. Somehow hit the button of loop, so we're just going to keep it going. Thank you, Tom. I was just thinking about that. I mean, I was also thinking, you know, as far as Harry Potter goes, we've been talking about King Kong so much. what a position jjp is in they know they have an awesome theme coming out yeah and you know the the naysayers are going to really nitpick this game i mean oh yeah you know seven or eight movies everybody's going to want this in it that in it it's it's i i kind of feel for jjp to be honest with you i mean it's a no-win situation it's loaded though right he's he's come out and he told everybody to save their money at tpf and he was talking about how it has everything it's just like was right didn't you mention that at tpr he alluded to expectations or everything and first impressions or everything yeah i said it's a no-win situation i think i think jjp is going to come out they're going to be just they got a killer theme and they're going to have a ton of sense but are you going to make everyone happy no i hope it's awesome why why joel are you on the yes and no okay so just were you yes and yes yes and yes the reason the only reason i was saying yes and yes but i understand do i think i think spooky could have sold more evil deads i think the overall opinion of evil dead is only going up and that's just because more and more people are having the ability to play it and once you play it i think there's a lot i mean we saw it of tpf there were a lot of people that rolled in there you know neutral or even maybe negative towards evil dead and then they played it and they're like wow this game's good so that's only going to continue i think they could play more with that said i was talking to bug at tpf and when they sold out you could see the relief that just fell on him and he goes you know what's awesome is for the next year all i have to do is make games and go fishing like that's all that's literally like like as a company they set a goal for themselves they achieve the goal that is a win hugs all around let's let's knock it out let's make these games and get excited for the next one that's that's good enough like that's what they want so to leave money on the table means they don't want to make evil deads for the next two years they want to make they want to spend a year of their their time making this game because they're excited for the next one like i was doing Or barrels of fun saying the same thing. They're okay with just, I want to spend a year of my life making this game. We got to remember, too, it's a lot easier to say, okay, since the company sells out of a game like five months later into the announcement that, oh, they could have made more. It's like, no, I would have panicked if they would have sold out day one or day two, like a true sellout. Then, yeah, I'd be like, okay, maybe something needs to adjust. Like whether it's price or amount that goes out, whatever, most likely price in that instance. But, you know, by doing it the way that they did now, they give themselves a way to actually scale up. Right. Like scale up the operation in order to actually charge more than what they charge to get past that. Because right now they're staying underneath that ten thousand mark. And of course, you know, knowing what raw materials cost and knowing what's coming and knowing the cost of manufacturing, it's going to be awfully hard to stay under that. Right. And people were already going up to eleven five on it anyways, if they got the butter cabinet. So people that got the butter cabinet were effectively paying a price that was higher than even a Godzilla LE from 2021. So the price can get up there pretty good if you want it to. So, you know, I would say that the amount of LEs that they had ended up being just perfect for their cadence of manufacturing, the way that they're going about it and probably the next themes coming out as opposed to anything else. So I don't really see it as leaving money on there. I see it as a pathway that gives them an indication of how to treat the next few releases in terms of how they want to roll it out, in terms of how they want the market to react to it. Now with JJP, I don't see how you can have something like Harry Potter with a license that costs as much as it does. I don't know if it's public, so I'm not going to say a number, but I don't see how you can limit that machine in any way. You would have to sell it for $20,000, $25,000 if you limited it. If people think $13,000 is a ton now, my God, just to cover the cost of it, it would have to be astronomical on something like that. So you're saying for J.J.P. to recoup its investment, their view is we're going to go unlimited because we need to sell thousands of these. I don't know that for sure, but that's what I'm inferring. Yeah, we're assuming the license costs a poop ton of money. Well, so knowing what the license costs, I'm telling you, it's not cheap. I'll put it to you this way, right? Like HomePen's not going to grab that license anytime soon. But what I'm getting at, what I'm getting at is, guys, is that you have to look at what a company is currently doing. Right. Because whatever a company is currently doing, if you see what their actions are and you see what their strategies are, you better believe them. It gives an indication for what's going on. It gives clues for what's going on. And so when you see that JJP, they've always done a ton of CEs. right? Like a thousand or whatever. They've always done a ton of LEs, 5,000. It's always been blowing this out. But when you look and you see, there's always CEs like outside of what happened with GNR. Like GNR, when it got released, they did really well. But after that, there's always CEs available. Like right now, we were just talking about it the other day. Like you can still find an Elton John CE right now. You can still find Avatar CE. So they're all out there. I think it's just a matter of it's awfully hard to judge what the true demand of this is going to be. So if I'm a manufacturer and I say, OK, this product's unlimited, that means I'm not necessarily selling it direct to customer nonstop or in perpetuity. But it also means, hey, you as a dealer, you're not just going to be like just down to your allocation and having to fight over, well, you only get five C's or you only get eight C's or whatever. It's like if you can somehow market it and you can go find 20 people that want to buy it like go hog wild and you look at what happened when they announced harry potter officially we saw facebook and everything flooded absolutely flooded with every dealer that sells those games it was the same it's just like content creation right everybody's saying the same shit just in different ways that's exactly what and it's and what i mean what is cool in a way is being that it's on you know you can you can go to whatever dealer you want at that point. Like, I think there are, there are issues with Stern LEs where, you know, Hey, I want to use this dealer, but we know their, their LEs are already spoken for. So then you're shopping around and you're going to end up with some, somebody you don't know, but you finally found some dealer halfway across the U S that you, that happens to have one. So there's some good to it. But to me, I just don't, I just feel like on reveal day, there's going to be a lot of people that are like, Oh yeah, I'm in on the CE. But then if they like the art package of the LE just as much, they're going to be like, nah, I'm going to let me swap to the LE. I mean, it's tough because if you're going unlimited, Joel, you're basically taking the secondary. You're taking that safety net out of buyers for your secondary market and actually lead to a perceived even in value, right? Like you'll keep the value in a game. I don't see how if it's unlimited, it's going to be awfully hard. But you're also looking at the play that it is definitely a short-term play for generating maximum revenue. Sure. So you're wondering how that's going to go because you're doing that at the expense of doing something that's based on dynamic pricing also, that you're going to go high, high, high. You're going to keep cranking as much as you can. And that sucker's cranked all the way up as far as it can go. And now you're just like, okay, floodgates are open. I don't think we've ever seen anything like that. $15,000 and no limit to it at all? It's just strange. And I mean, this whole reveal, I think we've talked about this before. Why doesn't Stern tell us what their next five reveals are going to be? And I think the answer to that is exactly what we're seeing with Harry Potter. The amount of people that are like, so I got to wait until early Friday. I got to wait to see what that is. I'm holding my money.
    81:52
    Every conversation, when you're talking about Dune, when you're talking about this, it's like, nope, no, I got to wait. I got to wait. And, you know, good on JJP for creating that type of conversation where even though, you know, we're talking about King Kong, people are still thinking about Harry Potter because I got to wait. It could be could be amazing. So and I so now I understand why somebody like Stern wouldn't want to do that to themselves.
    82:15
    Well, it definitely it definitely happened after Guns and Roses when you look at, you know, how everything went up. Right. Prices went up. The amount went up. But it's it's an interesting dynamic because you're basically looking at shifting a product from being exclusive to more or less scaling it. True. Right. And so if you scale it, you're basically you're risking you're doing that at the expense of that title of exclusivity. And that's what's interesting. When you see all of certain pinballs press releases, it still calls these highly collectible items. Right. So it's I mean, that that part fascinates me just from a marketing point of view and just from a manufacturing and distribution point of view that you produce a product of so much and still try to keep that exclusive brand. And that's what we're like. If people think Stern's doing that with a thousand, JJP is like, hold my beer. I'm going to put some nitrous oxide in this and really get going. So it's going to be. We've talked about this to the JJP. I mean, we've toured JJP.
    83:17
    It's you've toured. Oh, yeah. That's right. Did you notice what was going on? I was interested. It wasn't meant to be that way. Tell us. Are they here? You can actually answer this. Yes. And do you think, let's say, because everybody's been saying, or say everybody, there's some people that are saying like J.J.P. will outsell Kong 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 7-1, whatever. 7-1. Whatever. We hear it all. And people start parroting that.
    83:46
    You've been to the manufacturing area. I have. Are they going to be capable of putting out. Ten thousand units, like let's say they get four or five thousand within the first three months. Right. Like would they even be capable of getting those machines out within a year? No, I don't think I don't. I don't. Well, maybe the question is, how many are they doing currently? Because that's how many they're going to be able to make in a year like that. Right. Unless they've scaled. I mean, if they expect this to be a huge sale thing for them, which I hope it is. Well, see, that's what I think is going to happen. I think there's going to be like a massive push the first day, the first week. Right. And then it's going to tell off. Now, it's not going to drop off completely like some things do. Like, I think it's going to be a long tail theme. But the problem is, if you have a long tail theme, your manufacturing capabilities has to still sustain that. Yeah. So it's like. That's going to be a big question. Right. Is how how does J.J.P. and maybe they double their maybe they realize like, hey, sales are so good. We, you know, expanded the factory or whatever, like maybe, maybe. But I know the factory that I saw, it looks great. It's just it is like one fourth the size of Stern, maybe even less. And so if they're talking thousands of games, it's going to take a while. Well, it's going to take a while for there and goes the point. That means you're going to have a group of people that put in an order, right? And if it gets backed up and they're at the back of the line, you're waiting several months for it. And on top of that, a lot of people are saying, well, Stern might be in trouble because Jersey Jack has Harry Potter compared to Kong, this and that. But what do they think is going to happen if Harry Potter introduces somebody to the pinball industry? They're going to want to buy another game. And who has the biggest catalog out there? That would be Stern. Oh, I thought it was American. That would be Stern.
    85:47
    So that would be Stern. So they have the biggest manufacturing catalog, like the current production. Yeah. And that's what people are going to see. So it's just kind of like, to me, Stern is in a win-win with this either way. If I'm at Stern, I'm cheerleading JJP to knock it out of the absolute park. Yeah. Because it's not like all the pinball enthusiasts that are like, you know, is it JJP? Is it Stern? Is it this and that? They've already spoken. They've either bought their JJP games or they haven't. This isn't like anything new. Like by seeing Harry Potter revealed, they're not all of a sudden going to be like, okay, avatar Elton John dialed in. Like I got to go back and get all those games. So I think really it's just, that's what I'm most interested in is to see how much JJP puts into this launch. Yeah. And if it's unlimited, you better believe they're going to try to get outside of the pinball enthusiasts. They're going to try to go way beyond that, way beyond the reach that currently is. Because that's, I mean, how else do you recoup it, right? I hope they do. I hope they reach out to some big influencers outside of pinball or some celebrities or this or that. And I hope Harry Potter ends up being a huge catalyst for pinball growth. Yeah, I hope so, too. I really want it to. Listen to me.
    87:06
    Yes. Hot tubs. Another Tom Talks. Hot tubs. Let's do it. Oh, that's the, yes. You're saying hot tub time machine. That's the thing. Uh, unfortunately looking at the time, I do need to wrap up, but, um, the good news is I think, I don't know. I don't know for sure. I do, but I, I would assume being that we've been recording every three weeks to every month, uh, Harry Potter will probably be announced between now and next episode. Um, so we will, we'll have more answers. We'll have more, uh, more thoughts and answers when we record that episode. But we do know to wrap it up. And yeah, this was an interesting stuff, an interesting episode for sure. And at the end of the day, I love this hobby. I know Travis and Tom loves this hobby. And, you know, if if you don't if you're not if pinball is frustrating you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, because there's so much fun here. And I wish I wish it wasn't so frustrating to you. go play some pinball go play a game you like if that game's from 20 years ago or three years ago whatever go enjoy the game things will be fine like i've heard a lot of people i've heard a lot of people say like king kong has made it to where stern's in trouble this and that like kong is legitimately our third best-selling game since godzilla like in the past four or five years and that's after like 10 cornerstones yeah so it's yeah like this is like looking at a youtube video, right? We're not freaking out being like, oh, this is 10 and 10. Shit, what are we doing now? You know, it's doing just fine. That's the reality of pinball. Not all themes, not all games are going to come out and just be absolute grand slam for sales every single time. You cannot break records. You cannot just go up in perpetuity. That's not the way reality works. And I know, I mean, I read the YouTube comments on the Flippin' Out channel. And then even on the stream, somebody made comments about like, oh yeah, Kong's not selling well. You know, there's LEs in stock. And Zach was like, if there's LE, if a dealer has an LE that he wants to sell Zach, Zach's like, I'll buy them. I'll buy them out. I got to look at the camera real quick. My God. Because we talk about this all the time. I get his glasses out. There we go.
    89:15
    Stern is a B2B business, all right? If you see a limited edition game in stock, stern has already made their money on that game like they've already they've already sold through it blows my mind when people see inventory when they see a product still in stock that that means that the manufacturer is in trouble do we freaking go to walmart and just look at like at the shelf and be like holy shit there's like a bunch of tums right there that business is in trouble I can't believe this. Like what?
    89:57
    I just, it's like people forget that Stern's not selling direct to consumer. Like 98% of their business is going to be like B2P. I just, I, that's the part I don't understand guys. I don't understand. I don't understand it. Okay. I don't know. It's hard to, that's my Travis talks. Now that you like work in the industry and like actually look at marketing and sales stuff on a daily basis, it's really hard for me to discredit your opinions anymore. Because I think there is some validity to them. I have to hold back so much on this, but I will tell you straight up.
    90:29
    I have listened. Finally, I've went out. I've listened to YouTube channels. I've read message boards. I've been on Facebook. I've listened to everything.
    90:38
    Like everybody's in fucking la la land. I don't I don't under like it doesn't match up with the reality I see. It doesn't match up with the data I see. And again, it's only going to be as good as whatever source you have and how good they're going about it. But again, we try to appeal to retail, not just pinball enthusiasts. We've got to get outside of that, and that's how we're able to push sales. That's how we're able to introduce people to pinball. We'll get into it next time because once Harry Potter comes out, then we'll be able to jump into why LE buyers do what they do because they're definitely segmented. It's not just people that just want to flip games and make money. I mean, I know it's shocking. There's a lot of people out there who just want to buy a game that's top tier, that's new in box because it's cool, and they don't care about the money.
    91:20
    That's valid. One thing I think you did forget to mention in this episode was when I streamed King Kong the other night, I battled the T-Rex, which is currently the furthest. That's the thing that's furthest in the game right now. If you want to go see somebody play a mini-wizard mode in the most non-mini-wizard way possible. I was excited to be there. I was living in the moment. I asked Jared. I said, tell me what's on the screen. He read one thing. I didn't know what I was doing I was excited to be there I spelled King Kong I got I essentially reached the point of the code where as far as of code the words you're looking for Travis is I'm proud of you I don't think you've said those words when I watch you play I wizard Tom I watched him play without the sound on and I thought he was in some hurry up mode because he was just fucking chimp flipping like crazy he was flipping the left flipper when the balls on the right hand side I'm like, what the hell is he doing that for? I thoroughly enjoy watching Joel and Jared, and I think everybody should. Thank you, Tom. But it was impressive that you got there, and that should tell everybody, if Joel can do it, everybody can enjoy that game. That game's great, man. There we go. Okay, let's plug it up. Let's do our plugs. Tom, plug away, man. You can find me, of course, here on Triple Drain. I also do this other little thing called Fox Cities Pinball. we're going to be streaming the big tournament Yegpin next, uh, next week. I will be out of the country for that. So, uh, tune in for that.
    92:58
    Awesome. Well done. I will also be out of the country next week. So Travis, you're going to have to hold down the, uh, the entire country for triple drain. Cool. I'm on it. Plug away, man. Yeah. I'm Travis. I'm on, uh, I stumbled over my word. Sorry. No, no, leave it in there. I'm on triple drain. I nearly said like, I was on something else, not triple drain. I was going to mix up like my, my work with triple drain. I was about to say I'm with the pinball drain.
    93:28
    Nevermind. Triple drain pinball company. You know where to find me. Yes. You lovely people. Thank you for listening and watching. Absolutely. And yeah, and I'm Joel. So you can find me here on triple drain as well as the flipping out pinball stream every Wednesday night, not this Wednesday, but every Wednesday night with my brother, we're having a great time with that so check out if you want to see gameplay tutorials all that stuff check out the Flippin' Out YouTube channel as well as actually Tom has gameplay and tutorials on Fox City's YouTube and Travis has gameplay and tutorials on the Pinball Company so there's plenty of media out there to consume mine are more depressing no that was the dumbest comment ever oh man well hey yes there's plenty of content out there thanks to everybody that listens. Check out our stuff on Silver Ball Swag. We had somebody in Milan, Milano, Italy, order a shirt. So, shout out to that person. Thank you for whoever ordered that last month in Italy. So, yeah, it'll go out. Alright, like always, Tom, you get the last ones. Later, everybody.