Thank you. Welcome to Cactus Canyon Stranger. All right, no more Mr. Nice Guy. All right. There's a bad guy out there Hey buddy, you shot my drink Why do they always tie me to the tracks? Thank you for cleaning up Cactus Canyon. I'm here with Ryan White from Chicago Gaming. Thanks for flying up from IAPA with all those other guys to be here today. This game looks so much more colorful in the video than I remember it from 1998. Well, we used the original artwork. We used everything we could. We just enhanced it with some RGB color LEDs. We enhanced the gameplay with new code. made the game a little bit more modern so and you know color dot matrix oh and the excel color display i mean that thing is just intense we take the original art plus what we do you know in this game all the new animation and literally we do it in high definition dots so it brings it really to life but still has that classic feel that everyone's kind of grown accustomed to in that era of pinball Yeah, well, to refresh your memory, Cactus Canyon was like the game that marked the end of the line of traditional pinball, at least from the Williams perspective, and they cut it short. They gave it an early release with incomplete feature set, I guess you would say. Well, it was the last Valley WPC title before they went to Pinball 2000. They made 903 of them. And long story short is they literally was supposed to be a line filler to bridge a gap. And they had X amount of time to get it to the line, and they only had X amount of time to build it. And then Pinball, as they were building this, the line was being converted over to build Pinball 2000. When Pinball 2000 didn't do so well, it was kind of the end of the era of Bally Williams Pinball. So they really didn't get to finish it. It was kind of like, where are you at? Does it shoot? Does it play? Okay, cool, this is a filler piece. We don't expect it to earn well. We're putting all of our money into Pinball 2000. And that production quantity made it kind of like a limited edition, to use the modern terminology, that there were fewer out there than the collectors wanted. So there was some demand for you to come in and scoop up, I guess. The demand was there more because I think it's really kind of a really mythical game. It's got a great layout. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. It's got great flow to it. It's got really good humor to it. Full of jokes. But most people either didn't own it or couldn't own it. you know of the 903 a lot of those went overseas so that became very limited here and how many of them were destroyed you know so you know it's kind of one of those a lot of collectors have never owned it the people who have owned it have always wanted the game to be complete because it's really cactus has that kind of cult status where people love it and then they go through it and they've played it, the original WMS version, and it's like, okay, this is great and all, but I want something else in my collection, and it moves hands. Now we went ahead and we've heard you guys. Now we went ahead and we've literally went and finished up some of that code issues, updated everything to be a little more modern to bring Cactus, just like we have most of the other games, into a really modern feel. And can you position the 2.0, the famous Cactus Canyon 2.0, relative to this timeline? So Cactus Canyon continued. Is that what you're referring to? Right, it continued, yes. That was done by Eric Priepke, okay? Personal project of his that he liked. He did it on the P-Rock system to finish the game in his vision. And a lot of things he did, you know, personally I'm a fan of. You know, what we did is by starting on this project, we first had to start by completely reimagining our operating system. So for those who have owned any of our remakes in the past, the Chicago gaming menu moving on this title is gone. It's all integrated into one system now. So really, when we rewrote the pinball engine, we had to extract all the source code and rewrite it in. So when we were doing that we found, I'm going to call it, hidden things that they wanted in the game. So we were able to go back into it and look and go, oh, they wanted this kind of mode here. And oh, wait, here's how the rules they wanted for Bionic Bart. This is what they wanted. What you're hearing for voices and audio in the remake that's here on the floor today, most of that is actually hidden in the original source code that you guys, Anyone who's played the original has never heard because it was never programmed in there. It was all hidden. So it gave us an option to really bring forth their work and showcase it in a whole new way. Great. So you had the source code, and I believe that's like a new thing that has not happened in the remakes before? We've had it. But in this one here, when you have to extrapolate and rewrite it into a new engine, it becomes a whole different ball of wax. Right, because it's not just plunk the ROM in kind of mentality. Right, now it's not plug the ROM in, the game is great. Now it's let's look at what that ROM has and let's see everything that's in there and everything that should have been there that's missing. And literally when we go through part of our team reached out to the original design team and asked what their thoughts were and we kind of got to see a little bit of their vision and bring it forward by using the voice calls that are missing by using some of the stuff that was missing in there I mean, there's calls from Polly that we're using. There's calls from the mayor. There's calls from some of the bad guys that literally were on the source code that we just put back in the game. So it wasn't we had to go re-record them or anything. They were there. You guys just never got to experience it until we did the remake. so so all those assets were there and then um if we were talking about like design credits are there people who get credit for what you've done the the updating and so for what we've done we don't take credit okay we do as a company we as a team chicago gaming team you know um And we take credit for Dave Orman, Sam Zare, Sean Wilson, Doug Duba, the owner of the company, just some of the members of the team. We all take and take every project we do and we own it, and we literally look at it and go, well, what can we do here? What can we do here? What do we need to add? And then we reach out and we deal with a lot of different people. You know, we've got some high-end sculptors that we used on Medieval, the topper, who redid the toys for it. We used one other pinball guy, Matt, from Back Alley Creations. Oh, yeah, we know Matt. He did all the decorating for us on all the toys in there. And then we re-envisioned it, you know, with Cactus. Like, wouldn't it be cool if the train was metal? So we literally did a die-cast train. You know, hey, we want to do this big medallion in the center of the limited edition. So we literally have a spin cast metal medallion for the limited edition plaque. You know, we don't want these vacuum formed guns anymore. Let's get a sculptor in. And between our sculptors, we ended up with full 3D, you know, replica guns on it. Ironic story, though, is, you know, we had one of the original samples laying around and somebody thought we brought a real pistol into the office because they're that lifelike. you know so it's not like the cartoony ones you saw from years ago so i mean we redid the mind because we wanted to look more realistic but we also wanted to last you know the original one was all vacuum form cheap easy quick now it's high definition sculpted and literally made out of material that's going to sustain and that's really the story of what's happened to pinball in the 20 years in between right that you instead of keeping the cost down for the operator type buyer now You've got buyers that want the nice-looking train and the nice-looking gun and so forth. It's a little of both. You know, you keep the cost down for the operators. You keep the cost down for the consumer. You know, I mean, we kind of floored everyone when we came in with the prices we did on it. People were shocked. You know, like what, you know. And that was one of the beauty things behind what Doug Duba, the owner, wants to do is he wants everybody to be able to afford his game. He wants people to buy it and enjoy it and love it. And as long as we can continue that trend, we feel that people are going to be happy with what we deliver. We took a great game, and we really just over-the-top redone it. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. And continuing in that thought line of the design credits, so there's something more on the horizon too. So where you will say these named people are doing something new. So what you've got is we've got currently all games are shipping with the code that was envisioned by the Chicago Gaming team. Okay. Everybody in the team literally got together. We looked at what the original assets are. And the whole team helped create that code based on what the vision that the ballet guys had. now you have Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharpe who came on board who loved who wanted to work on this game too and so in the future there's going to be a code update available that you guys be a code update kit that's available and you will be able to get what Lyman Sheets envisioned this game could be and I think I'm looking forward to that because On a personal note, I mean, he's an amazing coder. I can't speak highly enough of him. And I just think he, coming from that era, he knows what that era takes as far as what's going to be over the top and good. And that you guys, as the public and the pinball community, are going to enjoy. So do we have a timeline on that? That will be your next question? No. You know what? I'm not going to put a rush on him and say, oh, we need it. We need it. You know what? get it done make it do your thing you know um do your thing when you're happy we go more time for people to enjoy what you've already delivered is the update um i think in considering the interests of tournament players and so forth they're probably going to ask if i bought the cactus Canyon remake as it is now, and then I buy the other package when it's ready with Lyman and Josh, will I be able to switch back and forth on the same machine, or do we know yet how that's going to happen? So, currently, the current system as it goes right now plays two versions of the game, and it's all selectable in the menu. It plays the original WMS Cactus Canyon with our new animation, and then it plays the Chicago Gaming Continued Code, the Chicago Gaming Enhanced Code. Okay? When the third code comes out, you'll be able to play any one of the three. Of course, you know, there will be security involving this third code being able to be installed and played on the game. Right, because it's a paid product, right? Right. That's understandable. But you'll be able to go back and forth between them. You know, one of the things that we made sure to add in this was a tournament mode in the game that you can just turn on. Okay. Okay, so there's enough room in there to hold all three codes at once. And so it's still as easy as it is between the two that you already have in there. Right. It's literally you go into – there's remake settings. You go into extended rules. Right now it's on 1, which is the current shipping version, and 0 is the original WMS version. I can take the game out there right now, turn it to the WMS version, and people would play Cactus Canyon from 1998 with the new animation and dots. Okay, so we will take some audience questions in a couple minutes. You can line up by that microphone there if you have questions. And is there some long-term relationship with Lyman Sheets, or is this like a contracting deal for one game? Right now this is a contracting deal. you know where he's working on this project it's a passion project he's having fun with it you know where that develops at i leave that up to them to decide um so this way they can you know we want everyone in this project to be happy that's one of the things we we take a lot of pride in is we all do it because we love it you know um you know it's literally a labor of love from the toys, the toy manufacturers, the sculptors we use. They love what they're working on. The painters love what they're doing. We love looking at it and bringing this game back to market. So it's one of those things where we just keep looking at it. And if everyone's happy, you never know where things are going to go in the future. Yeah. Another thing that's happened over the past 20 years that Martin and I will be talking about in the next segment, people are not so insistent on having the newest game anymore. And I think people in your position are much relieved that if you were a sales manager in the 1980s and you were taking this myth that oh, I have to have something new because my competitor is going to have something new, and you can't just rerun something, and then Gary Stern had the pinball field all to himself, and suddenly he could rerun. And we thought once he had competition again, maybe that was the end of being able to rerun and capture the upside of additional demand. But now people aren't saying, hey, that's an old game. They're saying it's good enough to be there up against something that's a brand-new design. Well, pinball through the history has been an operator-driven entity. so success and fail of a pinball has been literally the standard was what's it make in the coin box how fast can it pay itself off when can it come out and the next revenue generator is the next pinball machine people after a while will stop playing it on location so you need that next game that's kind of where that is now you're in a different market because You've got homebuyers. You've got collectors. You've got people who buy this because they love the machines. They're restoring them. They're bringing new life back to older games. The model is still, from collectors even, it's I want the newest. I want the latest. I want the greatest. But a lot of the games we've done so far, Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, and now Cactus Canyon, And either the price point was to the point where you couldn't buy it or you couldn't find it. You know, if price was no object, sometimes you couldn't find a nice medieval or a nice, you know, attack from Mars or a nice monster bash. Or in the case of cactus, you couldn't find them at all. You know, very few trade hands publicly of the original 900 and so cactus canyons. You don't see ads out there. you don't see you know you don't see them so it comes down to a lot of people have never played cactus right and and still you're gonna you're not gonna just forget the operator you're gonna go out there and tell operators like you were at iapa this this might as well be a new game and to the operators a lot of them have never operated a cactus they know that monster bash did well they know medieval did well they know that if they put a attack from mars on location it still earns to the day. We have locations we see, you know, a new game comes out, attack from ours will drop a little bit, you know, and then it comes right back in the top five. And then a new game will come out and it'll drop down in the top ten and then it comes right back up to the number one through five. We see that consistently. So people have not gotten to play Cactus yet. Cactus has legs. It's going to be in order for operators because it's got that bally williams feel you know it's it's fun it's got flow to it it's got a lot of humor to it and people enjoy that you know people enjoy you know in cactus canyon celebrity voices impersonated you know um so there's a lot going on to it that brings people a totally different light you know it's that 90s the end of the 90s era of pinball that's still kind of where a lot of us really the heart of it was you know in that 90s era you know in cactus you know medieval monster attack cactus well now cactus but those are regarded as some of the best pins of all time those three and it's because of the humor it's because of the flow it's because of the shot layout it's because of you know the whole package the art package the voice package the team that put it together. I say that we put honor to the teams that put these together. It's kind of a tribute to them. Because you know what? Their game was good enough to where everybody can't get enough of it and we can do our best to honor their legacy and bring it back to life. Yeah. Now, you were just with a bunch of operators down at IAPA. How did you like the show? IAPA's a busy show. I mean, a lot of operators, the games down there never stop playing. Operators were loving it, you know, hearing from a lot of people that they've bought or they've gotten an order in or, you know, where can I get it? You know, from operators because they want to put it on location. Hey, my Monster Bash earned great. You know, hey, I've owned three Medievals and they've paid themselves off in under six months. You know, so, you know, on different locations, the Bally Williams stuff earns. The new stuff earns well, but a Bally Williams has that just classic feel. It's kind of like warm apple pie in the fall. It's just everybody, it's a comfort zone. They earn, they play, it's fun. And who represents Chicago Gaming in the northeastern United States? In the northeastern United States, up here currently, I have Automated Services. Mike Dodona, he's here representing it. He was gracious enough to transport the game to the show for me and get it set up so everyone could play it before I arrived. We put the topper on at about 345 in the morning. So whenever we got to the show floor, the topper was here and it was on. And, you know, the people who were playing in the all-night room, well, they got to see the topper go on and play it until whenever they got finished. And who represents you in Eastern Canada? In Eastern Canada, you've got Player One Amusement Group. I also have Bettson up here in the up all up through this area yeah yeah then they you know they're right here too so I mean we've got some good representation you've got coin taker you've got pinball star all of which are right in the that whole this whole area up here you know and all of our dealers you can find on our website literally will handle anybody you know we really strive to have the strongest group the strongest dealer network as far as what they do for customer service as far as the aftercare. If you have problems, if you have concerns, they're the ones that are the first line of defense. You call them, they're going to help you through it. They're going to walk you through problems. If not, they're going to contact my tech support or contact myself. And then we get involved or I get involved and literally we take care of it. Okay. Last call for audience questions. I think I see a ringer from our own Pintastic staff to ask a question. Any update? Turn it on? Yes, awesome. Any update to the actual production facility? I heard that you're adding a new line. So during all this time of COVID inside Chicago Gaming, We've expanded our cabinet manufacturing facility, and we're moving it to a different part of our building. As people know, we are also Churchill Cabinets. We manufacture our own playfields. We manufacture our own cabinets. We do contract cabinet manufacturing for other video arcade companies. So we actually are updating our cabinet line, and then we are going to be adding in an additional capacity, work cells, another line to do more pens. So that's one of the things that we have done during COVID is we've literally took that time while we were waiting on supply chain issues to expand our operations side to be able to run smoother and faster and continue to grow. So that was one of the big things we've stressed as far as doing that. Okay, any other? All right well thanks for So I do have one thing I want to say cuz going to go over my top ten questions or my top few questions from the weekend FAQs So, yeah, so I figure I'll cut them all in one thing. So the topper on the limited edition and on the special edition plus, guys. So to activate for those people here that are going to go out and play, is anyone going to go play the game later today? Okay, we got one guy. Okay, a couple. So to activate the topper, guys, you want to hit the beer mug target five times on the current game. Okay? On factory shipping, it's ten. I have it on five because I want you guys to experience it. Then you have to shoot into the bad guy, the saloon back. Shoot part in the face. Okay? The ball will trap. Instructions appear on the screen, guys, on how to do it. If you hit the flippers, you'll cancel the instructions. long story short then you look up at the top and literally you're playing a shootout gallery by using your left and right flippers there's the cursor that goes back and forth you're shooting the bad guys, don't shoot the good guys, the farther along you get the better you do so that's been one of the biggest questions I have that's been asked of me all week from IAPA to even here the few people I've gotten to talk to today how do I get to the topper mode The other thing I want to explain is the differences in the models, guys. We're doing the special edition. We have the special edition. We have the special edition plus the topper, and then we have the limited edition. The limited edition, which is sold out, is the one I have on the floor here today. The wood grain apron, the train tracks underneath the train, the interior art. It has the mine cart on it, the custom tracks behind the mine popper. That one I know is sold out through most of my dealers. Then the Special Edition Plus is my Special Edition, which has the metal arch, has the same revolvers, the bullets on it, but it has the metal arch on it, not the wood grain. The train tracks are gone, but it's the Special Edition Plus than just the additional topper. So I just want to make sure everyone knows the differences in the models. So this way they see the value is in the Limited Edition. if you can find one if you have one on order congratulations we appreciate you thank you um you know with the medallion with everything you know that's kind of been the bread and butter that's been the great game but we appreciate the community feedback we received regarding the topper and the mini game so we went ahead and put that topper out available with the special edition plus kind of as a we want to give you guys what you want. And we want to make sure that everyone can own exactly what we designed for you guys. We're not stripping the topper down. We're not taking pieces off of it. We're literally giving you the same topper. But it's because we want you guys to have it. And that's kind of the way we operate is, you know, we're here because of you guys. You know, we still hand silkscreen our playfields. We still build our cabinets the old-fashioned way. We clamp those things together by hand. We glue them. Everything's done very craftsman, guys, and it's because of you guys. We want to continue that legacy to deliver high-end products to you guys so this way you guys enjoy them. Anyone else have questions? Come on up to the microphone. we are recording all this in case somebody says something historic it wasn't me so once you do a game like medieval madness and you've already sourced parts and you have your new forms and casting and you have your plans how if you go back and like look right now at like the aftermarket price several grand above what retail was when does it make sense to kind of go back and run out more since there is obviously enough demand in the market for it. Well, you had to pick the golden unicorn with medieval. I feel like medieval, I don't feel there's ever enough because of its status in the pinball world. You know, it's kind of the game that everything is measured against. But at some point you look at, we don't look at the secondary market as far as, you know, where prices are. We're not the price police. You know, it's, what's the demand from dealers? I talk to my dealers regularly. You know, some of them Saturday morning, some of them Sunday night, some of them Monday night, you know, during football, whatever. I talk to these guys, you know, hey, I'm getting a lot of calls for blank. I'm getting a lot of calls from blank. And you just kind of judge the market. And you see, you know, okay, if I put it back on the line, are people going to embrace it? Are people going to go, oh, you know, and you judge that. You know, the secondary market is kind of filled with a couple different things. And a lot of people are just – some people are opportunists. You know, they see – Flippers, flippers. I didn't say that. They see, you know, an opportunity. You know, hey, I own this game. I like it, but I like cash more. You know, my favorite people in the world are it's bolted to my floor. And then you go to their house two weeks later, well, where's that game that's bolted to your floor? Well, I sold it to Dave Fix over there. so you know it's one of those things so we look at the secondary market as kind of a judge of quality that's the way I look at it it's my judge of quality if I'm building great games that people love it reflects in the price that people are willing to pay in the secondary market because there is we have built a ton of medieval so far and we have built a ton of Monster Bash and a ton of Attack from Mars and people still want it. It's a testament to the great design team that built the game. It's a testament to what we did as a company to bring it forward and it also shows that there's demand for it and it also tells me the game's fun. So which one's your favorite? I guess it's medieval? Yeah, medieval. Okay. Out of those three, yes, definitely. So you're waiting for the 2023 run to get yours, or are you buying in the secondary market? I'd love to be able to buy one at retail price, absolutely. So in 2023, we'll be rerunning it. Okay. Make sure you contact your favorite dealer and get on their list. Absolutely. All right? Thank you. And at this point, I should also mention that Brian Eddy feels very bad about not being able to attend this year, and he's going to try very, very hard to come to our 2022 show so that he can have praise heaped upon him for those great games he designed. Do you have a question? So the question I want to ask is what's the next game after Cactus, but I know you won't answer that. Medieval Madness 2023. The next new game. The next game after that, after Medieval Madness 2023. I guess the real question is how many are in the pipeline? How many do you have out there? We have multiple games in the pipeline. For those who saw me in Atlanta, I said we had five in the pipeline. Well, chuck one off. We now have four. Good, good. With five getting ready to start again. So, yeah, we're going to keep moving forward, guys. We want to deliver pins to you guys. We want to continue how we manufacture and deliver great games to you guys, you know, for you guys to enjoy. And I think that you guys are why we're here. Without you, we're not here. And everyone asks, what's the next game? What's the next game? If I tell you it's Popeye Saves the Earth, are you going to buy it? No. Oh, come on. But circus maybe. Okay. Popeye Saves the Circus. Got it. We'll retheme it. Retheme. Just for you. Thank you. All right. Well, we're out of time. Thanks for the questions. Guys, thanks for coming out. We appreciate you guys being here. So let's all play some pinball.