Hey, what's going on, everybody? From the Electric Bat Pin Pals, I am your host, Serge, with my co-host, as always, Cale Hernandez, and you're watching Pin Pals Hot Pins. It's the show with hot wings and even hotter pinball action. Today we're joined by Corwin (Bug) Emery from Spooky Pinball, the great all-American manufacturer of pinball games and the self-described best pinball company in Benton, Wisconsin. They've entertained the pinball enthusiast crowd for 15 years now with so many great games, including Rick and Morty, Evil Dead, and Looney Tunes. Check out Spooky's newest game, releasing just today, Beetlejuice, based on the hit 1988 horror fantasy film by Tim Burton. Bug, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited, nervous, terrified, hungry, thirsty. I'm all the things right now. I've never felt so many emotions at once. Well, that's good to hear. I was going to ask you about how you're feeling today, and what's going on in your mind as you prepare to take on the Pen Pals, Hot Pins, Gauntlet. How do you feel about Spice? uh so here's the thing i love spice i love it but i'm a baby like it hurts me i'm not my girlfriend is a million times tougher than i am when it comes to spicy food she's usually loading her stuff up with extra sriracha and everything and i'm like taming it down but it's good i enjoy it and i love chicken wings so and am i right that she helped make your wings yeah yeah so we make wings like every single week already but they're never like super hot or anything crazy like that so it's uh it's going to be deceptive for me because it looks like I'm seeing like an old friend that I'm used to seeing every week and then they're going to just stab me in the stomach. Well, I don't know her, but she sounds like a keeper. And, Cale, what about you? Do you think you'll be able to handle the wings of death? I feel good about it. You know, I'm a little worried. I grew up in New Orleans, which is known for spicy, flavorful food, but this is really another level. New Orleans is a cheat code. I didn't know that about you. That's the left-right, left-right, up-down of it. All right. Now, just an explanation to our viewers on how this is going to work. We've each ordered a bunch of wings, except for Bug, who's made his wings with his girlfriend. But Cale and I have ordered some wings, and all three of us have the same ten hot sauces, which will get progressively much, much hotter as time goes on. We're going to dip each wing into the hot sauce before we eat them, and then I'll ask Bug a series of questions assuming he doesn't pass out first. Does that work for you guys too? I just hope Kale throws up before I pass out. We're going to find out. Rachel did give me a bag to barf in. Yeah. If I do pass out, carry on the show without me and just one of you pretend to be me and answer the questions how you think I would. Yeah, just tell Morgan to sit down. Yeah. Well, you know, Bug, I think I've already figured out all of the Beetlejuice rules, so I can take your place if we need to. Okay. All right. So are you guys, I think we're ready. Let's do it. We're going to go first take our first hot sauce, and I just want to show you. I'm going to pull it right here. Okay. The first hot sauce for everyone is Shaquanda's Hot Tropic. Hopefully everyone can see that. That's your Shaquanda's Hot Tropic. It has a Scoville heat units or SHU of 1400. And this newest hot sauce, Hot Tropic, brings a full fruity blend of mango, papaya, and orange. That's what we're here for. So what we're going to do is – So if people are wondering why I have souffle cups, Serge and I met up yesterday, and I have all of the hot sauces numbered. So this is official. I have the official hot sauces also. We doing our first bite? Yeah, I dipped it in there. Okay, here we go. Cheers. Man, that's really good. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can eat that. Yeah. Yeah, I'll take that. I'm going to use it later. Mm-hmm. All right, Bug. Your latest title is Beetlejuice. How did you decide what perspective the player takes in the game? are you Beetlejuice or are you Lydia Dietz the Winona Ryder character or are you the Maitlands the ghost couple played by Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis or are you a new character exploring the world? How much thought goes into that question of player perspective when you design your games? That is always one of the trickiest parts when you get themes and you're working on pinball rules, concepts and what not. It's like okay who are we playing as here? Because you never want to miss out on the opportunities to do the best things that there is to do in a game because you're forcing a narrative or perspective of who you're playing as in the game. So we always prioritize making sure that we're going to deliver the moments and modes and experiences that people are hoping for, and then we look at how can we best tell a story outside of that. So in Beetlejuice Pinball, you're not really particularly playing as any specific character, but we more so view it as you have died and you have gone into the afterlife and you're a part of this journey. Similar to how in Evil Dead you're a part of the journey with Ash. You're not necessarily playing as him. We do like doing games where you do play as characters. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we had our players play as the family. Strictly, you're the killers in that game. And you're catching, cooking, and eating people. Like, they're chicken wings on hot ones. That was a good time. So, yeah. In Beetlejuice, it's a bit more broad. We don't really focus on that aspect as much as engaged with the best points of the movie. Yeah, it must be hard when you're doing a movie to give yourself a perspective that way, or it might depend on the movie. I know, like, you know, some games must be harder to figure out than others. Like Rick and Morty, for example, they talk to you like you're a third part of their gang, and sometimes they'll be like, oh, three people? I guess that's okay. You know, in our adventure and stuff like that. In Rick and Morty, you're like a bunch of different Mortys for most of that game. When you start it, you can be Scuba Morty, Cowboy Morty, there's, like, Elephant Morty, there's, like, a whole bunch of different Mortys, and then, yeah, Rick's pulled littling you throughout it. But yeah, we also have call-outs from Morty, so it's like, this is always where pinball gets a little weird. It's a tough thing to explain to licensors, because it breaks a lot of rules that you would typically follow in other formats. And I often like to ask on Twitch streams of electric bat tournaments, I often like to ask some trivia questions like, name other Keanu Reeves games or Arnold Schwarzenegger pinball games. But I think actually that Winona Ryder may be the dark horse for this trivia question. She's been in four movies or TV shows that were directly turned into pinball machines, including Beetlejuice now. Actually, two more, if you consider franchises that she's been in, and other elements of the franchise were turned into a pinball game. Can you name at least one other? Well, Stranger Things. That's the easy one. I'm not going to make you do the hard ones unless you happen to know them. I'm thinking through, because she wasn't in Batman 89, if my memory serves me correctly. I believe that's the only other Tim Burton pinball machine out there. That's a good one. and there should be more. We could agree with that. Oh my God. I don't even get this started. I'd do all of them if I could. Next would be Sweeney Todd if I had my way but I don't think that's what I think that's where people would want me to go. Not what the public is clamoring for necessarily but it is a good movie. Yeah. So what are the other Winona ones? Well, alright. Cale, by the way, do you know? I have no idea. I was thinking I have no idea. I don't know if I should give it to the chat or not on the video, the commenters but I can tell you guys. No more trivia for this one. She's been in Bram Stoker's Dracula. She was the Mina Murray, who was the reincarnation that Dracula really loved in that thing. And people forget because Keanu Reeves in that too, but she's the one dancing in the DMD cut scenes. She was Spock's mom in the Star Trek movie, the 2009 movie. She really was, I swear it. She was Spock's mom, and that was turned into, that's a deep cut, but that was turned into a game. And I'll also accept Alien Resurrection, which she was in with Sigourney Weaver. And that was the franchise, that one wasn't turned into a movie. She's also been on The Simpsons, and that's been turned into a game. So what I'm saying is that she's been in a lot of pinball machines. That's my claim on it. Sounds like her and Arnold are like neck and neck with pinball games. I should have gotten Dracula. It's like one of my, I love that movie. Yeah, that's a good one. And Bill Paxton. He's in a lot, right? Oh, Bill Paxton is in a bunch of things. But we confuse it with Bill Pullman a lot is the problem. I'm a huge Bill Paxton fan. Is there a live chat on your side that you're talking with? No, I just call them chat. But they're not live. They are dead right now. But they will comment on the video later on, and they've been good at that. But that's good for my first one. I guess I would also want to know from you, what does the Beetlejuice theme mean to you? What were you interested in it for? Oh, well, so, like, Tim Burton is my all-time favorite creative force. period like three out of my top five favorite movies are all tim burton movies so i wanted to work on anything in any of his worlds and uh beetlejuice made all all the sense possible uh to do because it just had all of the best things going for it that also aligns with the spooky brand you know the fun bouncy music the notable uh slightly crude call outs but it still somehow remains family friendly as well. Big actors, stop motion creatures, a bunch of different colors. Everything about it just ties really perfectly to spooky pinball of like what we like to bring to the pinball table, to like the industry as our look and our feel as a company. So, you know, on the crude humor point, some Beetlejuice trivia is, and maybe you know this but when uh when the studio exec saw the name beetlejuice they really didn't like the name so tim burton as a joke suggested something worse that they wouldn't pick he was going to go with scared sheetless was going to be his the name but then they actually liked it and he was horrified about it and so he had to convince them to go back to beetlejuice that happens to me sometimes with spooky luke i'll make a joke like wouldn't it be funny if we posted this and retaliation to that and then he's like do it and i'm like oh no dude i was just kidding around he's like you're posting that today and I'm like, oh, this is going to cause me some problems. And that's why we are known for trolling so much. I love it. I love it. So, Bug, do you have this book? What book is that one? I have, is it the Tim Burton art book? Yes. Yeah, I think mine has a different cover, but I do have, is it a book of his sketches and drawings? That's all it is and it's absolutely phenomenal. Yeah, I have a different cover of mine, but I have the same thing. Yeah, it's all of his original drawings and whatnot. It's really cool. Yeah, this is the initial running of it, and you can see me through it. So maybe it was like a special edition. I ordered this before it came. I pre-ordered. This is phenomenal. If you're a Tim Burton fan, pick this up. That's awesome. Yeah, those are really cool. I thought you were going to hypnotize me at first. You were like, hold on, there's a spiral there. That's what the book does, yeah. Yeah, and we're huge Tim Burton fans too. And actually, before we do our next wing, I'll just say one other fact about it. Netflix used to be a DVD service before it was a streaming service. these mail-in DVDs. And the good Jeopardy question here is that Beetlejuice was the very first DVD they ever sent out to a customer. Wow. Isn't that crazy? God, I only used that DVD portion of the service a few times. It was not the best. I think two out of the three times it came in, it was so scratched you couldn't play it. So we were like, yeah, we've got to figure out how to do this. And then people tell you to take toothpaste and make it more abrasive. That doesn't work. All right. What do you say, guys? Enough delaying. We're on to the second hot sauce. Second sauce. Okay. Okay. Is this girl going to hook me up here? All right. Now, for you at home, the second sauce is Seed Ranch's Just Winging It. Let me show it to the camera there. Oh, thank you, Bug, for doing this as well. And this has a Scoville unit rating of 5,700. It is organic dactyl peppers, carrot, and some umami-packed yeast. Ooh. This ain't nothing. All right, here we go. That's a little hot. It's getting hotter? What do you think, guys? I'm getting worried. Oh, man. It's a little surprising that that's already a little hotter, right? Yeah. Yep. That just put this black pit in my heart. Yeah, it really puts things into perspective. I know. I just remembered that we're doing an interview where this is going to hurt. Oh, this is going to be terrible. That was really good, though. It still has good flavor and whatnot. It's actually good, too. I would still use it, but it is hot, actually. Yeah, I would use that. I agree. And by the way, I should say I haven't tried any of these hot sauces before, too. I never, we haven't tried one drop of it until this episode. We'll see how that goes. I've tried one. I'm not looking forward to it. All right, Bug, my second set of questions around innovation. In each episode of Pin Pals, our podcast, I discuss code innovation. Spooky games have had really, really great code innovation. I think of Evil Dead, for example. It was the first game I could think of to require hitting two shots simultaneously for the shotgun, for the multiball to start. That's a unique thing. I haven't seen a game do that before. On the start of most modes and multiballs in Evil Dead, for example, the screen will show the top scorer of that mode rather than only making that info available on the info screen or after you finish the game. and so you could actually see to compete with the leaderboard while you're playing is really clever. I'll give you one other and then I'll get to my question which is the action button hold for four seconds so that that searches, initiates the ball search which matters in multiball and having said all of that and I could name so many other really interesting innovations that Spooky has done as I'm sure you can, but you took innovation to a whole other level with Spooky Speak so I want to talk about it and what are some ideas you have for how you can use it? How did you figure out how to use it in front of a loud game? Did you get it patented? I'll pause. Yeah. You know, I got to give credit where credit is due. The whole Spooky Speak journey started when rumors were getting out that Spooky Pinball might be working on Beetlejuice. And a podcaster named Kaneda said, if Spooky Pinball doesn't have it, so when you say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, the game turns on, they shouldn't even be making Pinball. And we disregarded that. We were like, that literally can't be done. Like, we're not even going to pay mind to this right now. We're just going to keep working and make the game super cool. And then time went on, and we kept talking about it, thinking about it. And eventually we were like, no, we're going to figure this out. We are going to do it. Started testing different microphones and learning ways that we could have the game kind of listening to what you're saying at various times. And it originally started with just that intention. Say Beetlejuice three times, start a game or turn your game on. And, like, pretty quickly after that, we realized, like, well, there could be a lot more. We're going to invest so much into this. It should really do a lot of other things. And we started thinking about all the different funny clips in the movie where if you say things like, I'm feeling hungry, we've got Beetlejuice pop his hand up with the Zagna bar, and he's like, I've got something good for you. If I start singing Deyo, it would be fun if the game took it over and started singing it for me. And then also just random words that if you and I are sitting here talking, it might pick up a word and then play something funny that interrupts your conversation and interjects, And it does a lot of funny moments. So that's like the base level of like, okay, I can play cool clips. I can say cool things. And then we start thinking, okay, like how can we get this worked into gameplay? Like how can we tie this into rules? Because you're right, like you have all these noises going on. Can we hold the ball in a scoop, bring things down real big, and give people a cue to do things? Yes, we can. We do that now. So to be completely transparent too, this is all very new technology as of just like the last few months that we've been getting this integrated into the game fully. So the possibilities are still limitless for us. We're still learning new things every single day, coming up with new ideas. Some things I would like to see happen is service-wise. How many times, Cale, especially you, have you been both hands on either side of a play field doing something, and, oh, crap, you need to get to a different menu in the service menu? It would be great if you could talk to the game and get to that menu and fire something instead of having to let go, set it down, lose your spot, get frustrated. So there's a lot of things that we are still pursuing and learning how to do with Spooky Speak, but at least at the bare minimum, it does the coolest thing I've ever seen a game do, which is turn on after saying Beetlejuice three times. Genuinely. Sorry, you go. Also patent pending, so other companies can keep your filthy myths. I was going to ask about it. It seems like a highly patentable kind of technology out there. I don't know, loser kid. I was like, I don't want to see Jersey Japper show up on the next launch over there. Kel, what do you say to the service idea? I didn't even think about that. That would be absolutely phenomenal because Bug's absolutely right. There are so many times when you have the play field up and you have two hands doing stuff, it would be nice to go, hey, go to this menu. that is that just blew my mind I'll tell you what works so well for pinball there are some people who don't care about this but there are some people who don't want Alexa in their house because they don't want something that's constantly listening but a pinball machine is perfect for it because you don't have the pinball machine constantly on you turn it on when you want to play and then you turn it off when you're done playing especially if you're in a home environment and so it's sort of perfect for that I don't have any concern I'm one of those people who might be concerned I don't want an Alexa. But this one, this doesn't concern me at all because you just have it in your house, in your game room. You turn it off when you're done. I would only listen into people's homes if I could find out what themes they want us to do. That's really all I care about. I'm not really that interested in anything else. Or spy on other manufacturers. Well, you don't want to know what people do on top of a pinball machine in their house, you know? Ew. All right. Thank you, Caleb. Best hype man in the biz. But still talking about innovation, that's the big thing to talk about. But I want to quickly go through all the great mechs in the game and focus on one or two of them. This is what I could see from looking at the game. You have a Polaroid camera with the flash going off. You have stand-ups that guard a moving sandworm that can be hit to lower them, and then you could shoot the ball under the moving sandworm into a lower playfield area to take down the sandworm's health, and then the sandworm lowers his face down, and you could shoot the ball through the sandworm's mouth, right? Yes, sandworm does eat ball. Is that right, Bug? Sandworm does eat ball, plain and simple, and dances. He dances and eats balls. I saw that in the Deo scene where he's dancing to the music going on, which is crazy and awesome. Love that immersion. You have a magnet ball save below the flippers that can get fed from a disappearing right outlane gate. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So when you launch the ball, there's a skill shot light sequence that goes through, and one of those sequences on the inserts is the bridge out option where a right outlane diverter opens up, so the ball immediately launches and goes straight down your right outline, and you drain and die immediately. And then we catch it with the magnet between the flippers and throw it into play. Reason being just like theme integration. Theme immersion. Yeah. The movie starts with Adam and Barb dying, so I thought it would be great if you could start the game by immediately dying and then getting brought back to the afterlife just like they do. Well, you know, it's a little bit of a spoiler alert to future questions, but I really think Spooky is one of the best out there at theme immersion. that's just you put it front and center like this matters you know i think of all the choreography in evil dead with the shotgun and the double in lane double plunger lane just so you could fire two balls at once like that's a lot of choreography and a lot of effort to give you a theme immersive moment and it matters and especially to people collectors home journey type players who want to be immersed in in the theme that they care about yeah no theme integration is uh i love directing sequences like that. It's one of the few times where, so like whenever I put creative director on titles, I always thought that looked and sounded like BS, like it sounds like a fake job. But it's times like that when I get to like direct the sequences of what I want to see, how I want to hear it, what it needs to look like, all those things together and see the finished product that I'm like, oh, maybe parts of what I do is actually kind of important. Well, yeah, I mean, in my case, I am creative director of this podcast and it is a BS title for this podcast, but yours sounds real. It's a fake title until it's not, and then it's real. Until it matters, right. I came up with wings, but I didn't even come up with that. Other mechs in the game, you've got a lift ramp that creates different ball paths on that right purple ramp there that can lead to a physical ball lock couch going on in the upper left side of the game a rising beetle juice from the grave right um that wild topper of a beetle snake you know on the top and i'm sure you'll get an opportunity to talk about all those but i'm going to deep dive into one overshadowed uh mech or something you're putting in the game that if i don't give it special attention I fear nobody will talk about. And that is the now-serving backboard counter. And you might say, sorry, you go. Tell me about it, because you might say, why am I talking about this? That seems like the least interesting one. Not to me, I tell you. I think games should have counters. You've done it in Rick and Morty. You've done it in TNA. Tell me about it. So the now-serving counter was the first thing designed by our programmer, Spooky DJ, who is also our hardware guy, designed the warden system that we run our games on. And before we even had the title, he started working on a now serving counter sign for the backboard because he was like if we do beetlejuice we're going to use this like he absolutely demanded it very early on and there was no arguing it because it's an absolutely fantastic idea and uh it's got one of the dumbest and my favorite sound effects and it was not my spooky luke's favorite sound effects in the game where uh so when you hit the juno scoop you know it's kind of like you're talking with miss argentina and you're given your number and we you know beetlejuice will be holding up that number, let's say it's like four, we have two targets up in the waiting room, now serving, and whenever you hit those, it increases that counter, and you get met with like a ding sound effect, and it's the funniest, like, just stupid, dum, sound effect. When we make sound effects, they're usually like four to seven layers deep of different things that are all edited, and that one is literally just drag and drop ding sound effect, and it's so effective. It's so great. So you hit the now serving targets to get up to that number, and then that lights your Juno case modes. Got it. I appreciate hearing that so much, because I just think so much of so many things in pinball count. You know, how many, we won't talk about other games, but just all these things that you're counting in the background of the game, to have that clear and visible to a rules-focused player is just, you know, perfect. And it's theme-integrated. Yeah, it's also, we have this hilariously fun end-of-ball sequence where we manage to keep track of every single shot you hit in a ball. And we have a light show that plays through rapidly showing you every single shot that you did hit. Whoa. And it ties into your bonus after the ball is over, and then that now serving sign, you know, say you hit it four or five times, that adds a multiplier to it as well. So it tallies up all the shots you hit, and then it counts down ding, ding, ding, ding, and then that adds to it as well. So it's another fun experience, like you'll get out of that every single ball that you play. And it's In the gameplay reveal video that people will see, there's a hilariously long sequence where I had a pretty good ball, and that counter went on for quite some time. We might have to edit it a little bit, but it's really fun. Honestly, that sounds incredible. Great. Another innovation in the code just on the bonus countdown, which is interesting. Well, great. I'm good to go with our next wing. What do you guys say? Let's go. Number three. Our next wing is Hot One's own pickled garlic sriracha sauce. And I'm going to hold it up for everyone here. Focus. And this has 18,000 Scoville units. It's not your average sriracha. Takes pickles, takes garlic, throws in a splash of key lime. That is a fixed mark from the last one. Oh, boy. Oh, you already had it? You said the last one was 5,000, right? 5,000, and now we're at 18,000. What the heck is with that? That math isn't cool. All right. Big bite. It's a slow build. That's a slow build. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're right. That's a side. Sorry, I was going to say. I think number two was harder, right? I do, too. Number two was harder. Yeah. This is good. I like this. I'm going to dip my finger now. So far, it's been a good flavor all around. and that's how they get you like the first half everything's all good and it's all downhill from there yeah I'm still just having fun hanging out chatting and eating good food I'm not even pissed at anybody yet well let's get into it then I wanted to talk with you code structure in Beetlejuice and I know like you said it's being worked on by Spooky DJ who did Scooby Doo right and Casey is that right from American Pinball? That's right Casey Casey Butler and first time having two programmers in the game. I'm not going to go into all the details here in this podcast, although Cale and I will make a separate rules breakdown video on trying to go into the nitty-gritty, dissect the play field, and so forth. But just to talk more broadly about it, thinking about modes first and then lastly about multiballs, I could see that it's a mode-based game. And am I right that there are multiple mode trees? Do I have that right? Exactly. So that is something we love doing in our games. I don't like when a game has, you know, these are your ten modes and they all start right here, and that's, like, the only objective, going to the same scoop to start all your modes. I like starting modes in as many different areas as possible, and I like to have a goal. So, like, when I do my live streams, there's times I play Scooby-Doo. I do nothing but focus on the character modes and getting the extra bonus features out of those. And you can spend a whole live stream just covering that alone. And then you can do your next one on all the villain modes. And Beetlejuice is going to be the same way, where you can focus on all your Beetlejuice modes, you can focus on all your Juno modes, you can focus on all your Sandworm battles, and then that doesn't even touch the multi-balls that are also a part of the game, and many of which stack over quite a few different things. And all of those have their own special mechanisms and designated areas to the play field. So yeah, just a lot more fun, in my opinion, to have different trees like that. And people, in this, the You Are Our Lord 2025, there is a lot expected out of code in Pinball for having things not get old, because games getting boring and too repetitive is just the death of your game. It makes total sense. I'm on the exact same page with you. I think almost all games would be benefited from having not just modes, but multiple mode trees. As you said well, like having control rooms and T-Rex modes in Jurassic Park, completely separate, accomplished by doing different things. It's a different set of modes. It forces the player to use the whole different playfield to change their strategy, and it's breath. It adds last stability, like you said, because you could do different things every time you step up to the game right away. Not like ten modes down the line. That's another thing to get wizard modes, but just having different options right up front. And so you said that there's Beetlejuice modes and Juno modes and the Sandworm. If I could just ask about it, I see a lot of carousel inserts. I assume that you have to hit those carousel inserts and then you start a mode. Is that the Juno mode? That you start with that? Yeah, the carousel inserts are kind of like our arrows that point to all of the major flow shots and whatnot in the game. And those are going to be lit for quite a few different things. We're actually still playing around with the mode qualification stuff with how many are going to be lit at a time and things like that just as far as balancing if the game's too easy too hard. The really exciting stuff on our end that just takes hours and hours of testing. but basically when you launch the ball you're going to be met with a bunch of purple shots on the playfield that are going to be bouncing in time to the Danny Danny Elfman music and you're going to hit those you spell Beetlejuice, each of those shots is you saying Beetlejuice, you say it three times lights a Beetlejuice mode over at the Beetlejuice mechanism, if you want to go do your sandworm modes, you fill out that target bank that's in front of the sandworm, and then we have multiple different battles for you there, and then lots of planned future modes for like multi-balls and special, like, sub-wizard things there. And then the Juno modes, as I explained earlier, is you go get your ticket number, and then you hit the now serving up to that, and then that qualifies her modes over there. We also have cases there. So, like, there's short cases where we'll take somebody, you know, from the waiting room couch section, and we'll light special shots in the play field that you fill out those cases. And so you fill those out. And then we also have her modes as well. so that's that's incredible and then i also there's like super modes on the left ramp spinning wheel like ramps super ramps super spinner super pop super worm yeah so the the roulette wheel on the left ramp i i actually thought this is the thing that you were going to say is the underrated thing earlier um so what we have going on over there is it's the dante's inferno room ramp and as you hit it every uh few occasions that you hit it it will spin that roulette wheel and it's actually physically lit on the play field of the led board behind the plastic and it shows you which prize you're going to get from it and it ranges from things like extra ball to points to super values and then also just nothing but uh it can really change up your strategy as far as like okay well if i've got super ramps for the rest of this mode i'm going to want to try and get to modes where i have more ramps i'm sorry for this ball uh i want to get to modes that i have more ramps. But I like that we don't stop the ball there. Holding the ball for long mystery award sequences can really take the momentum out of the gameplay. And giving these awards, it allows us to do it a lot more frequently and not stop the game. So it's kind of like two perks there as to not slowing things down and rewarding players more. Awesome. Awesome. And then you touched on the multi-balls already. There's the sandworm and then there's also that couch in the back. you know what how do you what's that about yeah so uh there's a there's a looping shot that is around that couch so there's a whole waiting room section of the play field that upper left section and there's this really awesome looping shot that you can get going on that upper flipper and every time you do that it is the knock three times sequence from when adam draws a door knocks three times and enters into the afterlife so when you're hitting that that's what you're doing you're drawing a door and knocking three times that opens up the afterlife which is that right lift ramp. You shoot up that, and now you're putting balls on the couch for the now-serving multiball. And then on top of that, there's also the showtime multiball, because I was immediately, as soon as we were doing this, my favorite game is probably Adam's Family, and the multiball sequence where they say, Showtime! And do the whole buildup is pretty much the best one in pinball history, in my opinion. And I was like, yeah, I want to come after that. Because we have an actual movie where it's known primarily for him saying, it's showtime. That's one of the biggest things about the movie. So we knew we needed to do a really special sequence there, and the gameplay video, people will see exactly what that is. And then also Strange and Unusual Multiball, based around Lydia's camera and Lydia Dietz in general. So that's her on Multiball and Sam on Multiball. Deo, another Multiball there too. This game has more modes than Evil Dead, so it's a whole less movie. You know, we only have the one movie compared to two movies, but it has more modes than Evil Dead. So, absolutely loaded. Now, I can see your love for Adam's Family. I swear in one of your other games, I forget which one, you have a call-out that says, keep the ball, I have a whole bucket full. Yeah, yeah, I had the hitchhiker say it in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that's right. Because I thought it was really disgusting with the notion of him being a cannibal saying, keep the ball, I have a whole bucket full. A very different context. Yeah, a very different context. I thought that was clever. And then Multiball's last question on the code stuff, multipliers. So am I right that you hit the pop bumpers and that spots lost souls somewhere on the playfield that you then have to collect and maybe shoot the scoop in the center? What do I have wrong there? Yeah, exactly. Well, so there's a bit more to it because there's two entrances to that scoop. There's the front entrance where you shoot it from the front, but also if you shoot that left orbit and you hold the flipper up, it can go behind the flipper and feed that scoop. Which is super cool. Yeah. So, like, hit the left orbit, goes around the waiting area, hold up the upper flipper, and then it goes behind the scoop. Dude, that upper waiting room area is ridiculously fun. It's like its own minigame because of how the pop bumpers throw the ball back up into that upper flipper, and then you hit it around, you hit the scoop, that shoots it through the spinner, back up. I mean, it is... This game is ridiculously fun to play. I've been enjoying the hell out of it. But yeah, Lost Souls, they're a multiplier. We also have some other things going on with her. I'll be honest, I will totally butcher explaining it if I try to get... All right, we'll pause there. But yeah, like the pop-up or spawn them, and then it adds to your general playfield multiplier. It's something you can really focus on or do passively. The longer you play and the better you do, it will make a huge difference in your scoring. Excellent, excellent. Thank you for that hearty code breakdown. And with that, I'm ready to go to our fourth wing. What do you guys say? Here we go. You know, that last one wasn't as hot, but I will say it stuck around in my tongue for a lot longer than the others. Oh, this one's colors. All right, here we have, let's hold it up. We've got Alchemy Peppers Mango Serrano Hops. We've got a Scoville unit of 27,000, and Serranos are the main thing within this. Cheers. Cheers. You guys are faster than me. All right, what are we dealing with? Oh, that one's in the back of the throat. That's not bad. You know what? It is spicy, but not bad. And it is the back of the throat. It's very peppery, I feel like. Are you sure we're going in the right order? I've looked, and I think we are. And you know what? It has a lasting effect at the end there, though. Yeah. That one's in the back of the throat. That's a little weirder. Yeah. It's not horrible, though. I feel like these are all, like, warming you up for, like, these are the things you're going to feel later times 100. Oh, yeah. These are normie hot sauces so far. Yeah. We're good. All right. So let's talk about sound for the game, and you touched on it a little bit already. with so many of your games, including your latest game, Beetlejuice, you've chosen a licensed property where the music and overall sound quality is really iconic for the license. Halloween, Rick and Morty, Alice Cooper, Looney Tunes, obviously TNA. All of these are, people may not even realize, it might be at a subconscious level how important the sound is for all of those themes, you know, for example. And so how critical is the sound of a property for Spooky when you're choosing a license? And do you think about acquiring the music rights as a necessity before even making a game. Absolutely. I mean, if you really think about it, pinball was thriving on sound alone pretty much in the 90s, in my opinion. Like, yeah, we have the dot matrix and whatnot, but really it's the call-outs, it's the music, it's the sounds of the game that stuck out to me about the older games. And because those are what I grew up on, that's always been really ingrained in me as a major important part of pinball. And on top of that, my dad was a musician, I'm a musician. Spooky DJ is a musician. We've worked with tons of extremely talented musicians over the years. You know, Scott Danesi, Matt “Count D” Montgomery from the Marilyn Manson band, and then now Brady Hearn. And so we're all just big music people, lovers, enjoyers, creators. And, you know, when it comes to film scores, like Danny Danny Elfman is one of the goats of all time, hands down. so uh getting he's so married to tim burton that it ties in well to like when you're doing the tim burton thing it's like okay well he's like danny elfin's kind of attached to his hip when it comes with like a lot of his movies so for it to come across appropriately you better have those sounds like it has to sound exactly in that world and um we were fortunate enough to license that main theme song and have Brady do multiple recreations of it in different styles to utilize it all over the game, as well as just his insane talent to create a lot of new tracks that were in that world. A really cool story is I sent the music a long time ago to Kerry Hardy, and it was original creations from Brady. And he brought his kids in, and he played the songs. And he was like, what does that sound like to you? Like, what does it, let me review that. What does that sound like to you? And they were like, that sounds like Betelgeuse. I'm sorry. But they said it sounds like Betelgeuse. So we knew we were in extremely good hands with him. But music's extremely important to titles we chose. I was really lucky I got to do a lot of music creation and Evil Dead because, you know, that's a property where it's not nearly as known for its like score and whatnot. Most people, there's not really a main theme that comes to mind for that. So I got to have a lot of fun creating a lot of sounds for that. But you look at titles like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When that movie doesn't have a score, it has noises that are unnerving and creepy and weird. So we got to do some really unique things that I think are highly underrated in that game with the sound design and sequences that we do in all the modes. Well, that's why it's not just the music, it's the overall sound. Like you said, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Looney Tunes is just known for a certain type of sound. And so you have to get the music right, but you also have to get the sound effects right. And I think Spooky has always been so great at that. And especially here in this game, Beetlejuice, you have the Danny Danny Elfman, that dark fantasy campy style of music, which is so perfect for Tim Burton movies. And then you have the really bright Harry Belafonte Deo song. And you have that as well, right? Yeah, yeah, we do. Harry Belafonte Deo. It's probably the coolest mode in the whole game because the game gets possessed and taken over just like it does in the movie. But on top of all that, too, in Beetlejuice specifically, his character makes a lot of sounds that you can use in really creative ways. So when he's talking to Adam and Bart in the graveyard and his head just spins out of control crazy and he's going, well, it does that. Like that is a perfect closer to our skill shot, which ends at a spinner shot where you spin it with that. Like it just makes perfect sense. even down to him doing the like save that for later that what that's a great scooper jet you know like these are all things that just tie so perfectly into the sound design of what we do with our our shots and modes in the game i love it um and i think i think i for everything i could tell already how it just sounds great um i'm i'm good with that and ready to jump to the fifth wing what do you guys say let's do it fifth wing's halfway right this is halfway and for the fans just because I was doing okay didn't mean you had to try to murder me it's like holy crap she coded this one oh wow you're not kidding around alright just before we eat it I want to tell the fans this is hook and arrow spicier sauerkraut and mustard it has 51,000 scoville units so twice as spicy as the last one jalapeno, green habanero, and a whole bunch of other stuff going on in there. This is the most interesting sounding one so far. Yeah. Wait, I'm not even there yet. All right. It's thicker. I can smell the heat. I can already tell, first of all, that it's a lot thicker. All right. We're going to... I think Rachel would like that one. Okay. Yep. See, now we're getting there. Oh, yeah, I get it now. That's turning on. Oh, man. All right, Bug. We're turning it on. Bug, this is going to be... Oh, let me stop sharing my screen for a moment. I forgot I've been sharing my screen this whole time. Kelly, you can cut that out, right? All right. Bug, this is going to be a lightning round. where I'm going to give you a series of call-outs from your games. You have to tell me what game it's from. We're going to start off easy, but then get hard real quick. Does that work for you? Yep, I'm here. All right. First one is I Just Want to Die. Rick and Morty. Correct. The next one is Time to Handle the Rush. Time to Handle the Rush. Rob Zombie? No, I'm ready to share my screen and tell you the answer. Hold on. I see I'm going to have to turn off and on my screen each time. I don't want to give it away. All right, so first here. Just for everyone watching, I just want to show the, you know, the I just want to die. Shout out to Carl, by the way, for his stream. I used to stay out on the production line every single day building that game. I just want to die. And, Bug, this next one might be embarrassing because I'm going to use your video to show it. Oh dominoes Can you handle the rush Answer anything Is this the wizard mode All right Do another domino stream. I love that game. Yeah, and it's like a no-holds... That would hurt way less. I think that's a wizard mode, actually, and it's like a no-hold flippers kind of situation, which is cool. So shout out to you, Bug, for your video there. All right, the next one. Are you ready for the next one? Mm-hmm. Welcome to the Future. DM. All right, that's right, and I'll show it. I'll play it out again. Shout out to Carl. Welcome to the Future. That is not the highest score of the night. All right. The next one. Look at young Carl. Yeah, that's a young Carl right there. Young Carl. All right, the next one is My Glasses. I Can't See Without Them. You know, America's Most Haunted. No, Scooby-Doo. Yeah, that's going to be Scooby-Doo. Let's go to the next one to show that. That's Danzig's video. Exactly. And you knew it right away. Good. Yeah, shout out to Jake Danzig right there for his video. All right, the next one is, hi, I'm your doctor. Why don't you come in, take your pants off and make yourself comfortable? Make yourself comfortable. American's most haunted, baby. All right. Absolutely love MH. Wonderful. Hi, I'm your new doctor. Why don't you come in? There's a Moneyball pants on. Make yourself comfortable. All right, I got to show the clips. Can I share my favorite college class? I'm going to show you the clips. I gotta show the clips. Can I share my favorite callout from that game? Tell me. Oh no, I'm gonna get a spiritually transmitted disease. Oh, that is good. Alright, your next callout is Keep Your Balls to Yourself, Boy. Keep Your Balls to Yourself, Boy. I'm purposely not reading them in the way that they were done. That sounds like Rob Zombie. Captain Spaulding? Yeah. Yeah, that's Captain Spaulding, all right. That's right. He's a tasty fried chicken. All right, let me see if I can stump you with this one. Get in this capsule, baby. Get in this capsule, baby? You heard it right. Sounds like Evil Dead. Ends with baby? Get in this capsule, baby. It's either Rick and Morty or Evil Dead. Final answer? I'll go Rick and Morty. if it's evil dead that was a ben line not a mean line what if I told you get in this capsule baby we are blasting off does that change it and if it doesn't I'm going to give you the final one eep op orc uh uh get in this capsule baby did we have call outs in that game oh you're about to hit well I'm going to call it a call out but here's what I mean oh yeah I have it's been a while we got here get in the capsule, baby. Okay, yeah. Is that unfair, Bug? Perhaps. No, no, no, totally fair. I gotta say, Jetsons, this is not our best game, I know, but underrated dollar game. You're playing with your buddies, you're flapping some dollars down over top the flippers and you're drinking beer. This is a great freaking game. Very fun to play with your buddies. I am with you there. I agree. And by the way, I think shout out on that one to Jake Danzig again for his stream. I think America's Most Haunted from Papa Pinball also sat out to them too. You ready for the next one? Hit me. That blade is like you. Doesn't look real sharp. Oh, I know that. I think I wrote that. That blade is like you. Doesn't look very sharp. It's Evil Dead, right? That blade is like you. Doesn't look very sharp. that is that is my dad line actually no i remember my dad writing that line because he looked at me and said it and he informed me that he was thinking of me when he wrote it a bug you down for a few more obviously you're having a good time okay alright the next one is be careful or you will lose your life be careful or you will lose your life that's Ultraman oh good I thought you were the way you said it I thought you weren't going to get it actually yeah I started saying it like a little bit exactly be careful or you will lose your life most of the kaiju cast alright bug your next one we're rounding out the end here how fortunate we need all the help we can get how fortunate we need all the help we can get that's Halloween you are absolutely right and you even said it right there yep how fortunate we need all the help we can get I am torn by the fact that no call outs I write will ever be as memorable to me as the ones from Halloween like I have worked with some of the biggest voice actors in the world. Frank Welker, come on. And I'm... Dr. Loomis, his call-outs are just like a shop favorite. We all love Dr. Loomis' call-outs the most. And shout out there again to Jake Danzig. If you're wondering why I always pick his for his videos, it's because he turns off the audio of the games. And I can't use all of your videos, bud, because you don't. Yeah, because I don't stop talking over it the whole time. He lets you hear the game. By a lot of people online, not playing. All right, the next one is, don't let the door hit you on the way out. That's Captain Spaulding again. Mm, damn it. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. On the way out, yeah. Captain Spaulding, he does say, like, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. So if it would have had an ass, I would have known. Dang it. Shout out to Majestic Pinball there. Thank you there. Only two left, okay? Wait, wait, wait. I think you missed a few points. It's either Looney Tunes or Rick and Morty. I think we said it in both games. For sure, Looney Tunes. Daffy goes, wait, wait! I think you missed a few points. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait! We're going real good right now, boys and girls. Absolutely perfect. Yeah, that's right. That's Living With Cable, so shout out to them. Great guy. Great videos. And then, very last one, pick-em-up-he'll-asphyxiate-out-there. That's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yep. Ah, pick-em-up-he'll-asphyxiate-out-there. That's the introduction to the hitchhiker mode. Hitchhiker? Should we pick-em-up? Oh, yeah, man. Pick-em-up-he'll-asphyxiate-out-there. What does he look like? Such a rude question to follow, but valid at the same time. Totally valid. You should judge people's looks if you're picking up pitch hikers. I'm going to judge you by looks, and that is look by comfort, for sure. All right. Well, with that, I am ready for sauce number six. Are you, gentlemen, ready? Nope, but let's do it. That last one did hurt me a little bit at the start. I'm not going to lie. That was taking me a second to recover. Hold on one second. I've got to get up for this. Ooh, tropical Amarillo. Amarillo by morning. All right, so the next one is, as you said, Tropical Amarillo. This has a Scoville unit of 69,000, and it's iconic Caribbean flavors, sweetness from pineapple and mango mix, but also some scotch bonnet peppers. Is this the first one that's actually branded hot ones? No, the pickled garlic was too. Okay. All right. All right, here we go. Wait, I'm almost there. Here we go. I just want to point out, we've all been doing good-sized bites. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that goes in the throat. Yeah. I'm going to get a little more of that. Oh, it's way up my nose. Yeah, I'm having a good time with that one. Hmm. It's building. Huh. Alright. Alright. Alright, Bug. You've been known for... You've been known for adding Easter eggs in your code that clearly take a long time, a lot of effort, and you even add them well after your games have already sold out. I'm thinking of the crazy video mode in Evil Dead, for example. What's the weirdest, least necessary thing you've added to one of your games when it comes to code? Hmm. Early on, we had the gameplay. This is starting to hurt. We had the gameplay video. I can feel this one now. Yeah, that one lingers. We had the gameplay. Fuck. We had the gameplay video coming up for Evil Dead. And we were crunch timing pretty big. I was going over to Madison to hang out with Ben like every single week. If I drool on myself, I'm so sorry. I'm going to drool. That's just another Friday. We had a lot of modes, a lot of content, speech, bugs, important things to be fixing. And Ben spent an unusual, probably like four or five hours making sure the clock in the background of one of the screens kept track of real time. And was accurate and stayed accurate no matter what with your game's internal timer. And he thought it would be simple and it took him forever. And at that time, we were still struggling to get through full games without hitting code plugs, so it felt extremely unnecessary at the time. That's great. What about in Beetlejuice specifically? As far as totally unnecessary, just a weird thing to add, and a follow-up there, is it also true that if you say Christopher Franchi on Spooky Speak, it'll make Beetlejuice scream? Yeah, if you say, I'll say things like, I got a text from Franchi, and the game goes eee that like super high pitched scream he does later I don't know just give me the joke oh my god let's come on let's sit down for a little bit well yeah otherwise a useless thing not useless the ball tracking every single thing that's a good example he has a habit we'll sit down and you can't keep this guy on a normal schedule like it's impossible I'll be like, Dylan, I need you at work 7 to 5 every day this week. No ifs, ands, or buts. It's not negotiable. You've got to be here. He'll say, okay. He'll come in at 7. We'll have a meeting. These are the 10 things in the exact order that I need done next in Beetlejuice Pinball. You're going to do them in this order. Luke Peters has all the stuff prepped for you. Get it done. He says, okay. And from 7 to 5, he's working on that list. And then from 5 to about 3 or 4 in the morning, he is working on the most random thing that nobody asked for ever thought of in their life and he comes in the next morning at 10 to 11 p.m. a.m. I mean and you're like dang it dude where are you and he shows up and he's like check this out and then all of a sudden yeah the game tracks every single switch that the ball hit throughout a game that you played and you're like how long that take he's like only five or six hours he was up till three in the morning doing it but God bless him for it. I mean, we always say Dylan will have our best and our worst ideas possible. That has remained so unusually true because he's come in after some benders, late night benders, and presented us stuff where we were like, what are you smoking when you go home? That this is what you came up with and put in this game right now. Dude, we need speech. We need call-outs and movie clips. What are we doing? so programmers are a funny batch to work with so you never quite know and spooky games are like a box of chocolates and you never know what you're gonna get and uh fortunately none of them are the tooth placed flavored ones anymore so i love the weirdness that's added to the code like that um it's eccentric um and i'm good to go to our next one what do you guys say okay okay it's happening We're on number seven for those paying attention. All right, and this is Smokin' Ed's Apricot. It is 104,000 Scoville units. Smokin' Ed is bringing sophisticated flavors and potent peppers to the number seven wing with this lavender-infused apricot and lemon hot sauce. It actually doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way, right? Lavender. That last one increased my heart rate. Yeah, that mattered. I could tell that one. Here we go, right? One second. Wait, wait, wait. Okay, I'm ready. Dude, I think you're boring that. Like, take it. That's the bomb! Are you nuts? I really got in there. Oh, God. Ooh. That was immediate. Immediate flavor. Yeah, that's really sweet. Mm-hmm. Interesting, interesting. Now, Morgan's not even trying these. She's just coughing from the smell, right? I'm just smelling them, yeah. Oh, they smell potent. Like, if you take a whiff of these, it can make your eyes water. That one wasn't bad. No, I'm okay with that one. Okay. All right, Bug. Yeah, that's good. The four red things coming out, you can see it. Oh, no, actually, yeah, now I taste it at the end, like, way later. Way later, I get it. No, this is good. Okay. All right. Bug, you've likened your games to going on a dark ride at a Six Flags theme park and how other companies approach game design as making a pinball machine, but you approach game design as making an amusement park ride that happens to be a pinball machine. Can you explain what you mean by that a bit more? Absolutely. In two seconds. Give me just two seconds. It's milk time. So amusement park rides, dark rides especially, have a lot in common with pinball. you're taking an extremely well-known IP and you're going to give people a roughly, you know, three to five minute experience with it. And in that experience, you need to show them all their favorite, most iconic things that they know and love about that while also attempting to tell a new story and provide new, exactly what I said, providing them kind of like a new story with it. And usually you also bring in various actors from that IP to help aid with that and tell that original story and give them new things. And there's a whole sequence of music that plays at these certain parts. And it can never get boring. You have to want to go on that ride over and over and over again. And also, also, they require maintenance. Frequent maintenance. Something pinball people need to be reminded. Amusement park rides, they maintain those every day. So, you know, replace your coil flipper stops and stuff occasionally. Man, my lips are really hurting. You're feeling it? It's hurting the tongue quite a bit. But, yeah, there's a lot of similarities, like, with those rides with pinball machines. Also, like, rides, they're full of mechanisms. Like, you sell effects of things happening with, like, tricks and smoke and mirrors and things like that. So it's pretty similar. I could see that. And with our podcast, we usually take every week a pinball, every episode a pinball game, and we discuss ten criteria for a great pinball code. And the very first two I discuss are moments and theme immersion. And I think that your game design philosophy of creating an amusement park ride in a game, that translates directly into success at those two criteria. And those are the two criteria that make pinball players feel like they're on a journey. And I know you care about scoring, too, and risk and reward and play field multipliers, but it's always felt like the journey is the core thing that matters in your games. A journey's the reward. That's right. Sorry. That's a thing I have. No, it's like the lights and sounds go crazy in TNA after you destroy a reactor. It's an incredible moment through very common pinball elements, elements that are available to all manufacturers that you could do, or the Roy mode in Rick and Morty, how they're orange and green shots, and orange shots are bad life decisions, and they're worth less, and green shots are worth more. I play that. I punish Roy. I make him go through hell. I torture that poor bastard. yeah just just awesome theme integration you know and moments and each one each one of those just there's when i look at those spooky games i can name like a 10 moments in those games easy you know that are made and that's just not so common in all pinball machines from uh that i see out there so i'm good at number seven are you guys ready for number eight but before you say yes i want to announce that this number eight is the time where we have the bomb hot sauce oh right now and so I'm going to take it out we're going to dude that's so much it barely even came out is that that's Morgan in the background Morgan you're doing you're doing the lord's work Morgan he's helping oh no alright so I'm going to pour I'm going to do it you know over here I'm going to give some of this to Phil he's next to me I'm going to have the Hershey's squirting all over your house alright that's the bomb right there just to announce it for everyone this is called the bomb it has a The Scoville units have 135,600 units. Careful around the eyes. This is where things take a turn. That's what they say. You know, I think this is what's going to take us to diarrhea town population us. All right. There's a bite for us right here. Are you guys ready? The three of us are having a Zoom call. Yeah, we're going to have to stay on the Zoom call when that happens. You guys know that, right? Everybody ready? I'm ready if you guys are ready. Okay, let's go. Oh, no. There you go. That's your big boy. That's a hitter. That's impressive. That's the word you chose? That's not even enjoyable. It's like a cruel joke. It's a mean joke. Oh, no. All right, Bug. As you guys suffer through this, I wanted to ask you about theme selection. Spooky is known for their quirky themes. Do you feel like the themes you pick affect your planned production volume, or do you feel like your production capacity affects what themes you pick? Serge, are you really eating this stuff? Oh, yeah. Oh. I'm an immortal, though. This isn't... It's a different situation. Rachel made me some yogurt. I was born a Highlander. Fuck. Watch the eyes. Oh, wow. Oh, no. There we go. There we go. The Pepto has been brought out. Rachel, take this stuff. Oh, my God. There's two more. There's two more that are hotter. Close question. All right, I'll give it to you again. Bug, I wanted to ask you about theme selection. Because I know that Spooky is known for their quirky themes. And do you feel like the themes you pick affect your planned production volume? or do you feel like your production capacity affects what themes you pick? I'll take on any theme. I don't care. And then... And of course you started with the name Spooky because your family has a passion for the horror movie genre. But you found opportunities to veer away from that in your themes, like games like TNA, Jetsons, Rick and Morty, Looney Tunes. Years later, do you ever have reservations about the company name? Does it ever cause confusion when you seek out licensing agreements from non-horror-themed companies and properties? No. Good. I'll accept that answer. I ask one follow though Are there IPs Oh sorry There you go So really Like the name works Does bread help? Okay. Bread has to help. Give me a bun, please. you guys are feeling that one that's what you're saying Rachel's here with me dad really struck gold with the spooky brand cause um it's so marketable you know everyone knows bar and spooky it's like spooky shill you know that's cool the ghost is cute we can do a lot of poses we've made him a lot of things we've made him a pirate we've made him an astronaut we didn't make him eat these fucking wings but I might make him do that next yeah he's been a pirate and stuff so that's cool I have a point here oh you don't need one you know I always wanted to do I'm sure I just bramble I always wanted to do like family shirts I'm a spooky mom I'm a spooky dad you know I'm a spooky kid like spooky just ties on to so many cool marketing and brand related things and you know people still let us do other stuff outside of it like Looney Tunes and Rick and Morty my glasses are fogging up right now I'm light headed I'm light headed alright Morgan take it easy on him for the next two are there IPs that you'd love to turn into a pinball machine but the pinball scene hasn't aged into it yet because I know you go after a lot of nostalgia themes because that hits people in the feels movies from the 80s 90s things like that but are you just waiting for people to age into certain themes absolutely I'm a lot younger and you don't have to share them all you know obviously no there's some I won't share because I'm going to start pursuing them because like in the next six to seven years I think they'll be very in style but you know things like Call of Duty Zombies you know that would make for an amazing pinball machine and that's something like all me and my friends grew up and Spooky Lou grew up we all grew up playing that like that would be awesome a lot of bands early 2000s bands oh my gosh so many of them Like Limp Bizkit, Nine Inch Nails. Those are nine-inch. But a lot of really great, you know, My Chemical Romance. That would make for an amazing, like they're filling baseball stadiums. They have amazing imagery, music. You can get cool speech. Like there's a lot of newer, fresher things. My personal one I want to do, it's not an age thing. I want to do Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville more than anything. That's what the fans have been demanding. That's the holy grail for me, because I'm a die-hard Jimmy Buffett fan. So that would be really cool. My answers have really gone downhill, guys. No, that's okay. That's what we expect. Are you guys ready for number nine? No. Okay, good. I'll take that as a yes. Look at Morgan. Morgan's just loving this. She's having a great time. She enjoys my suffering. All right, guys. this is torchbearer actually came out like super fast this is torchbearer sauces sucker punch 690,000 Scoville units the last one was 130 why didn't you go up so much the last one was 130 this one is a powerful mix of Carolina Reaper ghost pepper and dragon's breath pepper powder that'll have you gasping for air but good news they've added citrus and minced onion to add layers to the taste oh thank god guess what the doctor ordered Are we ready? Hold on, I'm not there yet. Okay. All right, here we go. All right. Oh, no. I think I put too much. We've got a bite. Are we ready? I'm going to cry. Mm-hmm. Oh, no. I got so much sauce on my lips, I'm fucked. Oh, that was a snot David Hankin. No. You know what? I don't think this one's as bad as the last one. What do you guys think? Same. This is a little milder. We'll see what the number 10 does for us. I mean, it's spicy. Let me be honest. Oh, my God. No, it's creeping up on me. Oh, it's getting you now? Yeah. It's in the back of the throat. Yeah, some of these things take a while. Some of them are interesting. You feel it right away. And some of them take like 20 seconds before you feel it at all. Oh. that's not bad I mean I wouldn't it's not my daily driver but I like it alright bud this is gonna be another lightning round you can ask Kale some questions no no he's good I talk to him all the time he's a cool guy he's got interesting things to say I'm gonna show you I'm gonna show you some way too zoomed in pictures from your playfields. You have to tell me which game it is. What did you say? That's a windmill. Next question. Okay, you write that as a windmill. You nailed it totally. Is there a particular game that you might think a windmill would be on that you have made? This is not just any pencil machine. This is a spooky game. Sorry, what was the question? Okay, the question is, what game is this from? This is on the artwork of your game. Texas. Excellent. There it is. Yes. With a friendly arrow to show you. Right in the center, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. All right. Your next one. She leaked my nudes. I mean, one, two, three, four for a password bug? You've got to do better. It's Evil Dead. Evil Dead, correct. I'll zoom out, and then that's the lower play field, and I'll zoom out more so you can see it. Oh, man, my tongue is really hurting. All right. You're doing great, though. All right, the next one. Ooh, I know it. Looney. Good. There it is right here. That wasn't fair. The back glass is over there. That's so true. Oh, yeah, that's fair. That's Pikmon from Ultraman. So true. There it is for Ultraman. You're doing great. You're blowing through this lightning round. I'm sorry. Necraclus most haunted. Excellent. That's a deep cut. That is a deep cut. Right there. I love it. Nice job. Killing it on the artwork. That's a strange-looking Captain Spaulding. Boom. I have that tattooed on my arm, actually. Is that right? Oh, let's see it. You're very much going to get it. By the way, my eight-year-old son wanted to make an arrow, And, of course, he added 6-7, as the kids are prone to do these days. We got 6-7'd. All right, we're going through them. We're flying through it. See you, Matt. Good. There it is, the side cabinet. Alice Cooper. Excellent. there it is on the upper play field for Alice Cooper you're killing it my head is sweating yeah there's some sweat going on some head sweat right yes Domino's nice that's a deep cut too that's a super deep cut there we go right there right next to the Noid Jetsons wow that was really good because that's on the topper people don't even look up there what's that that was close alright let's do some more I think this is an interesting way Bug you should start doing meetings at work like this see what you guys come up with he's like no way go around the table everyone's doing it well you're clearly crushing this I'm not going to be able to get you Rick and Marty that's right right on the side but we'll finish it out Halloween excellent right there in that play field there excellent Scooby Doo wow I cannot get you look at that battling through the heat seeing through the tears at these very zoomed in pictures so that's it for that one and you've done tremendous on that you're an all star on the art you're a B plus on the call outs but now Now, are you guys ready for the final one? No. No, I'm not. I'm not. All right. Now, I want to remind you both that as is tradition on Pin Pal's Hot Pins, this is called the last dab. So you dip your wing in the sauce, but then you pour some more on is what I would say. So, for example, I'll show you what I'm going to do. Just for everyone to see it. This is the last dab right there. The last dab experience. It has a Scoville unit of 2,693,000. Serge, what was the last Scoville unit? It was 690,000. This is 2,693,000. So the multiple. It's a playfield multiplier of at least four. So this is four times hotter than the last one. Right. Well, it's about four times. On paper. On paper, that's right. And this is featuring the Guinness World Record's hottest chili on the planet. The last dab is created by the one and only Smokin' Ed Curry, who features Pepper X in fresh, dried, and all-natural distillate forms. So what we're going to do is we're going to dip it in so that you can see it right there. But we're going to pour just an extra dab on it, okay? As is tradition. Huge mistake. My face is leaking. Okay. Let's get it on there. That's when we shot here. All right. So we've got a very well dabbed wing. Okay, okay, okay. Let's do it, gentlemen. It's been a pleasure. Cheers. Cheers. You ready? Wait, wait, wait. He's not ready. Hold on. He's not ready. Morgan, be careful. Be careful. Morgan, make sure he gets the last dab. You know what I'm saying. You got to really add it on there. Oh, no. We're doing it, too. All right, we're ready? Okay, hold up, hold up. Mom, I didn't raise no bitch. That's right. Here we go. Cheers. Cheers. Oh. Oh, no. Buckle up. Oh, yeah, you're going to taste that at the end there. Give me the Pepto. Oh, please, the Pepto. Please don't take any more. Take, Rachel, take this. Oh. Why would somebody make that? Oh, for this show, Kel. they make it exclusively for this show I bought all the batches alright Bug Spooky started as a podcast on April of Pools April 1st 2010 how has the pinball podcast landscape changed in the past 15 years since you started and what do you think its role has been in the pinball industry specifically for creating the kind of goodwill the community has for a manufacturer especially geared towards the home collector like Spooky a fantastic question I'm glad you asked um bucket uh back when we did Spooky I think there was only like two or three podcasts total um and now there's you know how many pinball podcasts are there 50 there's so many yeah seems like it it's improved a lot I think it's done a lot of great things. I love the engagement and excitement it's brought. There's a lot of really exciting people doing it. You know, because in today's day, people are listening to content. People consume content all day long, even at work. they have earbuds, headphones in and they're consuming it all day long and it used to be you could run out of pinball content really quickly and we're really lucky and fortunate now that there's so many people who are providing so much good content continuously every single day of the week there's something new out there and including from the manufacturers a lot of us do live streams and what not too so that's been really great you know there's there's pros and cons to everything there's definitely been some negative aspects about it but overall net positive it's done a really great job of giving us an opportunity to come on things and express exactly what we mean and what our plans are and intentions are in ways that it's a lot harder to do on like stuff like a Facebook post so I think it's great I don't remember what your question was so I hope I answered it you did great well I'll give you one final follow-up though it was you and your dad, Charlie Emery. You started Spooky with that podcast, and now it's grown to be this incredible company with so many loyal fans. And I find it so interesting that pinball has such a proud tradition of dynasties. You know, there was Sam Stern and his son, Gary. Before them, there was David Gottlieb and his son, Elvin. And, of course, there's Roger Sharp and his sons, Josh and Zach. I bet Cale can think of a few more even. Oh, absolutely. Marco's specialties Mark Mandeltort, rest in peace passed it on to Paul Mandeltort and how can you forget I don't know Mukesh and Nirmal I mean you're right I thought Angela's dad, Anaconda That took me a second but I love it He's still got the jokes So I just got to know, what is it about pinball this great American industry that generates these passionate family-run operations that could last for decades across generations? This is the only thing I'm good at. So I didn't have any other choices because this is all I'm good at. So it made the most sense to do. I'm regretting it a little bit right now. Well, this has gotten you to this point. a really great father-son bonding experience. I think most hobbies that dads show their kids, they hope their kid takes to it and ultimately gets better than them at it, right? Like if you show your kid how to fish, you hope he catches a bigger fish than you. You teach him piano, you hope he's better than you at piano. And so pinball, obviously. You raise your kid on pinball, you hope he gets really good and loves pinball. and I think pinball can be one of the most impactful things on a young person because it has every different type of industry it's film, it's music, it's TV shows it's a sport it's strategy, it requires a lot of brain power it's art, it's welding electronics, programming, sculpting it incorporates every single trade you can possibly think of and when you influence a young kid in this industry and hobby at a young age, it shows them how great all those different things are, and I think it really sticks with people when it's shown to them at a young age, and I think that's why a lot of sons of pinball people stick with it. At least that's what I did. Well, Bug, that is, what a great place to end on. It's not for the money. The money is not what people think it is, that's for sure. They overestimated, I bet. If you're trying to get... People who get into pinball for the money are fucking crazy. Right. Well, there's that old saying. There's that old saying, you know how to make a million dollars in pinball? Start out as a billionaire. Yeah. Amen. Bug, I'll give you another saying, too, to watch out for, is that often the first generation walks so the second generation can run, but the third generation usually sits on the couch and watches Hours and Hours of Love is Blind, So watch out when you pass it down to your kids, is what I'm saying. I'm not running anywhere today. But, Bug, you answered that so beautifully, and that seems like a great way to end it. You've made it through the gauntlet of wings today. Tell the people what you have going on and what they should look out for from you. Beetlejuice pinball, baby. It's a great game. You should buy it. you probably can't. I think it's sold out. But if you haven't bought it, you should buy it. Cool topper and stuff. Watch my live stream, every Thursday, 7pm central. Watch all things Electric Bat does. They're cool people. Gail, I'm happy you and Rachel don't hate our games anymore. Thank you. Thank you for doing some really incredible stuff. I do have one thing to ask you. Before you shipped us Evil Dead, you reached out to me. Yeah. And you wanted to keep up with it. It's almost like you knew you had something special here that was going to be extremely durable. Yeah. And I also just, I don't know, I like being in close contact with, you know, I have a lot of respect for how you guys manage the insane operation that you do. And I can't imagine the overhead of keeping up with all that you got going on. So if making my product easier to maintain and handle, I just want the process to be as easy as possible for you so you guys have a good experience with it. Because I think what we do is really cool and fun, and I want people to have that fun and operators have a tougher time because there's a lot more work on the side of it than the homeowner has to face with maintenance and whatnot. So that can take away from the fun, enjoyable experience. And I'm really proud and excited about the experiences that we do offer. So I don't want you to lose any of that, you know. Like, I want you to get to experience the full-on spooky thing at its best at all times. So knowing that I'm just a phone call away and I'll overnight whatever you need at any time so I can keep you happy, that's extremely important to me and I do that for a lot of locations and what not I just want people to like our shit we very much appreciate it that was close, we almost did it well we did it you made it through the pinpals hot pins I think that's good for us, anything else on your end Cale? no uh keep it we have a probably like three different podcasts coming out this week so just pay attention to our channel and um yeah we'll see you at the arcade