🎵 Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Podcast. I'm your host, Retro Ralph, and we are here for episode I don't even know. Like I said, I stopped the episode number, so I don't even know. There is an episode number, but I don't know what episode this is. But it doesn't matter, because on this episode, we're going to talk all about Beetlejuice and its impact on pinball and the pinball community right now, because it's been polarizing. It's been absolutely polarizing. But is it all cracked up that, or whatever I'm trying to say, is it all what it's cracked up to be? Or are we just losing our minds a little bit? So we're going to temper the conversation a little bit. Talk about what this means. And maybe it doesn't mean anything other than just spooky hit lightning in a bottle twice. Maybe that's all that it means. But we're going to talk about it on this podcast. Anyways, here we go. So where we're going to start is we're going to do the quick word from our sponsor, but I'm not going to run the video. I'm just going to do it really quick. If you're looking for a new pinball machine or a used pinball machine, go check out Zach and Nicole Mini over at Flip N Out Pinball. You can contact Zach. There'll be information in the show notes to do that. So if you're looking for anything new, used, or you want to be on a list for an upcoming game, they can help you out over there. You can also talk to Ken as well or Greg. But all their information will be in the show notes for this episode. Anyways, let's get right into it. So I think now that the hype has died down and literally every single Beetlejuice has been sold, it's good to kind of just take a step back and look at what exactly happened and why it happened. And then maybe what kind of pressures, if any, this might put on other pinball manufacturers. Now, I took a little bit of a hard stance on this initially. I was kind of freaking out thinking, oh my gosh, Stern has to react. They have to react. And maybe I was a little bit, I don't know, foolish for coming up, making it seem like Stern is going to be greatly impacted by this. But there are some things that got brought to the forefront over the last couple of game releases from several different manufacturers that have to at least make the home buyer stop and think about, are they getting the maximum amount of value out of the games that they're buying? And I'm someone that's a home buyer. So I play on location. I play in tournaments. Not as many lately, though, because I've been traveling so much for work. But I do play in tournaments, try to support the local community. I go down to Electric Bat usually on Tuesday nights and I play there. I have such a blast doing that. And then I also, but I buy games at home because I am someone that really appreciates the calmness and the isolation factor of playing a game at home and really getting to fully entrench yourself into that game. I can hear all the noises. I can hear all the sounds. I can hear all the music. I can fully, I don't know, engulf myself in that game. And sometimes, you know, I get a little distracted by things. So being in a loud setting, I just don't get the same experience. So it does it does mean that I kind of go through my collection rather quickly. But anyways, back to Beetlejuice. So talking about Spooky specifically, they hit the market, you know, a long time ago. They've had a slew of games and they've had like a little bit of a rocky start in the beginning. They've had some hits, some misses. But then the last release, Evil Dead, was a big hit, right? They hit big, sold all of them out really. Not really quickly. I mean, they definitely did sell out once the word was on the street of like, hey, this game is really good. And reliability was kind of coming in. There was reports coming in of reliability being a lot better. You know, Electric Bat had had somewhat of a spotty past with some spooky games. And Evil Dead has been, knock on wood, completely rock solid for them. But there were some things about Evil Dead that sort of were a little bit of a turning point. Like they put a lot into that game. Right. It was it was you were getting a lot for your money. Right. You're getting even on the model without a topper. You're getting a flat plastic topper, but you're still getting a topper. You're getting powder coated armor. You're getting powder coated wire forms. You're getting art blades. You're getting a shaker motor. You're getting a really good sound system. You're getting multiple interesting mechanisms to interact with you in the game. You've got a lower play field. There was a lot in there. and so and and they did a really really good job with the theme integration i mean so much so that someone that isn't even an evil dead fan like me i'm not a really a horror movie fan at all and i'm definitely not an evil dead fan although i've kind of sort of become one through the game which is kind of weird but when everyone started talking about this game like you got to play this game this is something different this is something really good you know the layout isn't like super crazy it was just that there were so many cool little things in that game you had the the cabin ball lock right with the swinging uh you know the swinging uh the swing that locks the ball you had the lower play field uh which which which usually i'm not like the biggest fan of lower playfields but that one really works because it has the basement door that opens up into the lower play field so it feels like you're going into the basement and the theme integration is so good where even on screen you're seeing him go into the basement as you're going into the basement right The shotgun with the two balls that have the two ball shooter lane with the shotgun. You've got the two shells that you hit to start boomstick multiball. You have the hand on the side. You have the deadites that pop up. It's like there's a lot of things to interact with the ball. And so I think, you know, when games had been sort of absent of interesting mechanisms, people were really kind of gravitating toward that. But for Evil Dead, for me at least, it was really how well they integrated the theme. But not only that, there's something they did with that game. And I don't know if they've achieved this with Beetlejuice yet because I haven't played it myself. But the one thing that they really did well is I could have mostly any one of my friends step up to that Evil Dead and be like, shoot the ramp shots. This thing is going to lift open on the right-hand side. You're going to put the ball in there, and now you start a mode. and your modes are on the backboard and you can see what modes you're playing. And when you start the game, you choose Evil Dead 1 or Evil Dead 2. And it was really, it's not only that. So not only was it easier to start a mode, right? It was pretty simple to start a mode. But then you always knew what you were doing in the mode because the call-outs were awesome. So the lighting is telling you what to do and the call-outs are telling you what to do. And I think if you can theme integrate a game, make the code easy to understand, You're giving them a bunch of stuff that's value, right? You see the value right in it. And not to mention the nuclear power plant shaker motor. I still don't understand to this day what Bug does differently with that shaker motor, but it is like outstanding. You know, even you got the knocker doing things. There's so many things. Like they're giving you this multimedia overload that is what pinball should be, right? So they set this kind of bar with Evil Dead. And then when it's sold out, I think you're riding high as a company. And then you go in and you announce the next game as Beetlejuice. And then when people see it, they're like blown away by it. There's cool mechanisms in it. The artwork is, not to mention, by the way, the Evil Dead artwork is amazing. The Evil Dead artwork is really, really good. I have the butter cabinet, so it really pops. By the way, I have had people reach out to me that have gotten Beetlejuice. And they're like, do I get the butter cabinet? Do I get the butter cabinet? Look, I think you'd be happy without the butter cabinet, but I think you'd be really happy with the butter cabinet. So the butter cabinet just takes the artwork and everything to the next level. It's printed directly on the cabinet, then laminated. It looks amazing, and it kind of makes the colors pop more than their standard art package offering. But it is a considerable amount more. And I don't know. I've kind of tossed around in my head, does the butter cabinet really make it better for resale? Is it going to make it more appealing? I don't know. Because Beetlejuice is such a highly desirable game right now as it stands, are people going to get more money for the butter cabinet later? Or is it just going to be so in demand that it doesn't matter? I don't know. I got to think there'd be some return on that investment just because of the limited quantities and the fact that it just looks so good, right? So I do think there are going to be collectors that are probably going to seek out the butter cabinet. So anyways, a buddy of mine, we were going back and forth on Facebook DMs. And I was like, look, I wasn't going to get it, but now I am going to get it. And he's like, well, screw it. I'm going to get it too. So I wasn't originally going to do the butter cabinet. I was going to skip out on this one. But I'm like, you know what? Screw it. I want it to look the best it can. So this whole idea that I was nervous for Spooky because I'm like, are they really going to be able to do what they did with Evil Dead with Beetlejuice? And I think from what I've seen, every piece of content I've consumed, and I'm not going to rehash all of that because you've probably listened to a million podcasts by now. The world was smothered with Beetlejuice content, so I'm not going to deep dive the game or anything. But I will say I'm super impressed with what they put together. The play field looks amazing. There's lots of interesting things to interact with the ball. The sandworm thing looks really, really cool. The fact that they integrated the damn waiting room couch and the waiting room LED indicator of now serving, it's just like so many cool things. the the uh carnival wheel it just there's so much in this game that i just i just think without playing it just looking at it everyone is going to go wow they're going to see the value in front of them right they're going to see the powder-coated armor they're going to see the the the art blades the artwork how great it is the topper right even though it's an added cost but still very reasonable in comparison to some of the things we saw from stern like I am not a fan of this Kong topper. I think someone might have to get their head examined if they actually bought that topper. It looks cool. Don't get me wrong. I think it looks cool, but that's really expensive. I have limits, and I'm the Stern shill over here telling you I can't do it. I cannot justify that amount of money for what that thing is. And then I even saw that some people are getting the topper, and it's missing the chains, his chains, and it's missing the letters. I don't know how they messed that up, but I love Stern. I do. This show isn't supposed to be talking about Stern. So, well, we are going to make some connections between what Spooky's doing and some of these other manufacturers and Stern just to see, like, just to play with that concept a little bit and see, like, what do I feel like Stern could do to maybe give people a little bit more value and sort of even though I don't know that they have to. Like, I don't know if they have to do it, but I think it would be nice if they did consider it. But we're going to get into that in a second. So, yeah, Spooky's giving you just so much for your money. You know, at 10 grand, even if you don't do the topper, you're getting a lot in there and you're still getting like a flat plastic topper with it. You're not getting the butter cabinet. But like even with those things stripped out, their topper and the butter cabinet, you're still getting a lot for the money. So it got me thinking like Spooky absolutely killed it. No doubt. Like no doubt. I have not played it, but several people have. And everyone's reaction has been it's great. Now, I do think I was listening to the pinball party and he's like, we need to simmer down. We need to simmer down. And it's true. I do think we need to simmer down a little bit. But when I look at games like Winchester that just came out, and then I look at Beetlejuice, I look at Dune, you know, I look at some of these things that the other manufacturers are doing. I look at Harry Potter, you know, the arcade edition. You're getting a lot for 10 grand in some cases in these. I know Winchester and Dune are a little bit more expensive. But still, for the amount of money you're spending, they're giving you more. And at first my reaction was like well Stern better react Stern better react Like I just was getting really into this whole like Stern better do something But I think I was even being a little foolish there because I think we get caught in these little like microcasms or whatever the hell the term would be Like these little echo chambers of ourselves and we repeat a lot of the same messages. One podcast says it and then all of a sudden everyone's gospel, right? And sometimes we don't know. We don't stop and calm down for a minute. So if I stop and calm down, I think about it and go, is what Spooky is doing going to push the limits of Stern? Is Stern going to decide to change trajectory? Now, there's two things that are interesting here. Is that let's say Stern was like, oh, my gosh, I'm stressed out. I need to change. All the games that are being developed right now have been in development for like 12, 24, 48 months, right? They've been in development for 48 months, but they've been in development for a longer period of time. So they can't just go change something right now with those. They're done. The bomb is done. They have the parts. They know what's going into those games. So to add additional things to it, that's just not going to happen. So to think that Stern's going to react immediately to something, whatever they're coming out with has already been all planned out. There's nothing that we're going to see next year, probably, that they haven't already figured out what they're going to do. Maybe there's something toward the end of the year. But for the most part, this stuff's already baked and figured out. right they know what's going into all these games but it made me wonder the the pro i kind of view as like the pro right leave the pro alone it's mostly operator but i i do think there's a lot of great pros out there so don't don't don't take this as like i'm being snobby i won't buy pros because i absolutely will in certain cases 100 buy a pro like i loved bond pro i had bond pro i had stranger things pro i had jurassic park pro all great pros so um especially with especially with don't get me started with stranger things i feel like the i got so hyped i i return i got rid of my pro to get a premium at one point which is now gone again but i got all hung up on oh my gosh i need to have the the the projector thing and it's just gimmicky you know it's cool but like don't get me wrong it's cool but if you have the uv kit and you know you don't have the the multiball lock in the back which sometimes doesn't work that great anyway i feel like the pro is a great game to experience stranger things you gotta have the uv kit though the uv kit though is epic so it made me wonder like what could stern do for their two with their premiums to just give a little bit more because i think premiums a lot of home buyers buy premiums like why not put and i and i did talk about this on my latest live stream with rudy if you if you didn't catch it go watch it back we played a king kong and when we do it if you've never watched them they're really cool we do these competitions and i keep score so he had been he won two live streams in a row i had only won one and so i finally will well if you want to watch it you'll see what the outcome was but did i win Am I? Are we tied now? I don't know. You'll have to go watch and find out if you haven't already. But we were we had a discussion during that live stream of what little things could Stern add that would just give us a little bit better feeling when we're spending that 10 grand on the premium. And I thought, why not have a shaker motor included? Why not have art blades included? You know, those two things, you know, and they're not super high cost items, but they're having a shaker motor pre-installed is kind of nice because then you don't have to do it. You know, it's only like 120 bucks, but still that's some value you're getting. Why not throw in some art blades? And maybe, maybe what you do is the LEs have art blades in them already. So create something that's unique and appealing for the premium art package, art blades. And then the pro just doesn't have them, but you can buy, maybe there's a, a pro specific art blade that gets created. I don't know. However you want to do that. Just put art blades in the premium. And then I was thinking, honestly, that's not enough. Like it's not enough to just put the shaker motor in the R-plates. Why not put speaker lights on the premium too? And then you can leave the still the stock speakers, right? Like maybe don't have speaker upgrades, but at least put the lighting in there. So now you're getting some expression lighting on the speakers. And then with spike three, you can upgrade the cabinet lighting if you want with expression cabinet lighting, because all the cabinets are going to be routed for it. So you can put them in any of them. So I feel like this is all kind of simple things that don't cost a ton of money that will give you some value as the buyer. I don't know what else they could do. That's kind of to me where I kind of said, okay, I'd be happy with that, right? I know we're not going to get the mega sculpts, and I don't think they're going to go down that road because I know that stuff costs a lot of money. I'm pretty sure that the molds that they have to create for these sculpts get very expensive over time. So I just don't see them doing that. I think they'll do some like they do right now, but I just don't expect them to like turn a corner and all of a sudden be all about that. Now we've seen them do some kind of cool mechanisms that are kind of interesting, right? Like the dragon in D&D was cool. It was shockingly big. I was like, oh my gosh, and it does some cool stuff. You know, the sentinel head in X-Men, although doesn't really do a whole lot for the game, is kind of cool, right? And they did the wire form breaking ramp and the finger thingy. so that's some stuff that they've been doing so there's some stuff recently that they've done now they didn't do a lot in star wars i'll give them i'll you know be being open and honest about that i own one but i do wish they had done more with it right like even even um like on the le the two like um on the slingshots like those could have been sculpts but they're not um so there's just i was just trying to figure out like what more could they do but in the podcast i did with the guys, with Jamie and Kale, I was like, Stern needs to do something. And I don't know that they need to do a dramatic shift or anything, but I do think they need to start adding a bit more value. Because here's the thing, when I boil it down, Stern makes really good games. Like, they make good games, they code them well, they support them well, they have Insider Connected. Like, there's so many other things that they have to do and that they have to put money towards that I do think and they have this gigantic factory that they have to support and keep people working so i do think that there's only so many things they can do for the size and scale they are right now and have it still make financial sense right so that's kind of where i'm at with that but but it but i do think that the home buyer is going to really vet out where they spend their money now the downside to this spooky success is that there's still a small company so there's been people that of getting really pissed off about not getting a Beetlejuice, but it's like, guys, they can only make, you know, under a thousand games a year. So if they made more than what they're saying, and I'd say that's probably closer to like the 800, 900 number, well, then they can't make another game for a longer period of time. So I think in their mind, what I do appreciate is there's a collectability about Spooky right now because they're limiting how many they make, but they're limiting it for two reasons one because they want to be able to continue to make games every year uh and two i think it's just the production capacity right i don't it's it would be a big jump to now move to a second or a third line and make more games it's just now now they have more overhead so i think they're trying to play this balancing act of we've we've got hot games people are interested in and and yeah there's gonna be some people that won't get the game but the people that do get the games will have a highly collectible game that should maintain its value because the market isn't being flooded with a ton of them. And that's kind of the issue we've seen for people that turn over their collections more frequently. They're losing money on there. They're losing a lot more money than they used to. So when I first got into the hobby, I bought a Jurassic Park Pro and then I sold the Jurassic Park Pro for pretty much what I paid for it. So I didn't lose any money. I might have lost a couple of hundred bucks. And that was kind of normal in the beginning. You're only losing small marginal amounts. You weren't losing these like gigantic amounts of money. And that's kind of what you're losing now. You're losing sometimes thousands of dollars on a resale when you do it. Now, if you have no plan and if you're just someone that collects a bunch of games, then you don't really care because you're not losing any money if you're not going to sell it. Right. And I think they talked about this a little bit on the Flippin Out podcast with Ken and Greg. And so I did I did appreciate some of the avenues they went down with that with that conversation. Like you don't really lose money if you don't sell it. That's true. But I do think people sometimes keep a game for a couple of years and then they move it on. They want to they want to bring in the new stuff. And it's mainly because of space. We don't have infinite space. That's something that I'm plagued with. My problem, though, and there's something I've explained a million times with people somehow always like I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. I am a content creator. I'm also a pinball player. I love playing pinball. I play all my games. I love them. But I want to experience the new stuff as much as I can. So because of that, I end up with some that I view as semi-bolted to the ground, like Jaws, like Godzilla, you know, say King Kong right now. I'm really enjoying King Kong, Harry Potter right now, Evil Dead right now. All those I've kind of said they're not going anywhere. But that leaves me open spots. but those open spots allow me to bring something else new in and then hopefully i don't fall in love with it and want to bolt that too because i at the end of the day i can only fit probably 10 games in the garage so i have to have some rotation and i don't think that most of you that have home collections are that different you're at some point you want to move a game on after you've like dnd didn't last long because after i beat it quickly which is weird i'd never beat a pinball machine before and i beat that game and while the code is still developing i just kind of got over it i'm like i i saw the end you know and maybe there's going to be multiple endings now that i'm that i'm going to miss out on but for the most part i felt like i had finished it and i played it a bunch more i played it through a couple more times and the the final wizard mode that was in the game was really fun i had a good time with it but it didn't have the staying power and there's been people that have talked about well if they do this progression thing are people going to get sick of games faster if it's easier to complete it if you don't have to replay the same modes you know what i mean like if it if it saves your progress and let's just say there's 10 modes and i can you know maybe it takes me a little bit longer to get through the the last five than the first five but i can still get through them if i just dedicate some time to it you might get tired of that game um so i don't know but but but it is cool like dnd is definitely a game i i enjoyed i loved the idea of of this and i'm not a dnd fan but i loved the idea of how they integrated the D&D into it. And I do think they have something kind of rather interesting with the save progress stuff. But I do think it's a fine line, right? So anyway, so the good thing out of this spooky thing, this spooky string of success, is that the games are holding their value. I think that's great. I think that's awesome. I wish that the Stern games are doing the same thing, but I just think the sheer amount of them that get put out into the world, it's just hard for them to maintain their value. The LEs, that's a whole other topic, right? I don't like getting into the whole like pricing around LEs. I think right now everyone knows if you buy an LE, it's because if you're buying an LE, it's because you don't want to powder coat it yourself. You don't want to put the shaker motor in. You want the art blades right away and you just want the best version of it. And it's not always the best, but you want the one that is perceived the best. I get that. A lot of us get hung up in that. I mean, I know there's every hobby I've ever been in. If there was like a I'll give you an example. When I was doing a lot of the shoot, what's the name of that company? They do all the, is it Final Run? Final, is it Final Run games? No. Limited Run games. Limited Run games would come out with a, oh, here's the Streets of Rage 4 package. It's like the basic one. And here's the Streets of Rage 4 deluxe package. And it comes with this and this and this and this and a figurine. And I'm like, hmm. Like, as a super fan of that thing, you kind of want the best one. I get it. And it doesn't really make financial sense a lot of times. Although there was a time also where you could resell those limited run game packages and make a lot of money if you decided to sell it and never open it. So even if you opened it, in some cases you could make a little bit of money or at least sell it for what you paid for it. So I get it. That's how I – in my reasonable brain, I don't view it as you're stupid because you bought the LE. I think it you bought the LE because you want all that stuff on the game when you buy it and you don want to do any of that You don want to open it up You don want to put art blades You always going to have to open it up But you know what I mean You didn want to do any of the work I get that I totally do. But the fact of the matter is with LEs these days, when you buy them and you sell them later, you're going to take a loss on almost all of them. Like the last one that I think really held its value is probably Jaws. I think Jaws LE still held its value. but in the more recent slew of games, D&D didn't. I don't think Star Wars will. King Kong definitely won't. And I love King Kong, by the way. I think King Kong, we were talking about this with Rudy. I think King Kong is severely underrated. I think it's a great game, and I think it continues to get better. So it's interesting to see what Spooky's impact might be on the market and to see if someone like Stern will change their ways at all or if they'll continue to do it how they do it now. Pro Premium Limited Edition, you're not getting any of those things. Sorry, those are upgrades. Because if you think about it, if they do concede and go, you know what, we want to be like Spooky or we want to be like Barrels of Fun. We want to include a little bit more value in our games. No one, I think, is going to accept paying more for it. They're going to be, especially with the way the prices are with the boutique manufacturers, they're going to expect to pay what they pay now with more value. And I think they could do it. The problem is, is you're going to eat into whoever, you know, when you're, when you're bigger and you have bean counters looking at stuff, they're going to look at, well, that's our, that's our accessories revenue. Like we're making money on accessories. You're not going to give that stuff away for free. But I do think they should consider those small things because I think the community, it would make a big difference with the community if they felt like they got a little bit more value. Even if these aren't like high dollar items, it doesn't matter. It's the, it's perceived value, right? It's like, oh wow, I'm getting the art blades. I don't have to put them on. And I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me in the past a while ago. Like, how do I put these on? How do I put these art blades on? They're not hard to put on, but it's daunting if you've never done it before. If you've never put any kind of vinyl decal on like an arcade cabinet or any kind of cabinet or on a car or something, you just, it's a foreign thing. Or if you've never installed like window tint, right? Back in the day, I used to install window tint on the cars I would get as a kid. So like, or, you know, when I was younger, not a kid, but you know what I'm saying? so yeah and i don't i don't mind getting my hands dirty and doing that stuff i actually enjoy tinkering with things not everyone does though and that's the that's the that's that's just how it is but i'll be i'm very happy and very proud of spooky's success i think it's really cool i do think they they struck lightning in a bottle twice with beetlejuice i cannot wait to play it the thing is i don't think they're going to start manufacturing of it till january so you figure it's going to be January to like December as these things get out you know January 2026 to sometime in December 2026 so it's like it's going to be a while till these games start getting out into the wild but it'll be interesting to see if the hype continues but I really think it will because it just seems like one thing about spooky that I just you just can't avoid or can't ignore is they did such a great job with the theme integration with evil dead and then from what I've seen all these videos that I've watched, it seems like they really did a good job with the theme integration with Beetlejuice. And I genuinely get the feeling from watching lots of... You've got to watch, by the way, if you didn't watch the Hot Ones thing that they did, that Kale did with Surge and Bug, you've got to watch it. It's incredibly informative, but it's also really entertaining and pretty funny at the same time because Bug clearly can't hold his spicy food very well. And it's just it's just fun to watch him kind of squirming toward the end and having to answer these questions. And I'm pretty sure he was pretty close to throwing up at one point, which was which is pretty entertaining to watch. I wouldn't want to see him throw up. I don't I don't want to see anybody throw up. I hate throwing up like throwing up the worst. I don't think I've thrown up since I was like at least the 20, maybe 21, 22. So it's been a lot of years. I'm 46. I've not thrown up and I don't want to throw up. I am not someone my body resists throwing up. It will do anything but that. It's going to come out of my butt before it comes out of my mouth. That's for sure. But that's gross. I'm sorry. It's gross. I'm sorry for those you're driving in your car and you had to hear that or visualize that or think about visualizing that. I apologize. But I don't know. I just I just I just think that this is exciting times for pinball. And then you've got whatever they're going to do next, but obviously the main focus is going to be getting these Beetlejuices out the door. And they still have to finish the rest of the Evil Dead, so I'm sure they'll get those wrapped up in the next couple months. So I would think they'd plan to finish those Evil Deads by the end of December and then roll right into January and start doing Beetlejuice. But for those of you that missed out on it, I think this is maybe a lesson learned that Spooky seems to be getting a lot of titles that are interesting. that they're putting a lot of passion into. And if there are distros that are already taking wait lists for the next spooky game, maybe put your name on it. I don't know what the game is going to be. The rumor, I think, was Goonies, but I could have sworn Barrels of Fun had Goonies. I'm not sure what's going on there. Not that I had any confirmation that they had Goonies. I just thought that's who had Goonies. So I don't know. Maybe they do. But if it's Goonies, that's going to be one I'm going to want. want so like there's two themes right now that are big on my nostalgia list goonies would be one of them because i feel like oh my gosh you could do such an epic job with goonies there's so many cool references in that movie there's so many things you could do imagine a truffle shuffle multiball i mean come on now like how do you how could you even like ignore that but that and back to the future back to the future the first game i just you know it was just think about back to the future with modern technology and all the assets it would just be amazing my the biggest bummer for me and I've talked about this before in the past is I just, I just don't know how Dutch is going to meet the demand of back to the future as a theme. They just don't get games out fast enough. They make beautiful games though. I'll give them that their games all look great. It's just, I don't, I just can't see how that's gonna, I don't know, like how they're going to deliver on the demand of it. It's just, it's kind of a shame in a way because it had a, and I don't know, maybe Stern wouldn't have done the best job with back to the, maybe that wouldn't have been the best manufacturer to do it, especially right now when we have this resurgence of people putting in more mechanisms and more things to interact with the ball. Maybe Stern wouldn't be the best to do it. I don't know. But they sure would be the best to do it if you wanted everyone to be able to get one. And that's the thing. I don't think – I just don't think they're going to be able to make them fast enough, and I think the demand is going to be too great. I wish that there was some – in my mind, what they should do – I talked about this on the JBS show or the roundtable – is why wouldn't they partner with, like, American Pinball right now has a whole, at least they did, I don't know if they took it down, they had a whole section of their website about how we have pinball manufacturing down pat. If you need help with pinball manufacturing, come to us. And I feel like, why would you not partner, you'd have someone in the United States assembling your games, who could assemble them at a much faster pace than you could, and maybe you, like, let them handle U.S. orders and then Dutch Pinball handles European orders, And I think you'd and maybe if they can make more, they can add to that capability. But then you're not really like shipping. You're shipping parts maybe to the U.S. in the initial purchase of all the parts to build it. But then you're not you're not shipping full games into the country. They're being assembled here. I just I don't know why they wouldn't do that. Maybe those kinds of conversations are happening. But I feel like that seems like a no brainer because they don't really have any skin in the game either way. I think American pinball. I mean, I don't know. There are people that are saying that they're coming out with a game. I saw a couple, I think it was some representative from American Pinball saying they're coming out with a game in 26. I don't, I just, it's weird to me that them as a pinball manufacturer have completely like gone dark. Like they just don't say anything about what they're doing when it pertains to pinball. Then they have this Orbit Games thing, and then they're doing the Polycade, which is behind me on the wall. Like they're manufacturing it or they're assembling it. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing. And then they have the Shuffle Alley thing or whatever the heck it's called. I just I don't I don't know it just seems weird like it's it's like I don't I feel like they kind of they kind of fell off the map and it felt like to me they lost a lot of consumer confidence like I think there's a lack of consumer confidence around American pinball and I would think if the community's cautious after things like Galactic Tank Force and all the issues that game has, has, not had, has, I don't know who would be like jumping in the American pinball pool like right away, you know? So I don't know. I just, it's interesting times. Anyways, that was my idea around that. I know I deviated from the spooky topic. I didn't want to sit there and make the whole episode about spooky just because you've probably consumed so much stuff around Beetlejuice. All I'm going to say to close out the Beetlejuice topic is I think it looks amazing. The artwork is great the theme integration looks good the overall package just the topper everything is screams beetlejuice and i i just think they did an amazing job so we'll see where they go with it you know how how how how quickly they make it and how quickly they get out to customers and then what people start saying when they play it because you know i i gotta do it i gotta i hate i hate the term give a hats out hats off i i don't know it's not something i would ever say but i can't think of anything else to say but i gotta give my hat off to to don i think what he did around that midnight launch was really freaking cool so don congratulations on that and the success of that and whoever did get to go to that it looked like i saw the pictures it looked like they had an absolute blast and don lives in this like crazy house that looks like it's from beetlejuice on the inside so that's pretty cool i don't know if he's gonna leave it that way but um it looks pretty awesome so so uh that's cool but um yeah i don't know the benton boys the badass boys from benton killed it i don't know what to say like they just did and uh i meant to say this earlier it just seems like they pick a property that they're all passionate about and the why that ends up in such a good final product is i think they think about all the things in that movie or that property and go how can we integrate these key pivotal moments that will make a fan of the movie just smile from ear to ear and i think they just do that really well they at least my experience with spooky uh was like t total nuclear annihilation none of their other games i really have much experience with um and i hear a lot of people love texas chainsaw massacre but like what they did with evil dead like it was a it opened my eyes to what a passionate group of individuals could do around an IP because holy shit, man, is it good. And I think they've, it looks like even without playing it, that it's pretty obvious from watching videos that they did that same treatment to Beetlejuice. And it just makes me feel like it's obvious they're really into the horror themes and stuff like that, but it doesn't matter. It just seems like whatever they're into, they're going to pour their heart and soul into it. And it's still a small operation, lots of family. They operate like a family. And I think when you, you know, as you scale, things do change. I worked for I work for a company currently that used to be a startup. And while I still love my job, I love it. I'm 10 years in almost 11 years into this company. And I started when we were a startup. We were not a publicly traded company. We were a private company and a lot has changed. And sometimes throughout the process, I've had to take gut checks and go, man, am I still happy? Am I still happy working here? And I've always answered the, ultimately, the answer ends up being yes, but I've had to adopt and grow with the company. And do I have like these, oh my gosh, I have such amazing memories of when the company was small. And there's some things we did we could never do now, whether it be like, we had an event, we had a customer event. I mean, these are companies that are buying IT equipment for, you know, millions of dollars potentially. And we had Snoop Dogg come and sing at the, like he performed at an event with all of our customers. He up on stage smoking weed It was insane We couldn do that today Like that wouldn even remotely happen HR would be like yeah no but i got to see that like i and then and then of course those those customer events we do every year change it was like oh now it's goo goo dolls a little safer than than uh snoop dog you know so uh yeah what's that song is it to see me i don't know uh yeah i think that isn't that goo goo dolls i think that's who it is anyways don't don't clip that that's that's that's terrible i don't even know i'm not a i'm not a singer so whatever but uh orbital albert that's for you buddy he sings all the time so isn't that then i don't think that's it right anyway all right all right this is long in the tooth now it's late at night it's like it's like 10 21 p.m my time so i'm tired i got sick on my trip to chicago so i'm running on fumes but i wanted to put something out into the world for you because i haven't i haven't had a chance to do a podcast i really miss this i miss the interaction that i get with you guys and i see it in the comments and everything i really enjoy it but i want to know like what your take is on all this have you calmed down after all the spooky uh hype and everything and it did live up to the hype though you have to say that it did so like as far as i know none of us have played it or very few of us have played it but it definitely feels like everyone was so excited and rightfully so because it was pretty damn awesome but we'll see are the things that are the things that they're doing with their games going to have an impact on someone like Stern or Stern just going to stay the course pro premium limited edition you're going to get what you always got and we're not going to add anything else I don't know but I do think the community sure would appreciate a little bit more put into the games even if they're little things even if it's a shaker even if it's some art blades even if it's a shooter rod you know something very something that doesn't cost a ton but gives some value back to us for the $10,000 we're spending. So it's to be determined. Let's see, do they do that? Do they not do that? I don't know. But then you also have to factor in, and this is just how I feel, there is a cost associated with Insider Connected. I love Insider Connected. I have a bunch of friends that love Insider Connected. We like looking at streaks. We like looking at badges and achievements and all that stuff. I know that's not for everybody, but that is value to me. I do put that in the, there is a cost to run all of that, that Stern has to pay. And so that is something that most don't, most of these vendors or most of the other manufacturers don't have, they don't have that. So if, but if you don't see any value in that, if you're like, I don't care about any of that, then, then yeah, like you're not going to, but I do put some value in that and that that is something that uniquely differentiates Stern from someone else, from everybody else, really. I know I'm shocked that at this point in time, jjp with the resources they have have not done that like i'm so shocked that jjp i understand why someone like spooky wouldn't or turner or barrels because there's an investment that has to be made in the infrastructure to make that happen now most of them probably hosted in amazon aws but still there's infrastructure costs so they're doing infrastructure as a service versus doing it in their own data center but it doesn't matter there's still an infrastructure cost that that that comes goes into that so um they're absorbing that because to use insider connected outside of the all access thing you don't pay for that so i do think that that has to be factored into it and i and i know there are friends of mine at least that seek out stern games because they like insider connected jamie's texting me right now he said i have to send away my roadcaster Wait, what? Why? He's trying to get this roadcaster function to work. And I feel like he like stole his roadcaster. He said he said it was has a problem with the city on them. I'm kidding. He didn't steal it. But what do you have a hot roadcaster? Like what's going on, man? You buy it off the back of a truck or something. I was trying to get him to call me, but let's call him right now. Let's see. He doesn't like when I do this on a whim thing, but let's see if I can call him right real quick. I want to see what the heck's going on. I'm going to tell him he's on the show, though. See if he picks up. Come on. He's not sleeping. He's kind of a night owl. Really, dude? Seriously? Oh, come on. That's lame. All right, whatever. I was just talking to him before the show. He actually was the one that inspired me to actually do the show. I wasn't going to do it tonight. I've been feeling so tired lately. I don't know why. like every night day i'm tired but oh wait he's calling back he's calling back hold on hold on jamie yeah you're on the show oh that's wonderful yeah you're on right now i was i was just wrapping it up though i was talking about beetlejuice and all that stuff but do you have anything you want to tell anybody other than you you still they're on the phone for 30 effing minute roadcaster trying to get something to work for you. So wait, you really have to send it back to them? Yeah, I have to send it back. Why? Did you buy a hot roadcaster off the back of a truck or something? Or what did you... You know, some guy told me it fell off his van down by the river. No, no. Why don't you have your receipt? You just need your receipt. Because then I got to go to Best Buy and look at all my purchases from Best Buy. Like, who buys anything from Best Buy anymore? I don't know. And like an idiot, I got to get that and load it in. But they think there's something wrong with the Wi-Fi capability of the Roadcatcher Pro 2. Oh, my gosh, dude. What we're trying to do, ladies and gentlemen, is here's what we're trying to do. Okay? We're trying, me and Houston, Texas at Eureka Heights Brewery, stream Harry Potter. We have, at Eureka Heights, we have nine of the same games that Ralph has. Exactly, yeah. So from Harry Potter to Star Wars to Evil Dead to Jurassic Park to Jaws. You don't have to name them all. I'm getting excited. I'm getting excited. All right. We can then have matches like he has with Rudy, not trying to take time against Rudy, but maybe once a month, Jamie versus Ralph from Eureka Heights to the Ralph Cave. I know. I love this idea. The problem is you bought a stolen Rodecaster, so now we can't do it. It did stick. You know, it was a good deal. The guy was, like, in a Target shopping. He tried to sell me that and some kind of, like, projector. Was he trying to sell you a home theater system, too? Do you ever remember those guys? Yeah. Do you remember those dudes? Did they do that in Houston? We had these dudes that would, like, pull up in my neighborhood and be like, hey, man, you want this 5.1? It's an awesome system. You're like, what? There was always an HD projector that you take at home. It's not even 1080p. It's fucking. No, it's like a 240p piece of shit. Yeah. It's not even, it's no P. It's no P, dude. It's like interlaced. It's no P. My brother fell for that. I went to his house. We set it all up. He goes, can you believe this? 500 bucks? And then we set it up and it looked like shit. Like, yeah. Did you just leave your body when I said interlaced? Yeah, I don't know what that means. Okay, I figured as much. All right, dude, dude, I got to finish. I want to talk to you, but I got to finish this show, dude. I'm 45 minutes in and I think I'm done. I think I'm done with it. So I'm going to wrap it up. All right. Well, thanks for your time. I'm glad you were able to call me and figure that out through the Rokaster. So at least one Rokaster worked. So real quick, though. So the audience knows we're going to try to do a monthly, once you get this fixed, we're going to try to do a monthly tournament that's Ralph versus Jamie. Yes. And they're going to love that because you're going to beat me and I'm going to get pissed. And they love seeing me miserable and pissed off. So it's going to be great. I think, you know, I'll give you as many pep talks as possible when I'm drumming you. That's messed up. I feel really, really confident that you're going to go on a whole beat. I don't know. Did you see that Kong gameplay the other night? I was in the zone a couple of times, man. You still don't know how to plunge when it's that bad. Oh, the dead eye thing is stupid. I don't give a shit. Screw the dead eye thing. I don't even care. It's dumb. I don't like it. Well, it's not dumb. It's a free 20 million if you know what you're doing. It's free. since you're being a jerk i'm letting you go you know don't be a jerk on my show all right all right jamie jamie birchall everybody of the jbs show go go subscribe to his channel if you haven't already i didn't i didn't know if we were going to actually make that happen i was trying he's trying to it's a long story he's trying to get this roadcaster thing to work because we need a way to when we're doing these competitions to communicate back and forth and the roadcaster has this new feature called call me or newer feature where you'll get like audio like this So you'll hear audio as clear and clean as this as we're competing against each other from two different locations. It's going to be really cool once we get it going. It's not something that's taking the spot of the Rudy Ralph thing. Like, we love doing those. We're going to do those a ton. But it's just, like, another thing because I know people enjoy watching me play Jamie. So, actually, it could be interesting if we also do – I didn't even think about this. We could do a Ralph Rudy versus Jamie, too. Or, like, all of us competing against each other. that could be fun too anyways lots of little lots of options but it's time to wrap it up so i'm letting you go you see what i did i reversed the music this time i did the closing music as the intro music and the intro music as the closing music see what i did there i don't know if you guys noticed it's the same song so these two songs are the same one of them is like a like a whimsical version of it so anyways let me know in the comments if you get this far which one you like better this one or the intro one i like them both they're both really cool but anyways that's it for now guys i want to thank each and every one of you for continuing to support the podcast uh let me know what you think about beetlejuice like is is it going to change the behavior of the other manufacturers mainly stern because jersey jack's always been sort of premium but if they continue to do this arcade edition they're giving you essentially the same game without some of the things in it. But, you know, with Harry Potter, it's hard to not look at that and hard to not see that they're giving you a lot of value for 10 grand. But anyways, guys, that's all I had. Thank you again for supporting the podcast, the YouTube channel, all of that. Really appreciate it. And we will see you on the flip side. See you guys. Thank you. Thank you. That's a wrap