Now, they had two pins that were for public play that had not been in the public before with Black Knight Sword of Rage and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Stern with Black Knight and Jersey Jack Pinball with Willy Wonka. Surprised that, I can't really say surprised per se, but it's interesting because we make that trip down the TPF for the experience and it was great, and then the two big reveals kind of happened in our own backyard, and we just don't have the opportunity to get down there based on time. No, and you know what? Look it back. I mean, I think we should have gone, but honestly, with prior commitments, I know I couldn't go, and I think you couldn't go either. It is hard to make that a one-day trip is the problem. Yeah, and you know what? Honestly, I mean, I know I had a good time on Friday. I had a great time. We'll talk about Friday in a second. In your opinion, do you think that MGC, which is the Midwest Gaming Classic out of Milwaukee, does that now solidify itself as a premier kind of venue for companies to release or you know display a pinball machine for the first time it seems like it is and i mean logistically it makes sense because you know everybody's in our backyard here anyway yeah so why would you transport 20 some pins from chicago down to texas back up or whatever you don't sell etc so maybe that's it maybe there's other reasons it's a good spot i mean and it's a very busy show because you have the video game kind of industry there too with retro console gaming arcade machines computer games all the way up to you know and then you've got pinball machines so it's kind of a one-stop shop for the gamer which is pretty nice and you open up to a whole nother crowd of people that wouldn't normally be exposed to pinball so i mean it makes a little more sense in my eyes to have it there yeah so congratulations uh dan and team over there running mgc it sounds like uh the show went really well all the feedback i got from the show was really positive so nice nicely done guys Everybody seemed to enjoy it that we talked to. So on Friday, we had the reveal of Willy Wonka, and that was by Jersey Jack Pinball. There was kind of like our media rollout. We're special and lit. This week in pinball and straight down the middle, all had content to upload at the same time to coincide with the reveal, to try to give people better information and be better informed about the game as it rolled out. before any of that happened, which went down around 7 o'clock Central Time on Friday, we decided that since we couldn't make it to MGC, that we were going to host on our Twitch channel, which is if you want to search for us on Twitch, you can just go to twitch.tv, and it's simply Special When Lit Podcast. It's just all one word. No spaces. But we went ahead and we did like a JJP tailgate party out of Steve Beattie's house, and we fired up our stream, and we were streaming Congo, which was Steve's pin and we were just kind of talking JJP. Now during the course of that, we had a table set up so that people can kind of see like a live podcast, how it was working. And we had Jason and Matt. Yeah. From slap, say pinball podcast. We had Jeff Patterson from this week in pinball, Ken and Bill from special one lit. And then the gracious hosts, Steve Beatty chicken man. He opened up his doors and, and it was great. I, did you have a fun time doing that? Dude, it was real refreshing because normally every time we see Jeff, he's always running around like he's got his head cut off. Very busy, right? Yeah, dude. So this was like the first time he actually got to sit down, enjoy stuff, and relax and wasn't under the gun. I mean, we hung out with him at TPF, but he had so much pressure just from the Twippies coming up. Dude, he was like a nervous wreck the whole time. So it was great to actually finally hang out with him for, well, in six months, I feel like, since Expo. Right, and he was just pressure-free, you know? And he kind of let loose. I mean, we were all having some adult beverages and it was really fun to interact with people that were on the stream. And what had happened is the stream that we kind of envisioned to be just kind of a time killer for people leading up to the reveal started gaining legs. And, you know, at one point, you know, we started off. There was like 20 or 30 people that were in our chat room. And that was pretty fun for us because humbling. Yeah, we don't put a lot of time into our streaming yet. You know, we've got an approach that we're going to take, which includes a lot of live podcasting, you know, during the streams. But at one point, Bill, there were almost 400 people in chat and we had over 2000 views on that stream. And then when seven o'clock rolled around, we just transferred. There's a way that you can transfer your viewership to another Twitch channel. And we wanted to transfer our viewership of almost 400 people over to Buffalo Pinball because they were actually there. And they were there for the reveal conference. And then they were streaming the game afterwards. It was just super, super fun, man. And to be able to kind of – we had some crazy times that night. I mean, it got a little bit wild. A little blurry. I know you loved the whole Black Knight. Yeah. The Black Knight music. That was yesterday's last podcast for that. I don't mind the Black Knight music. I just don't want to hear the Black Knight music. And that's the Black Knight 2K music that Steve had on his machine that just seemed like it never stopped. And it was just getting to the point where it was like, I don't want to hear the music right now. Please, please stop it. Well, the problem was we had a couple of beverages, and then we started playing Valor Games of Black Knight. You know, it was a great time, though. Great time. It was fun. So I think everybody had a really good time. And then if you get a chance, if you just want to see what that was all about, again, the video is archived, so you can kind of check it out. So 7 o'clock rolls around. The reveal happens. The Buffalo Pinball stream is going on. People are seeing Willy Wonka for the first time. Now, we had already been on the machine a week prior when we recorded the podcast panel discussion. And if you haven't listened to that, a lot of self-promotion here today, guys. I apologize. Our prior episode is making of Willy Wonka. So check it out because you've got the design team and Jersey Jack that are all kind of discussing the game. So the world kind of sees Willy Wonka for the first time on a stream. And I think the feedback that we've gotten majoritively has been pretty good feedback. But I've noticed that there have been there's been a number of people that believe that maybe the game was overhyped. And obviously, the only people that could have overhyped the game that nobody else saw would have been, you know, podcasters that went in to see the game. And we know that Chris Calouris-Canada went in to see the game at the same time that we did. Now, Chris saw it in New Jersey, and we saw it straight down the middle in This Week in Pinball at the Jersey Jack Satellite Office, the development office that's in Bensonville. All three versions of the game, too, that we saw. Right. Now, if you remember, and you can go back two episodes ago, and you can kind of hear my excitement, where I try to meticulously detail what my overall impression was, first impression of the game. and I was super excited. Without making anybody confused, I'm just as excited as I was that day, but I think it's only fair that I kind of address a couple things if you're up for it. Sure. Okay. The first thing that Pat Lawler said that really struck me, and this just goes back into kind of like my feedback of the machine, and what I want to do is, all right, first of all, we're not professional pinball reviewers. We don't say that we're professional pinball reviewers. We're not professional journalists here. Or professional pinball players. That said, we have a lot of exposure to pinball. We've played a ton of pinball. Between the two of us, we have a couple decades of pinball under our belt. Now, are there people that have more pinball under their belt? Absolutely. Are there people that don't have as much? Absolutely. So when we offer our feedback, it's opinion-based. It's a middle-of-the-road opinion. our opinion is basically just that of regular consumers that are going to the home we're not competitive we're not playing in tournaments um we're not hypercritical pinball enthusiasts is what we are right uh so i'm enthusiastic about pinball and i'm not looking to blow up shortcomings i i'm looking for concepts in pinball i'm not looking to just crash and burn on on all the failures willie walk into me has way more positives than it has negatives it's hard for me to really find anything that's a strong negative on the game. And that's kind of what I said when we had gone ahead and discussed our initial impressions. Now, going back to Pat Lawler, something that he said that really hit home to me was that he said he believes that Willy Wonka is, and I'm paraphrasing, he believes that Willy Wonka is the pinnacle of what pinball can be right now in the 21st century. This game is probably right now the pinnacle of what you can create in the 21st century as a pinball machine. So when Pat Lawler tells you that, this is a guy that's been around the business. He's been in pinball for years. He's designed many games. He knows the manufacturing side. He knows the sales side. He knows the developmental side. Those words rung very, very strong. Yeah, they resonated with you. They absolutely resonated with me. So that's very exciting. And when a designer tells you something like that, it's impressive to hear. Now, people that have never played the machine and said that there was some overhype going on, I don't know that that's really fair because how do you base – It's opinion that we have, though. That's the thing. And here's the thing. Out of a lot of the gripes on Pinside that we've been reading and hearing about, one is artwork. Well, let's just backstep this two years. I want to backstep. I don't think there's a lot of gripes. I think there's just as much positive and there are people that are trying to point out what they think needs improvement. There is. But you know what? The one, I mean, there's a few different areas that kind of, you know, not irk me, but, you know, really would love to have that, you know, people in here to have a discussion about why they think this way and have a, you know, a dialogue so maybe we can understand what they're saying and, you know, they can understand what we see. But you're not going to be able to do that unless they actually sit down and play the pinball machine in an environment where we played it, number one. Number two, let's go back two years to Star Wars, when Star Wars came out. Everyone was hypercritical about the artwork. They are working within a license. You can't get crazy goofy with a Disney license like that. At least I wouldn't imagine so. And Willy Wonka, in my opinion, is probably going to be the very same thing. Which, on that style pinball machine, would you want Zombie Yeti drawing some crazy crap? No. And making it unoriginal to the theme? So John Yowsey, he says on the panel discussion that there was a lot of work that had to go into rezzing up the original photos. I mean, those photos are so old. So for him to rezz up, increase the resolution of those so that they're kind of cleaned up and they look good at the size in which they are in the cabinet takes some work. You're right. I don't want Zombie Yeti. I love Zombie Yeti, and I love his artwork. I don't need him deep diving into Willy Wonka. It just doesn't seem like it would make a lot of sense with that kind of art style for me personally. Now, some photorealism, something like a Christopher Franchi approach that you see on his pins, I think lends itself better and Willy Wonka for me. And if there are Photoshop things going on on this, it's not because it was a cut and paste. There was a meticulous effort to clean these photographs up so that they present well. I kind of like seeing the original stuff looking as clean as it does at the size that it is because you just don't see that. So, I mean, that didn't really bother me. But you know what, though? I mean, we're missing one of the key points of this thing. The reason why you fell in love with it and why I really, really like it and I do plan on owning it at some point, it's just I don't plan on selling anything out of my collection. So obviously there's a barrier there that I can't break just yet, okay? But we fell in love with the way that it played. The experience, the overall experience for me is what sold me. The immersion of being in the game. And it wasn't really a whole lot else, just feeling the energy being connected to that game. There's only a handful of games that I really feel connected to when I play. One is Wizard of Oz. And I have to say, I like Wizard of Oz a lot. I'll never sell mine. But I think Willy Wonka shoots better. Now, on the flip side of the coin, I wish there were a few more toys inside of it. And I wasn't able to say that last time. Kind of like the trees in Wizard of Oz and stuff like that. Because you were not allowed to comment on what was going on in the game. Correct. Okay, now is that a deal breaker? No. What does that do? That opens the door to the mod community to go nuts on this thing Yeah exactly So even that not a downfall to the game per se You know people don like the artwork Well you know I mean honestly you really have to play the game You know, it really resonates with me when we played Beatles for the first time. We were doing this podcast when Beatles came out. We were like, oh, okay, it's Beatles. It's cool. It's a re-theme of Sea Witch, whatever. I didn't think much of Beatles. I mean, I could take it or leave it. I had no drive to want to play it. I just didn't really care. It wasn't our theme. No, it wasn't our theme. I didn't really care about a re-themed Sea Witch going on. It just wasn't for me. Yeah, but not that we wished the game bad or anything. We said that at the time. Yeah, it just wasn't our thing. And then we jumped in front of one when we played Monsters. And tell me you wouldn't want to have a Beatles at some point. I had a great time on Beatles. And it was because what changed our minds was having a hands-on experience with the machine. So I'm going to double down on this one. And I like where you're going, so keep going. Because this is kind of where I'm trying to go. I'm going to walk you right into this. Okay. So we watched the Deadpool stream. Okay. Yep. And what did you think of Deadpool when we watched the stream? So actually, you can go back. We podcasted and recorded at the same time that Deadpool was being revealed. And I don't remember exactly what was said, but I remember not being too thrilled about Deadpool. And I was one of the persons that kind of questioned that maybe there's too much red that was in the play field. and that I wasn't really a big fan of the fighting scenes because I didn't think that that correlated well to pinball and that some of the shots might have lacked some flow, but overall I thought it was a cool effort and that was kind of it. And we were discussing that as Jack Danger was streaming the pin. Again, the impression that we had on that game was based on a pinball stream, which is an overhead view of a game with a two-dimensional flattened image. And since then, I own Deadpool, and it's one of my favorite games that I've owned. And actually, I own two Deadpools because I had an LE that left and I ended up getting a premium because I just felt more comfortable with that dollar amount invested into that particular machine. I love it. And it wasn't the stream. If I would have based my opinion on a pinball stream, I never would have owned Deadpool. It was a hands-on. And it's not of any fault of Jack streaming the game. He's got his limitations and he's showing how the game shoots. Until someone can figure out how to do a 3D view of a pinball machine stream, it's never going to happen. So, you know, I mean, and where I'm going with this is just that just because you see a stream and it might not be the best thing, you know, I've really learned to appreciate a few things. Number one, how hard people put their time and effort into building some of these, all these games, in all honesty. And then to see some people rip games down. And it's like, you know, this person gave up a year and a half of their life to build this game. And whether you like it or not, you should show respect. Well, you can show respect out of just being a human being, courtesy-wise. It doesn't mean that you have to throw your money out there to support somebody's effort that you just didn't agree with at the end. But you can absolutely be respectful for the person in their attempt. Yeah, exactly. So whether it's a theme of yours or not, you don't have to be careless about somebody's feelings. I mean, they put their heart and soul into this stuff. And we've seen it firsthand where somebody's gotten bashed on something and watched the after effects of how it crushed them. And that sucks. so you know the the kind of read some of this stuff now it's like you know number one if you haven't jumped in front of it whether whether you're just going off a stream or whatever i can totally appreciate that at that point you might be able to say okay i don't know if i'm in on this because the way that i saw some 500 strangers play a game and not a professional or not somebody that had you know you know somebody like us who had it in the home for you know four or five weeks where we got some time to play it and get accustomed to how it shoots um but this game you and i played it and it flows like butter i'll still maintain that even with the flippers turned down it's still those ramps are perfect i guess the the real issue that i'm having to go back to where i kind of was going originally is that you know if somebody doesn't agree with my opinion i can totally appreciate it what i don't really understand is that how you can compare the experience that i had physically playing and being in front of a game and being part of that pinball immersion and then comparing my experience with somebody that's critiquing me like potentially like over hyping a game when they sat and they watched a video or they watched a stream and they read some stuff on the internet about it so i i just don't think that it's a fair comparison whereas uh i just have a little bit more time in an exposure physically to the game versus watching something that's on a monitor. Now, it doesn't mean that after you have the same experience that I have as far as being in front of the game that you're still going to think that maybe I overhyped something or that I talked a little bit too highly.