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Episode 275 - The Blue Blur

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Jul 5, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.022

TL;DR

Sonic the Hedgehog pinball announced by Jersey Jack; Dungeon Crawler Carl rumors continue.

Summary

A podcast episode from Eclectic Gamers discussing recent gaming developments. Primary focus is the official announcement of Jersey Jack Pinball the Hedgehog machine designed by Steve Ritchie, with details on pricing, features, and editorial perspectives on its market potential relative to Harry Potter. Secondary discussion covers rumors about Dungeon Crawler Carl pinball licensing (Multimorphic vs. Barrels of Fun), game scoring psychology, and listener feedback on recent Stern releases.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has officially released Sonic the Hedgehog designed by Steve Ritchie

    high confidence · Hosts (Tony and Dennis) citing official product announcement and The Kineticist article

  • Sonic pricing did not increase from previous JJP releases: Arcade $9,999, Special $12,000, Collector's $15,000

    high confidence · Dennis providing explicit pricing breakdown from official product specs

  • Sonic features Slash (guitarist) doing additional guitar solos on licensed music tracks

    high confidence · Dennis citing official feature list; framed as notable creative choice

  • Sonic will not match Harry Potter sales but will outperform Elton John

    medium confidence · Editorial prediction from both hosts based on IP depth analysis

  • Multimorphic is the leading theory for Dungeon Crawler Carl pinball license

    medium confidence · Dennis citing NAP Arcade coverage and Discord rumors; hosts discussing platform fit (level-based gameplay suits modular system)

  • Multimorphic has never released an R-rated pinball game despite maintaining family-friendly catalog

    medium confidence · Dennis speculating on potential Dungeon Crawler Carl licensing challenge; based on historical pattern observation

  • Sonic Generations artwork and animation is being used as source material for the pinball machine

    high confidence · Dennis citing official design credits and documentation

  • Sonic pinball features a magnetically accelerated loop ramp as signature mechanic

    high confidence · Dennis describing official playfield features; notes this aligns with 'gotta go fast' theme

  • Player psychology strongly favors higher numerical scores even when relative difficulty/reward are identical

    high confidence · Both hosts and Patreon commenter 'Butts' discussing scoring bias; multiple games cited as examples (TMNT, John Wick)

Notable Quotes

  • “It's $10,000. They still fall for it. I guess if you really wanted it and you were trying to convince your significant other, you'd be like, it's not even $10,000, honey.”

    Dennis @ ~11:00 — Commentary on psychological pricing tactics ($9,999 vs. $10,000) used by manufacturers; illustrates community awareness of marketing manipulation

  • “They knew Ramp got a loop ball. Like, they didn't pull a start. Somebody didn't have to mod in a loop. Right. Man, can you imagine what a pain in the rear that would have been?”

    Tony @ ~16:30 — Relief that Sonic pinball designers included loop ramp as core feature rather than requiring aftermarket mods; acknowledges loop as essential Sonic mechanic

  • “A game where a storyline where you going through multiple levels a screen as a playfield would allow you to represent these different levels that Carl traverses through... Multimorphic in a way should have it?”

    Dennis @ ~31:45 — Core reasoning for Multimorphic platform fit with Dungeon Crawler Carl; level-switching gameplay aligns with modular P3 mechanics

  • “I'm convinced that if they slap another zero or two on TMNT, a lot of people would have had a higher opinion of that game.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~48:20 — Validates scoring psychology theory; suggests game reception hinges partially on score magnitude perception rather than actual difficulty/reward balance

  • “There's profanity in this. Like it's part of the culture of it. To neuter that will not go over well amongst fans.”

    Dennis @ ~34:00 — Concern that Multimorphic's family-friendly policy could conflict with Dungeon Crawler Carl's mature content; potential licensing friction

  • “It amazes me not about it becoming a pinball machine but just in general. How certain things just take off and become huge out of seemingly nowhere... Dungeon Crawler Carl has taken off and become a whole huge thing.”

    Dennis @ ~36:30 — Meta-commentary on viral cultural phenomena and community excitement around IP adaptations; contextualizes Carl's rapid rise

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanySonic the HedgehoggameSteve RitchiepersonHarry PottergameDungeon Crawler CarlgameMultimorphiccompany

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Jersey Jack Pinball officially launches Sonic the Hedgehog with three edition tier pricing structure; maintains arcade/entry-level tier at $9,999 despite previous rumors of discontinuation

    high · Dennis providing detailed specification breakdown from official product announcement; pricing and feature set confirmed across all three tiers (Arcade, Special, Collector's)

  • $

    market_signal: Manufacturers continue leveraging sub-$10k price point ($9,999) as psychological threshold despite taxable value approaching $10k; hosts acknowledge deliberate consumer psychology manipulation

    high · Dennis: 'It's $10,000. They still fall for it... I guess if you really wanted it and you were trying to convince your significant other, you'd be like, it's not even $10,000, honey'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Dungeon Crawler Carl IP licensing rumors intensifying with Multimorphic as leading theory; community speculation driven by platform fit (level-switching mechanics) and recent Multimorphic marketing push

    medium · Dennis citing NAP Arcade coverage, Discord rumors, and thematic alignment between Carl's dungeon-crawling narrative and P3 modular level-switching capability

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community fatigue evident regarding color-changing LED feature prominence in marketing; hosts note LEDs no longer differentiating feature and compare to normalized LCD adoption

    medium · Dennis: 'I do kind of get a little tired of acting like this is still special, like color-changing LEDs... Everyone's got a screen now. It's not a big deal'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Sonic pinball represents significant second-tier IP licensing win for JJP post-Harry Potter dominance; market positioning analysis suggests limited crossover appeal compared to Harry Potter's demographic breadth

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.059

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, July 5th, episode 275. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. We got a lot. There's a ton. It is. It's heavy. On both sides of the aisle this time. That's how it seems. But what have you been doing? I took a part in the Steam Summer Sale. Oh, yes. And bought a game off my wish list called Grim Dawn for like $2.50. Okay.
0:45
It was originally released in 2016. It is like a Diablo 2-esque action RPG. This game has enveloped me since the day I bought it. I've been playing it continuously. I'm literally up to 30 plus hours of playtime in this game. It is better than most of the newer Diablos. It very much reminds me a lot of Diablo 2, but it has this really interesting game mechanic where, you know how standardly in Torchlight or the Diablo games or other ARPGs like that, you pick a class and start the game. You play through the class, you know, you build your skill tree. The skill tree has a bunch of different options. You can really individualize what specifically you do. In Grim Dawn, you do exactly that. And then when you hit level 10, you get to choose a second class. And then you can level between the two classes and use their skills to synergize, to maximize your capabilities. And it really lets you narrow things down on very, very specific builds. So it's really, really interesting.
2:10
I adjusted my mic. I don't think I'm going to cut that part out either. People can just go. All right. So you've got a sub job now. Yeah. So I got a sub job now. So like the very first build I did, I was going through and I was figuring stuff out. I wasn't looking at guides. I wasn't doing anything. I'm like, okay, I can see where this is. I'm trying to figure the synergies out. I'm trying to make things work. I'm like, okay, this is going okay. And then after a while, I was like, okay, I need to completely redo this character because I'm way too squishy.

  • Locations are unlikely to route Multimorphic machines compared to other manufacturers

    medium confidence · Dennis expressing concern that Dungeon Crawler Carl on Multimorphic would be hard to find in venues; admits uncertainty on prevalence

    • “I don't think a lot of Sonic fans who don't already do pinball are going to go and get a Sonic pinball machine. Right. Like whereas with Pokemon, I could see it more or at the very least locations would do it.”

    Dennis @ ~23:00 — Analysis of Sonic's limited crossover appeal to non-pinball demographics; contrasts with broader Pokemon/Harry Potter draw

  • “He's not doing a three-flipper layout. Now, he's made exceptions to that before... World Poker Tour, I liked that comparison because it's very un-Steve Ritchie.”

    Tony @ ~20:15 — Recognition that Sonic's four-flipper design deviates from Ritchie's typical signature style; positioning as intentional deviation rather than standard approach

    • Barrels of Fun
    company
    Karl DeAngeloperson
    Slashperson
    Tonyperson
    Dennisperson
    Bill Gruppperson
    Taylor Snyderperson
    Duncan Brownperson
    Della Youngperson
    Pierce Colbertperson
    Grim Dawngame
    Outer Worlds 2game
    Buttsperson
    Princess Donutgame
    Elton Johngame
    The Kineticistorganization
    NAP Arcadeorganization

    high · Dennis: 'There's no way this matches Harry Potter... I don't think a lot of Sonic fans who don't already do pinball are going to go and get a Sonic pinball machine'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Sonic features magnetically accelerated loop ramp as signature mechanical element; hosts note this fulfills essential Sonic franchise mechanic expectation ('gotta go fast') and prevents mod necessity

    high · Tony noting relief loop was designed-in rather than requiring aftermarket modification; Dennis confirming magnetic acceleration component as integral speed-related feature

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Steve Ritchie's Sonic design breaks signature three-flipper layout pattern with four-flipper configuration; hosts recognize this as intentional departure from Ritchie's typical design DNA

    high · Tony: 'He's not doing a three-flipper layout... World Poker Tour, I liked that comparison because it's very un-Steve Ritchie'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Strong community bias against games with low-scoring ranges regardless of actual difficulty/reward balance; multiple examples (TMNT, John Wick) show players perceive games more negatively based on score magnitude

    high · Butts (Patreon): 'If they slap another zero or two on TMNT, a lot of people would have had a higher opinion of that game'; Dennis and Tony both confirming this as recognized pattern

  • ?

    product_concern: Potential licensing friction if Dungeon Crawler Carl goes to Multimorphic; R-rated content and profanity integral to Carl franchise may conflict with Multimorphic's family-friendly game policy

    medium · Dennis: 'There's profanity in this. Like it's part of the culture of it. To neuter that will not go over well amongst fans... they haven't done it [R-rated] before'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Multimorphic machines rarely routed to commercial venues compared to other manufacturers; Dungeon Crawler Carl licensing would limit accessibility for location players if assigned to Multimorphic

    medium · Dennis: 'Locations just don't route multimorphics. There probably are some that do, but I don't know any that do... you'd have to buy it to play it'

  • $

    market_signal: JJP maintains three-tier pricing structure (Arcade/Special/Collector's) for Sonic despite rumors of discontinuing entry-level tier post-Harry Potter; signals continued commitment to venue/operator segment

    high · Dennis noting rumors that arcade edition underperformed on Harry Potter but JJP confirmed continuing tier for next game; Sonic confirms this commitment maintained

  • ?

    content_signal: Official Sonic announcement covered by established pinball media outlets (The Kineticist); Dungeon Crawler Carl rumors tracked by NAP Arcade; community discourse distributed across podcast platforms and Discord channels

    high · Show notes link to Kineticist article on Sonic announcement; NAP Arcade coverage of Dungeon Crawler Carl theories referenced; hosts citing Discord discussions as rumor source

    • 2:42
    It is very cheap and easy to basically buy back all of your points. You can't change your classes, but you can buy back all of your points and rebuild completely in the middle of a run. Okay. So it gives you a lot of, if you find something's not working, you just get your points back and completely rebuild the run. Okay. And a lot of the points you can take back for free. There's only certain things where you have to spend money and it's not very much money, especially compared to what you earned. So it gives a ton of flexibility. Well, here's the thing. This game came out in 2016. So it's 10 years old. Yeah. But it's had multiple DLCs. And this game's popularity is still so high, it has a brand new DLC that is their biggest DLC ever. It's going to be about 80% the size of the original game. It releases at the end of July.
    3:37
    So it's a game that's still being supported and still has work being done to it. And like I said, it is impressively fun. I've been really enjoying it. I started a couple of three different runs just kind of playing around with stuff. I read some guides after my first run that I was playing on, just kind of trying to figure out the things where I'm having problems. And I found a recommendation from what's like, this is a very newbie-friendly build. Try this. They're right. It is a newbie-friendly build. So my character is up to mid-30s, and I finally added a third button I need to make this build active.
    4:22
    I spent a huge chunk of this build using a single button, and that was it. And then I was like, oh, now I have a heal button, so if I need to heal, I can click the heal button. And then eventually it's like, oh, now I have this other button that I can click that will boost my damage and create a protective shield. So I'm going to use that button. Now I have to use three buttons. So I still only need to use the mouse because my mouse has five buttons on it. So I'm just like, and it's hilarious, but it is literally my character is dual wielding pistols. But instead of shooting bullets, I shoot fireballs. Right. So like you do. Yes. So I just click the button and it is like full on Hitman style, dual ballers, just blazing fireballs that are exploding in front of me and that have various like passive effects that can trigger off of a random percentage. So those are like extra explosions or extra shots or fire waves that shoot out. So I just basically sit there and I just hold one button. I'm like, yeah, I can see where this is the most beginner friendly, least complicated.
    5:39
    But it is fun. So I've been I've been having a really good time. I've been I've put a ton of time in it. Any that's about the only game I've played since I picked it up. OK, well, good. Glad you got something good out of the same. Yeah, it's been good. And I ducked in pretty quick, like after four or five hours, and went ahead and bought all the DLC. Yeah, I was going to ask if you had – did they let you pre-purchase the one that's coming out, or are you going to have to wait? No, I could. I didn't. Oh, okay. Because it wasn't on sale. Right. I figured it probably wasn't discounted, but – It wasn't. But I didn't know. So I did buy all the other DLCs. They weren't as on sale as the main game. Right. But I was like, I spent $2.50 on the main game and I bought all the DLCs and it was another like $14. It's like, oh no, I spent $17. I'm okay.
    6:32
    Cool. So what have you been up to? You've been worky-working. Yes, I've been still working on most, well, all the Saturdays since last record. But because of that, I am doing it remotely and I just have to monitor something. So I have continued Outer Worlds 2. I don't know how many hours I'm in at this point. It's over 30. So lots of side quests. I have all the characters, all the companions unlocked. I've done most of the companion quests. I think I've got one left, maybe part of one left. I'm not sure. I might have finished that yesterday. It all blends. I'm actually working on some of the more main side quests now because I've done so much of the other stuff I've found. You're like, I've done all of the Ooshinies. I guess I have to actually play the game now. Yeah, kind of having one of those things going on. But anyway, I feel like I'm getting near the end at this point, but we'll see. Which is good, because I've got a pile of other stuff to get to, including a Final Fantasy game.
    7:29
    So, speaking of other stuff to get to, as we noted, we have a lot in both our sections. So starting with pinball as we normally do. The big news, of course, is finally at long last, the blue blur, the chilly dog, the spiky mammal. It's finally been formally launched. Jersey Jack Pinball has released Sonic the Hedgehog. I have a link in the show notes to an article with The Kineticist about this release. Basic information for people that care about such things. Design is by the famed Steve Ritchie. Software was a team of Bill Grupp, Taylor Snyder, and Duncan Brown. Art was done by Della Young and audio by Peace Colbert. This is using Sonic Generations soundtrack for, and I believe a lot of the animation is actually from Sonic Generations as well. However, in case you were worried after getting through the Godfather game, do not fear. They have decided that they had to call up their dear friend Slash and have him do guitar solos on It Doesn't Matter and Open Your Heart because, of course you do when you have Slash. You just shoehorn in guitar solos. Just wherever. It's what you do. I'm sure they're great. He's really good at guitar. He's better than me. Pricing. Better than me on pricing? I don't know about that, but pricing did not go up. So the arcade edition, they're still doing that. Guys, they have renamed the tiers again. I was going to say. So these are going to be in order for most basic to most advanced. Arcade edition is $9,999. They did not do that game, to their credit, with the other two. Special edition is $12,000. Collector's edition is $15,000. I just want the magic of saying it's less than $10,000. I do get it. I don't like that I do get it, though. Does that make sense? Oh, no. I don't like the notion that people psychologically fall for that nonsense. But they do. It's $10,000. They still fall for it. I guess if you really wanted it and you were trying to convince your significant other, you'd be like, it's not even $10,000, honey. It's not even $10,000. It's fine. It's no big deal. Except by the time I go and you've spent a dollar's worth of your time paying this bill. So now it's $10,000. That's how I see it. Well, also there's taxes and shipping and everything. The game itself is not $10,000. Yeah. The additional fees are not the game. That's totally different and that's not their fault. But anyway, game features. Oh, my gosh. As you would expect, all sorts of stuff. I mean, we've got the LGBs. We got the Wi-Fi. We got the Bluetooth audio options, the 27-inch LCD display that we're used to seeing on these sort of things. All the versions have the steel ramps and ball guides. Nine licensed songs are included. They've got the upper playfield, which is probably one of the interesting things. Polycarbonate, so you can actually see underneath it, which I think was a really cool choice. There's a bash toy representing Dr. Eggman. There's a loop ramp. I have a close-up in our internal notes of it, which is magnetically accelerated because it's got to go fast.
    10:44
    There's a magnet used. There are these LED rings, which are actually pretty cool. They're kind of stationed around the playfield. I saw somewhere, I think Charlie on Reddit, someone had really wished those were shaped like little TVs to be like the old game when stuff would pop up on the TVs. But they do look cool even as they are. Yeah. And again, these are not, it's not really inspired by the old games. Six ball, multi ball.
    11:06
    There are sculpts of Dr. Eggman, Sonic, and Amy in there. They've got voice call outs from the official Sonic cast. It's a four flipper game. It's got two spring targets, nine stand-up targets, a spinner, two up posts to catch the ball. Feels like an Elwynn maneuver there doing that sort of thing. And as I noted, it's a dual play field. Now, I said there were three editions, the arcade edition and the middle one, the special edition. Those both feature artwork that's inspired by the Green Hill Zone. Now, from the more modern Generations game, I believe, but nonetheless, Green Hill's been around forever. Right. The main difference is the Special Edition has a blue powder coat. A lot of people feel this is the best looking cabinet of the three. It also has a battle topper. It's got some sculpted micro LED rings. Shaker motor comes with a Special Edition and Invisi glass. The Collector's Edition has red powder coat. Personally, I think the red powder coat looks really good. It reminds me of Sonic's shoes. It does. And so I actually like that. The art is different, though. It's got this showdown sparkle. I can see why some people maybe don't favor it because Green Hill is so iconic. I do think the art is superior on the Special Edition. I can understand why people like it better. But I agree. The Collector's Edition isn't bad. And as much as I was wondering about what the difference is with the Special Edition being, you know, it's the blue armor that makes sense. But the red actually doesn't look terrible either. Mm-hmm. And so – and again, just like with Harry Potter, the collector's edition is not a hard limited count. It's made to order is how they described it, and they're going to do the whole – there's going to be available for order for a period of time, and then eventually they will close that, and it won't be available again. So those are, I'd say, some of the main basics. I've given some close-ups internally to Tony so you can see kind of what the playfield and all the art cabinets look like and some of the cooler mechs going on. It looks fun. It does. I'm really interested to see that loop in person. I like that Steve Ritchie has this clear upper playfield. It reminds me a little bit of his upper playfield with World Poker Tour. Oh, yeah. Except in this instance, because of how it's set up, you've got the flippers up there. You've got all the stuff. I mean, it's a big upper playfield. There's stuff to do on it. So I'm curious. I'm not normally a tremendous fan of upper playfields. It really does depend. But this one does feel like it's taken up enough space to be meaningful. But since you can see beneath it, you don't feel like you've lost. Like if you play Black Knight, for example, it's like, okay, there's an upper playfield and a lower playfield. But there's not like anything to do on the lower playfield where the upper playfield is. There's nothing to see here. Yeah, you don't feel like you've gained anything. It just feels like there's a – It just makes it hard. Yeah. Which, I mean, for the era, totally made sense. Gotta go hard. Yeah. And it does look like it would play with Ritchie's signature speed. And the magnet-accelerated loop, little loop toy thing, I mean, it is a nice touch. You've got to have a loop. Oh, for sure. Yeah, they knew. That's like the original thing everybody remembers from Sonic. They knew Ramp got a loop ball. Like, they didn't pull a start. Somebody didn't have to mod in a loop. Right. Man, can you imagine what a pain in the rear that would have been? Someone would try and figure it out. So overall thoughts, I'll start with saying that I think this will do decent for them. There's no way this matches Harry Potter. And it's not that I might actually like this more than Harry Potter as a player. I don't know how deep Sonic nostalgia honestly is, but it ain't Harry Potter deep. Yeah, and I agree with you on that. It is big, and it's become larger in the last few years. I feel like there's been a bigger pushback. I don't know if it's from the movies having people harken back to their nostalgic youth or whatever, but it definitely feels like there's been a resurgence of Sonic interest lately. Sonic's still not Mario. No, and that's really where I'm coming from too. It's like I didn't know very many people growing up who had Sega. It was mostly Nintendo and I don't think it was a Midwest thing. I think we were a reflection of everything else.
    15:43
    And another thing, most of the people with the money to buy a Sonic pinball machine will be of the two-dimensional era, not the three-dimensional. And so doing Generations, which I don't think is a particularly well-received game. I don't know that it was a badly received game, but it's not beloved is my understanding. Again, this is from reading other people's comments because I've played a few Sonic games, but it's not my thing. I think the art and stuff that they've done here works. Again, I'm going to go kind of like what I did with Transformers. It's not going to win any awards in my opinion, but it's captured the atmosphere. It feels like Sonic when you look at it. I think a lot of this for a lot of people, though, much like Elton John with Steve Ritchie will come down to the play. I think a lot of people will who would be willing to buy this. I don't think a lot of Sonic fans who don't already do pinball are going to go and get a Sonic pinball machine. Right. Like whereas with Pokemon, I could see it more or at the very least locations would do it. Now, that is an interesting question that I want to ask you. There were rumors that were then put down by someone at Jersey Jack that after Harry Potter and the arcade edition, the cheapest model, was once again the lowest seller, that J.J.P. was not going to, they were going to once again drop having that sort of standard edition. And they said they were not dropping that for the next game, and they clearly have not. I assume the desire there is to try and still get some JJPs on location.
    17:15
    Sonic, to me, does seem like a license that would do okay on location. Do you think that this actually – let me ask it this way. Do you think this sells more arcade editions than Harry Potter did?
    17:26
    No. See, I can't say yes to it either because I'm like, well, Harry Potter should do good on location too. It should, and I think the accessibility of the arcade edition would be definitely a, for Harry Potter, just so much of a larger fan base would be much more of a grab overall.
    17:47
    But I mean, it looks packed. I mean, lots of neat stuff, a couple thousand LEDs. I'm not particularly impressed by color-changing LEDs. I like them, don't get me wrong. Right. But I think it's funny. Like, they list how many. 2,000 plus. Yeah, there were. No, what was it? I've got to scroll back up to my internal game feature thing. Yeah. Nope, you're right. 2,000 plus. Okay. Yeah, guys. I mean, okay. But, like, that's because JJP does those little tiny ones. When they introduce those Wonka or something. Yeah. Little tiny Twinkle ones, which have a great effect. Don't get me wrong. I do like looking at them. But it's just kind of like – I do kind of – this is just a Dennis – this is just a stupid I get a little tired of acting like this is still special, like color-changing LEDs. I can understand the color-changing LEDs being special when they first launched, what, a decade ago? Well, yeah, when Woz came out and they did LEDs and Stern was still doing incandescent, that was a big deal. Yeah. But it's like the screen. Everyone's got a screen now. It's not a big deal. And that's the thing. At this point in time, I would think if somebody put out a game that had incandescence, that would be the weird thing. Not putting out a game using LEDs. Everything's LEDs. My freaking lights in my house are LEDs. I was trying to think I might still have a few of the sunken, recessed lights that are CFL. Yeah. I might. I have one – we have one specific light fixture in our house where we actually use incandescents just because of the age of the house and whatever reason on that specific light, it doesn't like LEDs. Like LEDs are supposed to last forever, and our LEDs in that light tend to burn out within less than a month, and CFL is flickering, and incandescents are fine. So one light fixture is still incandescent in our house. Yeah. No, I don't think I ever had a CFL go out on me. I ended up just replacing them eventually. I was like, I'm just tired of them. And these are even more efficient. So they've done pretty well. I did have an incandescent in my dimming light in the kitchen for a long time because CFLs couldn't dim. But with LEDs, I was able to get a dimmable LED and it's done just fine. So fun stuff. All right. Well, overall, I think Sonic will do pretty well. I think it's going to do better than Elton John.
    20:17
    You're right. I think it has a bigger inherent draw than Elton John. I don't know that it's going to be funner than Elton John. I don't know. In some ways, the layout here interests me more. Yeah. I don't know if I'll like it more. That's a good point. But Elton John still felt a lot like when I looked at like I feel you can look at Elton John and go, oh, yeah, this is Steve Ritchie. This? He's not doing a three-flipper layout. Now, he's made exceptions to that before. We had the four-flipper setup with Game of Thrones, as I recall, and an upper playfield, for that matter, with a premium LE.
    20:57
    World Poker Tour, I liked that comparison because it's very un-Steve Ritchie. A lot of people, when I would ask them back in the day about World Poker Tour, they didn't know that Ritchie did it because it doesn't look like anything else of his. This is different. So anyway, very cool.
    21:14
    Okay, so moving on, a topic that you'll probably be interested in, as many of our listeners will be because Dungeon Crawler Carl is so popular. There are a lot more things being said now, discussion, rumors, supposed leaks coming out. I do have a link in the show notes to a NAP Arcade piece that's covering this. So the lead theories, and Knapp's article discusses this, are between Barrels of Fun and Multimorphic having Dungeon Crawler Carl. In some of the pinball discord I'm in, I've been hearing – I could have almost put in the rumor corner music, but I won't. But I've been hearing it. Knapp's theory kind of leans this way too. It's that it's Multimorphic. That's my guess. That's been my guess since day one. Now, of course, the biggest reason why Beryls has been latched onto has been really that Carl DeAngelo just loves Dungeon Crawler Carl so much. I mean he dressed up as Carl for Halloween I mean that what everyone does So he clearly loves it But just like we know Spooky loves Godzilla and that doesn mean they get it Right Sort of thing And to be fair let me use a Joelism To be fair Tony a game where a storyline where you going through multiple levels a screen as a playfield would allow you to represent these different levels that Carl traverses through That's how the gameplay goes. And so Multimorphic in a way should have it? Question mark. Exclamation point. Should they? I mean, in terms of theme immersion, right? Like being able to change levels, like that's their stick. That is their kind of stick. No one else is going to be able to do it. Like they changed brooms and stuff in Lexi Life Speed. They'll just change levels here. That is their shtick, and I can understand that push. It's kind of like – I've seen an advertising push on Multimorphic lately. Have you? I have in a couple places where people are just – where there's just been some general talk about, you know, oh, there's so many choices and it's so easy to change out and it's so this and that. So why buy a whole bunch when you can just get one machine that does it all type stuff? And I'm always caught with the thought of it's like, yeah, but unlike a Virtua PIN, you still have to change the modules out. You still have to store the modules. You still have to buy the modules.
    23:44
    So it's always – it's a system that lends itself to this type of work. They've put out games that I have really enjoyed. They really have. It's still just not something I can see myself pulling the trigger on.
    23:59
    I mean, I think probably the area of biggest disappointment if this is the case, though the odds weren't much better with barrels, is it's just going to be hard to find in the wild. You'd have to buy it to play it. And I think that's frustrating to people because locations just don't route multimorphics. There probably are some that do, but I don't know any that do. Yeah, I don't know. So my biggest concern, honestly, is still that it's trite because it might not be an issue at all. But if Multimorphic has it, are they finally going to allow an R-rated game because they haven't done it before? I don't know. That I can think of, not first party.
    24:37
    And so because after listening to book two and the audio format, I'm like, there's profanity in this. Like it's part of the culture of it. To neuter that will not go over well amongst fans. Yes. But maybe they'll be like, no, we're fine with that. That's not been a rule. It's just the way our games have worked out and an attempt to make them as family friendly as possible to broaden our buying pool. Which makes sense. Sure. But we'll see what ends up happening. I'm interested in the whole thing. It's one of those things that I find is just... It amazes me not about it becoming a pinball machine but just in general. How certain things just take off and become huge out of seemingly nowhere, something that you wouldn't think would become a huge thing. Like Tiger King. Right. Which I never saw. Which took off and became this huge whole thing. Everyone knows about the Tiger King. Right. And Dungeon Crawler Carl has taken off and become a whole huge thing. There's been multiple things in the past that at no point would you ever think it would become this huge thing and then it becomes like an everywhere thing.
    25:45
    And it's just it's the epitome of stuff going viral. And it just impresses me for it to be something like this and how much it has taken off. So the anyway, also an artist had put out an image of Princess Donut and with a skull and then commented on their, I guess, Instagram post. I think it's what it's from saying this would look great on a pinball machine, won't it?
    26:15
    The art does look good. So we'll see. OK, yeah, that was the only other thing I was going to ask you. So what do you think of Princess Donut's art? I like it. I think it looks good. Okay. Well, good job so far. Whoever has it. All right. Those are the main news pieces in Pinball. We did have a couple emails. Well, one was a Patreon comment left by one of our Patreon members, which we appreciate. Patreon.com slash Eclectic underscore Gamers. You can join for as little as a dollar a month. It's our buddy Butts. Butts wrote on Patreon regarding our last episode, and this was regarding specifically the discussion of launch issues that we went through regarding recent stirrings. And he wrote,
    27:23
    Shoot a shot one to two times to clear any enemies blocking the shot before you would get mode credit for the shot. Think of it like a virtual drop target in front of the shot that has to be cleared out of the way. The game was designed to try and spawn enemies at different rates at the shots you were and were not shooting. It was an interesting and unique theme immersion that the player is fighting their way down hallways, stairwells, etc. But I fully grant that it was non-intuitive and people seem to like how much more the game scores now with the revised system. And enemies multiply the value of a shot. I just don't like that it was dumbed down when it was a novel new rule concept. Now it plays more like everything else. And speaking of low scoring games, I'm convinced that if they slap another zero or two on TMNT, a lot of people would have had a higher opinion of that game. People seem to want scores in a very specific range. Thank you, Butts. I agree with that last comment because I felt the same way on other games in the past that don't have the scoring. It's just everything starts in the millions type scoring. I've noticed that people never feel quite as good, even if it's a really good shooting game. But if the score is like, oh, one point is common and a really good score is 15,000, that if the really good score was 15 million and nothing else changed, People would be a lot happier with it. I think that is very much a human psychology thing. You're right. And it's true. Again, this is one of those things I've struggled to understand because different games just have their different scoring ranges. But I've seen plenty of people admit that they just they don't like low scores. And to them, it's because it's weird, right? Because in a way, you'd almost expect that this would have gone ad absurdum, like Attack from Mars, one of the most ridiculously inflated, like where baby scores are still like, what, you only got two billion? That's a baby score. And it is. And it's like, thankfully, I guess, I mean, it doesn't really matter if it gets that big or not, other than you start to have to count all the zeros to know what you're talking about. So that never became the thing. But, yeah, people want to have a good game and get hundreds of millions or maybe, like, get a billion on a really good game. If it's a game where it's, like, 10 million is amazing, it just pisses people off.
    29:46
    Yeah, I guess it's just, like, bigger is better sort of thing. But it's so weird to me because you think, you know, way back, I mean, even way, way back in pinball before the score reels were a thing, that I guess that was the case. It's like the little light bulb systems in the games in the 40s were like hundreds of thousands. Right. And then you got score reels and most of the games were like you rolled it at 9999.
    30:09
    Right. I think I would try a thing right now because you've got so much flexibility with LCDs that my game scoring would start. And once you crossed a million, instead of having zeros, it would all be just whatever million. So 1.1 million, 1.3 million, 1.9 million, 3.4 million. So then it can go to billion and trillion and quadrillion. Yeah, that's very exciting. You can make the scores go high and just go crazy and people would love it. They're like, what's your high score on Barney's Big Adventure? It's like, oh, I got 1.34 quintillion the other day and I had two bad balls. Yeah. Yes. But anyway, but no, it is definitely true about the scoring. There have been a number of people, which credit to them for knowing themselves, have fully admitted they find that they are biased against games that are low score. Right. And back on the John Wick thing, I've not played John Wick since the coach. I have not either, but I've never. And again, I played it on locations. And so I do typically set him up harder, but I've had pretty short ball times on John Wick, which. So I don't know if I would get – I'd have to really practice it, I suppose, to get to where I could – Really feel it? Yeah, most likely. I mean, I don't know. I should try and find it at a show again where it will probably be set up more standard and I might have a decent ball time. If it's a baby game, I should be able to exploit it, but I don't know. Even at my age, I should be able to pull it off to a degree. Most of the time, I can pull off a baby game occasionally. Yeah. Blues Brothers is my – It's a baby game. Was this a game for babies? Yeah, get Elijah Wood to record an ad for it. Maybe it would sell better if everyone knew it was for babies.
    32:02
    Richard A. wrote in with some throwback topics for us. Ha! I have some lookback topics for you. I have been listening to parts of your old episodes. I apologize for that. I was thinking the same thing. That's what Aubrey's show does. I went back a couple of years ago and listened to episode one. And I was like, wow, you could tell how careful we were to not upset anything. And I believe it was episode two where in the editing we cut everything super short so that the lines cut off real hard as we were talking back and forth. I had an issue. My computer was too lagged. We were recording directly to a laptop and my computer was lagging and one of our audios got messed up because of that. And it was a whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a mess, but they're all still out there.
    32:49
    Mostly just the pinball sections. I sit all day at a computer and listen to podcasts as I work. The two of you are an easy listen. For context, these episodes are from 2017, around the time of Ghostbusters, Batman 66, and Star Wars. This is an interesting time as it transitions from DMD to LCD screens, or as referred to in VPIN, full DMD. This is a topic I would like to revisit in another email. Three small topics. I'll probably pause and we'll take these in chunks. Okay. Number one, ghosting. Episode 40. Stern put a statement about ghosting in the Star Wars manual saying it is normal. Where do things stand on ghosting and that issue? Okay. I've not thought of this issue in years. I mean, he did say 2017. It's been a while. It's been eight or four years. I've not thought of this issue in a long time. I didn't remember that they put it in the manual, but when he mentioned that, it does remind me that they had to start explaining things. So, where do things stand, Tony? Do you remember? I don't remember. I mean, here's my understanding. Having read tons of Pinside where everyone is an expert, including them, they're actually being some experts. The issue that was identified as being the most likely problem is clear code. Oh, that's right. They changed the clear code. Yes. So this was the ghosting of the inserts because ghosting has also historically been used as a term for the effect that would happen when you put LEDs in incandescent games, if I remember correctly, and you'd get this effect where you could buy some circuitry that could minimize. Some circuit boards were more prone to it than others. So yes, this was the clear coat ghosting. And my understanding, and this may be wrong and people can correct if they wish, click the GameRiversPodcast at gmail.com. But what I recall as the consensus statement was that Stern was just putting on too thick a clear coat. There was all this demand for clear coat from people at this point. Everyone's like, I need clear coat. I need more clear coat. I want clear coat. These games need to last forever. Clear coat, clear coat, clear coat. And so the solution was, let's just go nuts and just like put all slather that stuff on thick. And then there were some separation issues as the games would – as temperature would affect them, I believe. And so some of the time, the clear coat would kind of separate a bit from the inserts because the inserts were different than the wood. And then you'd get this sort of ghosty-looking translucent effect to it that was fairly unsightly. And so the solution I recall some people suggesting was you just need to use thinner clear coat. Like it shouldn't be on this thick. If you do a thinner layer, the separation isn't going to be as risky. I don't know. There was science behind it and all that. I assume they eventually figured out a different way to formulate the clear coat, if that was indeed the case. There were other theories. There were theories that there wasn't proper climate control as it cured, and that was what was causing it.
    35:50
    There were others that it seemed like certain... I think at the time, Stern was using a couple different playfield manufacturers. Stern wasn't completely vertically integrated, so they were getting things from other players, and so it depended which batch you got it from. But the thing I would note is they weren't the only ones that had this. They were just the first, and because they sold so many games, it was the most prominent that I recall. There was an entire batch of Total Nuclear Annihilation from Spooky. I think basically the entire 400 run of the first 550, the 400 series, had this issue. And Spooky was, let's just say they weren't exactly great. In my opinion, they weren't great about how they handled it. Like in trying to help customers out, like I had like my number was like 522. I did not have the issue, but they did send me the protective rubber ring kit for it, for the posts to put under all the posts. But you could tell on theirs when they had done their, their fix was getting the art away from the impact areas. So it was bare wood. You can see the bare wood rings where all the posts go. Apparently having to do with – again, remember this is a time where people were moving away from screen printing to digital printing the play field. So there was also theories that it had to do with the ink, and different companies may have had different theories as to why they were having these ghosting. They had like a chippy ghost issue with the play field. I think it ghosted. Maybe it was chips. I don't remember. I think it was ghosting though because it was the same sort of like, why is Spooky having this issue? And they were they never I never saw maybe they did eventually, but I don't recall them ever saying what they did different. They just said they had fixed it. And then people realized, oh, wait, these later runs don't have art all the way to the post. There's bare wood showing. And so that helped with the binding of the clear coat, I think was the thought. Wonka, I believe Wonka had ghosting issues. The one I think it was Wonka. It was one of the JJPs. We had one on location and the ghosting was like is obvious. Yeah. And I think it was Wonka. If I remember right. So again, it was just a thing and it had to do with the clear coat. And where do things stand on ghosting? The manuals might still say it's normal as sort of a CYA, but I've not heard complaints about ghosting in years. I think even some of the Attack from Mars from CGC might have had ghosting. Maybe not. They might have just had, they had Pinkgate where the reds came out as pinks on a bunch of the playfields and made people mad because it didn't look like the original. Right. So there was that. Pink K. All right. Number two, video modes. Not sure what episode. Episode 40 of 41, video modes were offhandedly mentioned. Dennis stated he is not a fan. Tony said there are some good ones. Dennis agreed. Looking back, what video modes do you two like? What ones do you hate?
    38:41
    I think I have always and probably will always love the video mode. High Speed 2. Oh. Okay. The way you're dodging the... Yeah. Or if you can find just the right balance, you can just cruise straight through everything. It is okay. I've always liked that one. I got better at it because we had one on location for so long. Yeah. My favorite video mode probably still is the wolves in Balmstruckers Dracula, where you hit the buttons to shoot the wolves. Oh, yeah, that is a good one. They're coming at you. Yeah. Simple, real easy to understand, pretty intuitive. Another one that's decent is shooting the toast at the dog in Junkyard. That one was also pretty decent. That's decent.
    39:25
    Modes I Hate. I don't like that Dodge the Asteroid ones in the Ritchie Star Wars where you have to fly in the circle.
    39:33
    Oh, yeah, I didn't even remember those. But, yeah, that one's not great. I think it's the 3D. It's something about it. Visually, I have trouble understanding what I'm doing with that one. And they're not really video modes, but I have always hated the original Jurassic Park and the older Star Wars where stuff would pop on screen. It's like, oh, slam the trigger as fast or the launch button as fast as you can to shoot everything up there while you're still actively playing. I mean, yeah, Lethal Weapon does that with Lethal Weapon 3. Like, grab that handle and go while you're trying to play. I've never liked those. They're not really video modes. They're just little add-in things that annoy me. Game of Thrones originally had this fencing mode. I don't even know if they left it in or just completely took it out. I quit encountering it, so I don't know. I don't remember. Again, it didn't feel intuitive on how to play it. You don't want it to be too complex. Again, it's pinball with simple pinball systems, so it should be pretty easy to play no matter what, but sometimes it's still not completely intuitive. Like there was a video mode thing where I was supposed to run over things and I thought I was supposed to dodge them.
    40:44
    Like I don't remember which one of it's no fear or something where there's like things in the but there's some things you're trying to pick up and then there are other things that are obstacles. I'm just like with high speed, it's like, no, there are other cars and you don't hit the other cars. Right. And so anyway, yeah, most of the time, though, I I would rather they seem like to be like a breather. I'd rather just have the ball held while a thing starts up than go through that. So generally, I still don't really care much for video modes. It's curious, I have encountered a lot fewer video modes since it's gone to LCDs that are massively video mode. It feels like they've become less common. I agree. I don't know if it's because they're not as popular amongst the designers or if it's like when I complained about the Ritchie Star Wars thing Where just the way it looks on the video, like it just becomes more confusing. Yeah. I don't know. And it could be either. I don't know. But anyway, there's lots on those. Yeah. Number three. Lots of discussion about Skit B. Looking back, what thoughts do you have now? I do not know how it all turned out. I have that in the next nine years worth of episodes. This was also the time Dutch Pinball was trying to find a new manufacturer for Big Lebowski. As a reminder, they turned down, he writes Aria, but it's A-R-A or A-R-A. I think most people say A-R-A, and that's exactly how it's spelled. But I always called it ARA because that's how I heard it from someone else in the industry or in the podcasting world. Turned down ARA owning 51% of the company.
    42:17
    So, do I have thoughts on Skip B now? Skip B always looked fishy. Like they were – so that's Predator. Oh, yeah. No, I remember. I mean there's so many. There was Vonnie D with Pinball Gremlins. And Skippy got us a lot of content back in that time. It did. For a while. It did. It did, yes.
    42:42
    So, I mean, my thoughts are – I can't say they've really changed. Generally speaking, I still feel like – well, it's like there's Dutch and there's Skippy. Let's do Dutch first, I guess. So Dutch Pinball. They succeeded eventually. Yeah, and I still think that it wasn't the right way to do it. I agree. I'm sure people who finally got their games will disagree with me. That's fine. We all have our own opinions. But just the sunk cost, I just view money as if that's money that could be sitting. Let's say you wanted to buy something and you were told you're going to have to wait three years to buy it. But you could put that money in a savings account during those three years. That money is still working for you, even if it's not working as hard as investing it would be.
    43:25
    People had money with Dutch for a decade before they got their game. Now, maybe that money worked for Dutch, but it didn't work for you. And I have a problem with that. So ultimately, I think that it would have made more sense to partially refund people and have pulled the plug versus becoming whatever it is. And they linger on today in this weird space that I don't fully understand. Maybe I'm not meant to fully understand it. You know, it's a different culture and they have different goals. But there's everything that they do has always, to me, been really weird. And Dutch was weird even before Big Lebowski in terms of some of their choices.
    44:02
    Here's the topic I really wanted you to ask me about when you submitted this email, Richard, would have been, I heard the episode where you guys talked about the new PinBot 3.0 art from Dutch. That's what I wanted to talk about because a company that thinks that that's the right idea has a lot of problems. Yeah. A lot of problems You thought some of the discussion about this Totan remake and the remake art has some controversy to it given how popular Totan original art package is Oh, you ain't seen Pinball. I think it was 3.0. I don't know because they did the 2.0 kits and then they were going to do a special end. Anyway, if you want to search for it, you'll know it when you find it. There are images floating around. But anyway, so the Dutch. Skip B. Skip B. always felt super – the story is fascinating. Tony mentioned we got a lot of content out of it because we kept – we were following the lawsuit. There were lawsuits. We're talking like the lead dude behind it lived in a floodplain. Mm-hmm. And people who were spinning – like, they were sure that he had squirreled this money away, that it was always a rug pull. Like – and I'm not sure. Like, I could fully see that he just blew through all this money. And I don't think he blew through it making a pinball machine. I think he blew through all the money, though. I don't think he – you know, it just – how did he secure predator licensing? I think he said he called the number on the back of a DVD box. And it's like – there were – guys, there were a lot of red flags. There were red flags. Not to mention the game looked like trash.
    45:44
    Like it had some cool like the skull with the spinal cord attached ripped out as like I don't want to call it a topper because I think they dangled to the side. Like that looked cool. But the game itself, I still remember Nate Shivers. You remember Nate? I do. Okay. Custacus Pinball, Richard, back in the day was the popular pinball show. So it wasn't like now, today, where there's a number of really popular pinball channels. It was podcast-wise, that was probably the biggest one most listened to. Spooky had a really big podcast.
    46:20
    And other than that, there were a few that were focused on other stuff that came and went. I don't remember when Top ended and all that, Topcast and all that. But anyway, Nate even was really kind about it. I think he said something like, it's not really my type of game. Nate never was negative to pinball machines. So I was like, oh, this is a dog. This is a dog if Nate even can't bring himself to say it was fun. Because it wasn't fun. But anyway, it was a complete disaster.
    46:53
    I have to be careful. I will spiral on this one because this is why I remember more. Train wrecks are fascinating. So I felt bad for people who lost their money on this. But covering a train wreck like this, especially like these were not these were not like well-heeled grifts. These were these were shady people doing shady stuff. And a lot of people were there were a lot of I told you those on forums because, well, again, it's like the NFTs and everything else. Like to some people, like the fraud in all of it or the inability, the incapability, the lack of competence to execute is so obvious that the other. It's like, why are you taking ganders on things that feel like 90% bluff? To me, Skip B always looked wrong. Right. Sort of thing. But I guess the instances are when it works out.
    47:49
    And I always felt Skip B was a product of a different pinball generation. It was the generation of, holy crap, Big Bang Bar remake is like a $20,000 game now, against all odds. This guy beat all the odds. He actually got the game out. All the stories are that he lost a ton of money and all of that, but those games got out, and everyone who got their game has something that's worth more than what they paid for. And so there was just all this effort to leach onto this, to exploit, in my view, exploit people's desire for a speculative product that would be worth a lot. And that's why you got Skippy with Predator, Von E.D. with Pinball Gremlins, Zidware. That's Zidware's whole model, guys, was buy this boutique bougie thing for 15 grand. It's going to be worth 50. And then it never happened. It just felt like there was a row after row after row. And you might say Dutch was sort of the example here of the one Big Bang Bar that ended up beating the odds, except Dutch was already established in a way. They had very successful kits and such. Like the Brida Pinball 2.0 kit was very popular. And so they felt like an established manufacturer. Granted, they were moving on to something much bigger. And they still – they made it only in the loosest sense of the – I mean, a decade to fully make everyone whole is, generally speaking, unacceptable. Yeah, it was kind of – I remember the outrage when it first originally when they got to the point where it's like, Okay, well, we're sending one machine to an early adopter for every 10 machines we send to new people, things, or whatever it was. They were even like the guys' buddies were coming over initially and helping build some for free so they had product. And it worked. It worked. I was wrong. It totally worked. I figured it was a fail. Tony and I had predicted their demise as a company for several years in a row, and they're still going today. Yeah. We were very, very wrong on that one. That just shows you that just because you have a microphone doesn't mean you have any idea what you're talking about. Correct. So take everything we say with a grain of salt. Continuing the email. Big topic. Money, money, money. In episode 41, August 17, 2017, you are having a discussion of, is pinball too expensive? Essentially, nine years later, where do things stand? Yes. Part of the discussion was the price per game. Tony was saying $1.25 might be too high a price. How do you feel about that price today, nine years later? My local place, Slingshot Pinball in San Jose, California, has raised the price to $125 on some of their newer games. Don't love it, but I accept it. How are the prices in your area? Dennis, in another episode, around this time, you mentioned $5,000 was the most you would spend on a game. Has that amount changed? Okay. Yes, that amount has changed because two things. One, inflation is real and I can still get games under 5,000, but they'll probably be older than even the games I bought for under 5,000. Like Star Trek was under 5,000. So yes. Also, yay me. I do make more money, quite a bit more than I used to back nine years ago. So that also has made it easier.
    51:02
    That does help. Because making more money does help solve problems. But that said, I haven't bought a brand new pinball machine since Godzilla during the pandemic. Right. But I did go over 5K for it because I bought a premium. I don't go on location nearly as much as I used to. But I cannot recall paying more than a dollar anywhere I've gone on location recently. No, I haven't really since. I've not done. I can't remember this year. Last year, I know I went and everything. Most of the time what I see is Stern machines for a dollar a play or maybe you get three plays for two something instead. So they usually do that. And then the JJPs, when there have been JJPs, it's usually just a dollar a play no matter what, no discounting for bulk buying. So yeah, no, they've been holding the line in the area that I've seen at a dollar. The discounts on older stuff, it's pretty common for us to have the same price as New Sturton to play 90s Williams. If you go back, though, into the 80s, there's usually a discount, like maybe it'll be 75 cents a play. There used to be, and they might still do it, like at Nubs, the one classic game, like when Eric did the route, I know he'd always have one, like a 70s game, and that would be a quarter of play. Right.
    52:34
    Which was always interesting, because most people won't last very long on that quarter, because those games are brutal. Yeah. I remember the joyful time for an extended period of time when it was Flash Gordon. Yeah. Yeah. And little kids would be like, they have one quarter left, and then they go up to Flash Gordon, and they get to strike. Yeah. And then they're just like, Mom, can I have another dollar? So I can play Adam's Family or something else. The Adam's Family is pretty hard, too. One last thing. In a couple of earlier episodes, Tony was talking about being sick. He referred to it as having the plague. Is this three years? This is three years before COVID. It is funny to hear a term that I do not think we would now use for getting sick. Richard. It's hard to kick strain. But I don't use that phrase nearly as flippantly as I used to. Because it used to be, it's like, oh, if I'm sick and it lingers for any little bit of time, it was the plague. Yeah, it was a pretty standard catchphrase. And nowadays, yeah, I don't use it nearly as prevalent. It has to be a bit more major. Because like I said, the last time I really recall using it was when we had like a quarter of the staff down with bronchitis that nobody could kick even on medication. Mm-hmm. Because it was like we are shorthanded and everybody is gone. And I'm talking it's the everybody is gone where when they come back to work, they all look like they've lost 15, 20 pounds because they've just been out of it for the whole time. It was bad. Yeah. Hard times. Well, I told you we had a lot in pinball. We did have a lot of pinball. We are done with that now. So we can move to video games, which also there's a lot of stuff. There's a whole lot of stuff in video games. There's a lot of stuff going on here, guys. I don't know where I make it. Okay, on to video games. A lot of stuff. I had to cut a lot of less meaty stuff out just to keep this to a semi-decent length, knowing that Sonic had come out as well.
    55:00
    So we'll open up with the big stuff. Microsoft has joined the price increase group. They've announced another price increase. They made a couple last year, as you recall. This time they're increasing the price $100 on the 512 gigabyte model, $150 on the 1 terabyte model, and the 2 terabyte models are gone. They just don't exist anymore. Remember when consoles got cheaper as they age? Yeah, I do remember. Me and Pepperidge Farm remember. I saw that the other day, that exact meme. It's so perfect for what's happening. It is. This is so strange. And that's the thing. And the thing is, is they have flat said, Microsoft has, this isn't the end of it.
    55:43
    Their experts are expecting to see another doubling in component pricing by fall of 27. So there will be more price hikes coming for all the machines. Because at this point, Switch announced their price hike starting in September.
    56:01
    Microsoft's are starting in August. PlayStation announced theirs back in March. And there's definitely going to be another round. And on top of all that, we got the prices for the Steam machine finally, and they're insane. Well, I've got that slated a little bit later here. But while we're talking about Microsoft, as part of their reorganizing, reports are coming out that they have paused.
    56:32
    All third-party signing deals for Game Pass. So they have that entire thing on pause while they're in the midst of this giant reorganization that with the new management that came in at the end of last year, and they've spent all this first part of the half of this year kind of starting to get their ducks in a row, they're now activating all of the changes that they've been setting up, and everything's going active. So there's Arkane Studios who made Dishonored is reportedly also one of the big studios like we talked about last episode that are being looked at being spun off or shut down.
    57:15
    And the other big reports are coming out that they are planning to start tomorrow. July 6th is when all of the big announcements of the layoffs and the closures and the changes are going to start coming out because that's when they're going to start working. Actually activating their revitalization attempt of the brand. Okay. So next episode will probably have a lot more news on that front. Oh, yeah.
    57:44
    The rumors of the numbers are huge. With the release of the final update to Destiny 2, Bungie has laid off up to half of their staff and the studio head has stepped down. Okay. Yeah. So they are, which is expected. That was kind of where things were looking to be going, that they were going to spiral a lot of people into Marathon, and then there was going to be some layoffs. Reports are their layoffs are much larger than they talked to, including members of the Marathon team. Okay. So we'll see how that rolls out, especially with leadership stepping down. The Switch 2, we were talking about console sales last episode also. Switch 2 has now been announced to be the second fastest selling console in U.S. history. 5.9 million units sold in the first 12 months of release. The only thing that has sold faster was the Game Boy Advance 25 years ago. Yeah, that's way back. Sold 6.5 million units in the first 12 months. I remember that. I mean, I bought a Game Boy Advance like immediately. It was the first, like, really, I mean, in my mind, when you think of, like, the first really, really huge Nintendo handhold, I think it was the advanced more than even the original Game Boy. The original Game Boy kind of set the stage, but the advanced, I feel like, is the one that everybody had. Okay. That it really went around, especially when the second generation, when they came out with the advanced SP, so it folded, so it was so small and in your pocket. But that's still really impressive on Nintendo, especially in this atmosphere of game cost and hardware cost and everything else. Because at the same time, PS5 sales are down 58% year-on-year. Xbox's sales are down 12% year-on-year. But May is reported to have been Xbox's lowest selling month ever for any machine. Yes. And PlayStation's May was reported to be their worst month since 2000.
    59:57
    Their old systems and the price is so high now. Right, and the price is just going up. And a lot of the stuff I've been hearing as they're talking about expect to see prices higher for the next gens when they come out. Well, I mean, there's no way not to. I'm sure they're trying to figure out ways to make things more affordable, but when the key components are necessary, and those are what's our goal, it's RAM and it's storage. And that's what's at a premium nowadays. That's what everyone wants in these systems. I mean, you need it. Right, and that's the thing. The big discussion I saw online over the last couple weeks is traditionally consoles have been sold at a loss because the companies expect to make the money up on game sales and development costs and all of that. But prices are getting so high that they can't do that and maintain their overall level of earnings.
    61:06
    So they're not being able to sell at as much of a loss as they used to, if they sell at any loss at all, because costs have gotten so high that they are having to increase price just to maintain the unit counts. So we'll see how it goes. Grand Theft Auto 6 had the big announcement that their physical releases are just going to have download codes in them. Yeah, that went over great. It went over like a lead balloon. But their comments were made that gave people hope that, oh, oh, there's just not plans for a physical release at launch and in the holiday season. And the head of Rockstar made very sure to come out and say, no, no, no, no. We're never doing a physical release for this game. This game is digital. People are getting their hopes up thinking that there's something coming. There is not. We are not doing a physical release.
    62:04
    They're like, that is not happening. And I think that that is helped by the fact that Sony made the announcement.
    62:17
    That they are discontinuing physical disc production completely in 2028. They are not selling physical discs anymore at all. That's going to apply to all games releasing on PlayStation, including third-party titles.
    62:34
    They're reported to say that they're transitioning to this to adapt to customer trends, saying the preference is for digital media and that physical sales aren't that big. Mm-hmm. So.
    62:50
    Is that, well, I'm going to chicken or egg that. Is that because we don't get a choice and we've been foisted digital upon us or. Exactly. And I think it is. I think that's the big thing is once upon a time, Sony had multiple disc factories around the world and they made lots of games.
    63:09
    Nowadays, there's one factory still making discs, still making PlayStation games, physical PlayStation games. That's it. All the others are closed and gone for years now.
    63:22
    And with this sun setting, they're retooling that factory to make optical microlenses, which are important in hardware, especially the VR hardware like the PSVR and all that stuff. So they're retooling the factory to produce things that they think will be more useful in the hardware going forward while maintaining the staffing and then just getting rid of disks because now they don't have to sell disk drives or anything anymore. Yeah, I saw on one of the gaming Reddits, I follow a lot of the Microsoft could do the funniest thing ever inserts here. But the thing is, I reckon Microsoft is going to drop them too. Yeah, Microsoft's already saying that there are currently no plans from the leaks that the Helix, which is the code name for the next generation Xbox, has no disk drive inherent to it. I think the thing is, and well, you're going to get to it. There's some, you know, it's my concern, like for me, it's, I mean, it's different about not owning a physical version. I'm not as hung up about it as other people, but here's the thing. Owning. I want to own.
    64:44
    I'm tired of this rental, like, oh, it's not really yours. You're just getting a right to access it. There's something about it that just fundamentally pisses me off. It's deeply frustrating. Yeah, you don't own anything anymore. And I know you're going to touch on it about the library issue that came up with Sony. But allow me to let you continue. So micro lenses are the new future. Micro lenses are the new future. So obviously, this is going to hit. Yeah, GameStop's going to be even more trouble. The secondhand market is going to be a loaning games to your friends is going to be a thing of the past, which is ironically hilarious. Because when the Xbox One originally came out, Microsoft had made the big announcement that, oh, well, there's physical media, but it is bound to your account, so you can't loan your games to people. And PlayStation went out of their way to make a whole giant advertising campaign talking about loaning games to your friends that involved, like, the CEO just going, But with PlayStation, if you wanted to loan a game to one of your friends so they can play it, it's pretty easy. And he handed the box to his friend. Yeah, and that's where people were making the joke about Microsoft could do the funniest thing if they are going to go past 2020. But, I mean, it brings up other things. Like, okay, so I guess backwards compatibility isn't a concern now, right? I mean, it will be digitally, but what am I supposed to do with my disks? Right, and that's the thing is Microsoft stated, or the stuff that has come out about Microsoft, like I was saying, there's no disk drive being shipped with Project Helix from the current looks of it.
    66:25
    They are working on a way to grant digital licenses to games for people who own the game on disk already. So if you own the game on disk it can be bound to your account and generate a digital license So when you move on to a next generation Xbox console that has no disk drive you still have access to the games that you have Is Sony doing that Sony hasn't said a word about it. Okay. So, and then like you had alluded to, because Sony did not seal a deal with Studio Canal, Now, more than 500 Studio Canal movies are being removed from the libraries of people who previously purchased them. They're being completely stripped out of your library. You have no access to them. And that's, yeah, because, again, things no longer being available that you're still allowed to download has been a staple of the digital world for a long time. Like, hey, this game is no longer available anymore for purchase, but if you already own it, you're allowed to re-download it and keep it. Right. But this, like going in and actually taking it out of your library, not even can you not access it later, but it's just out. It's gone. Yeah, that's like, oh, because Studio Canal does some big, like they have some, it's not like, what's the Studio Canal? Do they do like Blood Rain 3? No, they have like Terminator 2 and Total Recall and Evil Dead and 500 other movies that are all being stripped away. It's interesting. I had this conversation with my wife, this whole digital rights and not just removing stuff like that, but also changing and editing so that what you purchased isn't originally. And in her case, we were talking about reading what you read originally and the current versions are very different because they've been edited to change something in them. She's read some books and seen comments on some of the books where after several years, they'll go through and edit the book to keep them relevant.
    68:40
    So song references will be changed to more modern song references. references to companies will be changed to companies that are more modern or still exist so that it keeps a relevance when people read them so they don't feel outdated.
    68:59
    That's stupid. She told me, are you kidding me? And it's like, oh my God, that's the dumbest thing ever. What sort of TikTok micro brain rot nonsense crap is that? Like if you want to have a new version come out, okay.
    69:17
    Modernize for modern audiences. All right. Like people, you know, like a Leo DiCaprio interpretation of Romeo and Juliet where they had guns. Yes, they said sword on the side. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, okay. Right. I'll give you an example of one we've, you know, Dark Tower series. So King has gone back and edited the first Dark Tower book. Yes. Because he wrote the first one in college and he was not nearly as good of a writer as he is now. I have the original. I don't know if I have a first run, but I have his original garbage tier level writing. Right. I don't want mine changed. I want to remember the book I remember. Right. And in that specific case, I've never read the original version of The Gunslinger. I've only read the revised version of The Gunslinger. But another King book that had the exact same thing done to it was The Stand. I've read the original version of The Stand and I've read the revised version of The Stand. And in that case, I much prefer the revised version, not because he became a better writer, because he didn't become a better writer. By the time he wrote The Stand, he was already a well-established and solid writer. The entire difference is he wrote the revised version of The Stand is the original version of The Stand that he then had to cut big chunks out because it was too big of a book. Right. So the publisher made him remove hundreds of pages to get it down to the size that they were willing to publish. So he did that. And then when it was written, when things were revised, he put all of those pages back in. And then he did do a few edits inside of it to bring things up to date to the 80s as opposed to the original 70s or the 80s or the early 90s as opposed to the original 70s when it was written.
    71:13
    But that was it. And most of those changes were in the parts that had been redacted originally. Okay. So, but yeah, no, it is apparently an ongoing thing that is getting to be kind of weird. I own on audiobook the original audiobook edition of The Martian because when The Martian came out, the audiobook was done by one company originally, and the narration was by R.C. Bray, who's one of my favorite narrators. And then at some point, the company that had done it lost the rights to it, and a new company got the rights to it, but they didn't get the rights to the original audio narration, so they generated a new narration, which is now narrated by Will Wheaton.
    72:06
    Thank you for pronouncing his name right. Yes, I had to pronounce that correctly. So now, if you go to buy an audiobook edition of The Martian, yours will be read by Will Eaton, whereas mine is the original Arcee Bray. Making you the winner? I mean, I think it makes me the winner, but the important thing is I got to keep my original edition. It did not get changed to the other version. I still have access to my original edition. So in the case of Studio Canal though, they're not getting new additions of Terminator 2. It's not going to turn into Terminator 3. All the money they've spent is gone because you didn't buy a physical media, you bought a license.
    72:50
    Sad. So sad. The same time that all of this was coming out from Sony, they also announced that they are closing the PS3 and the PS Vita stores. PS3 doesn't surprise me. Vita, I don't know. It has been a long time. It always frustrates people that still use them, though. Right. So reports are that you won't be able to buy anything else, but for at least a few years, you'll still be able to download stuff.
    73:26
    But they didn't say, oh, you'll always be able to download. They just said, for now. Yeah. Like with movies that you buy. Right. And eventually your console will just be a box that you can't download the games you bought and you can't do anything because you don't have servers up anymore. It's our glorious digital future. So much glory. It's been so great. Steam Machine, we got the big announcements. The releases started. The prices were as bad as we feared. If anything, they might be worse than we feared.
    74:02
    The cheapest version you can get is the 512 gigabit Steam machine with no controller for $1,050. I've already seen people build comparable computers for $800.
    74:21
    I've seen people take the same price and build better computers than what the Steam machine is. And the prices go all the way up to $1,428 for the 2TB version with a controller. And there's multiple levels in between, obviously.
    74:38
    But that's a series of price increases and price changes compared to what people were expecting out the gate. I remember that was back in November or December when they were first making these announcements and it was first being seen. And some of the game journalist people went to Valve and they were playing around with stuff. And when the Valve people had asked them what they thought the pricing would be, they were like, oh, like $500 or $600. And the room was silent. Yeah, you mentioned that. Yeah. At least to me, you did. So you don't think that 1050 is going to resonate widely, even with 60 frames per second 4K? Tony, what about the 60 frames per second 4K? They kind of walked that back. And by kind of walked that back, I mean they implicitly walked that back. Their advertising used to say 4K at 60 FPS.
    75:38
    And now it has all been changed to saying that it can run up to 4K with the frame rate removed. Hmm. So, and only in apparently very specific situations that utilize a very specific software speed up or accelerator thing in the system. So, but because this is the world we live in. It is. They sold out instantly. They sold out every single version instantly. This is another way to symbolize success. Yeah. Hey, I've got money, so I'm going to buy this ridiculous thing because this is for the haves, not the have-nots. And that's exactly what it is. Everything has just been grab, grab, grab and out so quick. And they do because it would not be a proper console without it. They already have their special name. They get the red line of death. Oh, yes. Like the Xbox's Red Ring of Death. Because some of them have already started to fail due to GPU failures. I heard that. It does not sound like it is a huge endemic problem. It sounds like it's a very small number of consoles, which means it's probably within the error rate of just bad, faulty hardware. There's a standard fail rate. I don't remember. Years ago, I heard it was 1% to 2% is expected to fail. Right. And from the sounds of it, it's within that fail rate. So it's not like the Xbox is Red Ring, which was like huge. You had a Red Ring, didn't you? I did have a Red Ring.
    77:17
    It was humorous because, as I recall, I was like on a work trip. I was doing something and my wife was using it and it went Red Ring. And I was just like, oh, you destroyed it.
    77:30
    It's like I just – you just destroyed my stuff with no – it's like what you do. It's sad. And then I explained to her. No, it's a common problem. It's such a common problem that literally even though I've had this for years, I will send it to them and they won't use it because that's what Xbox had to do because it was such a prevalent problem. So, yeah, no, this is just an entire rolling, I almost want to say joke because all of these price increases, they're huge. And the outcry on the prices of everything and the price increases and everything is huge. And everything is still selling out. Yes. Even when Sony announced that as of 28, they're not making discs anymore, demand for the disc add-ons for the current generation of PlayStations are so high, they actually put a limit of one per purchase because the demand for those are so high. But they're getting rid of it. There is an entire – I've not covered it very much. I think I might have mentioned it a time or two. But over the course of the last year and change, there has been an ongoing series of lawsuits in European court about protecting gamers' rights and accessibility to old games, It's touching directly on all of what we've talked about today about game accessibility, licensing versus owning and all of that. And that is still going on. And they've had some wins. They've had some losses.
    79:11
    But overall, there's this whole giant push trying to force companies to generate their games in such a way that they are not lost. They can't just be shut down, pulled away, and gone.
    79:25
    Right. So the people who buy them still own them and still have access to them. We've seen so many games that have come out, especially live service games over the last several years that flop because they don't become instant number one hits. Even if they've got a solid player base, if they're not huge hits, they're just shut down. And in some situations, it's fast enough that the company will give people their money back like we saw last year. Right. But in a lot of situations, they're just like, well, you guys enjoyed a year of the game. Bye. It's gone. Bye-bye now. Yep. Reminds me of the right to repair movement. Right. And it's very much the same. It's in a very similar vein to the right to repair movement.
    80:03
    So it's not had as much traction in the U.S., though it has been starting to build up more compared to what's being done in the EU courts. But it's very much something that we're starting to see.
    80:15
    So I thought I would end with a couple of feel-good stories. Yeah, feel-good. Because we need it. Things have been heavy lately. Feel Good Story number one. Twelve years after its release, The Binding of Isaac Rebirth hit a new record concurrent player count of 131,000 players on Steam. On the Steam summer sale, it was 90% off. The game was like $2. Right. And it blew up huge. And it's still a game that I consider one of the poster childs of roguelike gaming. Yes.
    81:02
    And it's still fun. Unlike some games with, no, Binding of Miser is still fun. Every time you play it, it's still enjoyable. So it's one of those games that I install and uninstall and uninstall and uninstall. Because it's so big. Well, it's just because, actually, that's because I need a hard drive upgrade, but I haven't felt like selling a kidney yet.
    81:27
    I have to make some edits and keep a rotating thing of games on my system right now, especially because I've got some big ones that eat, you know, 100 plus gig.
    81:39
    So I don't have all the room in the world. So good for them. That game's still huge, still great. And the other is, I'm going to call it the final big discussion of the Subnautica 2 saga that has been ongoing.
    82:03
    Crafton has agreed to pay out the bonuses. Not just the bonuses. There has been backroom negotiations going on, and we don't know the total extent of the negotiations.
    82:17
    But the reports that have come out is that they have agreed to pay out the promised bonus amount plus extra with the agreement to pay it to the entire development team, not just the original development team that was going to get it. So people who've been brought in after the fact still will be part of the bonus settlement. Okay. And part of that decision and part of the negotiations that have gone on is Unknown World CEO Ted Gill, who they had fired in their AI chat GBT, The we don't want to pay these bonuses thing that ended up with him in court and caused all of these issues and they were forced by the courts to put him back in his place has agreed to step down following the game's release. It's major success, like four million copies sold in the opening week and them hitting all the milestones and the bonuses being agreed to. It sounds like part of the agreement for the adjustments to the bonuses to pay everything out and to pay out to all the developers, not just the original rounds of developers, includes him stepping down voluntarily.
    83:44
    And the dude's making millions and millions of dollars on this deal. I don't really think that that was probably a hard choice for him to go. Yeah, no. Okay. Yeah, I guess you can hand me that giant fat wad of cash and I will step down and you'll pay all my people a giant fat wad of cash.
    84:10
    And then you guys can go ahead and run everything. I mean, long term, I can't imagine he'd want to stay there. It's probably awkward. Yeah, awkward, and I'm sure it was about as hostile of a workplace as you could possibly get at that point. Dealing with Upper, obviously. I'm sure it wasn't hostile and awkward with his team, but dealing with Kraft and Upper had to have been an absolute nightmare. So, good for them. That's one of those interesting kind of success stories that works out in a really neat way.
    84:51
    Yay! That's probably the end of the saga. We'll see. We don't get to the ends of sagas very often until Subnautica 3. The 3 and E. The Threnin. We'll see what happens if they actually – what's interesting to me is I kind of – I've been surprised. I have expected Kraft and CEO that is the direct cause of all of these issues hasn't stepped down. Yes, and I read about this and I was like, oh, okay, so this is, no, this is Gil. This is the guy for the studio. But I was like, do they still, I didn't check to see if they still had the guy. Last time I checked, he was still there. I mean, I don't know. It's weird because you'd say, well, for PR reasons alone, you'd almost think they'd oust him. But in a way, I guess it's all a matter of perspective because the company has done very well with all of these sales, too. So like from a performance standpoint, it's kind of like, eh, you're supposed to pay these bonuses out anyway. I guess they got a little – I mean they ended up paying more than they would have had to because they ended up renegotiating this deal. Right. But maybe they think that salvages the PR or maybe they let him go. That's my guess is that was entirely a PR thing and the desire to drive Gil out.
    86:06
    Yes. Like I said, it's like, oh no, thank you for a wad of cash. Yeah. That may have been a, hey, if you leave, we'll add in the new developers that came on board. Like that could have been how it went. Which sure, you know, it's like a severance thing, but for other people to benefit from. So, okay. Well, it all shook out good for them. They done well. I'll admit, I've not played it. I did buy it.
    86:34
    Yeah, show your support. There's a mini online game. It's one of those things where I avoid stuff like that a lot of times. In this case, I was like, I'm going to buy it just to support them. I'm not going to play it until it's done because it's an early access beta game. Very early.
    86:54
    And I enjoyed the original Subnautica so much, I don't want it to be one of those things where I play early access and it tarnishes things. Right. I'm going to wait it out. It's not like there's several games I bought in early access a long time ago that eventually went to 1.0 and I've never played them. Or there were things I really liked in early access that went away and I'm like, I don't like as much now. So we'll see what happens. Yep. Next episode. What? Probably lots and lots of bad news. Maybe. Probably. I am really curious about some of the closures seen as how many of the games were in Xbox's big State of Play upcoming showcase thing are from companies that they're talking about closing. Right, yeah. Like State of Decay 3. Well, I heard a rumor about Obsidian and then someone came out and said, no, Obsidian's not being looked at. I'd heard the same rumor. I saw the same rumor. And so it's starting to spiral. So they do need to get some. If they're going to do stuff, they need to get these words out. And I can't imagine they won't shed some of them. They just bought. They went on this buying spree. They can't all be good deals for them. Right.
    88:02
    But we'll have to. We will see probably soon. Probably next week. Probably. If all the rumors are right, everything starts tomorrow. Yes.
    88:12
    250 years. And then. Yep. Unplugged. Oh, no. I'm going to start chopping. I'm going to chop them. Somebody's going to get cut. Yeah.
    88:28
    Wow, that is a throwback. All right. It's been a great time. Yes. So if you want to reach out to us about the show, you can email us at EclecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com. We're available at Facebook.com slash EclecticGamersPodcast. As I mentioned earlier in the show, you can support us for as little as a dollar a month at Patreon.com slash Eclectic underscore gamers. We're on Twitch and Instagram as Eclectic underscore gamers. And we will be back with all that terrible, not so good news in two weeks. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Bye. See ya.