how was i welcome everybody to canada's pinball podcast happy rainy monday in new york city here we're going to do a fun thing here it's the end of the year it's like december 18th or something like that and look the year's pretty much over we didn't get jaws we thought we might have got jaws by now. We still might get it before the year is up. But now that we're coming on the end of the year, I wanted to do a very fun show that asks a very simple question. What were the top 10 pinball surprises of 2023? Think about it. From January until now, what things happened in the pinball world that we just didn't see coming? Now, look, we knew Elton John was going to come. That wasn't a surprise we knew we were going to get Pulp Fiction was that a surprise what I mean by surprises I mean something that when it happened you were like oh my gosh I can't believe that just happened in the pinball world like Jersey Jack finally making a game that shoots as well as a stern machine is that one of the top 10 surprises of 2023 I don't think so you know they got Steve Ritchie we knew Steve Ritchie the king of flow was not going to go over to Jersey Jack pinball and make a game that shoots poorly and is floaty like previous Jersey Jack games. He wasn't going to overload us with multi-balls, so we're not surprised by that. Were we surprised that Spooky Pinball decided to make another dual-themed game? Not surprised by that. They've done it before. Were we surprised that Stern brought back the Black Knight topper for three times the price of the original topper? Not really surprised. I mean, Stern is hellbent on profit, profit, profit. So let's go down my list. This is Kaneda's list of when these things happened. Even me, someone who's rarely shocked and surprised in the pinball world because I've been doing this for 10 years. These are the top 10 things that surprised me this year. Let's just rip the bandaid off with number 10. I was super surprised that after six years of having a lot of fun with the Twippies, that the Twippies would die in 2023 under their own weight. In one month, the new leadership over there has destroyed what made that show fun. I unsubscribed today. I'm not going to vote. Did you see how silly the damn drop-down menus are? They listed every single location in the world. They listed every single content creator in the world, but the people that won previously. So number 10, I was surprised that we would lose the Twippies the way we lost it this year. Number nine, I was surprised. I did not see this coming, that the Pinball Brothers would get Ripley into the Alien Pinball Machine. I mean, that was an amazing move by the Pinball Brothers. All these years, Andrew Highway told us she was not available. She could not lend her likeness to this game. And then all of a sudden, after all this time, I was super shocked and surprised to see her face on the Translate, her clips from the movie in the game itself. And I'm also surprised and super happy that the Pinball Brothers is offering this game for a very, very affordable price. A world in which every single pinball machine is going through the roof, I think Alien Ripley Edition is the best bang for the buck in all of pinball right now. All right, that's number nine. Number eight on Kaneda's list of surprises in 2023, we did not see coming. Now look, we knew that Dennis Nordman was working on a game. We knew that it was going to be like Galactic Tank Force because when they submitted for the trademark of the game, we knew it was going to be something about tanks and space and something like that. But the move that I never saw coming, and this to this day continues to surprise me, in a world in which everybody was fighting for sales. Remember when March came around and all these companies were making their announcements around Texas Pinball Festival? I was surprised that American Pinball, with an original IP game, would offer one version for $11,500. But that's not the surprise. That they would want people to pay $17,500 for a game in which the only additional features were a 3D Translate, an apron with worthless signatures, and then you've got a thermos and a lunchbox for a $6,000 premium. And again, when I saw that, it was one of those Canadian moments where I was like, wow, I think I've seen it all in the pinball world. I mean, think about that for a minute. The normal rule of thumb is that if you're going to go from a premium to an LE, it's usually a $3,000 difference or around there. But that's usually what it is. It's like $10,000 for a Stern premium, $13,000 for an LE. it's $12,000 for a Jersey Jack LE and it's $15,000 for the collector's edition so you're telling me that American Pinball is going to double that amount of money on an all original IP game that has no nostalgia no emotional connection to anybody and think they going to get away with it And I was super surprised by that move, and I still can't believe to this day that the team over at American Pinball hasn't shaken stuff up because they don't know how to fix their problems. Ironic that David Fix is still at the helm. All right, so that was number eight. And also, everybody, please email me at canadapinball at gmail.com. what some of your pinball surprises were in 2023. And I'll read it on a show this year. What else we got, Kaneda? Number seven. I never thought this was going to happen. And I remember when I was told this information. And it happened at the end of 2022. But this game did not come out until 2023. And it was a double whammy of surprises. Like, actually, this thing had like four layers of surprises. It was like surprise number one. Stern is actually going to make a fourth version of James Bond. No way. Surprise number two. It's going to be a Keith Elwin game. No way. George Gomez is doing the other version. Keith Elwin's doing one. Surprise number three. It's going to be a single level throwback game. Wow. Surprise number four. It's going to have instead of an LCD screen, it's going to have like a single scoring reel that makes no sense. Wow. I didn't see that coming. That seemed like a colossal waste of engineering and time. Surprise number what? Five right now? It's going to feature every single James Bond from the James Bond eras. Wow. I didn't see that coming. And the final surprise. Well, no, there's two more. They're only going to make 500 of them. It's going to be the rarest Keith Elwin machine of all time. Didn't see that coming. And then the final surprise. The cherry on top of all of these weird surprises around this game. stern pinball will charge you twenty thousand dollars to get a pinball machine that looks like it should cost five thousand dollars and then they cowardly removed the price from their website and then they told people to call for price and now the ultimate surprise is this game is the single biggest financial loss in the history of pinball this and elvira freaking 40th anniversary those two games have sunk more in value than any other game in history if you bought them for what Stern priced them at so I did not see that coming I don't think anybody did I mean even John over at Jack Bar was forced to join Canada's Pinball Podcast because he said there was no way there was going to be a Keith Elwin fourth edition of James Bond and I was spot on and that was my greatest rumor last year that came true all right so that's number seven what else you got Canada And number six on my top ten surprises is that JJP would put its own employees into the modes of the Godfather pinball machine. Look, I thought I'd seen it all. I thought I saw it all. And I'm like, wait a minute. What's that? Why is Christopher Franchi inside an iconic movie's pinball machine? Why is Eric Minier inside this game? Why does this game feature employees from Jersey Jack Pinball trying to pretend to be mobsters? I can't believe they did this. when that happened and I saw that video footage, it was one of those moments where just like, well, there you go. I guess all the rules are off. I guess you can get an iconic property and make Top Gun and all of a sudden it's not Goose who's your wingman, it's Jack Guarnari, it's Ken Cromwell. Just throw them all in. Like everybody who works here, you can now be part of an iconic movie's pinball machine. Wow, right? Just when we thought we've seen it all, Jersey Jack Pinball once again goes down a weird road with a weird theme and did a weird thing. You know, if you were to ask anybody a year prior, like, do you think you're going to see Jersey Jack pinball employees dressed up as mobsters in the modes of the Godfather pinball machine? And I would have said, no way, they would never do that. All right. So that's number six. We're halfway through the list. This is going to be a fun, short episode. It is a rainy Monday and you know, I just want to get you content. Thank you so much. I think we're five people away from 700 subscribers, people. Everybody pat yourselves on the back. Do a round of applause for each and every one of us. The last attempt to get Kaneda off the airwaves has failed and we're more popular than ever before. Number five on our list, the death of FOMO. The death of FOMO. And here's what I mean by that when it comes to 2023 and being a surprising year. Here's a crazy thing I never thought I'd say about pinball. And again, I've been covering this hobby for 10 years. In 2023, no game, none, not a single game that shipped new in box to customers, not a single game held value, not a single game even went up in value. In fact, almost every single new in box game That shipped in 2023 lost about $1,000 to $3,000 to $4,000. That is something that didn't just shock me. I think it's shocking every single one of you out there that used to tell your partners and your wives, the reason I in this hobby is it not expensive because you not going to lose much money if you buy a game unbox it and enjoy it But we saw something we never seen before We've seen games take a colossal hit to their values, and I've never seen that before. And I think it's got a lot of people pumping the brakes and saying, I don't need to own a game right away. I was shocked. I mean, every game, name every single game. James Bond, L.E., lost money. Foo Fighters, L.E., lost money. Godfather lost so much money Scooby-Doo so much money every single game that came out the only game that's held its value and might have gone up in value is the one game that did not ship and that is Pulp Fiction is it the death of FOMO will that be erased when we see Jaws pinball I think when Jaws comes out it's going to be fine I think it's still going to be an anomaly and as I've said, a fully featured Keith Owen game will never suffer the same fate as every other game in the industry. He's just on a different level. All right, so that's number five. Number four, in terms of shocking moments, and the next four of them, it's really like a toss-up of the order of these things, but I want to say number four on my list is that Stern Pinball dropped Jurassic Park 30th and Elvira Blood Kiss editions back to back, basically destroying the collector goodwill that they've built up after all these years. Did any of you think there was going to be another special version of Elvira? Did anyone else think there was going to be another special version of Jurassic Park? Now, you could argue and you could say, Chris, Kaneda, well, they did do the anniversary edition of Elvira. So it would make sense that now that it was a Jurassic Park anniversary, they would hit on it. They did an anniversary game for James Bond. There were rumors there was going to be an anniversary edition for Godzilla. But what really shocked me about this move is when this move happened. Remember, we just got Venom. It was brand new. They were still doing the marketing for Venom. The meal of Venom was just hot out of the oven. And instead of allowing Venom hype to grow. Instead of allowing Venom word of mouth to spread the word that maybe it's not as terrible as people think and maybe it's worth the money, they saw weak Venom sales and then instantly hit us with this. And I never thought Stern would do this, but now they've set a precedence where they are willing to cannibalize their own cornerstone games if they're not seeing the orders roll in right away. And I did not expect that to happen. And that was one of the biggest things that surprised me in 2023. Now, it does not surprise me that Stern is greedy. It does not surprise me that this is going to be Stern's move from here on out. It's not going to surprise us again. And that's the thing. Now that we're no longer going to be surprised by this, I think we're going to see a lot of people sort of waiting on the sidelines. I think we're going to see a lot of nervous Metallica owners over the next few months because that's the next one that's supposed to come out. And if you're looking at your collection and you love Metallica and you have like one of those special Metallica L.E.s that's worth like $14,000, $15,000, you might want to put it on the market now because if a new one comes out with an LCD screen, you're going to lose $5,000, $6,000, maybe more in value instantly. I mean, let's talk about Jurassic Park. Those owners, they had games that were worth like $16,000 during COVID and now instantly they lost like $5,000, $6,000 overnight. Stern does not care about the collector community. They do not care about preserving the value of those collectible machines. And some might argue that that's a good thing. I would argue that I don't think it is because they're calling them LEs for a reason and they call games collector's editions for a reason. They should respect that. All right, number three on my list of most shocking moments of 2023. We knew this game was gonna come out. We knew this game was a theme that they were working on. we knew it was another music pin and there was a lot of mediocre sort of response to this theme. How many of you out there wrote this game off simply because you might not have been the biggest fan of Foo Fighters? And when this game came out, I mean you could go back and listen to Canada's Pinball Podcast from 2022 and I talked smack about Foo Fighters almost every single episode. I said it was going to be a sales flop. I said there was no way they were going to win people over with this game. And so number three on my list of biggest surprises in 2023 is how well executed and how awesome the creative idea was to make Foo Fighters the way Stern Pinball made Foo Fighters. It wasn't just like a music pin. It was like a Scooby-Doo cartoon show fighting aliens featuring the Foo Fighters and it was done so damn well. And Jack Danger's inaugural game was executed so damn well. The artwork was beautiful. The layout was beautiful. The animations were beautiful The music was beautiful Everything about this game came together so nicely and that is why I think at the end of the year if I were to tell you in 2022 2023 game of the year is going to be Foo Fighters, you would have told me I'm nuts. And here we are. And it is going to win game of the year. It's going to win animations of the year. It's going to win best design of the year. it just was done so well all right number two on my list of top 10 surprises of 2023 i didn't see this one coming either pulp fiction's coming out right it's going to be a single level game everyone's like ah no man it's not going to work it's not going to work and we all were just kind of writing this game off right it was like forever in the works the rumors of this game had been going on for years anybody and i mean is i don't think anybody thought that we were going to get the Pulp Fiction we got. And when we saw that 20 minute featurette that straight down the middle did in an instant, in 20 minutes, like 20 months of us being skeptical got erased by a 20 minute video in which we saw one of the coolest approaches to making a modern pin. And everyone who's played this game has said it. It is really like an instant classic feeling game. It looks like a throwback machine. It's got some modern stuff in it. It's got maybe the best pinball topper ever. It's got the iconic music, the iconic call-outs, the iconic characters from a Tarantino movie. This thing is just something we didn't see coming. And look at it. Look at the hype around this game. Look at it. You can't get one. Nobody's even selling their LE spots. These games are going to be bolted to people's floors. And you're telling me a world in which we're relying so much on software, so much on animations, so much on an LCD screen. This game came out of nowhere and with no screen, just beat everybody. It beat everybody. This is the game everybody wants. This is the game that went up in value and it also was a good bang for the buck. And hats off to Play Mechanics. And of course, it was of no surprise to me that we still don't have the game. I mean, here we go. CGC all over again. Is anyone really surprised that they did not hit their timeline to get these games into homes. We're not going to see those LEs until next Christmas. All right, drum roll, please. Canada's Pinball Podcast, the biggest surprise of 2023. The one thing that when I heard it, I never thought I'd hear this. I never thought I would see the day. I never thought I would hear this on a day. And when I heard this, I literally jumped out of bed And I was like, I need to be on the list. I'm buying this. I'm not sending Killian to college. If this happens and if this rumor is true, this is the greatest and biggest surprise of 2023. Can you guess what it is? The biggest surprise of this year is that the company making Back to the Future pinball is not Stern pinball. It is Dutch pinball in the Netherlands. that is by far I think that is the most shocking thing that hit the pinball world this year you're telling me that Joe Kamnikow good buddies with Gary Stern did not bring that title over to Stern pinball and they have it over at Dutch pinball the other rumors are Joe might be working on the game Christopher Franchi might be doing the artwork we know all these rumors already it's nothing new it is happening Dutch pinball is making back to the future and I think that rumor alone the reason why it's so awesomely shocking is we know if there's one company that's going to theme integrate properly, if there's one company that's going to put mechanical kinetic stuff under the play field that's going to interact with the ball that's based on the movie itself, there's no company that's done it better than Dutch Pinball and the Big Lebowski. And I heard, and this is new, I heard this this week, someone got a little drunk and started talking about this game. I heard this game is going to be like the big Lebowski on crack. And what I mean by that, they're taking it up even another level. And as they should, they've had 10 years. They've had 10 years to get more creative. They've had 10 years to even implement new things into the pinball experience. And man, oh man, oh man, I think everybody feels this way. By the end of next year, if they hit their target deadline, where we're going, we don't need roads. Where we're going, we just need a lot of money to get on that super LE list where they're only going to make 88. No, scratch that, 87, because Canada is at the top of that list. So congratulations, Dutch, for making my number one list of the biggest and most exciting surprise of 2023. Everybody, have a great holidays. We're going to be back with more shows, more Facebook Lives. We're going to get our People's Choice Award results out the door this week. Someone tried to hack up the awards. Good thing is I grabbed all the results, so they're not going to spoil the fun. Cengiz and I are going to have. Our results are going to be what the people selected. Everyone was included. Everybody, be good. Have fun. Take care of yourselves. And ho, ho, ho. Happy holiday from Canada's Pinball Podcast.