Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Podcast. I am your host, Retro Ralph, and today this is a bonus episode because we're going to talk about the latest announcement from Stern Pinball that we've all been kind of anticipating for probably a couple months now, and that's the release of X-Men. So we got the trailer today, and it's the teaser trailer, right? That's what Stern does. They like to tease things, and then I didn't think they'd do it before the long weekend, actually. I was like, man, they're not going to do it this week, but they ended up doing it. So let's just go right into the trailer. If you're listening to this on Social Blade or, not Social Blade, the hell, Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever the hell else I have it, you're not going to see this. But if you're on the YouTube channel, by the way, if you don't know, there's a YouTube channel for the podcast called Retro Ralph Live. So if you want to watch me, even though it's just you're going to see me, and sometimes I show video clips, but it's a slightly different way to experience the podcast. But I upload both the audio version and the video version to YouTube because, I don't know, might as well spam the whole world. All right, we're going to roll right into it. So we're going to go to the trailer right now. So this is the trailer that they just launched. I'll kind of let you guys soak it in real quick. you're seeing a bunch of sort of animation stern logo and then the uncanny x-men and then you see the sentinel in the middle which which i'm going to pause it on that so there's a sentinel they do show some actual game well not gameplay but they show the actual machine very very briefly i'm going to pause it on it one more time so those of you that are watching can kind of see it so they actually did tease a little bit of the actual you know play field but it's very, very quick. So I'm going to pause it right there. A Sentinel pops up out of the play field. I can only assume that's some kind of bash toy or something, but other than that, you're not getting a whole lot. You can see there's something on the left that sort of looks like a fast lock, which Stern used in Venom. So I don't know if it is or it isn't, but it kind of looks like it could be a fast lock system. On the right, I have no idea what that is. But what's interesting to me about this is that Stern released X-Men in 2012. So this is another X-Men game based on the comic book. So I kind of thought and everyone else sort of thought, well, I only thought it because other people were reporting on it that kind of follow the news items. But Nap Arcade had reported, I believe that he thought it was going to be X-Men 97. So it's not. It's based on, this is going to be based on the comic books. So I don't know. I mean, there's not a whole lot to go on, but I do have some information for you guys. So I did talk to my distributor and he said that the release schedule looks like this. The limited edition will be in production next week. The pro model will be available in late September into October and the premium will be mid-October, late October. So those are kind of the timeframes that they're saying. I don't know whether those are gonna be, they're gonna stick to those, but he is a distributor. So I'm assuming that he got that information straight from Stern. and they're going to make 811 limited editions. That's a very weird number. Why 811? I don't know. Is there something? I'm not like a huge comment. I didn't read X-Men comic books. I did watch a bit of the cartoon as a kid. I played the video game and loved the video game. Everyone knows the six-player huge X-Men arcade cabinet. And then they had the four-player, the Konami four-player, both Konami obviously, but the Konami four-player version of that six-player cabinet, which I owned at one period of time. There's a video on my YouTube channel of us doing a, we converted, oh my gosh, it was so sacrilegious. Everyone freaked the heck out because I took a Simpsons and I turned it into an X-Men. It was a very butt-ass Simpsons that was pretty destroyed, but I got it really cheap. And me and my buddy Nick did a restore and turned it into a four-player X-Men. So anyways, yeah, it says they're going to do, they're reducing the number from 1,000 to 811 of the limited editions. I don't know why that is. I'm not really sure, but that's the latest I got. and my distributor, I think, already sold five of them. So he already has five of the LEs already accounted for. Now, what am I going to do? Am I going to buy this game? Hmm. I don't think so, man. I don't think I would buy X-Men. I got to see it though. Like it's interesting that these five people that pre-ordered the LE from him have not seen the game, only that slight little footage trailer we saw. So I'm going to go back to it one more time. I'm going to pause it on the play field section. But yeah, there's not a whole lot. It's just this little, I mean, the artwork looks cool and everything that they kind of tease in the beginning. But yeah, the only thing we're getting is this little thing of the Sentinel popping up. But it looks really cool. The one thing that I'm kind of noticing about it, other people had mentioned this, is it looks like he has a curved head. So I don't know how the ball would roll over it unless when it's down, it's fully flush. It doesn't look like it could be flush, but maybe that's, I mean, it must be because the ball would have to roll over it. I don know if you guys noticed but if you ever played Jaws the chum line I trying to get my chum line perfect because you can kind can kind of adjust it the height of it and and mine just air balls a little too much and i have that anti ball thing from i can't remember the company that makes it but the mod for that which does help the airball suppressor can't remember who makes that now but i have that in there but i just haven't fine-tuned it perfectly so i sometimes get a couple air balls out of that because i think I think the when the ball roll is rolling over the front part I think that's lower and the back part is higher so it tends to shoot the ball up which kind of sucks because that does affect your overall gameplay but anyway so this game is going to be Jack Danger design so those of you that don't know Jack Danger was dead flip the pinball streamer started as a pinball streamer now he's a pinball designer he's been involved in three games so far so the Jurassic Park home edition which now is back in the news, I played that home edition Jurassic Park back at Pinball Expo in its prototype format. And actually, you know what? It's a fun game. I hear people talking so much trash on it. It's actually a really good take on the original Jurassic Park design. I don't know why people talk trash. I mean, you could argue whether or not it's worth the amount of money that Stern's asking for it, but it's actually a fun game. It'd be a cool first pinball machine. As a matter of fact, it was almost going to be my first pinball machine. I think that came out, I think that's like four years ago now. So it's pretty old. It's got to be close to four. Or it's a little bit more than three. Because I've been in the hobby for almost four. So it's got to be around that time frame. And that was almost going to be my first game. But then I was like, because I was sort of indoctrinated. I don't even know what that word is. How do you say that word? Welcomed. We'll use welcomed because I don't know. and someone in the comments will correct my terrible pronunciation of that word. But yeah, a bunch of people were like, yeah, man, if you're going to spend that much, you might as well get a pro. But keep in mind, I think we're going all over the place in this podcast. The reintroduction, if you didn't hear, they took that home Jurassic Park pinball machine that Jack Danger designed. They released a new version of the game that's going to be offered in Costco locations, and they changed the play field from MDF to real wood, which is good. So it's going to be the same as you would get in a standard Stern pinball machine. In the one I played, the start button was on the lock bar. They moved the start button to the location you'd find it on all typical modern Stern machines. They also, I think that's all they really did. I don't think they did. Oh, and they added Insider Connected. So the one I played did not have Insider Connected. So it's kind of cool. So I don't know, man. for me that if i was that product to me is 1000 being marketed to someone that knows nothing about pinball that they're putting it in costco for that purpose i don't know why people are so up in arms in this people are like oh people don't spend a lot of money in costco it's like dude i see people buying the most ridiculous shit in costco i mean you can get you can remodel your kitchen in costco like there's people on the way out they're like hey man you need plumbing you need a reverse osmosis water system? Do you have a new garage door? Do you want me to paint your house? Like people buy crazy shit at Costco. Now they may put these, these machines purposely in the Costco's that maybe the, you know, average income is a little bit higher. So they find people that have more disposable income, but, and I, and I would, I would gather that they're only going to have a couple of them on the floor at any given time, right? They're not going to have like 20, 30 of these things on the floor. So I think it's, it's a smart, regardless of if you think the price is good. It's a smart idea of Stern to do to expand their audience. They've had home versions. They had that, what was it? That one they partnered with Hasbro on, I think it was the, shoot, what was it? It was, shit, Transformers. So they had that one. So if you go back, I want to say that was, is that 2012 maybe? I can't remember when that was, but I was actually aware of that at the time. I thought it was kind of neat. I don't remember what the, excuse me, guys. I gotta clear my throat. What's going on here? Sorry. Jeez. Why is everyone calling me right now? I'm doing a podcast. Anyways, so my phone is ringing. I'm coughing over here. So yeah, man, I don't know. They tried it before and never really, I feel like the home versions were never really that successful. So maybe they're trying to say, look, the enthusiast doesn't care about these home things obviously because if someone's going to spend that then they're probably going to buy a pro right it's obvious that the enthusiast is not the target audience for this but maybe they're thinking hey if we add a couple more features to it we throw it in a costco someone will do an impulse buy they'll buy it bring it home may get really into pinball and maybe they have a geez my sorry guys so rude i don't know why i have this tickle in my throat but maybe their idea is, hey, if it catches on, maybe it's a test, right? Let's test and see if we can get impulse buyers, new people into the hobby that didn't even realize that pinball still exists. They're going to walk by, they're going to buy it, they're going to put it in their house, and maybe the plan is let see if we can expand on this home offering but maybe through a company like Costco Who knows Anyways so back to X They did do an X machine in 2012 I believe it came in pro premium and limited edition This is also gonna come in pro premium and limited edition, but it's based on the comic book. I mean, there's really not a whole lot to go on. Am I excited about it? I get excited about all the new pinball stuff, really. I mean, even if I'm not into it, I mean, Jersey Jack just dropped the teasers through Kaneda and Nap Arcade and Cary Hardy. They dropped little pictures here and there. to get teasers of their next game, which is Avatar. I'm not a huge Avatar movie fan. I watched it, and I didn't fall in love with it and think I needed more Avatar in my life. I maybe watched the movie twice. I didn't watch the newer one. But Jersey Jack makes beautiful-looking games, so I'm sure it will look great. But I guess that'll be one that I probably, along with a bunch of other people, will check out at Pinball Expo. and I'm assuming that since we're in September, going to be in September, depending on when you listen to this, I can't imagine that there's going to be any other Stern releases because what was supposedly coming after this X-Men drop is a Metallica remastered edition or something like that. And the rumor on that is that's going to be with the new Spike 3 system. It's unfortunate that they didn't, and I'm pretty sure that we don't have confirmation of this, but it doesn't look like they're going to use Spike 3 on this X-Men machine. Now, what I am curious about is now that they're getting all into the expression lighting thing and the speaker light kit thing, which, by the way, I just installed it on JAWS. It's freaking badass. Like when you are when you're hitting the chum bucket, the speaker lights go from blue to like it's filled with red for blood. It's really cool. Like, honestly, it's really freaking cool. And I was able to retrofit their kit. At least, well, today they announced there's an LE version of the kit. So there's a version now for the five and a quarter inch speakers. but mine obviously was I bought the four inch speaker kit which is the pro and premium I was able to I kind of hacked it so I took the LEDs out of the inner ring you could modify the inner ring for a five and a quarter inch speaker you would just have to cut the inner ring out but I was being lazy so I heated up with a heat gun and took the LED strip out and put it in my pinball life RGB LED kit so I just took that LED strip out put it in that one it was just it was really easy to do and it works fine so i basically retrofit the four inch kit for a five and a quarter inch kit by someone else and it worked but yeah the speaker lights are cool and i'm wondering on this x-men on the le and and maybe even potentially the pro and the premium are they going to have expression lights by default on the le because that's what seems it seems like starting to doing that on all their on like their newer machines now like that seems to be they're possibly making that a standard option i don't know but will it also have the expression speaker light kits and will you be able to retrofit or upgrade your pro and premium i think that's actually really cool that they do that the only people that what i think would be bummed out about that is the is the the people that gravitate toward the le like the le buyer because there's not there there's less things now that make an le unique and i'm assuming we haven't seen pricing yet. I'm assuming all the pricing is going to stay the same, right? So it's going to be $6,999 for your pro. It's going to be, uh, what is it? Eight, nine, not shit. I don't even remember the prices of the games anymore. Let's see. Uh, Stern pinball. I'm just going to do jaws. I can't, I can't remember the prices. Why can't I remember? Is it $6,999? No. Yeah. No, it's, uh, sorry. I'm, I'm being, I'm on a wicked brain fart. Yeah. It's six nine nine for the pro it's nine four nine nine, which is weird because sometimes the premium I see for nine four nine nine and some people it's nine nine nine nine. I don't know why that is, but I'm pretty sure that the pricing that the MSRP pricing from Stern is a nine four nine nine. So it's like basically, you know, 10 grand for the premium and a limited edition is 12 999 so but sometimes i see it for 9 999 i feel like on the premium i don't know anyway so those prices i'm pretty sure are going to be the same so we're not going to see any difference we're not going to see them lowering prices or anything like that but maybe they'll add a little bit more to the le it'll be it'll be interesting to see like what kind of toys and mechs they have on this x-men i feel like x-men is a theme that you could do a lot of really cool stuff with so we'll see i don't know what the cool thing is is we'll know we'll we'll know exactly what it looks like on wednesday so they're going to make us wait till wednesday i think if i'm right because i think the date they said on there was nine four so it's going to be september 4th of 2024 we'll get the trailer probably usually they do pro and premium and then they do the limited later if i remember right i can't remember how they do it but they have a pattern of how they roll these things out and then i'm sure somewhere in there they'll have the dealer call so the dealer call will probably be on wednesday so they'll get all the distributors on on wednesday they'll pick their allotments how many games they they're gonna buy and then um yeah then we be off to the races and then like i said production of the limited editions will be next week uh they be on the line next week so yeah we get limited editions on the line next week pros late september and into october and then the premiums will be mid-october late october if that's the schedule they stick to so that's it we'll watch the trailer one more time just to kind of get some maybe final thoughts in here but the beginning just starts with you know some of the artwork which looks really cool to me and then it just rolls into a Stern logo, nothing really all that special, and then it gives you the uncanny X-Men, and then you got the Sentinel head pop up, which looks really cool, and I gotta think that thing on the left is a fast lock. It looks like a fast lock to me, so we'll see. The question is, do I need this? Do I want this? Do I need this? And does it even make sense for me to get this? Well, my room currently has four pinball machines on it. I just put the pinball alley sign up it's looking really good it could accommodate a fifth pin but this isn't one of like this isn't a dream theme for me at all like i'm not like oh my gosh i gotta have it but who knows maybe this game will just be so cool that uh that people will want it you know but it's kind of interesting that my distributor already sold five of his i think he's gonna try to get 10 limited editions so the fact that he already sold five or has people signed up for five is pretty crazy i think he normally gets 10 so my distributor is game room goodies aaron over at game room goodies really good dude uh we've built a pretty good relationship over time so he's funny because he knows he like he like messaged me right away and he's like bro bro x-men man and i asked him i was like do you guys think when the guys deliver the game so they think i'm crazy and uh he wrote let me see he wrote something funny back let me let me i'll bring it up real quick uh shoot where'd that mess we wrote so much stuff back and forth that i can't even find our message oh i said the delivery guys probably think i'm nuts when they came they were like how the hell did this guy get this get the godzilla 70th powder-coated already and he said every time i get a new game and i tell my dad that it's for you because his dad is the one that does the deliveries with these two guys he's like where the heck is he gonna put it um they're really cool guys so i really like i didn't realize the other guy so oh okay so that's interesting so his dad is the delivery guy the other guy andrew is his brother i didn't know that his brother's really cool actually and uh and his friend jose who's like super into the games he always comes in he actually saw my john wick uh shooter assembly thing and he's like man this is badass so uh he's they're all really cool guys over there so if you if you if you're in interested in in buying a pinball machine or pre-ordering a pinball machine definitely go check out game room goodies the guys are awesome out there they'll treat you right and they ship all over the united states so So that's it. They actually, and they're the same distributor that my buddies over at, Cale and Rachel over at Electric Bat. By the way, interesting news. I am now a operator because my big Buckhunter Reloaded, my big Buckhunter Reloaded is on location at Electric Bat. Super excited about that. And Rachel said that it's already doing really, really well on location. They don't really have many non-pinball games at Electric Bat. Electric Bat's known for pinball. but they have a couple. They have an Aliens Armageddon, which does really well, and I think Big Buck Hunter's gonna do really well because it's reloaded, so it's got Big Buck Hunter, all the newer versions of the games. It's got some cool mini-games. It's got Terminator Delta Mission, which is really cool, and then it has The Walking Dead, so I upgraded it with The Walking Dead, and then I even put the cool Terminator topper with the light-up eyes. It's badass, so I think people are gonna really like it on Electric Bat, so if you're listening to this and you're someone that frequents Electric Bat, That game is my game that's on location there, which is pretty cool. So we're going to do a little profit sharing thing. So I am right now an operator. It's my first game on location. So maybe I'll ask them if they want, hey, you guys want a Venom on location? And then, I don't know, they already have a Venom. I wonder if they'd want a Venom LE because then I could put my Venom LE on location. That would give me room for X-Men. Oh, did I just tell you I'm getting it? Oh, no, I'm not. I don't know. Maybe. What do you guys think? If you're watching it on YouTube and you have the ability to comment, let me know. You guys know. I mean, I don't know. It's expensive. The wallet is tight right now. The economy is not great. Inflation's through the roof. It's not really a great time. Probably should be saving that money for a rainy day, but you never know. You never, ever know. All right, guys. Well, thanks so much for tuning in to this special bonus edition of The Flipside. I appreciate every single one of you guys for supporting this. I am going to have stickers passing about at Pinball Expo. I want to get more people listening to the podcast, but I feel pretty good about the way the podcast is trending right now. And yeah, the support's been really good. So thank you guys again, and we will see you on the flip side. That's a wrap, guys.