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Gary gets 647 Million points on Dungeons and Dragons Pinball (Pro Edition, Stern, ver. 0.92 Code)!

Wild Dog Arcade·video·29m 17s·analyzed·Jul 8, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Gary scores 647M on D&D pinball; hosts praise recent code updates and discuss industry trends.

Summary

Wild Dog Arcade streams gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons pinball (Stern, Pro Edition, v0.92), with Gary achieving a 647 million point personal best. The hosts discuss code quality improvements, Dragon Multiball fixes in recent updates, character leveling mechanics, and broader pinball industry trends including Spooky/Barrels games, American Pinball's trajectory, and post-release code updates across titles like John Wick and X-Men.

Key Claims

  • Dragon Multiball was broken in a previous D&D code update and has since been fixed

    high confidence · Hosts (Cameron Silver and Gary Stern) discussing code progression: 'they broke the dragon multiball in one of the previous updates' and 'they fixed that'

  • Stern Pinball does not publicly report game sales numbers because they are a privately owned company

    high confidence · Cameron Silver: 'Stern Pinball does not report game numbers because they're a privately owned company'

  • John Wick pinball is now very playable after recent code updates

    high confidence · Cameron Silver: 'Apparently, Wick is now very playable now. They fixed that.' and 'people on our Discord going, oh my god, it's playable now'

  • X-Men received a major code overhaul

    high confidence · Cameron Silver: 'X-Men, they say that it was a major overhaul on X-Men code'

  • D&D's difficulty settings for Dragon Multiball were broken alongside the multiball mechanic itself in a previous update

    high confidence · Hosts discussing Dragon Multiball: 'when they did it, they accidentally set it to the hardest. But also, the difficulty settings in the menu, they broke those'

  • Wild Dog Arcade sold their Rick and Morty pinball machine to Axcadia (a local arcade in Michigan)

    high confidence · Cameron Silver: 'you sold your Rick and Morty game to an arcade in your area yes Axcadia friend of ours wanted to buy one but he wanted to buy ours not any Rick and Morty'

  • The D&D rulebook does not contain information about shield mechanics

    high confidence · Gary Stern: 'There's no clear, quick guide on what continues the shield, but that's okay. It's not in the book that I have. It doesn't say anything about shielding'

  • Spooky's Dune pinball had a rough early code release but recent updates look great

    medium confidence · Cameron Silver: 'i was playing dune and all the code updates with that thing look great and i excited to play it again and i think there was a lot of skepticism about the game because it didn't have a great start because it kept breaking'

Notable Quotes

  • “Don't think, do, in pinball. That's kind of my personal motto, I guess.”

    Cameron Silver@ 11:19 — Core philosophy on pinball gameplay mechanics and decision-making under pressure

  • “They felt originally that it was way too easy to get the multiball and they didn't realize that when they went ahead and made it harder they made it really hard to the point where people and operators that own the machines, they want patrons to play their game. No one wants to play the game anymore.”

    Cameron Silver@ 14:31 — Describes the Dragon Multiball difficulty balancing failure and its impact on location operators

  • “if you play a game enough times, and you like the shots, and you really connect well with it, then that's all you need.”

    Cameron Silver@ 20:49 — Commentary on how familiarity and shot preferences shape game enjoyment across different designer styles

  • “I swear I would never play John Wick again. But when I hear a bunch of people on our Discord going, oh my god, it's playable now, I'm like, okay. Now you have my attention.”

    Cameron Silver@ 17:06 — Demonstrates community-driven reassessment of previously unplayable titles after code fixes

  • “When those coils on the flippers get too hot it just starts really weakening the shots.”

    Cameron Silver@ 22:48 — Technical note on how flipper degradation affects gameplay assessment at conventions

Entities

Wild Dog ArcadeorganizationGary SternpersonCameron SilverpersonDungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's EyegameStern PinballcompanyJohn WickgameX-MengameSpooky Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball staff actively monitor community streams and Discord discussions to identify code glitches and gather quality feedback

    high · Cameron Silver confirms 'raydaypinball comes on stream once in a while...He watches a lot of streams for glitches and things' and references community awareness that 'Stern Pinball actually catch our stream'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Host perspectives on game enjoyment driven by familiarity, shot preferences, and design style rather than absolute game quality

    medium · Cameron Silver notes 'if you play a game enough times, and you like the shots, and you really connect well with it, then that's all you need'

  • $

    market_signal: Operator concerns about Dragon Multiball difficulty directly impacting machine placement and retention at locations

    high · Cameron Silver states 'operators that own the machines, they want patrons to play their game. No one wants to play the game anymore' after the difficulty change

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multiple recent code updates across John Wick, X-Men, and D&D have significantly improved playability and player satisfaction

    high · Hosts note 'John Wick is now very playable now' and 'X-Men...was a major overhaul' with community Discord reporting games are 'playable now'

  • ?

    product_concern: Dragon Multiball in D&D was made artificially difficult in an earlier update, then difficulty settings were broken, resulting in operator complaints and reduced machine placement

    high · Hosts detail how Stern 'made it really hard to the point where people and operators...No one wants to play the game anymore' and 'they broke the whole mechanic' by also breaking difficulty settings

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.088

0:00
Casual. I was just hitting it over and over again. Of course, I should have used the shield there. You have a high score. Please enter your initials. Well, six... Good for you!
0:12
Yeah! Open your mind to new Dungeons & Dragons games. It will lead your imagination down a dungeon labyrinth wherein lies the Dragon's Treasure.
0:26
548 is mine. I've got a... 548, oh. Yeah, it was like, what did I get? Oh, 493. Yeah, you got 493. So you've got 548. I have 507.
0:38
Yeah. Miss the middle shot. Give the middle finger. Yeah. That's where it was supposed to go. All right. That's at fifth level.
0:51
Not these two shots. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. let's get this try to get mr. curly foot up to fifth level got the last you I did have I didn't miss the two hits earlier so that means this right and then they missed the middle shot that completes the cycle we're playing baseball all I'm gonna remove the dwarves or I can remove the dwarves. That looks a little mislabeled. Oops. Yeah, it does. Because that's not supposed to be remove the dwarves. Weird. All right. Pulled up the wrong label. Code glitch. Yeah. Rebel lock. Rebel, uh... nice little flutter step there. No! Oh, dope. I know, I hate when I go halfway up the rank all the time. Can you report these code glitches to Stern? I think you can put a ticket in there, something like that. Oh, you can, okay.

  • Stern Pinball staff (like raydaypinball) actively monitor streams to identify code glitches

    medium confidence · Gary Stern: 'raydaypinball comes on stream once in a while, especially on the games he was involved with the coding. He watches a lot of streams for glitches and things'

    • Dune
    game
    American Pinballcompany
    Rick and Mortygame
    Axcadiaorganization
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    King Konggame
    raydaypinballperson
    Dialed In! (Collectors Edition)game
    Black Knightgame
    Legends of Valhallagame
    Hot Wheelsgame
    Godzillagame
  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Reassessment of previously problematic games (John Wick) based on code fixes, indicating community willingness to revisit titles after improvements

    medium · Cameron Silver: 'I swear I would never play John Wick again...But when I hear a bunch of people...it's playable now, I'm like, okay. Now you have my attention'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Post-release code updates becoming standard practice for maintaining and improving game viability, especially for operator retention

    medium · Extended discussion of how Stern pushes regular code updates to fix broken mechanics, with hosts noting excitement about replaying previously unplayable titles

    • 2:16
    There's a lot of people who do that, so... So what Gary's saying is chances are if we haven't done it, someone else has. Or, I swear, sometimes folks from Stern actually catch our stream. Every now and again, yeah. Ray Day comes on stream once in a while, especially on games he was involved with the coding. He watches a lot of streams for glitches and things. Yeah.
    2:41
    When we play Fu and Rush, he comes in. Not as much anymore now that those games are no longer in production, but... Yeah.
    2:57
    Yeah, that's kind of the nice thing is that we know they're listening, because that's what happened with the Dragon Multiple being messed up, you know? Yeah, but that was reported all over the forums. Yeah. operators were complaining to start as well the other reason why because people were not liking the game it was not at the same game that they were playing they were like I can't get the dragon ball right my favorite part of the game so they stopped putting money in the machine exactly yeah it's I would love to know what the percentage is of machines sold to operators versus home use I think if people were reporting on numbers that's really high home right high home now.
    3:43
    I'm curious, though. What is it? Is it 720? Is it... I don't know. I don't remember. 730, whatever the hell it is. But it's also an estimate, keeping that in mind. Because Stern does not report game numbers because they're a privately owned company. Correct.
    4:04
    It's still kind of a curiosity. I would love to know. Because at a certain point, a lot of the games, it does have to appeal to a wide audience, but what's the audience?
    4:19
    Yes, you got it. The age demographic is pretty much carrying myself. So, with that being said, where's the Beastie Boys pin? Stern?
    4:32
    Yeah. I was talking to a co-worker of mine who's, I think, about 10, 15 years younger than me, And I had mentioned, you know, listening to Beastie Boys and other things like that. And he's like, I don't really listen to them, but I've heard of their songs before.
    4:48
    And so I'm like, damn it. You missed a really good group. Go listen to them now. It doesn't matter if they're not bringing out new music.
    5:01
    Oh. There we go. Got that one-point shot. I think this was the first time I was able to put up a high score in quite some time. Oh! code update because on that last game I ended up doing a gelatinous cube multi-ball and dragon multiple I think twice at least as well as completing a couple modes um if you complete a mode successfully it's kind of all over the map but how many points you can get I've seen modes being completed for like 100 million and I've seen some completed successfully at only 10 million or So yeah, I think it's all dependent on is it a level one, two or three quest? And then also, you know, how high your character is, too. Exactly.
    6:27
    You have to keep that in mind. But knowing that each of the characters in some way, shape or form is going to help you along your journey. At this point, I think it's definitely the right thing to start leveling our characters up as much as we can. because that also will help be more successful when we get to those modes,
    6:47
    since there's a lot of goodies that are supposed to come along and help out. Whether or not they get programmed in until a little later, I guess we'll see.
    6:59
    But maybe our questions will be answered on this interview that was mentioned earlier. When the shield light is on, is the shield available? Yes. I think that's the only time actually that or the only reason why it's there is you know and then once you use it it flashes it lets you know that it in current use And then when it goes away then yeah it not available But there ways to get that shield to continue powering up as I noticed Yeah I forgot the qualifiers but it probably says right in that book thing in front of you. Here we go, qualifiers. Of course there's no index but that's okay. I will skim. That was an air ball Yeah there's a ramp in the back That goes over In her orbit Right A door I got a door I'm gonna go home and door Oh I get this thing again The door is now a jar I tried explaining that joke to my students Recently and they looked at me like That was crazy vocabulary. No!
    8:17
    I wasn't trying to back end up that ramp, but of course it goes up just far enough to go right down the middle.
    8:23
    Yeah, there's no clear, quick guide on what continues the shield, but that's okay. It's not in the book that I've got. It doesn't say anything about shielding. It gives you all sorts of wonderful information about all the characters and all of the modes, but nothing about shields in here, as far as I know.
    8:41
    Game Features, Short Skill Shots, Short Plunger, Super Skill Shot, MXV Skill Shot. Help Kobolds defend the caravan. There you go. I don't think I've ever gotten the MXV Skill Shot.
    8:55
    MXC Replay, Painful Luminations. No, I don't think it's like an MXC. Um, a lot of town dungeons being explained in good detail.
    9:11
    Um, that's okay. We'll figure out the shield stuff. I'll do my homework and get that back to us the next time we play.
    9:26
    The door can be a jar, but a jar can't be a door. Exactly. That would make my students even more confused.
    9:37
    You're talking crazy talk. There we go, finally. Good, got a much deserved extra ball. Yeah, so on the character on the screen right there you'll notice that all the little dice are throwing these little things here. And each attack that they do successfully helps you and your class going through that mode, which in turn helps when you level up the characters. So that's kind of why the characters are important in this game. It's kind of neat. There's a lot of things to watch on the screen as an observer for this game. Probably more so than any other game I've played, pinball-wise, I want to say, almost. Maybe Rush is a close second.
    10:29
    Hmm. He's got Dragon. Hey there, Silver. What are you doing, Silver? Yes, speak of the devil, exactly! Likely planned it. Although oddly enough, I thought I was doing so well in my last dragon multiple, I ended up missing it by two, and I'm like, woo-hoo! I must have just not hit enough shots and drained enough balls, simple as that. It creeps up on you and sneak up on you really, really quickly without you realizing it. It's kind of the scary thing about it. You spend too much time worrying about your shield and if you're dropping the balls, that's usually an indicator if you're going to drop the balls. The more you think about it, the worse off it is. Don't think, do, in pinball. That's kind of my personal motto, I guess. You're speaking tired? The last two days of moving? Oh, nice. Silver Ion has been working and moving in. Old house is like 90% empty. Still got to move the pens. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we saved the pens till the very end. I think we'll add in the vinyl records we had. We had to definitely take some personal tender loving care of those items and move those ourselves. We had everything else moved by movers, but we definitely took care of those things last time we moved. Yeah, I moved all my shop tools because I didn't want them like, Oops, they disappeared in the moving company. Shit. Yeah, unfortunately my family in particular had a terrible experience with a moving company as well. My parents did too. That's right, your parents did too. We like to try to take advantage of old people. Yeah, exactly. Where the hell are you going to it? Well, at least they can hang out with my dad, who they stole money from.
    12:42
    Hey there, Supernoid. Silver is just figuring out the best way to get the pens out without risking damaging.
    12:49
    Watch our video. Yeah. Well, it depends on your basement and however it is. Yeah. There's a lot of different ways. but generally what you'll want to do is make sure that the legs are off the machine. Obviously the back panel is folded in, all that good stuff. I recommend going to Harbor Freight if you've got one and buying a bunch of cheap moving blankets and then get pallet wrap and wrap the snot out of it. Yeah, that is the way to do it. Hey, how is the cook progressing in this game? Much more satisfactory than the last couple of updates. It's most definitely super annoying. Much like we've heard that John Wick is now playable. Yeah. I feel like, not to say that D&D wasn't playable, but it was a lot more difficult to get the dragon. Specifically, they broke the dragon multiball in one of the previous updates.
    13:46
    No one goes up against a dragon and wins. And they fix that and they held it back again. You have power up and blankets, but I may get more. Yeah, that's the way to do it. Yeah. They're cheap enough.
    14:00
    I still have an entire rack of those that we use all the time for moving stuff around or whatever. Yeah, whenever we get a new pen, we have to, you know, make sure that it's all wrapped up so it makes its journey down the stairs safely and that we don't get hurt.
    14:20
    Yeah, exactly. Get a hand truck, be slow. Yeah. I've heard about that, Did they make a dragon multiball work harder and now fix it? Yeah, that's exactly what happened to Super Noid. They felt originally that it was way too easy to get the multiball and they didn realize that when they went ahead and made it harder they made it really hard
    14:46
    To the point where people and operators that own the machines, they want patrons to play their game. No one wants to play the game anymore. But they also, when they did it, they accidentally set it to the hardest. But also, the difficulty settings in the menu, they broke those. So even if you changed them to an easier level, it didn't change them. So they kind of broke the whole mechanic. Yeah. But now, evidently, they fixed it. We have not touched the levels, as far as I know. No, I mean, I generally don't mess with the default levels on a game. anyway. Right.
    15:28
    It's really hard to post-pass from that angle. I don't know why. Oh, hey. You did it successfully. Holy crap. Now I can copy you. Yeah, it's a matter of getting the amount of timing and how far out it moves. Okay.
    15:44
    I also look at the flipper gap, or the gap on the actual leaf spring might be off too. Oh, okay. Yeah, wrap in blankets should be fine. Obviously a lot of tape. Don't forget the tape because you have to put the tape. You basically put the blanket underneath the game itself and then you put the bubble wrap all around it and you tape that on there too. Yeah, I usually pallet wrap around it, put it on a blanket, tape the blanket to the side and then I'm going to pallet wrap.
    16:18
    Make it look like a Christmas gift. Yeah, very padded. Christmas gift. I don't know where... Oh, I guess that was the shot, even though it wasn't red that it wanted. It wasn't flashing red, so I'm like, where is the monster at? Yeah, I wasn't paying attention. I was reading chat mostly. Yeah, it was a cyan light like the gelatinous cube one. We were successful with it at least.
    16:45
    Seems like Cern has been doing a lot of code updates. Yeah, that was the other thing. Apparently, Wick is now very playable now. They fixed that. And X-Men, they say that it was a pretty major overhaul on X-Men code.
    17:03
    Makes me excited to want to play both those games again. I swear I would never play John Wick again. But when I hear a bunch of people on our Discord going, oh my god, it's playable now, I'm like, okay. Now you've got my attention.
    17:17
    Right, exactly. A blanket burrito. A quesadilla. A bell rabbit, yeah, exactly. Yep. Rear that puppy.
    17:29
    No, no, no, no. Don't put any hot sauce on the machine, though. Unless it's hot ones, then pinball. No, that's a pinball idea. Yeah. Your final wizard mode is the last dab, of course.
    17:44
    So then, what are you exactly avoiding when you're playing hot ones on the pinball? You're avoiding... Yeah, you have to make... It would have to be a partial pinball game trivia game, too, where after each one you have to stop and A, B, C, or D, combine it with trivia.
    18:01
    It'd be fun. It's almost like he's interviewing you. And the trivia could just constantly get updated.
    18:11
    The plot of Berrios. Sort of, yeah. That's a good point, Red Lancer. That's probably the closest thing we're ever going to get for the hot sauce pin. Or anything like that, yes.
    18:32
    Very interesting, unique concept for a pinball machine. I can't hate that game because of that. Which one? Barry O's Barbecue. Oh, yeah.
    18:42
    It's just not that exciting of a game. Yeah. I think they're trying to do the motif of what Pulp Fiction did, where it's sort of like the classic thing. A little more classic theme feel.
    18:55
    So it'll be fun for the right player, definitely. A little more exciting to play than Oktoberfest. I'm not as, I don't know, as enthusiastic about that machine versus Virgos. In the world of, like, weird food ideas for pinball machines.
    19:20
    But Diner still blows them out of the water. I think I like it better than the other ones. Ooh, that was a good save.
    19:33
    Alright. Oh boy, here we go. Level 2. Shoot the dragon.
    19:45
    I tend to like AP games more than the average person. You tend to like what? American Pinball. You know, the company had promised. They actually built a pretty, you know, ignoring some of the 3D printed stuff on Galactic Tank Force, they always made pretty solid, like, quality games. Right. I liked the direction where they were going when they started out you know I think Hot Wheels was kind of I think was it their weakest point or whatever because they had high hopes for that game I didn't sell as many as I think they were also a big victim of timing on that one as well because it came out early pandemic and there were a bunch of other games like Godzilla got released at the same time I mean, it was not an amazing game. Oh, come on. No, but it definitely caught the interest of a lot of folks out there.
    20:46
    It's legitimately good. Yeah, see, that's just it. It's like, if you play a game enough times, and you like the shots, and you really connect well with it, then that's all you need. I think Gary and I, because we hadn't played the game enough for a lot of it, I mean, this is true for so many games out there, really, if you think about it. but for whatever reason, it was the style and things that we didn't like as much because it was more about the shots that we like in other games that were made by other companies that we tended to gravitate more towards, and that's why we ended up spending more time with that as opposed to other, you know, different ones. Boutique pins, I guess you could call them. but you know we're seeing a lot of changes in every single corner of the pinball you know industry with what companies are doing now i mean i'm watching all the stuff going on with dirty full pinball and i was playing dune and all the code updates with that thing look great and i excited to play it again and i think there was a lot of skepticism about the game because it didn have a great start because it kept breaking But that was early early code i had to shut that game out really fast in order to compete against i guess it was uh jjp's new plan or something well yeah jjp and king kong and king kong yeah they kind of had poor timing and had to rush it out right may have been a not a great decision of theirs to rush it out. Right. One of my guilty pleasures is Legends of Valhalla. Not perfect, but a fun theme and a fun game. Cool. Yeah, we never really connected with that game. I think, again, it might be because we didn't have a chance to play it in the right circumstances. I think when Gary and I played it a few times, it was like at the tail end of or in the middle of a convention where the flippers are going to fade away real fast in the middle of the time. And you're just not going to get those shots off the way you want them to. When those coils on the flippers get too hot it just starts really weakening the shots. But nevertheless, I think it's part of the ability to have the opportunity to play that make it the most challenging thing. There we go. No! Un-Cult. Dragon success. Un-Cult Dragon Success. Un-Dead Cult Dragon Success. 85 million.
    23:21
    Un-Dead Cult Dragon Success. Success! Light Show. Well, Gary, I think you got your new personal best just now.
    23:41
    So again, now I don't know where I need to be going. The master just showed it up on the screen right when I said that.
    23:48
    So congratulations. Thanks for checking in on that, master. I don't know how Gary just saved that. Oh, dice game. All right. We haven't done this yet. Shots add time, and then hit the middle to roll the dice. Yep.
    24:08
    That's a good thing to do. Oh, I missed. So not only has Gary got his new personal best, he has also beat my score, as of now. So that speaks volumes of the new code, I think. And also having a chance to play this game enough times, too, on top of that.
    24:31
    Oh. Red Lancer was internally screaming, use the shield on that save. Oh. See, we don't want to, man. It's all about snudging at the last second. I want to save my shields, man. That's the constant battle I have in my head. But you're right. I need to use a shield more. I've been a little more generous in using it as of late.
    25:01
    All the while, while trying to do Dead Flesh on top of that, new dice value is 16. What does that mean?
    25:08
    I've been rolling it, so I'm playing the dice game. by hitting in the middle. Oh, okay, okay. I'm like, was there not a 16 before? But yeah, I see. Oh, you got a million. Okay.
    25:25
    Okay, time increase. You're the same way with the Magnus Saban Swords of Rage. Yeah. Yeah, and Gary and I had the uh, was it the Black Knight original game, and for a while I didn't want to use the magna save and then you got the hang of it and it was a lot of fun same thing with the magna influencer on Rick and Morty that was also a lot of fun to fool with that thing and really influence what you want time added and I roll one more dice time added There we go Aw, it was a weak one Yeah, it was a weak one Okay, that's better Nice roll Did you see me roll?
    26:27
    Sorry Uh-oh I got you 11 The weirdest shit pops in my head every single day Alright, here we go 14 Thank you, Kevin Smith Still rolling? Oh, you finally got a bad bounce Damn Are you only on ball two? Oh, you got this you're gonna kill my score out of the water here I do declare didn't you say you sold your Rick and Morty game to an arcade in your area yes Axe Cadia friend of ours wanted to buy one but he wanted to buy ours not any Rick and Morty we did a lot of modding a lot of modding to make that game function the way it should and it's unfortunate because it's such a fun game. It was like all I needed was just a little tiny, tiny bit fixes in the geometry in some of the shots. We kind of go over that in one of our videos that we put out. A little bit, but not... A month or so ago or two weeks ago, whatever it was. But yeah, it's... It wasn't like I was filming a lot of videos at that point. Yeah.
    27:52
    Nevertheless, if you have a chance to go to Axkadia here in Michigan, definitely check that game out as far as I know it's still up there it's still holding up and it's still getting a lot of enjoyment out of a lot of people 49 million in just a dice game alone is the shit I didn't even look at the score there casual I was just hitting it over and over again of course I should have used the shield there I should have shielded that one But then you would have gotten a higher score. You have a high score. Please enter your initials. Well, six... Good for you!
    28:37
    Yeah! Um, 649... Or, excuse me, 647 million. Is not a bad game. Sensational. At all. And that... Means... Thank you for the GG's. No, thank you. Use your tail and hit the action button. Yes. You forgot. Yeah.
    29:05
    Challenge your imagination to come alive and to battle with the creatures of Dungeons & Dragons. Grapple against the forces of evil.