coming at you out of st charles illinois the special when lit pinball podcast starts now hey what's going on pinball land welcome to episode number 62 of the special when lit pinball podcast my name is ken and i am bill and today we are going to discuss some things in regards to pinball that's a good idea right here we go start the podcast first huh It's a first. Just kidding, man. Let's jump right into it. Let's just get into the pinball news. Getting the news from around the industry in this week's Industry Buzz. Hey, this is Kaz, your special when lit American pinball correspondent. I spoke with Dan and Ferret this week, and Oktoberfest has big code updates coming. It's currently being tested and is going to release soon. So look for updated lighting effects, more detailed graphics, more animations, and additional scoring tweaks. Matt Curran is their audio tech. He's been adding additional music, and he's been busy with the voice talent, adding lots of new callouts. There's also a new mini-wizard mode that's called Stein Slinging. It's going to require you to collect one of every unique stein in the game. Ferret said that he was personally working on lots of other small improvements to further polish the game, but one big update that people have been asking for is that yes, Oktoberfest will also have an official adult mode with what he calls spicier callouts. So you're going to have the option to have family-friendly turned on or the non-family-friendly version. American Pinball is also still working on Houdini. It's getting more code updates with bug fixes and minor enhancements, all while they continue to work on game number three. For American Pinball, this is Brian Kosner. Hey, this is Steven Haberman with your weekly update from Jersey Jack Pinball. Jack on the road to Ace Goki on Saturday the 20th for a tournament and official Wonka Pinball launch party. Jack Guarney was there promoting the new release. Also, Jersey Jack has spent some time promoting and supporting their factory staff, talking about the folks that are working on these machines and get their hands on. There was Rich Torres, who's the cabinet assembler. He's been working there about nine months and loves putting together cabinets. We've got Yuberki Kiprian, a sub-assembler at JJP. She's from the Dominican Republic, but has been in New Jersey for 11 years. She loves assembling the toys to the playfield and has enjoyed being there. And finally, a veteran on the line, a mainline assembler, Dave Johnson. Born and raised in New Jersey, been at JJP for six years, loves the challenge of putting pinball machines together and hopes everyone enjoys them as much as he loves putting them together. So that's a nice little feature to promote all the staff that work hard there. It was neat when I went to pick up my Jersey Jack Wonka standard pinball machine. I was able to walk around the assembly line. It's well organized, but also the staff seem to be happy enjoying themselves throughout the day. And there's a wall of the employees of the month, call outs for great work, and hitting those goals. So it's great to see that. So that's your update for the week. We'll be talking to you again next week. Welcome back to your special Winlet manufacturer updates. I'm your Multimorphic correspondent, Ryan Claytor. Today I'd like to dive into some of the P3 infrastructure that I think often gets overlooked. I know I didn't give it much thought until researching Multimorphic as a company and their P3 pinball platform. The infrastructure I'm talking about is the P3's multi-game architecture and the need to create software to support this new pinball experience, which no other company has ever had to do. With single game titles, there just is not a need for such thing. But in the P3, when you replace a Playfield module, it detects what module you just installed. But within each module, there are typically a number of different games you can play using that module. So to support all this, we've essentially had to create this environment that's on par with, you know, think of the Android system for mobile phones or the iOS system for Apple phones. where you have the ability to manage, install, uninstall, have all these applications available to the user. So, obviously, this type of environment doesn't just happen. And while there are concepts for multi-application systems out there, this has never been developed for a pinball platform before. Consequently, all of this code is being written from the ground up, which takes time. How much time? Our software developers probably spend over 50% of their time just working on these framework features. So as a startup company, on top of developing games for the P3, Multimorphic has had to build an entirely new systems architecture to support this revolutionary new approach to pinball. I asked Gerry Stellenberg, Multimorphic company founder, if the days of dedicating 50% of their software development time to systems architecture are behind them, now that the infrastructure is in place. And it sounds like, sort of. While that's true for the multi-application gaming system we've been talking about. There's always new features and there are always people wanting to do new things with the machine. And there's always this notion of an expanding market where we build the infrastructure out to support it. Some of these new features Jerry was alluding to are things like increased web support, which they've been implementing, copy protection software, and development models used by game developers who can create their own game and have them deployed by Multimorphic, like in the case of Hooping It Up. And this is only a short list that I hope sheds some light on just this sort of double-time development that the folks at Multimorphic need to do for the P3 platform. Until next time, I'm Ryan Claytor, your Multimorphic correspondent, urging you to stay innovative. This is Ken Cromwell, your Stern Pinball special outlet correspondent. Stern Pinball this week revealed new code with Game of Thrones. They've also gone ahead and announced that Ghostbusters code. is even bigger of an update than Game of Thrones. It's coming soon. Star Wars Pin, a home edition of Star Wars, was released this week, and a new Cornerstone game will be announced shortly. Let's go to George Gomez for a little bit more information on the latest release at Stern Pinball. And joining Special Win Lit right now is the Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer at Stern Pinball. You all know him. His name is George Gomez. Mr. Gomez, welcome to Special Win Lit. Hey, guys. Great to be on. Great to have you on here. Thanks for calling. Thanks for inviting me on. Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's exciting things going on at Stern right now, and we just had a new pin revealed that was at Comic-Con. And I wanted to ask this question first, if you don't mind, George, because we'll just kind of get this out of the way. Was the recent reveal of Star Wars' pin at Comic-Con, is that considered the next cornerstone release for Stern Pinball? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, you're going to see a cornerstone within days probably. Ah, good. Very, very soon. And, you know, the Star Wars pin is really intended to be a consumer product. I mean, there's, you know, it doesn't, the coin door doesn't take money. It's strictly a consumer product. And knowing that we were going to be introducing a cornerstone within, you know, a very short period of time, we decided that Comic-Con was a great place to bring the Star Wars product. so that's why we did it at Comic-Con the folks at Lucas have a big presence there the fan base is enormous for that particular title and everybody was there and so we had games in the Lucas booth we had games in our booth we had games in the pinball lounge that we always host every year so it was a great place to kind of introduce that kind of product For those that may have missed the stream and the reveal, I mean, can you give us some general information regarding the pin? Are you using standard-sized playfields, translights, and what kind of hardware are we running for Star Wars? Right. So the idea is to create a lower-priced consumer product that still feels absolutely like a Stern pinball in terms of playfield, and that's very reliable because it's going to be in someone's home. Okay. Now, some of the reliability you inherently get out of simplicity, right? If you create a simpler product, your chances of creating reliability increase substantially. So by nature, the fact that it's simpler is inherently reliable. But we paid a lot of attention to the details of the material selections and crafting those materials and working with them in such a way that they were adequate, even in some cases, they're less expensive materials, and they have to be handled a certain way in order for you to execute reliably with them. It's interesting, because I've seen this question a lot, what size is the play field? It's a standard size stern pinball play field. Okay. And the main glass on top of the game is also a standard size stern glass, just like you would find on a Pro Premium or an LE. Right. And the trans light is also the same identical size as on a standard stern game. Okay. So you don't have anything that looks miniature in size when you approach the machine? No. So the cabinet is smaller. And the cabinet is smaller by design so that it would fit into more places in the home and more different home environments. It's also going to be marketed worldwide. And, you know, people in Europe have much less space than we do here. So, you know, if you live in a large metropolitan area in Europe, everything is smaller. You know this. You've seen it. You know, the cars are smaller. They just don't have the same geography in terms of footprints for their buildings or structures, etc. So we're going to sell this thing all over the world. It's a much more appropriate, easier-to-handle pinball machine, whether it's going upstairs in Johnny's room in suburbia outside of Chicago, or whether it's going to a small apartment in New York City or a small apartment in Paris. I'd like one upstairs in Ken's room in St. Charles if we're going to be putting these in bedrooms. That sounds great. When we were talking earlier, I think it was important because you said that not a lot of people understood or realized that this was not kind of a reskin of a Spider-Man Home Edition and that there were significant changes that were made not just in places but throughout the play field. Did you want to discuss a little bit about what's going on there? Yeah, so the game – a lot of the armchair quarterbacks out there are just basically saying that I use the same play field that I used on Spidey and Supreme. And I think what a lot of people – to the naked eye, it may look that way, right? So every one of those playfields, by the way, I've designed all those playfields, and every time I went back at it, I tried to fix things that I didn't like that I did the last time, and I tried to improve on it. And I always work with the notion of integrating the theme into the kinetics. And I'll talk to you a little bit about that in a second. So this particular play field is actually the most different of the three in that north of the slingshots, not a single post, not a ramp entrance, not a ball guide is in the same place or the same as it was in the Spider-Man product or in the Supreme product. Right. So this, you know, when I when I sat down to do this, I had I come off of Deadpool and I was sort of enjoying the flow of Deadpool and sort of, you know, kind of thinking about some of my old games. And and I have a lot of guys coming up to me and talking to me about Johnny Mnemonic and the combination shots in that game, et cetera, and the speed of the game. And so I thought, you know, this is a perfect opportunity because I don't have a lot to work with. I can't put a $50 toy in it. So I have to make the play field, the most basic elements of the play field, interesting. Right, right. And so what I did is this particular – so, for example, the orbit ball guide in this game, there's an angle at the top where it meets with the back panel. in order to add more speed to it. The centrifugal force has the ball right up against the ball all the way around I put two electric control gates on that game which Supreme didn have and neither did Spider Both of those gates allow you to orbit in either direction super fast shots I made sure that the entrances, when you have any kind of velocity coming off the guide, you're going to clear the fling shot. You're going to end up midpoint on the flipper, and you're going to be able to repeat the shot. So there was a lot of attention to the notion of, you know, I moved. I kept things like, for example, I really like the passive ball lock and the target behind it because I felt that in a family environment, in a group play environment, you know, a couple of brothers, a brother and a sister playing, father and son, whatever that environment is, I thought that the stealing locks feature was kind of fun. I love that. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. So I did stuff like that. So I kept that. And I took the horseshoe, and I moved the horseshoe to try to get it so that if you get any velocity on the horseshoe shot, you can – you always end up on the flipper, and you can hit that thing in reverse. You can repeat it in reverse, which is really fun. You know, I went to the Opto Spinners like I used on the Beatles. So when you hit that spinner right, you let – you know, it sings forever. Oh, yeah. There's a cool audio on the spinner too. I love ripping the spinner. It's my thing. You know, that's become a thing ever since we did that Beetle spinner. We've tried so many different spinner, you know, sound effects because they're kind of fun. You know, we did it on Deadpool. Even though those are conventional spinners, we spent a lot of time thinking about what should that spinner sound be. Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, on the, like, for example, the Millennium Falcon shot, that swoopy wire form ramp. So I've always liked those, and I first did it on the Bride Ramp in Montrebeche, and then I did it again in Lord of the Rings. And I hadn't done it in a while, so I thought, you know, the Millennium Falcon feels like a thing that should get a fast, swoopy shot. Right, exactly. Yeah, so that's a brand-new shot relative to the layout. Awesome. And everybody, you know, it's funny that somebody would think that you don't have to change the layout to just cram in another shot. Yeah. Yeah. You mean a quarter inch doesn't change the geometry of a game? Oh, my goodness. I bet you a sixteenth of an inch probably changes it dramatically, potentially. And I know, like, with the original Star Wars pins, right, like pro, premium, LE, I mean, one of the most satisfying parts of the game is when you get an opportunity to kind of go in and destroy the Death Star. That being said, you know, it's attainable, but not everybody would see that necessarily. And I think it's such a fun part of the game. Were there any efforts made in regards to the code, which allows you a better opportunity to get to that point? I'm really glad you brought that up. So almost immediately when I sat down to design the game, knowing that I was going to leverage items from the other games, like I was going to try to use the Death Star toy, I was going to try to use the TIE Fighter toy, I couldn't afford to do what they did with them. They had a lot of mechanism associated with both of those items. And I couldn't afford that, but I needed to do something interesting. I always felt when I played the Pro and the Premium on those games that the difficulty of that shot sort of kept the average guy from blowing up to Death Star. And I felt that I had to make it more attainable. Okay. um you get you get a you know you get a four ball multiball and when you're down to a single ball we start a timer and we start strobing those lamp those the lamps on on that ramp and the lights on the ramp and you have within the timer to get control of the ball and make the shot so yeah i'm getting a little stressed thinking about it if you don't do it and you time it out You're just back in single ball play. But that entire sequence was almost one of the first things I thought of, and that drove a lot of the geometry changes for the play field. It's fun, and it's all about the pinball experience, and that sounds like something, again, that you made more attainable, but there's still a lot of stress involved, so it's exciting. Yeah, with a game like this, I tried to make the multiballs very accessible because I anticipate that it's not going to be the usual suspects playing it, that it's going to be new people. I'm trying to teach new people to play. I'm trying to teach little kids to play. And no one's going to have fun if all they do is they can't make shots or they drain all the time or it's three up, three down. I mean, that's not a lot of fun. That doesn't convey a lot of fun. So I tried to make things like the multiballs very accessible. And then as you get better, I don't even expect a real newbie to blow up to that star. But as you get better, that's a very attainable goal in the game. And, of course, if you happen to do all the slick stuff and you collect the rebels, when you do blow up ahead of trying to blow up this star, then your value for collecting a dust jar is going to be exponentially greater. So it still offers abilities for scoring strategies. It's not just a flip to have fun necessarily. You've got different ways you can approach the game. There are definitely scoring strategies. You have to collect the rebels. The rebels are tied to shots. There are some strategies relative to the orchestration of the different multiballs and the hurry-ups. And, I mean, there is some of the standard sort of pinball progression complexity, but you don't have to go there if you don't want to. You can just flip the game, enjoy it for what it is, get a multiball, lock a ball, blow up to that start, destroy some tight fighters. um we have you know the thing is um it's standard spike too so yeah and the entire thing is powered by a single node board that's amazing and um you know that's the reason that like uh you know i and and you'll never be able to tell if you unless i told you this you know you like the pop bumpers were great but the reality is that i've got two of them tied together and the slingshots are tied together and that's because you know i mean i did the entire thing with a single note board yeah but honestly it's like the pop-up reaction in that thing is is amazing and considering uh that i i made that uh that modification that we never use you know and like game designers around here walking around going i can't believe i can't believe two of those pop-up are tied together yeah you're getting better you're getting better action than my three independent you're onto something that's awesome tie them all into one note board and just go nuts I know when I got into pinball, I mean, pinball within itself, it's just a fun experience. But then when I started realizing that there were ways that I could add on to my pinball machine, whether it be with mods or that sort of thing, like you can really kind of customize a pin and personalize it and make it a little bit more of what you have out of the box. Are there any capabilities with Star Wars pin as far as like adding on to the game or customizing the game? an external offer so there's a um there's like a whole suite of accessories that was specifically designed for this game some of them are carryovers from the other game but some of them were um were specific to this game like for example uh you know you're going to get the usual stuff you're going to get art blades and you're going to get the stormtrooper head from uh the last game it's going to be even easier because all you do is take off the the oh for the shooter the shooter knob is that yeah you just take the shooter knob off and put the other shooter knob on there's no installing the shooter this shooter is by the way it's kind of cool it's uh it's an all-new design that requires zero adjustment you basically um what i did is i attached it permanently to the play field so the location of the shooter ball tip um relative to the ball is always in the same place because there's no like it doesn't move in shipping it uh you know game a is not adjusted it different than game b sure yeah um it's it's it's really kind of cool and we're looking at it um as a potential item for the big games because it's just so much easier to do you modified that shooter lane too which virtually eliminates any potential for wear on star wars yeah and that's that's you know we do um so we do a lot of you know we do a lot of playfield testing in the back We have fixtures that run playfields. They cycle playfields like 24-7. I own lots of games, and I see even all the way back to my Willie games, eventually that wood shooter groove from the ball being pounded out of the trough wears out. So this is a design that uses two wire forms at playfield level. They guide the ball perfectly. Actually, I think they guide the ball better than the traditional shooter grooves because they don't – the spin on the ball is different. It's minimized somewhat. And they prevent the playfield from wearing out. And because this game is intended to be what it is, I don't want any calls on shooter groups wearing out or anything like that. So, yeah, there's some new stuff there. There's also some, like, we leveraged all the video assets from the original game, all the video and audio assets from the original game. But we also added additional video. And so this has got new video stuff that wasn't in the original games. You know, new speech calls, new audio, some different music, stuff like that. What about, like, for instance, topper support? Is that something that we could see with this pin? Yeah, so I – right, I forgot. So we're talking about accessories. There's a whole suite of accessories. Like I said, the blades, the Stormtrooper knob. One of the coolest things that I'm most excited about is there's a three – the game ships with a single speaker. But there's an audio upgrade, which basically gets you three speakers that bolt on. And the coolest thing about this is that the speakers were audio engineered to the product. They're not off the shelf. They were custom made for the games. So you're not throwing a pair of JBLs in there and calling it a day. You've got something that's – Right, right. No, these were made for the game with real audio engineering behind, the thought behind the position and the loads it sees and the quality of the drivers and all that stuff. So the amplifier, the whole thing was thought through, and it's going to be sold as a kit, which bolts in. Also, the R2-D2 topper, which took us forever to get approvals on, is now approved and will be for sale. It is very expensive, but if you want it to bolt it into this game, it plugs in place. So it bolts onto the top of the backbox, it plugs into the game, and it will have all of the software and audio features that are in the big game related to the topper will be in this game. So the topper will be available, I guess. I mean, do you see it available before the end of the year for Star Wars? Yeah, I think so. I think so. It's just been signed off on. Congratulations. Nice. Yeah. It was challenging. It was like the quest for the topper for you guys, right? Unbelievable. It was very, very challenging. But it is a very cool device. It gives the game a whole life. But, you know, I think that and so, yeah, it'll be available for this for this game also. There's just you know, there's a there's a headphone kit for it. Oh there a Millennium Falcon from the original games You can actually bolt on There an open post that was purposely designed so it take the Millennium Falcon So you can have an illuminated Millennium Falcon. All the cables are there. You're just going to run the cable and plug it in and it'll work. So all that stuff's there. It was done with the notion that people like to customize their games. There's a lot there. I mean, when you think of a typical home edition, I don't know that anybody realizes that, I mean, this is on a level that we've not seen before. Yeah, I mean, you've got real wire form ramps, the same as you get on real games. You get stainless steel ramps. I mean, all of the playfield components are commercial grade components. You know, everything, flippers, slingshots, pop bumpers, drop targets, all that stuff is all of our conventional stuff. And, Stern, you guys have talked about online connectivity. I mean, is this level of game, is this something that could also be implemented into online connectivity, or is that going to be more for your commercial-grade machines? No, this game will fit into the suite of connectivity features that we have planned. So this game absolutely, as a matter of fact, there's a lot of cool stuff that you're going to be able to do with this game relative to connectivity that's coming. You know, when that stuff goes live, it'll be very easy to bring all your Spike 2 product up very quickly. Amazing. Yeah, so it'll be really fun. I mean, that's a lot of stuff I'm mired in right now is just that entire ecosystem that we're designing and planning for all of the games. But we felt it was important for this game. I mean, at the most basic level, you'll download code, but we have much bigger plans for that stuff than just downloading code. So it'll be fun, I think. Well, my hat's off because, I mean, with the thought that went into this game and being able to have just, you know, an average consumer that might not be into pinball and shopping games to hook up the topper and the Millennium Falcon and all these different items that you can add to this game is just, you know, brilliant. So the average person isn't frustrated. Well, we try to make it simple, right? Try to make it real easy. So, you know, I mean, four screws and a connector are going to get your topper on the game. And, you know, the Millennium Falcon, you're basically, it's one screw and a connector, you know. And so I think, yeah, we're trying to make it as painless as possible to, you know, get the game, enjoy the game, and have a good time with it. And it's – for all the guys that are talking about it negatively, that haven't seen it, touched it, played it, flipped it, I mean, all I can say is, geez, we're going to continue to make cornerstones. This is like, if you don't like this, don't buy this. Buy something else. Right. It's like no one's forcing you to grab this pin. Although having one in the bedroom, as I said, George, is appealing to me. And I'm going to have a conversation with the wife after we get off the line with you. We totally appreciate the time. We appreciate the effort that's going into this. It's interesting to see just a different approach to pinball and something different that's being offered. And, you know, we wish you luck with this one. What I'm noticing right now is that where you do have people that are a little bit skeptical, I think now after you kind of explain what's exactly happening, it can kind of put some minds at ease. And I know for a fact this is not just appealing to newbies. There are pinball people that are considering this title. So I think that's exciting. And if anything else, you know. There's definitely a bunch of guys reached out to me right away and wanting to know, you know, how do I get one? Where do I get one? How much are they? You know, all this stuff, right? So I think that some of the traditional community will enjoy it also. But I think that, you know, it's like if I, you know, I'll say it again. If you buy what you like. I mean, it's really important to me that you buy what you like. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Buy something else that you like. We're not going to stop making cornerstones. And we're not going to, you know, pro premiums and LEs are a part of our life. We're just, we're growing the pinball market relative to the world because we want to be all things pinball to everybody. We want lots of people that don't currently enjoy pinball to enjoy pinball. And so this is a way for someone who maybe doesn't want to buy a used game, doesn't know how to buy a used game, doesn't know how to maintain a used game. And it's like I've heard some of the conversations, well, for this much more money, I could buy a pro. And I say, then you should. Then you should really buy a pro. um and if and if you know i mean that's that's really our mindset is is hey there's another we've had you know you can say that about a premium you know the price of a premium relative to a pro and you can say that relative you know the price of a premium relative to an le so you're you know you're making you're making financial choices and you know make the choice that fits and and so and you know maybe maybe i'll keep maybe i'll keep working down you know downstream and maybe one day you'll be able to buy um um you know a three thousand dollar pinball machine for me and maybe you'll buy it maybe one day you'll buy a two thousand dollar pinball machine oh you heard it here on special when lit stern is shooting for the two thousand dollar price point for pinball so breaking news you never you never know you never know but but but But what I do, I do highly recommend. Buy what you like. Buy what you can afford. And, you know, don't be offended. Don't be offended that I created a new pinball game. No, it's not offensive at all. In fact, we've been streaming pinball once a week with the new releases. We're going to do the best that we can because we want to get a hold of one of these Star Wars pins. And we want to stream it. And you know what, George? We would love to extend an invitation for you to come out and show us how it's done if we can get one at some point. We're going to do our best, so we'll extend that invitation. I'll see what I can do. Yeah, that'd be great. I'll see what I can do. That'd be great, man. And on a side note, I'm a big Deadpool fan, so thank you so much for your efforts on that. Hey, you know what? I'll tell you a Deadpool story. So while I was waiting for you guys to call you guys, I had one of my best Deadpool games ever. 868 million points, which to a large portion of your audience means nothing, meaning that they blow past that all the time. But for me, at the level that I play, that's a really good game. And so we have a premium in our arcade that I play every day, and I had a breakout game tonight. And so it's funny because Nick Wainer, Mark Weyna's son, who's an amazing player, he's the grand champion on that game. And I actually knocked off some big names like Mike Vinikour and Zach Sharp and stuff. Of course, I don't know how long. So now that I'm publicizing this, I don't know how long my score is. There will be a code update tomorrow, George. Right. Those guys will be like pounding it now. That's awesome, man. And then I'll never get my name on my score table. Such a fun game. I'm looking forward to your next Cornerstone release too, man. We've appreciated your work through pinball. We appreciate everything that you're doing for pinball. We appreciate everything Stern has been done for pinball. So thanks for your time. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Thank you. Have fun, guys. Thanks. Thanks, George. Hey, so it was great having George Gomez on the show. Yeah, thank you, George, for making the call and letting us interview you. Yeah, I mean, he's one of those guys where, I mean, we've talked to George on occasions, but we've never really officially had him on the show. So it was nice to have him come in and kind of, I think, clear the air a little bit on Star Wars Pin versus people speculating what it is and what it's about. Because, guys, listen, there's another cornerstone game. I have a hard time saying that word, Cornerstone. I don't know why. But, yeah, there's a Cornerstone game that's going to be released here or shown within a few days. Now, we're recording this on Monday night, so it gets uploaded Tuesday. So Tuesday afternoon, I would say start the countdown clock because you're going to have something. Now, the speculation that we've been hearing is that it's dinosaur-themed, Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, something like that. Speculation. Keith Elwin on there. Now, Keith was on the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, and Keith talked about things that he liked in his games. And, like, he likes having upper flippers. He likes having toys that change states. This was all in the Loser Kid interview. Now, Rick Nagel writes the rule set based on Keith's idea of the rules, I think, so that would potentially be something that we would look forward to in this Dinosaur Jurassic release. Yep. And then I think we have a new artist that's coming on board at Stern that might be doing some artwork there. Exciting stuff, man. It is exciting stuff. And everything that I've heard kind of off the record, and not anybody that works at Stern, but people that have access have said that this game is going to be shocking. Now, I hope it's fun. I hope it's something that – I mean, Jurassic Park's a huge theme, right? Oh, absolutely. Does that appeal to you, like a Jurassic theme? It does. I mean, honestly, you and I have talked that the next game that I bring in the basement might actually be the next game released, just because I think I'll be at a point where that might be one that I'd go after. So I have an original Jurassic Park now that I'm kind of waiting to see what happens with this one, and maybe offload that and get the new one, if that's what it is. Well, I know that we'll stream Jurassic Park or Jurassic World or Godzilla, whatever the dinosaur is that comes out. So that'll be fun to do that and kind of get a first look, and then you can kind of test it out and see if you want one. Because we'll have a pro, right, that flipping out pinball will be throwing our way for streaming purposes. And then you can decide if you want to get a premium. You know, the one thing that I was thinking that would be a really cool moment if it's a Jurassic Park machine would be, like, you would need some type of, like, cup of water mod that would, like, go in the play field. And then when the T-Rex starts walking and you hear that boom, the shaker's got to go off on each step and you've got to see the ripples in that water. And then everything has to fade on the play field and you have to have that T-Rex come out. That would be really awesome, man. I would dig that. Little known fact, when they were filming the movie, the director wanted that cup of water to move that certain way. And they tried everything in their power to get the speakers, this, that, and the other, and they couldn't do it. So finally, they drilled a hole through the dashboard, used a guitar string, and put it at the bottom of the cup to actually get that thing to reverberate that way. Ah, see? That's awesome, man. Well, I'm sure the mod makers could do something like that. But if it's a Jurassic pin, it's going to be a great seller on theme alone. It's iconic. Yeah, it is iconic. It's just one of those iconic themes that's like a never-ending, you know, it's timeless. It's like a Wizard of Oz at some point in my eyes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we all grew up watching Jurassic Park. And when I think about, like, you think about movies that have special effects, there were movies that, like, impacted you with special effects. And Jurassic Park, for me, I mean, it's like, wow, it doesn't get any better than this. When you saw those dinosaurs in real time, it was just awesome. So, you know, we'll see here shortly. So, again, another, a cornerstone game is going to be released here in a couple days. Star Wars pin is not a cornerstone. It is just another pin that's going in the market that's targeting different people. And you're going to see more of this from Stern. It's not going to be just that you're going to see different types of pins that appeal to different types of people. And long and short, they're just literally trying to expand the market and getting different people exposed to pinball. And that's really what it's about. Absolutely. Hopefully everybody realizes that and stops being so critical on this. Yeah, don't be mad. I think after you kind of listen to what George, how he articulated the approach on this pin, if you're still upset about it, then it's kind of like ignorance on your part, in my opinion. I don't know why you would be upset about it. Now, I can understand if you had concerns thinking that the direction of the company was going to be more towards this approach, but it's not. It's just it's something in addition to what they're offering on a regular basis. So the more pinball, the better. And that's the kind of way that I look at it. And as long as you've got the quality there. Oh, yeah. There's no reason to be mad at Star Wars. And they're just expanding the product line. You know what occurred to me, too, is that even at that lower price point of $39.99, which is the lowest advertised price, it's got to appeal to the higher-end Star Wars collector, too, that might not want to put $5,000 or $6,000 into a pinball machine. But now you can get one at $4,000. You tap into that Star Wars market. This was a very interesting title to do this with because there are those hardcore Star Wars collectors And maybe you do snatch up another percentage of those that have four grand that they want to put into a pinball machine I sure that not the only thing Easily. I mean, think about it. Some of these guys got $3,000 Millennium Falcons hanging from their seat. Right. Exactly. Stuff like that. I wonder if everybody, Jeff, would be interested in one of these. We have to get one and have him play one and see. Because I want to play it. I want to play it. How about we play a little Drain It or Save It? Let's do it. it's time for this week's edition of drain it or save it drain it or save it's brought to you by lermods.com offering you custom quality pinball playfield mods and lighting for your machine l-e-r-m-o-d-s visit lermods.com today the first item we have up for discussion on drain it or save it how about this bill Steve Ritchie designs a high speed three before he retires do you drain that or save that? Absolutely gotta save that, dude. I saw that earlier and I was like, absolutely. Great question. Love to see another high speed and have like a red light camera in it and modernize it a little bit. Yeah, I save it too. I would love to see a high speed three. Selfishly, I was hoping that his next release was going to be that high speed three. And it is Black Knight Sword of Rage, and I'm having a great time playing Black Knight Sword of Rage. If somebody that wasn't a huge Black Knight fan, I appreciate this latest installment of the game. High speed three would be something that's exciting. And I don't think it's something that Steve would not consider at some point. So depending on how the market sways and what people are looking for, I can see Steve Ritchie potentially... Now, some people are going to be like, well, no, because he already did this and it didn't go as planned. I disagree. I think that we could potentially see a high speed before Steve rides off into the sunset. I think high speed was definitely a more iconic game than people give it credit for. Yeah, absolutely. Now, how about this one, Bill? Deep Roots Raza, which is, you know, short for Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land. It gets released at a price point of $3,999 or less on Drain It or Save It. Drain it? Drain it. There's no way. No way? I just put out a pinball machine at $39.99. I know they're not directly competing with Deep Root potential pricing, but it lied heavily on my mind when I saw the price point because I was thinking to myself, okay, now this is potentially a viable pinball machine at the $4,000 price point. And when I thought about Deep Root, I thought to myself, well, they have to kind of get themselves a $5,000 or less. So do you see DeepRoot being able to come in with their first release at $4,000? I don't think so. I think just the cabinet materials alone would change that. Just between that and the coils and stuff like that, anyone that's built a pinball machine, buying all these parts brand new, you're in the thousands and thousands of dollars, even if you're buying them in mass quantities. And I'm sure they're not going to be pumping out 12,000 RASs in the first six months, so I don't think the price point would be there. Yeah, I don't think so either. I'm going to drain this. I think everybody would like to be at a $4,000 price point, but you heard Mr. Gomez talk earlier that, listen, there are distributors and there are ways that they could kind of cut people out of the game, but it just doesn't make sense. You need a distribution model, and that does add to the price. So $4,000, I think, is an incredible price point. Can Deeproot come out and do something like that? No, and I don't think that they're trying to do something like that. I think when they get their game out, whenever that comes, the price point will be higher than $39.99. Yep. And finally, Chicago Gaming Company, their next release, whatever it may be, it will be revealed before the end of the year, before the end of 2019. Do we see a game revealed from CGC? I don't think so. I'm going to drain it. No? That's it? Monster Bash is still relatively new. They're still getting all these stuff out in the world. and it wouldn't make sense to drop another one right now when they're still working on trying to get caught up on the last game in my eyes. I'm going to agree with you, too. I'm going to drain that. And also, I think we will potentially see another run of maybe some Medieval Madnesses. And, you know, I don't know. We'll see. But I would agree. I'm going to drain this. I think that we see the next reveal sometime in 2020, and I wonder at that point if the games will be shipping before the end of 2020. But right now I know that they're doing well with Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness, and just recently, Monster Bash Remake. So to kind of sum it up on Drain It or Save It, Steve Ritchie designs a high-speed three before retiring. Myself and Bill, we both saved it. Deep Roots Raza gets released at a price point of $3,999 or less. We both drained that. And CGC's next release will be revealed before the end of the year. We both drained that. Now, one of the rare times we actually agreed on all three. Yeah, but I'll double down on this and say that we'll probably see it at TPF next year maybe. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We'll see what happens. We'll see. So, Bill, I mean, as far as us and pinball lately, what's been going on with you in particular? You got anything moving and shaking? Yeah, so Whirlwind's getting ready to leave first week in August. And then the famous Whirlwind. Yeah, actually, the Whirlwind has had a mention on like 55 of our 62 episodes. I'm looking forward to being done with it. But it's going away, actually. And other news on Whirlwind, the Chrome Wireform showed up today. Did it really? It did. I thought that that was never showing up. Yeah, I thought that was, you know. Congratulations. I was floored. I'm like, what in the heck is this? Open the box up, and I'm like, no kidding. Yeah, that's impressive. You know, the final piece of the mystery. So that's going to go on, and then the new buyer will be coming up first week in August. And then after that, I'm getting a Munsters. Cool. And then possibly, I don't know, maybe an Aerosmith or Stern's next game. Stern's next game. Moving and shaking over there. I have, first of all, we mentioned that I was trying to convert my garage into a game room. And last week I received an awesome email from Todd Anderson. He's a listener of the show. Now, he didn't just write me an email. He gave me a video tour of his garage game room conversion, which I thought was unbelievable. Actually, it was a garage to a workout facility conversion because then when you went into his basement, he had his game room kind of converted down there. And what he had done with the garage gave me some great ideas as to what I want to do as far as the approach to the garage itself. And he's got a pretty incredible game room. So, Todd, I wanted to thank you for sending out that information. And that was super, super fun to kind of watch. I also wanted to mention that if you remember episodes back, I mentioned that I'm going to be retheming a Stern Meteor. And I had teamed up with Brian Holderman, who was the artist for our special one lit pinball podcast T-shirts for the retheme. Now, we are in the process right now of starting the Translight design, and he showed me some things that ideas that he's talking about where he'd like to go with the pinball machine. And I got to say that the two of us, again, are on the same page now to kind of help with funding the whole restoration process and the whole retheme. What we're what we're contemplating doing is selling copies of the Translight of the retheme for the meteor. So if anybody might have interest in that, if you're a fan of Brian Holderman or if you're just a fan of pinball art in general, I'll be able to share some information going down as we get closer to going to print on the Translight. Because we're going to start the Translight first. The production machine will have a mirrored back glass. And you'd be surprised who's on board as far as helping out with this. And I'm going to be giving everybody special mentions that have done this. Because when this machine eventually goes to shows, I want to see how everybody from the pinball community was able to kind of collaborate and do something that I think is special. I do want to be clear. The translates that we're selling will be in an effort to help fund the machine, and nobody's holding a gun to my head to do this. So it's just a way to kind of share some artwork and help lessen some of the costs. Yeah, but you know what, though? I've got to jump in on this, though. I mean, how many times have you seen alternate pinball art that you can't find, can't get, And now you're going to be offering something to the rest of the pinball world. So even though they might not have the game, they can have something cool that would go on your said machine. Yeah, I don't think people are going to be swapping the Translight into their Meteor because I don't know that that makes any sense. That being said, again, if you're a fan of pinball artwork and you see as the machine gets some traction, maybe it's something you want to follow, we'll definitely offer a piece of artwork for purchase and affordably. We're not into trying to mark this stuff up to make crazy money. But for it to make sense for Brian and myself and put some proceeds back in, all my proceeds back into the machine. It's not free. I get it. It's not free on the machine itself. It won't be an $8,000 meteor, hopefully, right? Well, you know what? That's what it's looking like right now. It might be upwards in that idea. So we'll see. Anything else you've got going on there? You know what? Honestly, just looking forward to the next Cornerstone game. um you know this is kind of the you know the calm right before the storm hits yeah it's exciting so i mean to see it like kind of like a reveal that might not have been focused on the pinball uh you know the diehard pinballer but then you know like the the following week you've got a cornerstone game yeah they're kind of trolled they're kind of trolled you know the pinball people and i like it you know what i would like to do because i imagine that stern is going to reveal this game uh well Well, George said within a few days or sometime soon, right? I'm assuming Jack Danger will stream the game, right, from Stern. Now, the last time a new pinball machine was revealed via a stream, it was Buffalo Pinball. They had streamed Willy Wonka, and they did that. Where was that at? At MGC. At MGC. And we had that tailgate stream for JJP's Wonka release, remember? Hey, if we find out, maybe we'll tailgate stream this. Yeah, I want to tailgate stream the next Stern title and then take everybody that's in our stream and let's just go ahead and raid the Jack Danger stream. But let's have everybody have an opportunity to kind of like prior to kickoff. Let's have everybody get together again. Let's let's get some drinks flowing. Let's get some conversation going. Let's get some speculation and let's just see where it goes. I mean, I would love to do that. Should we do it? Absolutely. Those are great nights, man. I mean, it's going to be heavily reliant on when when the stream is actually going to take place. So, yeah, but we'll see. I mean, and if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense because I would love to do a tailgate stream, you know, for the next release after that. Absolutely. So we'll see. I do want to offer, and I think we both want to offer, congratulations to Dwight Sullivan. And the reason that we want to congratulate him is because that Game of Thrones code update is finally in the public's hands. And Dwight's got to have such a sense of relief and accomplishment on this pinball machine because we knew behind the scenes that he was working on stuff. We just assumed it was a Game of Thrones, and he announced that he is also working on Ghostbusters and that it's taking so long because the Ghostbusters code is even bigger than the Game of Thrones code, and that's why they've got additional resources on that game. So, I mean, you've got Game of Thrones, you've got Ghostbusters coming out. Congratulations to White. And for those of you that had ever doubted the man as far as, like, finishing his games, I think you guys are in for not only a huge treat but a huge surprise because this is going to be major. yeah i think uh definitely stern has definitely made good on their promises of updating codes and uh coming back back and revisiting things so you know they they aren't disappointing you know i mean it's good stuff it's it's great to be in this this uh era of pinball in all honesty no and more importantly you know dwight sullivan's not disappointing i mean this guy's been working tirelessly we know just because from a personal standpoint we know how much time he's got available for his own personal time and it's not a lot which is none and it's not because he's got a second job somewhere else. His primary job, his love, his passion is Stern Pinball and it's writing code. And you guys that have waited and have been along for the ride are going to get the ultimate payoff. And I'm just excited to see it. So congratulations, Dwight. Congratulations, everybody that stuck around. And I'm glad that he's proven the naysayers to be wrong. I want to thank the correspondents. We noticed we had Brian Cosner. Cos stepped aboard today and he's covering American Pinball for us. So thank you, Cos, for covering that. Thank you. Dr. John had the week off from Spooky Pinball. Ryan Claytor with Multimorphic. Thanks so much for your submission this week. And then, of course, you've got Steve Haberman, who's rocking out JJP. Congratulations. You've made it for two episodes. No, we appreciate it, man. We appreciate all the effort there. We appreciate it. I want to thank Lermonts.com for sponsoring Drainer to Save It. Robert Kim, thank you very much. I want to thank the listeners for helping us make the show great. And without your support, we couldn't do it. That being said, if you won a prize on our one-year anniversary show, we've got last call here for you guys to claim it. We've got a couple of stragglers that have yet to claim prizes. So we'll hold on to those to the end of the month before we tell the manufacturers that there's no reason to ship them. Or if we have it in our possession, we will relaunch it into the next prize pack. But you've got to listen to claim your prizes. Absolutely. That's just part of the deal. If you play the lottery and you don't check the ticket, dude, how are you going to know if you win? Right, exactly. The lottery doesn't call you up and say, hey, I think you might have charged this on your credit card. And just checking to see if you have the winning numbers. You've got to contact us. The government's countdown starts, and they're waiting to put that money in the roads or whatever they can find. Right, right, right. Hey, so exciting things happening at Expo this year. We're going to talk about this maybe next episode because we'll just talk about that next episode. But, you know, it's always fun, man. That's going to be Episode 62 for Bill Webb. I am Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.