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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News September 2020 pinball industry news recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 6m·analyzed·Oct 6, 2020
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TL;DR

JJP launches Guns N' Roses to acclaim; Deep Root Pinball cancels September reveal amid design criticism.

Summary

A September 2020 pinball industry recap discussing Jersey Jack Pinball surprise reveal of Guns N' Roses (JJP6) with innovative light show and sound design, and Deep Root Pinball dramatic failed launch attempt on September 21st after inviting press to their San Antonio facility. The episode analyzes Deep Root Pinball unconventional cabinet innovations (floating backbox, touchscreen pin bar, hydraulic glass lift) while questioning whether innovation in non-playfield areas compensates for lack of core gameplay innovation.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball JJP6 is Guns N' Roses pinball based on the Not In This Lifetime Tour

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston, editor of Pinball Magazine, announced this after the game was revealed on October 5th, 2020

  • Guns N' Roses has an unprecedented light show unlike any pinball machine before

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston's post-reveal commentary describing the game's light integration

  • The game features 21 full-length Guns N' Roses studio master recordings and original music by Splash and Duff McKagan

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston reviewing official game specifications

  • Deep Root Pinball cancelled their September 21st launch after feedback from six invited guests at their San Antonio facility

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston and Martin Ayer discussing the failed launch event

  • Deep Root Pinball prototype features a floating backbox on poles and a touchscreen pin bar instead of a traditional start button

    high confidence · Photos of Raza leaked after the cancelled September 21st event, analyzed by hosts

  • Raza's lock bar had pointy corners instead of curved edges, causing comfort concerns similar to Stellar Wars and Full Throttle

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston and Martin Ayer discussing design flaws visible in leaked photos

  • Collector's Edition of Guns N' Roses sold out within 90 minutes of the announcement

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston received sales mailing noting distributors had already sold out of CE models

  • Deep Root Pinball innovations focus on cabinet design rather than playfield mechanics and actual gameplay

    medium confidence · Martin Ayer's analysis of the leaked Raza images and This Week in Pinball article

Notable Quotes

  • “this game has such an incredible light show, unlike we've ever seen on any pinball machine before”

    Jonathan Houston @ Post-reveal segment — Establishes Guns N' Roses as a landmark achievement in pinball lighting technology and theme integration

  • “They didn't launch...the plan was on the 21st of September, they announced...But then, well, it tried.”

    Martin Ayer @ Mid-episode Deep Root discussion — Emphasizes Deep Root's failed launch despite heavy promotion and teasing

  • “Eventually people don't buy a game because they like the cabinet. They buy a game because they like actually the game that's being played on the playfield.”

    Martin Ayer @ Deep Root cabinet innovation analysis — Core criticism of Deep Root's design philosophy—prioritizing cabinet innovation over core gameplay

  • “it takes people from outside to come along and point out exactly the same things that your internal people have been telling you”

    Jonathan Houston @ Deep Root feedback discussion — Suggests internal awareness of design problems at Deep Root but lack of management responsiveness

  • “Jersey Jack Pinball is exactly showing Deepwood like this is how it's done”

    Martin Ayer @ Comparison of reveal strategies — Contrasts JJP's effective five-day teaser campaign with Deep Root's poorly executed launch strategy

  • “It is actually Guns N' Roses pinball, and the game is based on the Not In This Lifetime Tour”

    Jonathan Houston @ Post-reveal announcement — Official confirmation of the long-speculated JJP6 identity

  • “they've been trying to innovate almost everything about the pinball game except what happens with the ball under the glass”

    Jonathan Houston @ Deep Root innovation critique — Summarizes the fundamental mismatch between Deep Root's cabinet-focused approach and what players actually value

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonMartin AyerpersonEric MeunierpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyDeep Root PinballcompanyRobert MuellerpersonSteve Bowdenperson

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball officially reveals JJP6 as Guns N' Roses pinball on October 5, 2020 after two weeks of teasing campaign

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'It is actually Guns N' Roses pinball, and the game is based on the Not In This Lifetime Tour'

  • ?

    product_launch: Guns N' Roses ships code-complete on launch day with games already delivered to European distributors; Collector's Edition sells out within 90 minutes

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'the game will ship code complete and we're very likely also to see games already delivered in Europe...certain distributors already sold out of collector's editions'

  • ?

    product_concern: Deep Root's Raza prototype features pointy rectangular lock bar with sharp corners instead of curved edges, causing hand comfort and safety concerns similar to past problematic machines (Stellar Wars, Full Throttle)

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'the lock bar that they used on this prototype basically had pointy corners...those games were not comfortable to play in the long term'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Deep Root Pinball's credibility damaged by cancelled September 21st launch after months of heavy promotion; this is their third failed launch attempt (March 2018, March 2020 COVID cancellation, September 2020)

    high · Martin Ayer: 'having promoted this so heavily...this was the third attempt to launch after March...in 2018 at the Texas Pinnacle Festival'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Deep Root focuses innovation on cabinet mechanics (floating backbox, touchscreen pin bar, hydraulic glass lift) rather than playfield gameplay; industry observers criticize this mismatch with what players actually value

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.378

0:00
Jersey Jack Pinball reveals new game Deep Root Pinball fails to launch Virtual Pinball Expo interview Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined here with I'm Martin Ayer, I'm the editor of Pinball News and we're here to look back at the wonderful month and a very interesting month it was too, of September 2020. Yes, sir. And we'll also be looking at a bit of the first week of October, which actually we're recording this October 4th, Sunday evening, local time.
0:46
But, well, basically jumping into our first headline, Jersey Jack Pinball will reveal a new game tomorrow. And we'll be covering it. Yes, and we will be covering that in this podcast, or actually I will, because Mark and me are actually leaving on holiday tomorrow. So too bad Jersey Jack's Pinball didn't want to delay their launch. No, they didn't ask. I mean, I was really thoughtless of them, but yeah. So I launched in this new game on October the 5th, and I and my partner go away on holiday on October the 5th. So there we go. I asked Jack about it. He said he didn't get the memo. that's typical communications crap never mind next time yeah ok so but we can discuss what is leading up to this new review because actually I think personally it's quite interesting and it also has to do with events earlier this month because basically Jersey Jack Pinball have been teasing their 6th Jersey Jack Pinball title for I'd say about 2 weeks now First, there were a couple of videos in which the next chart-topping hit for Jersey Jack Pimble was announced, and a couple of teasers like that. And in the past five days, actually including today, we've had photos on Jersey Jack Pimble social media of Eric Meunier, in one way or another,
2:23
with elements of his new game. Yes, that's right. Up until now there's been absolutely no acknowledgement of what the title of this game is. And I add to that, distributors have been briefed that there is a new game coming, and everybody at Jersey Jack is referring to it as JJP6, but nobody is mentioning any title or confirming anything. well i think last in our last monthly podcast we did an interview with jack and um again you know he at that point he wasn't able to tell us exactly when the launch was going to be but it wasn't long after that that uh the 5th of october was promoted on jersey jack pinball social media as being launched today right and but even then you know that it's although there have been hints dropped about what the title is going to be and i think we said then that we thought it was going Guns N' Roses, but there's been no confirmation of that and no direct link to that from any of the Jersey Jackpin Ball social media images or videos or posts. So we're assuming it's going to be that, but you know we could be in for a big surprise. Right, Harry Potter, surprise us! However, I think it's clear that it's an Eric Mounier game. Yes. Well, he's the lead on that game. Yes. Which is, well, Eric is very versatile inside Jersey Tech, Pimble, obviously he's designing, but he's not afraid to roll up his sleeves and help out in another department if necessary. No, he's certainly got plenty of knowledge of the electronics inside the game, because that was the original role within the company, as the electronics engineer, to redesign various parts of the game's hardware system. Right. He's done a great job with that, and I think it seems to be pretty rock solid these days, compared to how it started out. But, yeah, as you say, he took that leap into game design with Pirates of the Caribbean. Right. I think he's first, and this is his second. Yes, and his first. Stan McVallie game?
Jack Danger
person
Jean-Paul DeWinperson
Duff McKaganperson
Slashperson
This Week in Pinballorganization
Guns N' Rosesgame
Razagame
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
[name withheld pending review]event
Stern Pinballcompany
Ballycompany
Heighway Pinballcompany

high · Jonathan Houston: 'they've been trying to innovate almost everything about the pinball game except what happens with the ball under the glass'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Guns N' Roses features unprecedented light show and sound integration described as unlike any pinball machine previously released

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'this game has such an incredible light show, unlike we've ever seen on any pinball machine before'

  • ?

    leak_detection: Two leaked photos of Deep Root's Raza prototype surface after September 21st cancellation, revealing floating backbox and touchscreen pin bar design before official explanation

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'two pictures of the Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land...were leaked...They did show the game from the front and from the side'

  • ?

    marketing_strategy: Jersey Jack Pinball executes novel five-day teaser campaign with daily photos of game development, contrasted as effective reveal strategy versus Deep Root's failed attempt

    high · Martin Ayer: 'Jersey Jack Pinball is exactly showing Deepwood like this is how it's done...a novel approach'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community heavily speculated about JJP6 identity as Guns N' Roses based on teaser clues; high expectations set for game innovation

    high · Martin Ayer: 'although there have been hints dropped about what the title is going to be...we thought it was going Guns N' Roses, but there's been no confirmation'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Deep Root invited six journalists/podcasters to San Antonio facility for launch event; their feedback prompted immediate cancellation of announced September 21st reveal

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'the weekend before, they invited a group of six various people...they traveled down to San Antonio...based on the feedback...Deep Root decided to completely postpone'

  • ?

    content_signal: This Week in Pinball published major article about Deep Root's cabinet innovations co-written by Robert Mueller following the cancelled launch; Jersey Jack's Guns N' Roses received extensive early media coverage despite minimal official photos

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'This Week in Pinball had a deep dive ready to go...It's very surprising that the Jersey Jack pinball website hardly didn't have any pics'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Guns N' Roses Collector's Edition sells out within 90 minutes of announcement; three-tier model structure (Pro/Limited/CE) with varying flipper counts and playfield configurations

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'the standard model has three flippers, the limited and collector's edition have four flippers and they also have an additional upper playfield'

    • 4:44
    Yes, so it would appear. Now, what we do know is, and remember this has been recorded the day before the actual game revealed, so we're only going on the pictures that have been produced on Jersey Jack Pimble's Facebook page or Instagram or elsewhere. But, yeah, as you said, it's been a novel and interesting tease because they've been doing the five days as it were, of Jersey Jack Pinball, which could be seen as a bit of a slight or a bit of a poke of fun at the five days of Deep Roots that were planned for March 2018, back at the Texas Pinball Festival. So they've been doing a five days of JDP, posting a different picture related to the game. Yeah, which is, and I don't want to get ahead of myself with the next topic, but if we're looking at building up a reveal, then I think Jersey Jack Pinball is exactly showing Deepwood like this is how it's done.
    5:53
    Yeah, and it's actually... I wouldn't say it's been too widely promoted, but the promotions they have done have been very solid and very effective, I'd say. Right, and I don't think we've ever seen anything like this from any Pimmel manufacturer, at least in the past 20 years?
    6:15
    No, no, it's a novel approach. So we should probably go back and look at what those five daily pictures were. Right. Started off with a picture of Eric standing next to the back of an unpopulated playfield. Right. Okay, so from that you can see all the inserts and the switch holes. That also tells us, yes, and that tells us it's a standard body game. Exactly, yes. That's how we know that much, or that's how we knew that much straight away. There's also some cutouts in the playfield for some toys. That's clear, and scoops.
    6:54
    But, you know, from a blank playfield, there's only so much you can learn about the layout of the game. It's got one in-lane on one side and two in-lanes on the other side. Right. It has... I was trying to work out how many flippers the game has from that. I reckon at least three, and possibly four, but I think probably three, just by working out where the position of the flipper plate mount can go on there.
    7:25
    Other than that, there's a scoop by the looks of it. I think there's a magnet in there, or I think the cutout, one of the circular cutouts will be a spinning disc of some kind. Which, well, if it's Guns N' Roses, that would glean itself to be a record or a CD or something like that. But it could also be something completely different, a pop-up mechanism, you never know.
    7:50
    Yeah, okay, so anyway, that was the first picture. Right. The second one, that was Eric standing above the underside of a populated playfield, with the underside being up, and Eric with head and shoulders above that. Yeah, it looked like it was on a production line, and the focus was obviously on Eric, and the playfield was somewhat defocused as a result. because of the depth of field of the shot, so that couldn't make out an awful lot about the playfield, other than the fact that it looked pretty complex to me.
    8:32
    Yeah. In terms of devices on the other side of the playfield. Right. So, and then the third image that they revealed was actually a shot of the production line where you have these playfields rolling down, all upside down, where you only see the underside of the playfield, which is the usual of playfields being already assembled underside.
    9:00
    Yeah, that was certainly a bit more revealing, because you could see where some of the mechanisms are. You could try and work out what they are, and you could relate that to the earlier picture of the blank playfield. Right. You could see exactly where things were sitting on it. And, well, it's hardly worth going into it in too much depth, because by the time you're listening to this, you will actually know exactly what is in the game. So let's not get into speculation, because it's fairly pointless at this stage. Right. So, yeah, then the fourth game that was revealed showed Eric Meunier sitting on top of a box of a new inbox, pinball boxed up, so to speak, where they blurred out the title, which model it is. And the fifth title, obviously, well, it's an interesting one. And I'm expecting actually a follow-up to the photo that I'm about to discuss right now. It shows Eric surrounded by boxes of new in-box pinball machine.
    10:22
    He's wrapped up and sealed. Exactly, ready to ship. But if you look carefully at the photo, you see that it's actually, the boxes are lined up in a, what's the word, symmetric way, arching at the top, and it appears that there's a couple of rows of boxes in a circular movement at the top. So I'm expecting this picture to be taken a larger focus, so to speak, so we can actually see what kind of shape they are trying to make. And it wouldn't surprise me if that had something to do with the logo of a particular band. and they try to create the logo or do something with that. A G shape, for instance, or an R shape or something like that? Yeah, something like that. I'm not sure what they're doing. And what I also can say, obviously, we talked to Jack last month, and in between the last podcast, I also talked to Jack. and I think it's obviously by now when you hear this it will be already out there but the game will ship code complete and we're very likely also to see games already delivered in Europe to European distributors. Right, okay, so by today, or by October the 5th, there will be games at distributors, yes? Yes.
    12:02
    Yeah, okay, I'd heard that somebody I know was expecting to get their game in their home on October the 5th. Right, which is actually very interesting, because if you, for example, look at storage reveals, Not all the time, but most of the time, Stern will announce a game, and then it will go into production after it's being announced. And that could be one or two weeks later, and in between that time, people can obviously order the game, but it's not being assembled or delivered.
    12:44
    No, there have been instances where the game has been available at launch, but it's not the norm. It's the exception, I would say. Yes.
    12:53
    So, anyway. Well, obviously, we can continue talking about the tease of Jersey Jack Pimple for the new game, but at the end of this podcast, basically, I will be covering what the new game is.
    13:07
    And obviously, we don't know yet, but it might actually very well be that we have an interview with somebody from Jersey Jack Pimple about the game as well. Yeah, so Jonathan will be covering that while I'm sitting by the seaside, admiring the views over the English channel.
    13:27
    Well, good for you. Well, assuming it's not pouring with rain like it has been for the past week. Oh, because it's foggy. Yeah, well, even so, I'm sure we'll find something to do. But, yes, so Jonathan will pick up with that at the end of this podcast and cover everything to do with the launch of Jersey Jack game number six. Okay, so I'm going to make an edit right here. Obviously, this podcast was recorded last night, and in the meantime, the Six Jersey Jack pinball game has been released, as has been rumored for months and months, if not longer. It is actually Guns N' Roses pinball, and the game is based on the Not In This Lifetime Tour. the object of the game is certainly to recreate the concert feel, if you would go to such a concert. And from the images and the video that I've seen so far, this game has such an incredible light show, unlike we've ever seen on any pinball machine before. So congrats to Jersey Jack, Pinball, the entire design team and everybody there on what most certainly looks like to be a hit game that will not easily be met with much competition by other competitors. I mean, this is really, especially when it comes to light show and sound integration and, well, basically theme integration, I would say, I am very impressed. So, here's a couple of details about the game. Obviously, there's various websites where you can find everything listed by now. Just quickly, there's three models, a standard, limited and a collector's edition. The standard model has three flippers, the limited and collector's edition have four flippers and they also have an additional upper playfield. The game features 21 full-length Guns N' Roses studio master recordings, as well as original pinball music created and performed by Splash, and exclusive original instrumentation and sound effects recording performed by Splash, Duff, McKeegan and Rich and Fortress. So, lots of new music and sound effects available in this game. each model has its own art package the playfield art looks identical on all three models but the cabinet and back glass artwork is different it's been created by four different artists under art direction of Jean-Paul De Wyn hopefully we will be talking to Jean-Paul De Wyn about working on this game later this week. And that will be part of a bonus episode that we're planning to record soon.
    16:56
    The game is really, really impressive. You just have to go online and see for yourself. This week in pinball had a deep dive ready to go with lots of picks, which is interesting to note, not only because they had the pictures, but mostly because it's very surprising that the Jersey Jack pinball website hardly didn't have any pics of the games, no close-ups. You had to look really well to find a Playfield photo or the flyers of the game. So kudos to This Week in Pinball for that.
    17:32
    There was a sales mailing which I received 90 minutes after the game was revealed, and at that point I already received notes that certain distributors already sold out of collector's editions. So chances are that people received this mailing and are no longer able to order a collector's edition, but okay, I'm just putting it out there and that's what I noticed.
    17:59
    I didn't receive a press release, which is also kind of interesting, other than the sales mailing that I received, so I'm not sure whether there is an official press release.
    18:11
    But I don't know what to make of that. I was expecting one and I didn't see one yet. So, as I mentioned, well, originally the plan was, when Martin and I recorded this podcast, that I would record a section to insert at the end with additional interviews. It appears that, as far as I understood, everybody at Jersey Jack who I would like to talk to is currently busy with other stuff.
    18:44
    And it appears no one is available. So we'll be talking to them probably later this week. I'll record a special bonus episode and I'll put that up whenever it's ready. Whenever we talk to people who are discussing stuff that we haven't heard anywhere else yet. So, that's the update for now on the New Jersey Jack Game Guns and Roses. And for now, let's continue with the September recap and pick up where Martin and I left off. And there will be no additional extra segment recorded to follow at the end of this podcast. But this is the insertion. And from here, Martin and I will continue discussing September 2020.
    19:36
    I think the biggest story of the last month was the announced reveal or launch by Deep Root Pinball, and then that didn't go exactly as planned. So there's a lot to talk about that. Oh, well, we can keep it very brief. They didn't launch.
    19:54
    No, well, they kind of did. But then, well, it tried. Basically, the plan was on the 21st of September, they announced and had teased in the lead-up to that, saying that this was going to be their big reveal, or at least hinting at it. It was just, they sent out information about that.
    20:19
    But the weekend before, they invited a group of six various people for a Hoodoo podcast website to come and basically be guests at that launch and give their feedback. Yeah, and it's interesting to note that I think most of them were all located in Texas, except for two, I think.
    20:45
    So most of them, I wouldn't say they are local, but they are at least in Texas and sort of near or within traveling distance of San Antonio, except for two people, two of those. And so what apparently happened is these people, they traveled down to San Antonio. They were put in a hotel. They were taken out to dinner, and they got the tour of the facility. they basically saw a lot of what was going on at Deep Root, and we're not exactly sure what happened, but based on the feedback that D6 gave to Robert Mueller and Stephen Bowden and other people around, Deep Root decided to completely postpone their announced reveal or launch date of September 21st. Yeah, which is kind of gobsmacking, really, that having promoted this so heavily. And for weeks, they teased it for like three weeks that this reveal was coming up. Yeah, this was the third attempt to launch after March, as I mentioned earlier, in 2018 at the Texas Pinnacle Festival, five days of Deep Root, which was cancelled because they weren't ready for it. The event was meant to take place this March in San Antonio at the facility where you and I, Jonathan, were all planning to go there along with lots of other people. Right, and then COVID happened. Yeah, so I guess you can't really blame DeepRoot for that. No, but you can wonder what were they going to show because... Well, quite. Yes, it was six months later and apparently they had to cancel their announced review.
    22:54
    And so, okay, we can discuss about what we think of that, but I think what's more important to talk about what we've seen and what we haven't seen.
    23:09
    Yes, okay. Well, having announced that they were pulling the launch through a message on their website, and, well, we had an email on the launch day, didn't we, because it wasn't going to happen, from Robert. they put a message up on the DeepRoot website saying that, basically announcing that the launch had been cancelled due to feedback and I think that message is still there which is very strange for a company looking to remove itself to have an apology caption up for so long. Yeah, and no new launch date has been announced either. No. So what happened then was that two pictures of the Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land, or Raza, as we can call it, or Raza from now on, so we're always having to say all that again, two pictures of that were leaked. okay and two pictures from the launch event now it's not known by us at least who leaked them and to be honest it doesn't really matter but they did show the game from the front and from the side right and that of course prompted a whole lot of speculation and questions and yes and we might have to explain why because the game there's probably well there's a couple of things that people bothered about that game or that they noticed, but the most noticeable is that the game has a sort of a floating back box, I would say, which is on, well, you know, it's kind of like two poles, yes, isn't it? That's holding up the back box, and the game has, instead of a start button, it has a touchscreen above the apron.
    25:10
    Yeah, it kind of built into the lock bar, I guess you'd say. Yes. And that's where people start a game. And what also was very concerning to a lot of people is that the lock bar that they used on this prototype basically had pointy corners.
    25:33
    Yes, it was basically a rectangular block rather than having a nice curved front to it and curved corners that wouldn't harm the hands. Right. So we've seen this kind of thing before with other games like Stellar Wars. Not only that, Full Throttle from Highway of the Book of the Mind. Yeah, yeah. And those games were not comfortable to play in the long term. No, exactly. But as well as not knowing exactly what it was that were said that caused the cancellation of the launch.
    26:11
    What's equally amazing is the fact that these problems existed and nobody at the company appeared to be aware of them. Or people were aware of them, but management didn't want to listen to them. Well, it is sometimes the case that it takes people from outside to come along and point out exactly the same things that your internal people have been telling you, and then it's taken on board. Right. Then just listening to your own staff because they might not have the authority. But if people realise that the rest of the world is thinking the same, then, yeah, it carries more weight at that point. But, yeah, as you said earlier, was this what was going to be shown in March or has there been development six months since? And also take in mind that Rasa was actually shown at the Houston Arcade Expo in November of last year. Two prototypes were there which were actually playable. And then they basically redeveloped the game or tried to improve the game. and they, well, that resulted in now they have one playing game, but from what I understood from listening to various podcasts, people were able to play the game, but only to a certain extent, which is telling me that there's probably incomplete software and they were afraid that people would try to activate certain modes so that would not be there. It's just an assumption, but that's the feeling that I got.
    28:02
    Let's be clear, the people who were there, nearly all of them, I think, were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. Right. So they were only allowed to talk about things or show things that Robert and Pete Brute had agreed can be shown or talked about. or have been already being shared in public and as such are public knowledge, so then they can be talked about.
    28:29
    Yes. I don't know whether that would include things that have been leaked, like those images. You know, if those images were leaked, would everybody else then be able to talk about those? I think they did anyway. so well as it turned out um there was uh there was an the next stage which which to me looked like a bit of a bit of panicking oh absolutely yes i feel the same way i got the same impression so basically what happened is we have uh september 21st a uh a cancelled reveal which obviously is causing a shitstorm on social media, if you want to call it. Pardon my French, but basically that's... That's a very good description. Yeah, but basically that's what happened. And everybody started commenting on the two leaked photos. Everybody had an opinion on what would become known as the pin bar and floating back box and so the next move a day later is that This Week in Pinball published an article that was for a large part I suppose written by Robert Mueller of Deep Root himself completed with some elements of Jeff from This Week in Pinball in which Who was at the event. Yes, who was at the event. And with a lot of details on the innovations regarding the game and the Deepwood platform, if you will, as well as, and we'll get to that in a little bit, a full announcement of upcoming titles, which is very odd. But getting to the announced... obviously the pin bar was explained and what it does and how it's supposed to function and what have you. The back boxes were explained. The artwork on the back boxes was sort of explained. I don't have the article in front of me. If you want to read it completely firsthand, go to This Week in Pinball.
    30:43
    You have no trouble finding it. It's a very easy to find article about all basically describing in what way Diebold have been trying to raise the bar, if you want to call it that, in pinball. The interesting thing that I noticed, and obviously others as well, they've been trying to innovate almost everything about the pinball game except what happens with the ball under the glass. Yeah although I would say quite a lot of those innovations are ideas that have been tried before not necessarily adopted Right and some of them are techniques used in other industries for example the hydraulic system to lift the playfield glass which is basically coming from the car industry if you want yeah i mean but the fact that the glass is in a is basically in a magazine or a cassette with the side rails so you lift the whole thing out and lift it up in this case, which has been done with Bally. Bally did that in the past. They didn't have the hydraulics on it, but they did have the ability to pivot it around the bottom of the back box and raise it to get access to the playfield. But that obviously comes with the issues in that you need to have a high ceiling in order to lift that whole thing up. Yeah, and it appears that the glass is actually longer because it also has this section for a pinball but that could be cosmic uh what you would you um you could be fooled by that uh no it appeared to be uh it includes a frame yes through which the display is visible um but then the highway pinball also put their uh their playfield glass in in with the uh the side button you know the uh the side rails and that that whole thing was you could actually pull it off or you lift it off rather than pivot it up you could pivot it up as well you could just lift the whole thing off yeah and therefore you didn't need the height so that's what we've done before but it it actually makes things quite expensive compared to yeah and sliding the glass into it right and so the the what sort of resonated with me is yes there are a lot of innovations with the cabinet being tried by Deepwood. But eventually people don't buy a game because they like the cabinet. They buy a game because they like actually the game that's being played on the playfield.
    33:31
    True. I will say, there was quite a few things on there I did like. things like printing on the back of the play field where all the components are I'm sure that's useful it's been done before as well I think CERN is even doing that right now it's useful for construction you'd think as well when actually building the game to be able to have an idea of where everything goes to be able to bolt them on it's a confirmation of that the pin bar itself I'm in two minds about it I think it's actually a great control surface. Right, so did we cover what the pinball is? It's a touch screen with the width of a pinball machine basically above the apron and you start the game there but you also control your for example during the gameplay your MagnaSafe over there and it's also used for navigation if you're a service tech to look up if there's any switches not functioning or what have you. And it's completely replacing basically the traditional service menu where you have four buttons at your disposal, of which usually two are volume buttons. And, oh, well, you know the system if you're familiar with pinball machines. But then again, it's an innovation that's only applicable to the number of people that actually are going to use that menu or a lot fewer than the people actually playing the game. Yeah, I would actually almost counterintuitively say that I think that's one of its least useful functions, is for navigating the menus in the service and adjustments and audit menus. Because of the shape of the display, it's a really ultra-wide, not very tall panel. So if you imagine trying to put something like a playfield image on there, showing you where the location of all the switches are, all the lamps, the solenoids, you can't do it because it's the wrong shape. It's very wide and it's not tall. If you think, those who have seen it, like a Jersey Jack pinball, if you go into the service menu there you've got a picture on the right of the play field and on the left you've got the switches or the solenoid or the lamps and as you go through because of the shape of the display you can get it all on there I think this panel is not going to be that good at showing that kind of thing and the one in the back box is exactly the same shape it's VIFA but it is the same aspect ratio so I don't think that's a great thing I think the really good thing though is doing things like if you're logging in to get your game profile, then you obviously can have a keyboard on there, which you type your name in, rather than having to go left and right on the buttons to try and select the right letter and then press the start button in order to lock it in. And the same for putting high scores and that kind of thing in there. I don't think it's going to be great for doing things like scores, at least not until the end of the game, because if you remember, other companies have tried putting score displays down by the or the eight pro or towards the lock bar area and no one really liked that they always want to look up to see where the scores are yeah so it is interesting that you have a um
    37:07
    uh a display in this case below the flippers so it can help you during gameplay but then again you're supposed to be also blocks the view of the flippers to a degree as well because the The lock bar is a lot bigger. And, yeah, so. But, okay, so there is a certain innovation with this pin bar, whether it's a good one, okay, that's one thing. But, like I said, it appears all the innovations have to do with the cabinets and not so much with actual gameplay or interaction with the vault so far. at least as far as we've seen and that was actually what everybody was waiting for people want to be blown away by a game that they say like wow, how come nobody thought of this before yeah, true but I suppose the argument could be that there's only so much you can do on a playfield, so if you make the playfield part of an overall entertainment package including multiple displays then it adds value to whatever you are doing on the playfield. Right. If I may believe a certain podcaster Canada, I'll just say his name, were about to be blown away by the sixth game of Jersey Jack Pinball, which might put everybody behind that's putting out a game based on all the way that we used to play pinball, so to speak. But then again, we don't know at this point, it's still Sunday evening, we haven't seen that game yet, so we don't know how revolutionary it will be, although it's being rumoured that it might be, so. Well, they were certainly teasing, shall we say, the innovation in this game, with a video a while back saying, if you want innovation, you haven't seen anything yet. Yes.
    39:09
    So, let's see. Well, expectations are very high. But so, getting back to DeepRoot, here we have a company that has been innovating almost everything around the playfield, but not so much as far as we have seen on the playfield. And the other thing that actually I find rather disturbing is that, So we have a situation where six outsiders are invited to visit a pinball wannabe company. They leave their feedback, but we still have no idea what type of feedback they left. Everybody that has been on podcasts is saying, like, oh, this was wonderful, that was wonderful. But they left feedback that was apparently so serious that Deepwood decided to cancel their reveal. yeah and that's part of the NDA they're not allowed to talk about those things which is crazy really I don't know if everybody was aware they'd have to sign those NDAs when they first turned up or the impact that such NDAs would have yeah well it's it turns I don't know it turns a failed launch into almost a fiasco in a way if you could just be open and honest about it and say these are things which we didn't know, which we've now learned, and which we're going to address, then fine. You know, be open and honest about it. It's all about secret. You know, no one can say, no one can talk about what they saw for fear of being sued. You know, it's a crazy situation to put everybody in, and it doesn't look good for the company either. Right. So, and then, actually, I think we've covered the innovation bit. If you want to read more about it, please do this week in Finball. But then there is the announced upcoming games. And it's not just one or two. No, I think they announced like eight with another four or five also sort of announced but probably further away.
    41:21
    A few of them we knew, but there were certainly some surprises in there. Right. So, and in the meantime, so one of the themes announced as an upcoming title is Food Truck, which obviously reminded a lot of people instantly about Diner, which is a Mark Ritchie game from 1990, if I'm not mistaken.
    41:48
    I couldn't give you the year, but yeah, certainly a Mark Ritchie one, and also had kind of thoughts about Taxi as well. Right, which is also, yeah. There's another Mark Ritchie game. Yeah, exactly. And artwork images of that game were also shared, and I think one of the animators is no longer working for Deep Root as a Deep Root employee, and maybe he never was, but it's a third party, basically. and they put these, what I understood, artwork in their portfolio reel. So that was quickly discovered by someone. I don't know, forgive me about that.
    42:33
    But it's interesting to see. Okay, so the animations look very cool. The theme, I can think, for an original theme, sure.
    42:42
    Dinah worked in the 90s, so sure, why not? If you want to get back to not too complex pinball that's accessible for everybody, and I think that's exactly what Deep Road is trying to do, then I think footwork is a great thing. It would certainly be very different from Raza, if you were looking for a simpler playfield. But the most interesting in the food truck is a Barry Elser design. Right. And Barry has been a very busy boy. If we look at the other designs, I think he's probably listed for four or five games. I'm not even sure.
    43:19
    Certainly four. The second one, which he's down for, is a band. Based on the band The Who. Who? Yes, that's right. Ah, yes.
    43:33
    So we're not clear exactly what that's going to include, whether that's going to be based on their albums, their live performances, or any particular one album, it might be. I think you have this mask it does. Oh, okay. Okay, hopefully that comes with replacements then for when that happens. Yeah, so The Who is a music game, but from Barry. Another game from Barry is Gladiator. Yes. Not apparently based on the movie,
    44:06
    but actually the same kind of theme, I think. Yes. You start as a gladiator, So you try... You start as a slave and you build yourself... Yeah.
    44:17
    You become a gladiator by fighting in the arena, climbing the ramps. And then try and overthrow the emperor. Something like that, yeah. Take control of the Roman emperor. Yeah, and the interesting thing here is that game is based on the Space Cadet layout, which is a virtual pinball game that was included in Windows 95, I think. Yes, it's actually quite popular, I played it for quite a long time, I know other people do as well. But I guess they licensed that then? No, actually, no, they did not. From what I hear is they tried licensing it, and the reason that it's called Gladiator is because they couldn't license it, So they're using the layout because that can't be copyrighted or whatever, but they can't use the name Space Cadet, so that's why it became Gladiator.
    45:17
    Which is probably for the best because, as far as I remember playing Space Cadet, theme-wise it didn't do that much for me.
    45:26
    No, because they would have been able to do a lot more with it as far as the rules and the integration goes, but they've gone a different route anyway and gone for a radiator thing so fair enough that was another Barry Alts design yeah they only have a design called Machine Age yeah no idea exactly what that is yet that's just as a description but it didn't ring any bells or what have you but it's interesting obviously I should probably correct the Machine Age is actually a Dennis Nordman theme title. Oh. Yeah. Sorry, that was my mistake. I'm reading your notes, and it says very author. So... Yeah. No, it varies down for a too busy-sided title. Right. Which hasn't been announced. But it's about something about space pirates, which is based on Black Hole. Yes, and that might include a, from what I understood from one of the podcasts, it might include a spinning disc in the back box.
    46:31
    Right, okay. I'll just update my notes to correctly credit Dennis, who of course is no longer working for Deep Root, to say that Machine Age is one of his. but there are also John Norris of course is another designer he's got Merlin's Arcade which I believe knowing the history of John Norris for quite a bit the last game John Norris worked on design wise is a game that was released as Sharky Shootout but it had a completely different ruleset than John Norris originally intended which did not sit with him very, very well. So he has been working on a game that I think he called Wizard, if I'm not mistaken, for years, sharing on his social media, Facebook,
    47:36
    what he was working on with Wizard. And that game is basically based on the same playfield as Sharky Shootout. And as it happens, this Merlin's Arcade is loosely based on the layout of 8-Ball Deluxe, which actually happens to be also the inspiration for Sharky's Shootout. Yes, absolutely.
    48:03
    Sharky's Shootout was... I'm trying to remember the name of the game that John designed. Golden Q. That's it, Kelly Packard's Golden Q. to give it its full title before it became Jeanette Lee and Sharky Shootout.
    48:20
    Yeah, Golden Cue was also based on, did you say it correctly, on a modernisation of 8-ball deluxe by having ramps and... I can't remember if it had the 8-ball in it or not, the magic 8-ball, but it was basically the same kind of idea with the pool shooting game. And that's interesting to see that's now sort of resurfaced in Merlin's arcade for Deep Root, although I think John has said publicly that it's only very loosely based on 8-Ball Deluxe and significant changes to that design. Now, if you were still on pinball, and one of your upcoming wannabe competitors announced that they are doing a game which is loosely based on the 8-Ball Deluxe playfield, and the designer actually worked for you in the past and designed the game based on that same 8-Ball Deluxe playfield. What's stopping you from digging up the Sharkish Shootout playfield layout and see, hmm, what can we do with that today?
    49:31
    Well, apart from the fact it wasn't that popular, I suppose. Yeah, well, that had probably to do with the rules, and basically no Stern games at that time were popular. That's true. Yeah, there was a huge gap between what Bally Williams had put out at that time and where Stern picked up the ball, no pun intended.
    49:50
    Yeah, well, it was at the time when they were trying to collaborate with incredible technologies, the Golden Tee people, in order to do online tournaments. and that never really happened. So it was all a bit of a damp squib in a way. It probably never happened because nobody enjoyed playing that game.
    50:13
    Oh, yeah, but if there were big prizes to be won and tournament pots to be built up, it could have worked well. But I think there's other challenges there around gambling and pinball that couldn't be overcome. So it was almost doomed from the start trying to go down that route. So I don't want to tip off anybody at Stern, but if I were Stern, I'd be, I mean, if a future competitor is coming up with something and you already have basically half the game done, see what you can do with that. At least that's what I would do. And it might not be a popular move, but it makes so much sense business-wise.
    50:57
    Yes, well, it would certainly be a spoiler, I suppose. but yeah so moving on from that particular Merlin's Arcade from John Norris we mentioned Dennis Nordman earlier from Machine Age but he's also got another game out which is co-credited to Robert Mueller which is called Yukon Yeti and billed as a sequel to Whitewater right so that's got some big shoes to fill and there have been some images shown there as well of some characters from the game, and it does look very childish. Yes, exactly, yes. It doesn't look like a natural follow-up to Whitewater, but we haven't seen the playfield, so who knows.
    51:42
    It certainly looks to be appealing to a younger demographic, and there's a concept description that says a goofy and light-hearted game. Right. Mr. Burson Lovable, a teenage Yukon Yeti feud with the gold miners against the backdrop of the late 1890s Yukon gold rush. So, yeah, okay, maybe it's more like a sort of... Gold reach whitewater, something like that. No, I was saying no good gophers, really, where you've got the yetis trying to frustrate the gold miners, as opposed to Buzz and Bud trying to frustrate the golfer. Right, okay, so I'm guessing that I'm sorry, I'm just butting in there I'm guessing that's credited to Robert Mueller and Dennis Dalton because Dennis Dalton started it and Robert Mueller took it over when Dennis left Right, so, and well, Robert Mueller is also credited as a designer for Fire and Brimstone the first biblical themed pinball, I suppose Yeah, it doesn't exactly sound like it a bundle of love, does it? But, um, it does say, relive the Old Testament alongside the prophets of ancient times. Ah, yeah. Build up faith or suffer the fire and brimstone of the wrath of God. Well, who doesn't enjoy that? I was going to, well, you took the words right out of my mouth. So, and then there's, uh, a couple of other titles, uh, um, sort of announced a further down the way, including, um, well, there's a hint dropped for a 2021 title, although at this point I really doubt whether we should take 2021 too seriously. But the hint is, hey, you guys, which everybody is reading, as a reference to The Goonies.
    53:40
    Yeah, I don't know the movie, so... Yeah, I think I watched it one time, and it's about some kids, and clearly I wouldn't be able to tell you what it's about, but apparently pinheads in America have been begging for the Goonies as a pinball theme I really couldn't care less well same here haven't ever watched it and don't particularly have a desire to watch it the only thing I've had with the Goonies is that after visiting a Northwest pinball show I think it was after or maybe it was before I spent some time in Oregon before driving up there to that show. I think it was actually maybe after a show in California, the Golden State, and then I was doing the road trip. And I went to a town in Oregon on the coast, which was actually the home of the Goonies' house. And the weekend before, there had just been a big Goonies fan festival there, celebrating the film and visiting, doing tours of the house. Okay, so there are people enjoying the movie, there is a lot. Absolutely. It meant nothing to me, but apparently it was a big event for the town. Right, but that's the same with music by John Legend. Everybody loves it. I have no idea what it's like. Right. Yeah. How's that along with you with that? I don't know either. So, I don't want to speculate here, but what I find interesting, I can see why this article, which was mostly written by Robert Mueller himself, why that was published in the sense, I can understand that if you want to kill the negative comments that have been coming after the launch had been cancelled, I can understand that you want to give people information so they shut up, because then they might see the way it's intended.
    55:49
    But there was no... I couldn't find a good reason why they would announce all these titles to be able... that would be coming down the line. I mean, if they couldn't even get Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland ready in time,
    56:06
    there would... Yeah, announcing titles is easy. Actually, building the games, that's the difficult part. Yeah, and it's interesting, several people suggested that the only reason they could think of to announce such titles is to interest investors to put money into the company. I'm not saying that's true, I'm just saying that's what some people online said or discussed in other media. That's true, any investor would want to see a pipeline of products which are expected to be released in the not too distant future. Yeah, but if I were an investor and I know a little bit about Bimble I would want to see a manufacturing line and so far we haven't seen that either. No, well that's the elephant in the room really, there's no indication anywhere here exactly how they're going to build these games. We can see one prototype, and one prototype that's not finished and has sufficient difficulty or different problems with it that it can't be revealed fully in a public way. So, yeah, you wouldn't normally release details of your pipeline of titles because it could kill sales of the current title. that's always been the argument somebody could say right I want the Who game from Barry that's going to be a real fantastic game so I'm not going to buy anything from Deep Root until that comes out right it didn't make any sense to me but we did see some other titles as well from well obviously Razza is a John Pappaduke game but John's also slated to bring out Magic Girl, which was going to be his first title, but from Zidware. Right. That's also in the pipeline. And there's also a list of other titles that are in development, one of which is Alice, which we will assume is Alice in Wonderland, which was another title John was working on.
    58:28
    But beyond that, there's well there's well people like barry and um have like three or four titles in the in the uh pipeline yeah um other designers have a lot fewer now we know barry's no fantastic worker and and manages to create game designs from in record time right so maybe that's the reason but we don't We don't know, we didn't see anything in the list there that beyond the titles from John that we already know, that John might be working on.
    59:07
    No. And, yeah, obviously, I think there's five or six titles mentioned. I suppose John Norris is at least working on one of those as well.
    59:19
    Yeah, it must be. And, oh, well, we'll just have to wait. at this point I'm like, okay, first let's see, we would actually get some manufacturing going, build games,
    59:34
    get, or take out all the child diseases that are certain to happen when you start up a manufacturing process. I mean, look at Jersey Jack. they had the manufacturing facility and they ran into so much technical issues with the Wizard of Oz resulting in completely redesigned board sets, lightnings, or all that kind of stuff, you know.
    60:10
    And that doesn't mean, basically that means if you start manufacturing, you're in for surprises. Let's put it like that. And actually I'm surprised to see how well American pinball is doing because they started off manufacturing. I don't think they run into that much difficulty.
    60:28
    No. I mean, they were obviously running on the P-Rock board set for their main system and a PC base as well inside. So that part of it was relatively well understood and a standard shape and non-innovative cabinet for it as well. So, yeah, they were able to get games built and on the line and into distributors and buyers' hands relatively quickly. Well, certainly compared to DeepRoot. Right. And compared to Jersey Jack as well. I think they learned the lessons. And I think because of the family connections they have there, they have a good understanding of what it takes to actually build things rather than just come up with concepts and work on just the software. Right. Okay. Right now I say, okay, since Deep Root did not launch and it appears that it will take some time before they actually will, can we move on to companies that are actually manufacturing pinball machines?
    61:28
    Yeah, okay, let's start with the most successful one of the lot then, with Stern. Right. Because they've been, well, last month we covered the launch of Avengers Infinity Quest. Yes, which is a game that has been really, received a lot of positive feedback and was received with a lot of enthusiasm, I would say, if I'm not, well, that's probably an understatement. People were really very enthusiastic about this game. Obviously, the design style of Keith Elwin, a lot of people appreciate very much. yeah great and they started off as usual with the with producing some pro models so they can get those out into arcades and uh and operation very quickly as of the 25th of september they uh they started producing the limited edition models right and then after that they'll they'll move on to the premiums and then obviously more pros right as well probably mix the premiums with the pros once all the limited edition ones are built.
    62:37
    Needless to say, I believe all the LEs have sold out. That's not a surprise. I'm not sure whether it's fair to say, but I'd say that's almost a common stern tactic. An answer game, before any game is on the line, limited edition will sell out. Yeah whether they all actually bought by buyers or just given or allocated to distributors Right I don know but And then it still remains to be seen whether the game is any good or not although Coach really would have to suck to make this a bad game. Yeah, I've seen some gameplay videos and Jack Danger's deadflip presentations, and yeah, it looks a fun game.
    63:24
    And a good layout as well. Yes, so obviously Stern is very busy building Avengers Infinity Quest, but there was some other news from Stern as well. I already covered in my last newsletter, in the Pinball Magazine newsletter,
    63:44
    there is being worked on a topic for Elvira's House of Horrors, I really have difficulty pronouncing that right, which is supposedly to be a $1,000 topper.
    64:02
    Yeah, I don't know quite why that would be so expensive. It's not like it's maybe the Beatles or something like that where the cost of the game is already far above the normal. There was no pro model of Elvira House of Horrors, but 999 or a topper, which what I originally saw didn't look that innovative in what it does, seemed odd to me. Yeah, okay, but that being worked on, let's not waste too much time on that. and it was very interesting Sir teased on their social media a last chance to buy Black Knight's Sword of Rage yeah I got an email about it as well about advising me that if I was looking to buy a Sword of Rage this could be the last chance to buy they said last chance to buy with a question mark but no indication of why it would be the last chance because it's not license it's not going to run out so uh i can't see why why it should be seems like a marketing tactic to me yes i think that's probably fair i'm sure if there's a sufficient demand they will they'll do another run right no matter what size yeah we've seen that with plenty of other games as well and so um then as turn did also a teenage me to be eternal uh turn turtles uh heads of pinball invitational where the winner would win a new Turtles game I suppose yes a little odd that one eight players pre-selected never saw any sort of selection criteria or opportunity qualifications or anything no just people who were selected and they would play online to determine the winner right I didn't see any of it But I did hear that it was a fun tournament. Yeah, I didn't see any of it either.
    66:10
    There seem to be plenty of other things to keep you busy at the moment, some of which we will cover later as well. Yes. So, well, I'll leave the code updates to you because you love to go into detail. Oh, I do. Well, fortunately, there isn't much this time. The Avengers Infinity Quest code had an update, which was the first one since they announced it last month. and it was quite a big one actually there's quite a lot of new features in there and interestingly they dialed down the strength of some of the coils in the game as if it was maybe a little overzealous when it was released so unless you've changed them to default some of the things like the flippers and the kickouts and things like that will be a little weaker than they were before so maybe there were some air balls or some rebounds and things which weren't ideal so that's been changed, and they've dialed up the ball saver time on the game to 12 seconds, which seems incredibly long to me, but that's the default ball saver. That's a red flag in my book. Yeah, well, I thought the move had been to do away with the ball saver altogether. Right. And I still have a history of basically killing fun games with endless ball savers for almost everything that you achieve, which really makes me wonder at some point, like, when will this game ever end? Because it keeps giving me new balls. and seriously that's really killing it for me there is no challenge left and reading this I haven't read that so this is new to me obviously I don't pay that much attention to code updates because I don't have the game so I don't need to spell out the updates so long ball saver times is really what took away a lot of the fun in pinball for me. That's just a personal note. Other people might be perfectly happy with it, but for me it would be a red flag.
    68:24
    I should just note that is the default rule, unless you change it. Yeah, okay, but we know that operates usually don't change anything.
    68:33
    Well, there you go. But this update also adds quite a lot more video clips, sound effects and lighting effects into the game and tweaks some of the rules and fix some of the bugs that were introduced in the release version, or not quashed in the release version, I should say. Right. So that's Avengers. And then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that we mentioned earlier, that's had a very small update to it which just fixes a few bugs and adds some more shaker motor effects and that's the end of the code. Okay. So, we'll move on to another company that's actually manufacturing pinballs, American Pinball. Yeah. As we mentioned last month, they've been doing their Hot Wheels streaming challenge for those people who, A, have the game or access to the game, and B, are able to stream it. That's ongoing, as you said last time, and will be going on for, I think, towards the end of the year even. Yeah, something like that, yeah. Yeah, so it's some interesting videos there if you want to watch some very good games, some people who have got a long way into the game and maybe even completed it. Yeah, well, I have to compliment American Pimble on this case. It's a great way to generate social media content that's actually different than, well, it's always difficult to figure out if you're a pimble company, what are we going to show about a game that's already out there for God knows how many months. But this is a very good way. Yeah, even harder to do that at the moment when so many locations where it might be are closed. or they're not able to operate the game either. So, yeah, those people who have got it either in their home or in a club and are able to get a streaming rig onto it, yes, that generates some extra buzz about it, as you say, because anybody who comes along can then take part and join in and become part of the challenge. Right, okay. So, American People also had a couple of code updates for... Yeah, well, one, the most recent one, on the 23rd of September, was just a fixer, a bug that was introduced in the previous one, on the 19th. There was a problem with the game crashing right at the end. And we're talking about Oktoberfest here. Yes, you're absolutely right, yes. Oktoberfest code.
    70:57
    And the previous one just added some new game settings, lighting effects, and some new call-outs as well to Oktoberfest. Just in time for October. although Oktoberfest itself is mostly in September at least normally it is this is a very different Oktoberfest of course given the current problems that people have going to large gatherings yeah the closest thing you get to Oktoberfest is playing Oktoberfest right now yeah and it's not a bad way to go it also has some adjustments to the warm team scoring and there were lots of bug fixes in there as well it was quite interesting to read how many small but I'm sure noticeable bugs that were in the game but they've all been, well all those ones have been addressed in this latest code so if you've got that game make sure you're running version 20 09 23 for all those fixes and the fix for the game crash which was introduced with the last code. Right, okay so moving on to a, I'm going to rush this a little bit because this is going to be a lengthy episode we got an interview coming up with Rob Berg which is at least 30 minutes so I'm rushing this a little bit Spooky Pinball actually two celebratory events that they know yes exactly so first of all they announced that they reached the mark of having built and shipped 2000 pinball machines little company that's not bad No, exactly. And of course, this includes all titles that they have manufactured so far.
    72:39
    But it's still, I mean, with their first game, America's Most Haunted, they started with 150 units. So now being on their, I think, sixth title, if you count Contract Gamers as well, and 2,000 games, that's not very bad. Yeah, and probably the most important thing for them, as well as having built and shipped them, is that they've sold them. Right. So they've got the income from them as well. Right. And the other landmark, if you want to call it that, is that they finally shipped a game to Alaska, completing all 50 states of the United States of America. Yeah. Congratulations to Spooky on both those landmarks. landmarks right uh got there for a little company um started up as well as a hobby but uh but they certainly certainly shown other people how to do various uh risk um i was gonna say marketing and goodwill uh generate goodwill within the pinball community oh yeah some way that uh that other companies can only dream of yeah and they're uh very very nice people too uh exactly that's how you do it yeah exactly so um then i'm moving on to multimorphic which is a kind of interesting um nick baldwidge who we might know from the uh the electromechanical pinball and bingo podcast i'm not sure if the name of that podcast is correct but he does a podcast on electrical mechanical pinball and bingo games from uh which mostly are electromechanical anyway he wrote new code for the Cosmic Car Tracing playfield if I'm not mistaken yep that's right you probably know Nick as well from his co-author Coin Up Carnival oh yeah I gave him I gave Ryan Claytor and Nick the trophy that I won earlier this year because I figured they deserved it better because I did not publish a new issue of Pimble Magazine while they published coin up carnival and i think that was the best publication uh pinball related publication of last year so i gave my uh twippy award to them yeah and of course nick is um a big bingo guy he uh he built the multi-game bingo machine which um incorporates multiple different bingo games all into one cabinet. Yeah, he tried to explain it to me, I lost him completely immediately. It was, yeah, I really have to be into bingo machines to really get it, but that shows that he's very knowledgeable on technical stuff and obviously he has a P3 at his
    75:36
    apartment, home, whatever you want to call it. So, and well, he knows about programming, So we decided to program a new game for the Cosmic Kart Racing module. So what can you tell me about Ranger in the Ruins, as it's called? Ranger in the Ruins is kind of a throwback to an 8-bit adventure game.
    76:01
    I think he said in interviews that he actually wanted to theme it after a particular well-known adventure game. but couldn't get the license for that, so he generated his own. And the artwork for the game is very much of that style. You know, it looks like sort of like platforms or wandering through civilizations, but all drawn in like 8-bit graphics. So bear in mind that obviously the lower part of the play field in the P3 is a big display, so there's quite a lot of graphics in there. but I saw some demonstrations of how the game works. It looks interesting. It uses the Cosmic Cart Racing Playfield module in a very different way to the Cosmic Cart Racing. He chose that because he likes a fast-paced game.
    76:58
    Basically, you are a ranger. That's your role when you start the game. It's always good when you go into a new game to know what your role is and what you're meant to be doing. and you're wandering through the crumbling cities from an ancient civilization, trying to scavenge what you can, pick up bonuses and power-ups and some less than beneficial items as well along the way.
    77:25
    And also, an interesting thing on there is that previous players of that game, or you in earlier attempts, when you die, if you've got items on you at that point you can return as a ghost in future games and give those items to the current player and in a first I think it is for Pinball if you connect your P3 to the internet, you can do that as well from other players and you will see who they are and you can decide whether or not you want to accept the items from them, because, as I said, they're not all power-ups. Some of them can be harmful as well. Right. So it's an interesting take on it, and it's a downloadable game from the Multimorphic store. You just go to multimorphic.com, go into the store there, and you can purchase it. I think, I can't remember the exact price, but it was pretty cheap, like $150 or something for the game. Okay. So if you have a P3 and the Cosmic Card Racing kit, then you have an extension waiting to be purchased and have more hours of fun playing your P3. It's a no-brainer really, you should pick that up. Right. And well, actually, Multimorphic was quite busy on social media the past month. I think the highlight would be an interview that Jerry Stellenberg, the founder and owner of the company,
    79:10
    and Stefan Silver, who we know as the designer of the Heist game, did with Jeff Teois of Pinball Profile.
    79:20
    Yeah, I haven't listened to that interview yet, but knowing Jeff, it's going to be a very interesting listen. Yes, absolutely. So do check that out. It's on the Pinball Profile website where all their podcasts are. So that must be very interesting. Yeah, there are a huge number of them as well. So keep browsing through the back catalogue of Jeff's Pinball Profile interviews because there's some amazing ones in there, some of which will be prophetic and some of which are historically very significant. Yes, okay. So, well, we're almost down to the list of pinball companies that have news to report. Some interesting news from Dutch Pinball, which I'll cover as I'm Dutch as well.
    80:09
    Dutch Pinball have been looking for a larger facility, and the news is that they are expected to sign a new lease this week, and they will start moving as soon as possible after.
    80:26
    And I talked to Barry a couple of weeks ago when we were at the Dutch Pinball Museum recording some segments for a Dutch video item that will be part of the Virtual Pinball Expo, to which we get in a little bit.
    80:45
    And basically he told me that he's expecting that before the end of October he will have completely moved to the new facility and be in production.
    80:56
    Excellent. Do we know where that is likely to be? I think he's still sticking to the same city where he is now. So it's just either on the same or on a different industrial park, but in the same area. Okay, is that location public? Or is it not for public knowledge yet? Well, he hasn't shared it with me, so I wouldn't know Where is the current location?
    81:28
    Yeah, that's on his website and on their Facebook So the current location is not a secret And I've been there, other people have visited as well and I'm just very happy to see that they're moving to a bigger location because that means that they can increase production of the Bitabowski, which is, well, I suppose you could say necessary because they have a huge backorder file to fulfill. I'm not sure if that's correct in Mish, but obviously they need to build a lot of games, both games for people that already pre-ordered and paid for the game as well as people that have recently ordered the game. And basically once they get to the new location, production can increase. So that's a good deal. I think Barry did share a picture of a big display of white Russian playfield models to go onto the playfield for the Big Lebowski. I don't know what that was indicating other than the fact that they have a lot of stock of white Russian models and are ready to keep building games. Yeah, so I know a little bit about that. These white Russians are actually handmade.
    83:02
    For those who are not familiar with the game, it's basically a glass with a white Russian cocktail in it and a stirring thing. What do you call it? A stick. Yeah. Stirring some ice cubes. Some ice cubes, and the glass is slightly tilted, but the, yeah, but the, obviously the liquid in there is horizontal, as it would be if, you know, that stays flat all the time.
    83:44
    And it's actually a, they're mixing these, sort of, well, if you wanted to call it a cocktail, basically it's some sort of cocktail that looks like the White Russian, and then they add some sort of glue to it that it becomes hard. Yeah, hardener. Yes.
    84:06
    So it's kind of like a resin, I suppose. Yeah, I think so, yeah. So they shared that they had made a new batch of those to go into future games. So that means that they are still building games, which is good news. Yeah, good. Well, good luck to Barry with the move, and presumably he can move it relatively swiftly once a new contract is signed and he's able to move into a larger premises. Right.
    84:40
    So, yeah, fingers crossed for that then. And so it's good to hear some good news. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so, and then there's a couple of companies, and I'm just going to say really quick, no news to report from Chicago Gaming, Homepin in Taiwan, Haggis Pinball in Australia, which is already for six months or so that they've been quiet, so that's kind of worrying. A little worrying. Yeah, and no news from Circus Maximus either.
    85:10
    So, and I just hope that everybody in these companies is in good health and that they are working on new stuff, but for whatever reason are staying silent. Nothing too serious, hopefully. So, no news is good news. Yes, exactly. And then, as our third headline, We did talk to Rob Burke and David Fix from Pinball Expo. Yes, as we mentioned last time, once the Pinball Expo physical show was cancelled, they swung into action and started organising a whole series of virtual events, which originally, I think when we spoke about it last, it was going to be maybe two days, maybe the Friday and the Saturday. Well, they've been working on it and it's just expanded and expanded and these are all free events, you know, unlike the actual physical show where you have to be a paid member to go and watch the seminars or take part in it. These are all going to be totally free and all available through the Pinball Expo website. Yes. So we've been trying to find out from Rob and David exactly what it is that they've got planned for us. Right. And, well, basically the only way to find out was to do an interview with them. Right. And that's exactly what we did. All right, okay, so we hand on over to Deb, and then we'll get back to you after that, and then we'll discuss the new game by Jersey Jack Pinball. But first, let's talk to Rob Burke and David Fix of Virtual Pinball Expo. So we're joined now live from the United States. I don't know exactly where you are in the U.S., but we've got Rob Burke and Dave Fix, the masterminds behind the virtual pinball expo. Hello, Rob. Hello, Dave. Hello, guys. Hi, guys. How are you doing? We're doing okay. You guys okay? You are in one aisle in your pocket of a temperature of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so we're all good. Sounds very nice. You guys. Yes, we are. Okay, so you guys must be very, very busy with the upcoming virtual pinball expo. Very busy. We've been running cameras all over the world as it is because Expo this year has expanded its boundaries. We're not just focusing just in the Chicago area and all the people we can bring in. We're now opening the doors that if anybody wanted to talk about a seminar, say from Australia to Italy to France to the Netherlands, they are part of Expo. And we've already got more than the normal factory tours. So we do have a stern live factory tour that will be taking place live. And then we have a lot of other factory tours that we'll be showing during the Expo Virtual. So what's interesting, guys, is that in a way the virtual show is taking as much time as not more just putting it together logistically. I mean a phone call to ask someone if they're going to speak is one thing but then getting the format whether they send us a video feed or we do a live feed or just getting these people to participate. Now the one thing which is interesting is in one respect this show is almost more exciting for me than the live events because we're getting a lot of people to speak from their homes or their businesses that we would normally have the opportunity to do, or the average person could never see the inside of Higgins unless they live in Australia. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, but you cancelled the physical show officially on the 2nd of September. But obviously you knew in advance, or sometime before that, that it was pretty unlikely to happen. So how long have you been planning for this virtual event? We started talking about a virtual event in July. But it wasn't until September 1st when the hotel released me from the contract that I finally felt the free reign to really let it go and make it a reality this year. And here's the thing we're looking at here because many years in the past unfortunately there's so many shows in the U.S. that have been canceled around the world. Every show has been canceled. So the idea was we had the knowledge, we had the power, we had the people with the seminars that we've always had. You know, Martin says it best that we have like the biggest soapbox and people come and talk to us all the time to show off the new product. Well, the idea was let's make it virtual, let's continue the show, let's give back to the community because this is a free event. This is free for anybody who wants to watch Pinball Expo virtual. Anybody wants to tune in. Tune in. Basically, we took over Twitch and it is now going to be Pinball Expo TV. So you're watching eight, nine hours of dedicated new broadcast of pinball information. That's right.
    90:25
    What's interesting also is we're also going to have the Hall of Fame ceremony. We'll still be doing that. We're trying to keep everything going as if nothing changed. Other than the fact that you really just can't play the games. And even then, we have got an exciting thing. we are actually having a tournament that will be happening on Thursday night.
    90:51
    The Bells and Chimes tournament, it's a women's tournament from different cities will be tying in to show a tournament in their own little groups. So even though we can't have a tournament, we're definitely going to put a tournament together. You've got to realize that most guys, you know, this is breaking ground in one respect because yes, Zoom has been around and Skype and some other vehicles to promote things. But to do it to the degree we're doing it, plus we have a marketplace, we're going to be selling games through the Internet and through the website. It's going to be interesting. So we're trying to do a lot of creative things to make it fun for everybody. And there's going to be so much content. You know, that's the one thing. When I was working on seminars, I'd always take seminars until the last second. and somehow I squeeze them in. But this is a little more difficult just because we have to get the video to download it, and that takes time, and then we've got to find a space for it, and then we have to worry about, in general, about can't make it too early or too late. So just the fact, guys, that we're doing four days, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, of seminars and tours and everything else we have in mind, it's almost unbelievable because I think a couple guys have tried to do a virtual show, but from what I heard, I haven't seen it, but from what I heard it was just a one day event perhaps, so this is pretty outstanding if I have to say it, because to pull this off is just unbelievable, and with Jeff Boyler's help, he's done a fantastic job in the video world because that's his lifeline, that's what he does for a living and he has done a fantastic job with the video of bringing people right to the stage and right to the forefront You're going to get a great feed, great audio, great video. And this has also brought us to, Warren, Ohio, has brought us to different areas to test the feeds. So we've already done some initial tests so that we have good upload, good feed, good sound. And then we reached out to some of the greats to give us some information, stuff that has never been seen or talk about stuff that we have not talked about. I'm going to mention one thing only because Martin is from the UK. Yep. So this is one seminar is for sure. Joe Kamenkao, along with George Gomez, is going to talk on the first million dollar pinball machine, the Beatles.
    93:28
    And detail what was involved in getting the licensing. And going from there. I suppose a million dollars. Yeah. We have never heard this stuff. I'm looking forward to it already. One of the great things about Pinball Expo seminars, and indeed other show seminars too, is the ability to ask questions and interact with the speakers. Is that something which is part of your plans? Yes, seminars will be interactive. Yes. All the live seminars will be interactive on Twitch. People can make their questions on Twitch. We'll then go to a moderator who is watching the quick feed, and then we'll quiz the participants. We've done this just for another reason, just to keep naughty talk out of the seminar kind of thing. And we can definitely ask the questions that are being thrown to us on the Twitch. We are also going to have a video. I not quite sure if I play it once or several times throughout the event but it going to showcase our new location next year Ah yes We're very excited about it because this would have been the last year at the Westin. Now it's over with. And now Expo is going on too. New chapter. So I will say this, you guys, if you want to mention something in print, But we are going from a 22,000 square foot vendor hall to almost a 70,000 square foot vendor hall. Let's hope by that time we still have the PIMO community. Larger. Three times larger. Not only that, it is also drive-in. You can drive your car into it. Ground level. Drop everything off. No more going through back hallways. No more bad loading. unbelievable also it's connected to hotels to give you a choice of hotels that you want to go to the event staff now we won't have a link to the hotel yet for next year's event only because they will give it to me but it's got to be one year before the official event you got to just wait for that it's about one year and two weeks or one week before the official date, so I can't quite open up that spot yet. But, stay tuned and you guys, and everybody will see it. Okay. So, but let's not get ahead of ourselves because that's next year's expo, and we first have to focus on this year's, which I think we can now call the Virtual International Pinball Expo. I guess you could say that, yeah. So, there are going to be seminars on a live feed, but I also understood that there will be pre-recorded footage that will also be aired. Can you talk about that? Sure. So what we're going to talk about is some of the factory tours that we have will be pre-recorded. But they will be recorded this week. The only reason we're doing this is some companies cannot afford to go to the expense that Stern Pinball went out and hired an actual team of, they have a whole production team for sending them on their factory to do the factory tour live at Stern. So it's not going to be someone with a cell phone and his camera walking around and that's it. That's correct. This is high quality professional production live at the Stern factory. Meanwhile, the other ones are all being edited and made look beautiful with high def. And, I mean, this is going to be a show. Yeah, but you know what? The fact is, in a way, I'm trying to convince people that it's always going to give them an opportunity, some of the speakers, to make an infomercial. Yes. So they can talk about themselves and what they do, but also I'm going to give them the opportunity to promote themselves, whether it be a book they've got. There's Damien Guest who wrote a book. He'll be giving a talk once I'm running his book.
    97:54
    It's the one you guys are seeing, that Stern coffee table book. Oh, yeah, it's been 50 years. Oh, yeah, which is a couple of years late, but okay. Thank you so much, boy. But, you know, that's just an example. So, hey, Jonathan, COVID delays a lot of things. Yeah, but I didn't know they had COVID in the U.S. already four years ago.
    98:17
    This is not a political show. Oh, okay. That's fine. The show is pinball, the first passionate love to give everybody new content. So here's the other thing. So American Pinball is going to have their entire team that designed Hot Wheels to be on the live stream after their tour. So they're going to be there to answer questions about Hot Wheels and answer questions about other things. And also other surprises that they're releasing, which you'll just have to tune in and find out.
    98:52
    So it sounds like you've already got a very, very packed schedule of events. are you looking for any more people to step up or to offer to do talks or seminars or panels or anything like that listen, Martin you know me by now, I'm the seminar guy you know me by now I can't say no to anybody we're going to fit you in somewhere we've got a 3 o'clock in the morning we'll fit them all in if someone's got an idea for a talk they'd like to do or a presentation, what should they do? reach out to us And honestly, we'd be excited to hear from people from all over the world. We've got a video presentation that I'm looking forward to seeing. It's one of the probably larger collections in Spain.
    99:43
    It got 100,000, 200,000 games. Wait till you see this thing, Dave. You are going to cry. I'm always praying. It's going to be interesting to see whether that's a collection of American games or whether it's European games. Yeah. I'm guessing it's Spanish games. Spanish market is very interesting guys, as you know about it. You probably know more than I do, but there was a time when they couldn't import games, so they developed their own cottage industry there in Spain, and produced a lot of different titles, and a lot of different manufacturers made them one-off. similar to what the guy does today in space and also what was going on in South America with NATO back in the 80s and the 70s, most of those were copies but some of them were one offs that some of us have never seen or never heard all I can say guys is I'm really hoping that this COVID goes away before next year because as crazy as it is this year it's going to be even crazier next year Right. Well, everybody's hoping that this COVID thing will be a thing of the past very soon.
    100:57
    So, obviously, also because we all love to go to pinball shows and actually meet other pinball enthusiasts. That's the only thing that will not be possible, although you will have a chat on the Twitch channel, I understood. so people will still be able to interact with each other if they want to. Yes, and we've already contacted Twitch because we know that we've got a poll already, so they have already guaranteed us that we will not have a problem, 5,000 to 10,000 people following us on Twitch live. Wow. So, yes, you know, we've already contacted them about the servers and everything else, and we've already done our tests with the uploads, and we've had people all over the United States and a couple overseas on the quick test that we did just recently and we had no problem. So we're excited to be able to roll this out and show this great show. I'll tell you what else, guys, I see happening is that a lot of things that we're doing this year's show, I bet we're going to be trendsetters as far as what we're going to see in future shows so I don't really want to tell you about everything but there's a lot of cute things we came up with which I think on the marketplace I think that people are going to grab hold of it and do their version of it but that's okay, you know, let's face it Expo was a trendsetter back in 85 the first show around and amazingly you know, nothing's going to stop us you could say they're going to have 36 you're doing a show and the best offer. And the other thing was to give people content. I know I've talked to a lot of collectors over since March and they're all like, oh, I was watching, you know, Special When Lit filmed in 2006. You know, I mean, people are watching old content. Expo is always about new content and we're going to give you the new content because we got the themes of all the manufacturers. They're going to do seminars. I mean, it's going to be a packed show, Mark. You know it always is. Wait a minute. I need to ask Jonathan something. Why don't you write up an article about Expo in your wonderful magazine? I already did. You've been in there.
    103:14
    Just general stuff, or was it 35 plus years of Film All Expo? No, at that time it was 30 plus years. There you go. You might do something big for the next year's show, too. We'll talk about that. We can always give him the room to write. And then all of a sudden, just, you know, full coverage. Yes. Well, that was one of my... I have to ask you the big questions, though, such as, you've got this big, huge actual schedule of events. When does it all start, and when can we see the schedule of what's going to be on and when? Okay, so the schedule's being put together, and this is the sad thing. We are trying to jam everything in, and we're going to... We're going to be adding daily. Yes. and the thing is we made ourselves a time frame where we could fit it in, but we have little spots where we can extend it in certain spots in case we have more speakers. Because, like you said, what if somebody comes in and says, hey, I want to talk about Lost in Space pinball, or I want to talk about the, I'm sorry, the Big Planet pinball. The pinball shoot. Yes. I'm going to make a spot for them because that is, you know, history in the making and people want to hear about it. But anyways, right now we're saying October 14th, which is Wednesday, is 7pm Eastern Standard Time. That will be our official pin-fast kind of kick-off. It's a short night just like every Wednesday night. That's your bumper blast online.
    104:46
    We're not calling it a bumper blast, that's an idea. We just have party streamers there. Everyone can have their own food. Everybody has their own. food, yeah, you don't have to worry about getting some lousy food from the hotel, you can drink your snacks, you can have a drink, yeah, exactly, they're not going back, so,
    105:05
    yeah, and you don't have to worry about paying so much for a drink, but you can walk around in your knickers, Mike, yes, and you can sit there, and we're gonna hit the highlights, we're gonna show some rare games, we're just gonna have a blast so everybody can see it, and then the next day, Thursday, we're shooting right now for 3pm Eastern Standard Time however that could change if we have more people that want to do something we're going to start running the show at 3pm ok now I can imagine that people may not be able to block 3 days in their calendar just to watch all these seminars will they be available to watch later on as well? yes they will be wait hold on one second the bumper blast is starting now there it is yeah yes to answer your question they will be available but not right away and Pinball News as always will be doing their review and we will make the information available for Pinball News to put up there when it will be release. The one disappointing thing is some people I've asked to be involved and these are people that have been around for a long time in the hobby and they just, you know, declined to do it. It's the same because, and trust me, this is the same person that I called and talked and he said, what were you, did Rap call you yesterday? I'm like, no, why? because Rob called me yesterday about this and told me. I'm like, well, Rob is completely different. But for the most part, everyone's been very obliging.
    106:55
    And let's face it, Pinball's one big community, and it's becoming more and more international, as we all know. And it's fun for me. I mean, for me, when I think back about the first show in 85, when I had these guys in Japan show up, I just was astounded. And I thought they were just so cool. but this is before we have all the social networking that we have so to have those guys show up was great now it's become a common place so and I will tell you it's been a little easier on me to some extent everybody says what do you guys do put Expo, start working on Expo three months out, no last year at the end of Expo I was figuring out how to jam more in the rooms how to get everybody set this year I don't have to worry about putting everybody in those rooms, I gotta worry about The year after with the bigger size, which won't be a problem. But the idea is we've been working. We've had many meetings. We've had many long conversations. Zoom meetings from March on. And now in-person meetings, just testing everything to make sure that this is the show of the year.
    108:03
    Fantastic. So is there anything that people can do to help support Pinball Expo? obviously they can't come to the show and buy any of the merchandise that you have to sell there but is there a 2020 Pinball Expo shirt, t-shirt, sweatshirt can they buy posters can they do online promotion listen online promotion never hurts but there will be a super new package that we have available I don't want to share with you now because there will be no surprises everyone listens to the podcast and is like Well, I do that. So we're going to have a little fight. Somebody has to have the scoops, Rob. You know that. It's usually us. Well, we've got to give something to Jim Shelbert.
    108:49
    Okay, we'll let him have Jim then. Okay, fine. Just because it's Jim. The thing is, if I tell Jim, I might get into the December issue, which is the calendar. So, you know, I might as well tell you now. But I love Jimmy, though. We've got to keep him. Anyway, so yeah, there'll be a souvenir item or two, so take care of that we'll have something we'll remember the first goal yeah it's all good fun guys and like Dave said there's no charge to anybody I mean we have infomercials and we're posting them at no charge so yes and I we've dealt out to some of the other people we've sent to other people that But, hey, if you want to give us a small 30-second ad, we'll run that. And here's the cool thing, Martin and Jonathan, I didn't touch on this. How come I didn't get that call?
    109:50
    Probably. I don't know. Both ways. That's right. But you know what, Jonathan? You want to put a 30-second ad in about the magazine? Send it to me. Let's put it in. Okay. You were saying? He's in a rush. Oh, yeah. The international customers double-carved and double-carved.
    110:11
    What I want to say is that over the last, and I have to clarify, Jim Shelberg has been great because he has dug and dug and gone through some of the craziest commercial ads that have a pinball in there somewhere. And you're going to see stuff you've never seen and has never seen the light of day, and those are the commercials that are going to run between the seminars. So as we're getting the next seminar up and ready, there will be a small little commercial featuring Coca-Cola and a pinball machine from 1971 in black and white in Australia, which most people don't watch. Well, that's just one of them. Yeah, but now they won't watch it now. Okay, no, but that's a very welcome alternative for just having pausing music in between seminars, you know. I realize, and for your audience to realize this, there's a lot of energy and effort put into it. So when people leave, I'm not sure how much they're going to watch every day, but they're going to say, boy, these guys pulled it off, and they pulled it off in a big way. So that's what we want you to know. You know, X, O, Z, O, stay. And we try to be a trendsetter when we can. And this is certainly a work.
    111:31
    Passion of love. It should be a piece of art if we're done with it. It should be. Okay. It sounds fantastic, but you haven't told us the one thing that everybody wants to know. Where can they find this? Pinball Expo. Which? Pinball Expo. There will be a better answer to your question. There will be a link on our website. So, pinballexpo.com. Yeah, there will be a link on there that will take you to my feed. and the schedule and other information as well we're working on a couple things right now Martin, that it's going to be on our webpage, not only that we may even feature the show on our webpage, also feature it on Facebook at the same time we're working on that right now so this is going to be we're going to be showing it in many places in many things if we tell these guys too much stuff they'll never interview us again we don't have enough content That's the last thing we want is for information when we talk to you.
    112:35
    These guys want more information because they say, oh, these guys are the trendsetters. We need them on every night. Right. Get ready. It's going to be the show of shows. Right. Okay. So rounding this thing up, obviously you mentioned you already have a busy schedule. As a teaser, you already mentioned there will be live and prerecorded factory tours. there will be a seminar with Joe Kamikow and George Gomez on the million dollar Vito Mania pinball machine any other tips of the iceberg that you can reveal or what you want to call it lift the curtain a little bit like type of seminars that you are planning to have let me just say this, I'm waiting for it to come true, but Tim Arnold is supposed to be sending me a video on his museum in Las Vegas So that would be interesting to see that.
    113:30
    So it may not be seen if he does it, but he's telling me he does. We've also already told you that we have something from Spain on a huge collection. Can we go and tell that again? Well, we already told that. I was hoping he didn't hear that the fifth time. Now he's heard it. He can hit the rewind button and hear it.
    113:47
    Right. Okay. You know, I guess the bottom line is we want to keep the suspense there, but also the fact that it'll all be in an open book once you guys go to the website. And when the time comes and we can finally post it, the whole world will see it and they can all be excited. And as soon as we put the schedule of events, we'll make sure that Pinball News gets a full coverage of that so you can focus it on Pinball News. And our front page of our website will also tell us the whole schedule of events, kind of like a TV schedule. tune in at this time to catch Joe Kamikawa, tune in this time to go to the Stern Tour, tune in this time to hear about Hot Wheels I mean, tune in this time to talk to Jonathan Joyce of Pitball Magazine nobody wants to do that, but okay that's why it's at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody's stuck that's fine, I'll still be up I'm still on American Hour, so for me that's fine you're a machine I'm sure we'll talk to you closer to the time anyway, at least for the Pinball News article. But thank you to Rob Burke and David Fix for telling us all about the virtual Pinball Expo you've got planned. And good luck working there in Warren, at Rob's place. One more thing. Okay. We've got a very special person meeting you at the registration desk. Oh!
    115:17
    I'll leave you with that. but we thank you guys kindly for your time and of course for your support well clearly they have an awful lot lined up for us and we look forward to seeing what the schedule is when they're ready to publish that I know it's still very much in flux at the moment and people are coming up with new ideas and Rob and David are having a well they're spending their time trying to get everything lined up and all the technical aspects worked out so they can put together a stream on Twitch as they said we're looking forward to that and well I'm looking forward to seeing you and the other Dutch pinball people say that in two separate words with pinball in a small piece people in pinball in the Netherlands yes so what I can briefly say about that is Gerard van der Sanden is the owner of the Dutch Pinball Museum and he was approached by Rob Berg for a, I think a, if I understood the story correctly, and forgive me if I didn't, but for a virtual tour or something like that of his museum. And then Gerard figured, why not get the most well-known people from the Netherlands who are actively in the pinball community to come to the museum and do a presentation of what they are doing on camera. Edit that professionally, so it wouldn't be like a seminar type of thing with one camera and, no,
    117:00
    professionally edited montage, I would say. and it was actually I was approached if I knew anybody who could also contribute obviously I knew a list of names of people that were invited and I actually suggested since Nate Shippen of Coast to Coast Pinball is living in Amsterdam to ask him to host this event and he ended up doing that it was very nice to see Nate in Rotterdam and basically Nate interviewed all these various Dutch guests in the museum, either with the game that they built or designed or other things that they did.
    117:46
    And I think it's going to be a very interesting montage of Dutch people doing something for the pinball community.
    117:56
    Excellent. Okay, well, we'll wait for the schedule to come out and see when that's going to be on. Yeah. and in a way I was kind of hoping that all these things would be alternating on different streams on Twitch TV. So if some of the live events, some of the interactive ones, if they needed to overrun, then they could because they wouldn't be butting up against the next one. They always have at Pinball Expo, you know, people have to get out of the hall when a lot is over and they say, well, you know, if you need to ask me any questions, come and see me outside in the hall, I'll talk to you there. I thought it was a virtual event. You might be able to be a little more open-ended with them, but it's all to be on one stream. But maybe there'll be an after stream or an extra feed that you'll be able to look at later where some of these seminars and panel discussions might have a sort of follow-up to them as well. Right. I thought we'd be able to do that. If there is, well, we'll bring it all to you anyway. Some other news. Anyway, before we move on to the new Jersey Jack pinball game, the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, we covered before their new building that's being built on the Strip and the progress they're doing towards that. And they have just almost, I don't know if it's today, but very, very recently, it was today. Yes, it was today. Yesterday. It says here. No. Okay. they've announced, well, they've published a picture of their proposal for their sign. Now, in the original drawings that they had, which I showed on the Pinball News article, they were going to have a sort of like a tall column with Pinball on one side and the Hall of Fame on the other. Well, they've gone for something completely different and gone with a very much more retro, eye-catching and dazzling, I think, sign. It kind of reminds me, in a way, kind of like the Jetsons. in the way that it's like a 60s throwback. It's got pinball in each letter in a circle, kind of like Las Vegas, I suppose, like the Las Vegas sign, quite vertically rather than horizontally. And a Hall of Fame and a big swoosh of an arrow pointing towards the building with, well, previously you said it had neon strips all the way down it, but there'd be LEDs these days. But it's going to be really eye-catching, and there's a big screen underneath it as well, which I guess will be showing, well, pictures of the games that are inside and people enjoying themselves and parties and stuff that's going on in there. And, yeah, it looks a really, really bright, attractive sign to put on the script. And it says, you know, pinball in big letters right there. Right. Okay. So, and obviously we can't wait for the new location to open, especially since I think they probably need to make it sort of their catchphrase, I think Pimble Hall of Fame is probably the cheapest entertainment you'll find everywhere, anywhere in Las Vegas yeah yeah, I think best bang for your buck well that might get you a different crowd but yeah it's going to be right there on the strip and bright and as gaudy as any of the other hotels up there. And if that doesn't catch your eye, then you might even be able to see that sign as you're flying in and landing at Las Vegas International. Well, you definitely see it if you're driving into Las Vegas from the south, and so if you're coming from L.A. or that direction, basically. Yeah, it's right there by the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, and there's a similar themed Pimble Hall of Fame sign. So great work to whoever came up with that design. Yeah, and I have to give credit to Tim Arnold also. The funny thing is, if you've ever been to the Bill Hall of Fame or if you talk to Tim Arnold, you might get the impression that some of the stuff that he says either doesn't make a lot of sense to you, or actually it does, but he's very in-depth in... he's so deep into the material that he's looking at details that nobody else is sort of looking at or seeing problems that other people figure, like, how could that be a problem? But the good thing is he announced that he was going to move and look at where he's at now. I mean, they are actually building the new location, and it looks like it's going to be great, you know. So I have to give him credit there that it's a huge undertaking to get this going. But so far it seems like he's pulling it off. So congrats there. Yeah, I mean, every time he's set himself a new goal, there have been a few knockbacks here and there, but he's basically achieved everything he is going to do. And now this is kind of like the dream location, I think. I can't imagine where he can go from here, from the first place next to the movie theatre to where the current locations are now onto the strip. You know, how far can it go? Two locations. Yeah, true. One at the north end, one at the south end. Something like that. Or, oh, well, we'll just have to see. For now, best of luck to Tim Arnold with the completion of his new location, and we hope he gets to open it really, really soon. Yeah, and while we're... We're sending out our best wishes. Let's also give a shout-out to Roger Sharp, who recently had a bit of a health scare, we understand, but seems to be recovering well. Thankfully. Best wishes. Yeah, best wishes to Roger, and we hope to see you up and about and at a pinball show again before too long. Yeah, definitely. So, I suppose this is me wishing you a very happy holiday. Thank you very much, yes. not exactly the holiday I was expecting in October at the start of the year I was expecting to be in Chicago along with you oh and speaking of which is that my phone? oh as long as if you just talk about things that he was going to be involved in he rings you up almost as though he's listening but no I think that is my phone that must be Gary Right, usually he's calling me, but I'm surprised that he's calling you. Oh, well, he does call me as well, you know. Yeah, okay. So, have you got a way to hook up your phone? Yeah, let me just, I think if I just press this button here.
    124:52
    Hello, Gary? Hello. Oh, that sounds terrible. Oh, sorry. What happened? Oh, I don't think it was me. I don't know what this is. No, this is sort of some sort of distort connection. Oh, sorry, Gary. No, this is not going to work. Please, this is hurting my ears. Turn it away. Okay, I'll end that.
    125:12
    Too bad. I figured, okay, at least he's trying, you know. Oh, he is. Nobody can say Gary's not trying. So, no, that's too bad.
    125:23
    I'm sure he must have had something really important to discuss with us. But we'll try again next time, I suppose. Or perhaps you can come up with something that you can talk to him in your segment covering the Jersey Jack game. Let's see if he gives me a ring. Anyway. So I'm making another ad here. Obviously, Martin and I were saying goodbye and talking into the segment about the new Jersey Jack game that was supposed to be recorded today, but it's already inserted. So as Martin is already on holiday, I'm just going to say until next month and have a good time in between. Keep on flipping. Thanks. Bye-bye.