And now, coming to you live from the Wisconsin Rabbit Studios, it's Don's Pinball Podcast Episode 3844272023. Why, that is correct, Don. Thank you so very much for that intro. Sure do appreciate it. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the beginning, or the end of the week, actually. There's a ton of news I've been sitting down jotting notes that I want to get to, and we're going to get to all of that and more. It's new game day pretty soon, and I heard there's a fresh-ass live stream, which is about to happen tomorrow. Prepare yourself. We're coming up. After just no words from our sponsors, because I cut that stuff right out of there, but I still have a tip jar that you can hit. The link in the description to the podcast will take you there. Buy me a beer. Buy me a couple games of Godfather, why don't you? Buy me a nice Diet Frosty soda. I don't care what I get, but throw your tips my way, ladies and gentlemen. Let's hit it. Now, I'm recovering from my rant that I had. I think I may have been a little too harsh, though it was all well-meaning against my new friends there at Pinball Adventures. But I went and reached out to Andrew by email, and we had a discussion back and forth, and we made peace. So we're in a good spot here. Not an enemy of the Pinball Adventures. I just really wanted them to succeed. And I did pass along my notes and my inspirations and my affirmations and things I think that would help this go into a better direction. So speaking to him, you know, I did happen to ask, you know, how is this game selling? I mean, it is now released after years and years in development and rumors and pictures and videos and whatnot and what have you. And this is a behind the scenes things that I haven't even got deep enough into to fully understand. And it seems that they have, in fact, according to him, sold out of their engraved editions. Those 10 editions of Puny Factory with the engraved side and the all-black cabinet, those have seemed to have been sold off to consumers. He says he's also sold another 10 to 12 of the regular edition. So around 20, 26, 25 machines have been sold to date of our email from just a few days ago. So he mentioned that sold out all their inventory that they had on hand. So he's happy. So that's great for them that they succeeded. Now, I also asked him, like, you know, what's the market like for these? You know, where are they selling? And it turns out that he's actually doing better in places like Europe and then domestically in Canada where they're at. I don't know. I didn't get into it to see if that is from, you know, value-added tax that comes from machines that are made in the U.S. and then exported. But he says that, you know, going head-to-head, you know, with Stern, In the U.S., for the U.S. consumer, it doesn't really make a lot of sense when you look at what Puny Factory has on offer. You know, its lights look great and everything. The shot layout's fairly simple and straightforward. And when you have, you know, even a Bond Pro here, you know, with new updated code for the same price, it's hard as a U.S. consumer to then go ahead and go in on this. But let's say you were over in Europe and the price of, you know, importing, you know, a Stern Pro to your neck of the woods, you know, would add like several thousand dollars of cost. Maybe there's a trade agreement or something with Canada where you could get a game a lot cheaper. And so that, and then it becomes a bargain, you know, compared to some of the prices that we see, you know, internationally. So that may be kind of more where the core market is for pinball adventures. And that may have been gone into driving the prices. And so, you know, none of that was really anything I was thinking about because I'm, you know, my lens is strictly coming from the U.S. market. But, you know, good for them. We'll follow along and see, you know, how they sell. and I'm excited to see what comes next. Their game Elements, you know, sounds interesting. I mean, that theme appeals to me more than Puny Factory sure does. But I'm still waiting for first class, man. I want a commercial jet themed airline game. I'm just curious about how that theme is implemented. And I'm amped on it because I am a fan of aviation, you know, as it turns out. So, you know, going back, I went back and watched a stream with my wife the other day and I was looking at the comments. And, you know, when this game is on idle, you know, when the ball is in the trough waiting to be launched, there's just this, that music, that just sound effect loop that they have. And I was watching people in the comments saying like, would somebody please shoot the ball already and stop this music. So that isn't what I would call an opportunity for quality improvement. And this can be done easily by code. So it's not something that, you know, they have to add any new hardware or anything. But I would imagine, you know, some sort of different music or just rotating or a longer loop or something, you know, cause the, you know, the, the cartoon factory sound effects droning on. That was getting a bit much, even for people watching the stream. Moving on to my other punching bag, Multimorphic P3. Now, you know, my first experience with Multimorphic was at Texas Pinball Festival a year ago. And when I saw the four games, the screens were, you know, pretty greasy and dirty. I don't know if that was just due to the heavy play that they had the day before. I was there on a Saturday. And so when I played it, I was like, oh, you know, the screens looked a little scratched and scuffed up. Maybe that was just from heavy play or new balls with grease or something. So I hadn't had a lot of good experiences with it. But now that I've played it at a few expos, the Multimorphic particularly Weird Al I went to On Goji out in Van Nuys and played there too So I played a location version of a Multimorphic And you know I was watching the Lexi Lightspeed video online And you know the game actually looks kind of fun. I don't know that I actually played that one at Expo. I think it was next to I think I played Cosmic Kart Racing, played Weird Al. And then I think there was a couple other ones I did. But I got to thinking, if I ordered a Multimorphic, I mean, it's going to be a year until I can get the dang thing. And so what is the holdup here? Is it a supply chain issues or is it like what I've been hearing other people speculating that it's actually a labor issue, right? Trying to hire people in rural Texas for the factory that are skilled enough to be able to assemble these things is probably their bottleneck or very well could be. I sent them an email to kind of clarify this and just reach out to them. I haven't heard back yet. But I was thinking, you know, self, you know, what could we do to, you know, help facilitate a multimorphic machine? You know, should I be in the market for one? And then, boom, it hit me. What about the IKEA model? If the problem and bottleneck that's holding up production is manpower and assembly, you know, can they make a kit version available? Can I order a kit, you know, where they take, you know, all the flats of the cabinet and all the electronics and everything, you know, the boards, you know, mount them to the back of the cabinet but send them to me, and then I can assemble on site. I can populate a play field, especially when it's the digital variety that encompasses most of the board with the multi-morphic. Now, the modules, I'd have them still do those. Those don't seem to require as much labor as cabinet makers and everything. But just send me the parts and let me assemble. Maybe knock several thousand dollars off the cost because you don't have to worry about that labor. Plus, the machine will ship flat like Ikea does. it won't have to come as a big freighter. If it does come in freight, it won't have to be on a big vertical pallet the size of a refrigerator. So I floated that idea to them. I'll let you know what I hear back. I'm sure this idea must have occurred to them at some point. I'm sure it would take a lot of technical know-how, but now that I've been working on my games for a while and assembling them and unboxing them and shipping them and setting them up in other people's homes, I think I'd be up to the challenge of doing that. Heck, people order helicopters as a kit, and they assemble these things in their garages and then go fly around their neighborhood. Kit airplanes have existed since the 70s or earlier. So why can't we have a kit pinball machine, especially something like Multimorphic, which is modular in nature anyway? I think it lends itself to it, and I think if the problem is truly a bottleneck of labor, outsource that labor to the consumer and pass along the savings. That would make it a lot more attractive for me to jump into a Multimorphic. When I look at the machine in total costs of around $13,000 or so, 11 for the base unit plus a machine or a module you know to put in it you know just send me the stuff and let me put it together they already said they sell like decal kits so you can customize your cabinet if you want to change the theme of it you know so they're already have one step in that space and definitely it wouldn't be for everybody you know not everybody has the time or willpower to do this but i think as a kit fun hobby i would like to order one of these um you know if i got a good kit price and assemble myself multimorphic what do y'all think why not go with the ikea model so i'll let you guys know what happens when i follow up with that email um i just sent out today uh but yeah i was just curious you know let me assemble the dang thing myself um order some modules play it for a while you know and maybe i assemble and then i can sell it on later and buy another kit and assemble maybe it's fun to just put these kits together people like puzzles i like three-dimensional puzzles i like pinball come on let's make it work moving on to stern i can't believe they weren't the lead-off story for this episode so stern production updates last i had heard there was something going on with the le production and it turns out the le production has paused and they've gone to running premiums they've gone to running premiums so quickly that i've seen a couple premiums show up today and the foo fighters facebook group i've seen people posting that you know they have their new out of box premiums and this morning i got woken up by a telephone call from federal express saying hey what time tomorrow do you want us to bring this electronic whatever that's coming to you So my premium is coming tomorrow, you guys. I am so beyond excited about that. I live-streamed Elvira out of the box and setting it up. I'm going to do that again today with Foo Fighters. But not only that, I'm going to set up Foo Fighters. I'm going to add the shaker motor. I'm going to add the knocker kit. I've got pin woofers to put in there. And thanks to Mr. Kerry Hardy, who I'll get to later, I've got a set of dang pin stadium Neo Geo Adams coming in. So it's going to be a blind brain blistering experience in my room downstairs in the game room for the live stream tomorrow. So get ready for that. They're scheduled to come in sometime in the first half of the day, central time. I don't know when that will actually be. So watch the Facebook page. But I'll definitely put up there once I see the truck show up. And then we'll just live stream. We'll take the ding downstairs. We'll throw it on the pin crawler. I'll film all that. And then this time I'm going to try something new. I'm going to see if I can lay the box down, slide the machine out of the box, and then keep the box intact so I have one intact stern box if I want to ship another thing a game by a trucking company or something I can have an intact box If not my kid can go play in it and turn it into a huge dollhouse or something But we see how that goes I think it possible I've seen others do that. So because premiums are coming out, a couple of things. Something happened on the line. So now the one denominator that is not common between the LE and the premium would be, you know, the green powder-coated armor, you know, the art, you know, the back glass. But I think it's the expression lights. I think that may have been where the holdup was. Perhaps there's a second line that's running these expression lights and maybe the quantities were dwindling. And so they weren't able to keep the pace of these machines going out due to maybe a bottleneck at the processing area for the expression lights. So flip a switch, just put different art on, put different armor, and then just start running premiums, right? They're essentially the same as the LE at that point. And so that's probably what happened. And so they were able to run some premiums now to keep that line flowing, keep it nice and greased and boxes going out while they build up a supply of the expression lights then they can go back into running the rest of the le production and then after that they'll probably keep rolling making these kits for rush uh since a lot of the components are similar my hope is that they keep that line running though and once the initial rush orders are fulfilled they'll then go and start building up inventory so they can release the foo fighters expression lights because i would like to get those um the other thing is premiums are coming out man that was quick i was expecting you know sometime in like mid-may and here we are still april surprise here's your premium so if you've got them ordered you know in that first run you may be getting a call from somebody this week to get your game so that is fantastic i'm excited about that what else did i get oh my rush shooter rod showed up and i'm seeing rush armor showing up too so those other uh rush accessories they're coming out they're going into people's hands i've got uh my rush shooter rod installed i love the lights that are on it i don't know if mine needs to break in or something but it shoots a little weaker than the other shooter rod that I did have, but I do love the red lights that come up on there. And now I've made myself my custom D20 shooter rod, you know, modeled after the Stranger Things one. My shooter rod's a little bit bigger, almost tennis ball size, and I have a translucent one. And when that translucent one is hit by those red LEDs and lights up, it's really fantastic. So I may keep the actual Rush shooter rod. I may switch it out for my translucent D20, because that thing glows too with those red lights. But accessories are coming out. The armors out. I did not order the armor since I have an LE and that came with actually distinct armor itself. But if you've ordered those, those may be showing up too. What I haven't heard and what I haven't got a bill for is the Rush Topper. So that should be sometimes still in the works. But the way Stern works, we may get a call from the distros tomorrow saying, give me your $1,700 because we've got toppers that are leaving the factory and going to your house. So a lot of fun developments from Stern this week. I mean, we're going into the weekend and people are going to have new games, new pinball Saturday is coming up you know for me it'll be tomorrow friday so watch the facebook page man you know sitting down on the couch you know jotting down notes and i'm like is there any pinball news to talk about today and i filled up an entire legal pad page man i still got more to talk about pin stadiums carrie hardy had put up his uh premium video for foo fighters or video for foo fighters premium the video itself is not premium although it's got that premium carrie hardy quality so i mean we got that so he picked up a show game from texas uh brought it home and then in conjunction with his sponsors, Penn Stadium and Titan, rubber band, silicone band, performance band products. He did a whole video of showing him putting in these glow-in-the-dark Titan bands, you know, rubbers for the slings, for the flippers, as well as posts throughout the whole game, even removing the upper play field to put those in. And then he dropped some Penn Stadium neos in there. My goodness. Augustus Gloop, it's amazing. um you know the way the lights just charge all of the the glow-in-the-dark bands you know so i'm sitting there watching this and it's late at night i have not even been drinking but then i'm on my phone and i'm ordering titan bands and i'm ordering pin stadiums now i have one of the pin stadiums since i was at expo okay uh chicago pinball expo i was at the pin stadium booth you know playing all the games talking to the guys and they had a star wars set up there at this point i can't even remember if it was the pro or the premium but they had these pin stadium neo adams like the high level ones, the $650 LED light strips that you put inside your cabinet. And like I had a TIE fighter target or something and the whole, like my whole world turned bright fluorescent pink. Like my brain started melting out of my nose. I was halfway between ecstasy and epilepsy. It was the most bizarre brain melting experience I've had playing pinball. Heck, I think I've ever had, you know, it's like the lights were inside my brain and I was transcendental out in the astral plane for a moment. So what a bizarre experience that was. And I have with Star Wars Premium now. So I haven't forgot that experience. But there was a barrier of the price. Now, Homie Kerry came through. If you put code Hardy in there, you're going to get 10% off Penn Stadium, 10% off Titan Bands. So with Penn Stadium, it knocks like $65 off. So in a moment of weakness, and in a moment of thinking back and reminiscing to when my brain melted at Chicago gaming expo I went ahead and got some pin stadiums So my plan is I going to put those in my Foo Fighters because I was convinced you know looking at all those glow bands I like the Titans to begin with, and just that whole package just really set it off. So I'm going to replicate that in my own house. Now, when the expression lights come out, I'm for sure switching those out into my Foo Fighters, and I'm going to take those pin stadiums and stick them in Star Wars and go melt my brain some more at home. My goodness. I mean, I don't even know if there's any kind of a pharmaceutical mushroom that can match what the heck happened to my brain when I played that with the PinStadiums. It was nuts. It was nuts, guys. So, anyways, passing on to you. If you haven't checked out the video, it's on there. But without checking out the video, use Hardy's name and throw it in. If you want some PinStadiums, now's the time to get 10% off. Or, you know, get yourself some Titan bands. Those are always worth it. And there's a kit that's already made. It's got all the glows in it. They give you two sets of them. So I think I paid $60, $6 off, 10%, whatever. I don't know. I'm buying pinball stuff on the couch late at night. I'm not making good decisions. What else? Oh, God, the news keeps coming. Another thing dropped on us. So a perennial favorite, right, the darling of the moment, Pulp Fiction is going to be streaming by some guy called Deadflip on Twitch tomorrow Central Time. What's that, 6 p.m. Central Time. So we're getting a stream from Jack Danger on Deadflip of Pulp Fiction. That's fantastic. I can't wait to watch this, especially because so far all the videos I've been able to see were either, you know, under controlled conditions like that big trailer that Flip N Out Pinball did. Great job, guys. Or it's just, you know, over-the-shoulder videos at a busy convention hall. So this will be fun to actually be able to hear those call-outs and for me to see those shots, you know, in a stream format. So I think, you know, half the Internet is going to be watching this thing tomorrow. Central time, 6 p.m., twitch.tv backslash deadflip. Y'all know where to find it. what a great follow up to the Galactic Tank Force stream I think and what a palate cleanser from Punny Factory guys I wonder if Jack Danger would stream Punny Factory if he did would anybody watch it if Jack Danger streamed Punny Factory in the woods would anybody care to hear it what else do I have for you oh god one more thing one last thing before we go Pinball Brothers man we're all over the place with all this news so they had announced that they had an announcement I love announcements for announcements. They were going to have an announcement yesterday, 4-26, must be two days ago. No, that was yesterday. 4-26 was going to be alien day, big announcement coming. And so we were all hype, right? People, it's a new code update. Is Ripley finally going to be in the machine? Is there new modes that are coming out? New code, new something. And it turns out it's a discount. It's a discount of $426 because it came out on 4-26. I'm not sure what the connection is. Maybe there's some kind of you know nozoma what was the name of the the the the the battle mix spaceship they were on um anyway 426 off of the game off of the full price msrp of i guess alien is it on both versions of it is just the lv i don't know call your distributor i've heard some distributors honoring the 426 discount for both of them um so okay what is prompting this uh obviously it must be that you know inventory is sitting around and not moving otherwise why the heck would you discount it um it would have been nice if they had accompanied this okay so the discount idea fine good marketing idea but how about throw out just like like some little piece of code or something like so some new shout outs or a new mode or a new you know lighting something something simple you know but say hey we got a fantastic new code update you know something new for everybody to try oh and also if you haven't gone in on one and you're on the fence this will help push you over, use code Hardy and get an alien LV for, no, you don't have to use the Hardy code, but $426 off. So they surprised us with that. But I got to think that, you know, they're sitting at distros right now, or, you know, maybe sales have slowed down. There's a million other games out. You know, Queen, the way that it's been received by the community has not been like it was with Pulp Fiction. So maybe they're just trying to move some inventory. I think that's a fantastic marketing option. Maybe a pinball brothers has already started to work on their next release soon. And they want to kind of get some of the inventory going. I love the car lot analogy, you know, you know, we got the, the, the 2023s are still on the lot. The 2024s are about to be loaded out and leaving the factory. Let's get some of these 2023s out of here so we can have the 2024. I'm all for that. I mean, I think that would move toy stories. I think it would help move Godfathers if those are slowing down. Um, but you know, sales numbers aren't really released. So I have no way to know really how Godfather's doing. Is it brisk? Is it slow? Is it plotting? Is it just the crowded market? There's all these market forces and everything. So spin the wheel and pick what you think. All right, I'm going to wrap up right here. Let me hit my music. A lot of stuff I felt like I wanted to cover. Tomorrow's going to be huge. I mean, I got Penn Stadium showing up. I got Foo Fighters Premium showing up. Live streams. I put my banners up on the wall. I got pictures on Instagram, on the Facebook page, everything. Hit me with emails, donsbimballpodcasts at gmail.com. I got other exciting announcements in the future. Here's my announcement for announcement. What do you think of that? All right. So thank you, everybody. Be cool. Eat your vegetables and hit me up later.