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DPP #148 "X-men or Avatar DON! Which is better?!"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·51m 21s·analyzed·Sep 15, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Don compares Avatar vs X-Men: Avatar superior build quality, X-Men fresher gameplay experience.

Summary

Don visited Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball, playing X-Men LE and Avatar CE/LE machines. He directly compares the two games, concluding Avatar is objectively a better-built machine (superior materials, radcals vs decals, hydro-dipped armor, UV playfield effects) but stops short of declaring it the better game. X-Men remains fresh in his mind from recent review. Avatar's CE playfield features innovative 3D-depth UV ink effects requiring chemistry PhDs and November production start; day/night eclipse cycle, lower playfield crab battle with 3/4-inch ball, complex submarine shots, and tight layout packed with features.

Key Claims

  • Avatar CE playfield uses three fluorescent inks (orange, lime green, blue) creating 3D depth effect under UV light

    high confidence · Don witnessed the prototype under UV flashlights and described the optical depth effect in detail

  • JJP radcals cost six times more than decal art

    high confidence · Don asked JJP staff during factory tour and was given direct cost comparison

  • Avatar production playfield won't exist until November; CE uses Mirko playfields, production uses Bader

    high confidence · JJP staff explained timeline and division of labor during factory tour

  • JJP playfield assembly takes 10-15 hours of labor; line can be retooled in less than a day

    high confidence · JJP explained their production process during factory tour

  • Avatar's lower playfield ball is 3/4-inch (between Family Guy and Munsters size), with full-size mini flippers

    high confidence · Don examined the machine and was told the specifications

  • Approximately 50 Elton John CEs were in storage at JJP factory during Don's visit

    medium confidence · Don counted boxes staged at loading dock; unclear if ready-to-ship or temporary storage

  • Avatar features UV spotlights (at least 4 visible) hidden throughout playfield plus UV in RGB lighting underneath

    high confidence · Don counted and observed fixtures during gameplay and factory tour

  • Mark Seiden addressed flipper fade concerns on Avatar vs prior JJP games (Hobbit, bowling alley complaints)

    high confidence · Don spoke with Mark Seiden directly during factory visit and gameplay

Notable Quotes

  • “Objectively, going Excel spreadsheet wise, Avatar, particularly the CE, is a better pinball machine. I don't think anybody that's being reasonable can argue that.”

    Don @ ~12:30 — Direct claim of Avatar's superiority in build quality; hedges by distinguishing 'better machine' from 'better game'

  • “The six flippers all do what they're supposed to do. I didn't feel anything was a little sluggish... They've listened to the feedback. They're really marketing themselves as we want to have the best machine that's on the market.”

    Don @ ~28:00 — Confirms JJP addressed flipper performance issues and is positioning Avatar as premium quality solution

  • “I found like a square inch of space all the way on the side of the play field and I'm like you could have put a drop target or something right there guy but like honestly there's no room under this game at all for anything else.”

    Don @ ~31:45 — Avatar's playfield is extremely densely packed with features and toys

  • “The CE play field has three different colors of inks... the oranges of the fire on the lower left side of the play field where the RDA area is, all of a sudden it looked like it was transparent like depth... almost like that there was a plexiglass that you were playing on and the art went like three or four inches deeper than it actually was.”

    Don @ ~23:15 — Describes Avatar CE's signature 3D UV ink depth effect that justifies premium pricing

  • “It's like if you were to be myopic and get down on the play field and just that square nine inches, that's the most boring part of the entire thing. And if you were to extrapolate that in your mind to that's what the whole play field was like, instantly, like, I was turned off by it. And then when I see the whole machine in the lighting and the games being played... that picture is so not representative of what is on that play field.”

    Don @ ~8:00 — Criticizes the viral Avatar 'anemone' leak photo as unrepresentative of actual playfield appearance

  • “I had to talk to some people from the industry, PhDs in paint design and chemicals. I had to get involved in here to make this right.”

    Mark Seiden (as relayed by Don) — Indicates complexity and technical rigor behind Avatar CE's UV ink formulation

Entities

DonpersonMark SeidenpersonZach SharppersonJack DangerpersonKen CromwellpersonScott LarsonpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Avatar CE production delayed to November; suggests production bottleneck or quality control requirements

    high · JJP stated CE playfield 'will not exist until around November'; attributed to final approval pending

  • ?

    event_signal: JJP hosted media and content creator premiere event for Avatar with factory tour, designer roundtable (Jack Danger via Zoom), and extended gameplay

    high · Don attended event with Ken Cromwell, Jason Knapp, Electric Bat, Erica's Pinball Journey, Loser Kids

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Avatar designed for maximum playfield density and feature packing; No unused space; playfield flipped upside-down on rotisserie shows zero empty space

    high · Don examined production playfield on rotisserie and found only one square inch of free space

  • ?

    leak_detection: Viral Avatar playfield 'anemone' photo from leak was unrepresentative of actual machine; photo shows small isolated section under poor lighting

    high · Don criticized the leaked image as 'myopic' and 'so not representative' after seeing full machine in person

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Avatar licensing from James Cameron's estate imposes design constraints: Na'vi areas cannot use metals/glitter (organic only), RDA areas can use metals/sharp edges (human military)

    high · JJP explained licensor requirements during designer roundtable discussion

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.154

0:00
Well, hi and hello everybody. Don here. Let's call this number 148. I'm fresh out of the danger room in what seemed like an entire weeks of adventures and excitement packed into two days. Let's just go ahead and roll the music and get into this.
0:17
Oh, that's better. Surround me with the goodness of Pandora. Bring me into a Pandemorian forest. hit me with some of that bioluminescence.
0:28
It's been action-packed, you guys. The last two days, I spent time, good amount of time, at Stern Pinball and Jersey Jack Pinball playing not one, two, but three, four new games across two different versions.
0:44
Especially this Mark Seiden-headed Avatar. Who said Ativan? I think I'm going to need one to try to come down from this.
0:54
It's about excitement. All right, we'll get back to that in a minute. Let me just start with a breakdown of how this all went, okay? I drove on into Chicago, got in a day early, ostensibly there for the Jersey Jack premiere of Avatar, and I happened to have been trying to make inroads in Western Pinball since back before the X-Men launch. Like, hey, man, I know you guys are busy, but I'm in town. I'm a local guy. Hey, if you got 10 minutes, maybe I'd come in and take a gander, you know? Figured I'd shoot my shot, right? You know, you don't know if you don't ask. and of course they were far too busy being a huge commercial company with the launch of a brand new title a cornerstone title no less in a market that's full of tumetuous turmoil so I wasn't expecting anything but I thought hey you know no problem with asking and then who should reach out to me but Zach Sharp a couple days ago and said hey man if you're going to be here this week you know probably knew that we were all going to be in the area you know maybe we can set up a time to swing by and so I jumped I double jumped like we're playing Goblins and Goals or something. I double jumped at that chance to get in there. And so I was able to get myself in Stern Pinball and play X-Men, the LE version, and I was just completely blown away. My whole first impressions shared with myself and friend of the show, Scott Larson from Lizard Kid, is all on the Patreon right now. We put up a first impressions video. So for those of you that are throwing $5 in the tip jar, that's up there to go listen to. It's nearly 45 minutes plus of content going through like our first exuberant expectations and how the game played and what our impression was. So if you want to go listen to that or if you already have, thank you and bless your face. So that was amazing, right? X-Men, I was one of the guys that we were all kind of waiting back, waiting to see what the game was like. The market's in turmoil. We don't need to go on everything. We just had Wick come out. It's kind of sitting there. We're hoping it'll be good someday. But we got our hopes, right? So nothing wrong with just like waiting. okay stern what do you got what do you have maybe we'll play it on location or whatever and then we all saw what the sentinel was doing to the wire form and what jack danger was making and just all the madness that was going on there and we started calling our distros and we all ordered you know six or seven of these things all right so that all happened did we make a good choice or not i can emphatically say you know for sure yes of course yeah after playing it yeah heck yeah i want to play there all day i want to get back in the danger room and just like set up residence in there it is so fun it is so fun go listen to whole impressions if you want i'll get to more of those here at the end because inevitably my phone has been blowing up with the same question. Don, which game is better? We'll get to that. We'll get to that here. Just shortly. I'll just give you the answer here in a little bit and then we'll go into the whys of all that. And then the next morning it was all about being down. I got this message from Ken Cromwell, man. Come on in to Chicago. It's going to be fun. Heard about some other people that were coming into. Jason Knapp was there. Electric Bat was represented. Erica's Pinball Journey. Loser Kids. You know, we were all there, man. The usual suspects, right? Usual suspects. Some of us with and without warrants. So we all added in there. And it was ostensibly just supposed to be, hey, man, you know, 10 to 3, we'll just hang out at the factory. You'll get to play the game, you know, no pressure, no big sales presentations or anything. So I came in with expectations on like, all right, you know, I'll walk around until they kick me out. And, you know, I'll do a bathroom review, and that'll be it. And then, but no, man, they took us through, you know, the meeting with everybody, explain the entire game to us, give us these posters of the entire rules of the game that everybody that buys this game is going to get. You can put it up on your wall, and it's like a whole flowchart of everything that's in the game, which hopefully means that the code will be complete someday for this game so that Wizard Muds are in there. We've got confidence now. And then we met with the president of the company was there, all the leaders of the company. Jack was out of town for family engagement, but he joined us via Zoom, and we just kind of round-tabled the whys and wows and who of Avatar. I was going into this game, right? Having, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the movie. It's cool for what it is, but like, you know, so is Titanic. You know, I'm not like asking everybody to please make a Titanic game for me. I like the theme park area, the animal kingdom, the rides, a little bit lackluster, but the area's cool. You know, the food and drink's kind of cool. Like, it's a cool vibe, you know? So, like, it's an area I like to go and hang out in, and that's what I look for in pinball. Make a theme that I want to go in and spend some time in, right? You know, I've explained before I like games that seem to take place at night. Godfather was kind of like in a day-glow deli. I don't want to hang out there. Day-glow, because it's light.
@ ~24:30

  • “Elton John parts staged so that when Avatar production and there's a lull eventually once they get there, which probably won't be until the early next year, then they can retool and just kind of go right into it.”

    Don @ ~18:15 — Signals JJP's production timeline: Avatar through early 2026, then Elton John retool

  • “I'll probably lean a little bit Avatar-heavy here because that's freshest in my mind. And plus, I just did that huge X-Men review.”

    Don @ ~15:30 — Acknowledges recency bias toward Avatar; full X-Men impressions posted on Patreon

    • Avatargame
    X-Mengame
    Elton Johngame
    Mirkoperson
    Baderperson
    Jason Knappperson
    Electric Batorganization
    Erica's Pinball Journeyperson/organization
    Loser Kidsorganization
    McFarland Toyscompany

    manufacturing_signal: JJP runs one game at a time on production lines; playfield assembly takes 10-15 labor hours

    high · JJP staff explained production processes during factory tour

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Mark Seiden leads Avatar design; engaged extensively with media during premiere discussing engineering details and coil tuning

    medium · Don spoke with Seiden multiple times during factory tour and gameplay session

  • $

    market_signal: JJP radcals cost 6x more than decal art; explains why most manufacturers use decals instead

    high · Direct cost comparison provided by JJP during factory tour

  • ?

    product_strategy: Avatar CE playfield uses premium 3D-depth UV ink process (three colors, requires chemistry PhDs) vs standard production playfield; justifies price premium

    high · Don witnessed prototype under UV; JJP explained multi-month development with paint chemistry specialists

  • ?

    product_strategy: JJP addressed flipper performance issues from prior games (Hobbit, Guns N' Roses); Mark Seiden explained coil strength tuning to prevent flipper fade

    high · Don confirmed 'They've listened to the feedback' and Seiden explained engineering improvements

  • ?

    product_strategy: JJP production timeline: Avatar through early 2026, then retool for Elton John production (parts already staged)

    high · Don observed staged Elton John parts at loading dock; JJP explained less-than-one-day retool time

  • ?

    technology_signal: Avatar features sophisticated UV reactive ink system requiring custom nanometer wavelength matching and chemistry expertise; first instance of this technique in pinball

    high · JJP staff explained multi-month development with paint chemistry PhDs to achieve 3D depth effect

    • 5:22
    But this was different, right? And when you hear the why we did this, all the assets that we got, we got the Sigourney Weaver likeness that Alien had to fight years to be able to get. We had some custom call-outs from some of the other people. Otherwise, we had full assets to bring in, to bring into this across two films. It's like, okay, well, now it's starting to make sense to me, like, why you did go on this, what seemed to be kind of like an older, early 2000s theme.
    5:49
    You know, but learning, you know, the background of, you know, where that all was coming from. And then, you know, seeing the game in full reveal now, those images that were given out, that little picture, the one with the anemone and the balls that were locked down in there that looked like it was straight out of a Lisa Frank, you know, glitter catalog sticker book or something, that's like, like if you were to be myopic and get down on the play field and just that square nine inches, that's the most boring part of the entire thing. And if you were to extrapolate that in your mind to that's what the whole play field was like, instantly, like, I was turned off by it. And then when I see the whole machine in the lighting and the games being played, even just the play field under factory lights, like, that picture is so not representative of what is on that play field, you guys. What a horrible leaked image to put out there, man. It's almost like if that was a troll image to get out. I almost had trouble finding, like, where that anemone was, you know, that looked like, you know, the barista with dreadlocks or something. Like, once you back out, like, you see, okay, like, this all flows very well together. You know, they explained to us the hows and whys of why the inserts aren't symmetrical because nothing in the Navi is symmetrical. There's no glitter on the play field because the Navi don't use metal. There's no mirroring effects in the back glass, so we had to use creative UV lighting effects and things. And it's like, okay, I'm getting, like, this whole concept and stuff, you know, but it's a brand-new pinball machine. I'm going to show up no matter what it is. probably. I even, I honestly, I had designs, I had looked into flying out to Melbourne to the pinball show because Blues Brothers is getting unveiled right now, just because I thought that would be kind of a goof to go out there and, like, cover this big launch of this just dumpster of a game, but even that would have been fun, even that would have been fun, so I would have been there regardless, but, like, I was, I was getting hyped after I watched that 18-minute video, you know, in the afternoon in my hotel room, you know, and then, you know, getting out there and hearing the whys and everything in the game. Now they got into the code and stuff, but it's hard to really, you know, interpret that in the setting of, you know, not having played the game at all. Like I got to play the game first, then explain the code to me. All right, so, you know, we're all kind of building and we get to go play the game. Don, let's just spit it out there. Which game, which pinball machine is better? Is X-Men better or is Avatar better? Objectively, going Excel spreadsheet wise, Avatar, particularly the CE, is a better pinball machine. I don't think anybody that's being reasonable can argue that, but hang on JJP fanboys. I know you're jumping up and down here. I said which is a better machine, pinball machine? I didn't say which is a better pinball game. Make sure you're asking the right question. That's the answer we're going to get to at the end. So hold at least six or seven of your six-legged horses there, buddy. Alright? I say it's a better pinball machine because of the build that you get, man. Every model of this has powder-coated or hydro-dipped armor. The CE's hydro-dipped armor has a clear coat on it. It feels like a regular powder-coated machine, and it does look kind of cool. They explain the process of doing the tooling that they had to make to make this huge pattern, and then parts of that pattern would be printed out for the hydro-dipping material. So each one is a unique tattoo. Each one of these thousand machines they're making, the side armor's pattern will be slightly different from one to another. I mean, it's not going to be the same motif, but, like, the stripes will be in different places because you're taking a big floating sticker, putting it in a vat of water, and then dunking the metal on it. It's going to come out different every time. Just like your grandma's Stanley Cup that she goes and dips for and then sells them on Etsy. Same deal. So that's kind of cool.
    9:13
    The powder coating on the X-Men LE is fantastic. The foil art on the X-Men LE is fantastic. But that foil art is a foil art decal. The art blades are art blade decals. These are radcals, covering the entire cabinet. There's back box and under back sliding. Uh, there's a shaker motors in both of the versions that they're doing. Um, you know, the, the play field underneath, I didn't test it. I haven't seen the underneath the X-Men yet, but let's look at it underneath of avatar. There's something absolutely, absolutely everywhere on top of the play field, underneath the play field. Like everything is packed, everything's packed and it's built to high quality to high reproducibility, um, to low failure rates. It's been tested. They've taken full play fields, lifted them up four feet in the air, dropped them on the ground, found out what broke and then reinforce that. So just going everywhere, like they've spent extra money on everything. We asked during the tour through the factory, which was subsequent to the meeting that we had, but just prior to actually playing the games,
    10:10
    what is the price difference between, say, decal art and radcals? Why aren't everybody just doing radcals? Because they're super awesome. And it was like six times the cost, right? So, you know, the custom shooter rod that's included on the CE, the big topper and everything. So all of the parts of the pinball machine aren't as budget engineered to meet a certain price point as they are with Stern. So I think if you look at a build of a machine with everything that is included, objectively, Avatar is a better built machine. That doesn't necessarily make it a better game. Godfather is a better built machine than Foo Fighters Premium. Based on what's it look? Did you see the Gold Lions in Godfather? That's fantastic. Game-wise, though, I would put it several decades down in the list of the top 100. So it doesn't mean it's the greatest game just yet, okay? But from what we've seen, there's a heck of a lot of cool stuff in here. I'll probably lean a little bit Avatar-heavy here because that's freshest in my mind. And plus, I just did that huge X-Men review. It's over on the Patreon. But then we'll compare and contrast with X-Men here at the end. And then I'll hopefully be able to give you some information. So if you're on the fence and you can only get one, first off, you're in an awesome position. If you can afford a pinball machine, that's great. um otherwise if maybe you've got uh you know some pull at your location you want to kind of put that pressure on you know for them to get your thing and maybe you can push for one or the other uh so let's get more into it uh jersey jack's factory is my first time in their world-class operation looks great um you know plenty of uh games and boxes over there in storage there was a heck of a lot of uh elton john uh ces still in boxes over there i think i counted around 50 or so they made they were sitting by the loading dock waiting to go out or just in like temporary storage? I don't know, but it was cool just seeing like, look at all these freaking Elton Johns up here, man. Fantastic. So, you know, it was cool walking through seeing their stations and everything. They've got everything optimized. You know, they're running their lines. A play field can be made in about 10 to 15 hours or so of man hours. You know, going through there. They run one game at a time for those of you that care about these sorts of things. And then they have to have things staged to switch the lines over. They say they can switch the lines over in about less than a day. While I was there, I did see Elton John parts staged so that when Avatar production and there's a lull eventually once they get there, which probably won't be until the early next year, then they can retool and just kind of go right into it. So, you know, we did the typical tour things. You know, they talked about how they have redundancy in their vendors. So, you know, no one vendors hold up. We'll shut down the entire company. Cool to hear. Some other little nuggets that were interesting that came out is Mirko is doing the play fields on the limited edition version of this game But Bader is doing the play fields of the newer one I want to get into the playfields a little bit later The CE playfield has some of the coolest things I ever seen in a pinball playfield ever,
    12:58
    and this is why they're commanding the premium price. It's in there. We'll get to it. All right, so we got around, and then we had hours to play these games. They had four of them set up, two limited editions, and two collector's editions with limited edition playfields. The collector's edition play field, the production play field, does not yet exist, will not exist until around November when they're looking at that build. And the reason is this. All right, so the big difference between the play fields, it's not glitter, because the Avatar, the Na'vi, they don't use metals. So the licensor said you can't use any metals, you can't use any glitter in this if it's Na'vi. If it pertains to the RDA, which is like that military organization, they're humans, they use metals, so they can have sharp edges, they can have straight lines, they can have right angles, they can have metals, for those sorts of things. but anything that's from them has to be organic you know so you know limitations like that push your creativity and they then push it they did so this game has a day night cycle it's an eclipse is how the the mechanism of that works it's like one of the coolest things about this freaking game um so there is uv lights or uv ink in the play field okay in the merco play field there's you know uv ink all over there um you know similar to what we saw with stranger things um there are uv lights hidden just everywhere all over here. For those of you that have installed or have seen a UV kit on Stranger Things, of which I have just done, there's LED strips that go on the left and right ramp, and there's some LEDs that shine through the apron, and that kind of casts that glow up the play field, but doesn't really hit the back and everything. On this game, there are UV spotlights hidden. I counted about four of them that I could see. There's other ones that are hidden. And then there's UV in the RGB lightings underneath the play field as well. So in different spots, there's UV that can come up from there. There's UV and RGB that comes from the apron. You know, the whole thing has the rainbow glow that a Jersey Jack game does. You know, hot rails are there and everything. But there's UV covering just everywhere. The UV Reactive Ink is in the Art Blades, which are available on both editions of the machine, the back play field of the game, the back board of the game, and then all throughout the play field. So it's super cool as the night comes in, which it comes in as an eclipse, which is super cool. It's not just like snap your fingers and we're in the upside down. And then there's, you know, gameplay elements that happen at night that don't happen during the day or during the eclipse. And there's a jackpot function. It's all awesome. You know, but it kind of fades in and then fades out. So there's this natural day-night cycle. Over the eight or nine games that I had played, it tended to be a little bit of a longer playing game.
    15:25
    And I managed to get an eclipse just about every game. You know, if you had a really good ball one, you'll probably get to it. Otherwise, about halfway through ball two is when that eclipse will hit totality. And that's when the jackpots start being open. So it was cool. And it all worked, man. The CE version, and they showed us the prototype. We weren't allowed to take pictures. We're not allowed to show them yet because it's not final approval. But they took us into the room, hit the lights down low, brought out their woods lamps, their UV flashlights, and shined them on this play field. And all of a sudden, this whole thing just transformed. So the CE play field has three different colors of inks. Okay. So, okay, great. So it's fluorescent orange, it's fluorescent lime green, and fluorescent blue, you know, whatever. No, sir. Or if you've seen 3D pictures or certain 3D films that have flat geometric shapes, you'll see that sometimes the 3D will give you that sudden depth where the blue colors are very forefront, the yellow oranges are really far back away. It gives that depth. The exact same thing happened to this play field when they put the spotlight on it. I was blown away by this. I don't know that you can even capture that in a picture, but seeing it in person when that light hit it and the oranges of the fire on the lower left side of the play field where the RDA area is, all of a sudden it looked like it was transparent like depth you know almost like that there was a plexiglass that you were playing on and the art went like three or four inches deeper than it actually was the greens were very bright lime green and then the blues were just kind of going all through there um so we spent some time with the designers they were telling us that this was a process to find you know the type of ink they wanted that would work with a certain nanometer of blue light that they wanted to use with the with the uv um and then also that would work with the wood. It wouldn't just soak in there. It would keep its sharp lines, but then also wouldn't get diluted with clear coating. It was a whole process I had to go through. I had to talk to some people from the industry, PhDs in paint design and chemicals. I had to get involved in here to make this right. That's why it's not quite ready yet. I think they're just about there because this play field looked amazing. I think it's just waiting for final approval. The word is that this will start getting produced sometime in November. Early, late, I don't know. We'll find out. But that's the skinny from what we know now. But I can tell you this, you know, in that room with that flashlight shining on there, like this was super cool. This was better than just the extra couple pounds of glitter that go into the play fields of, you know, most CEs that come out of Jersey Jacks. So that was the first time I've seen that in pinball. It was rad. Don, who cares? How's the game? The game's fine. Are the flippers strong? Yes, they are. Are they the Elton flippers? Yep. Talk to them. I talked to Mark Seiden actually for quite a bit throughout the entire day, both at the factoring and at the after event. and talked about different coil strengths and also he was explaining it in a way that made sense to electrical engineers of what they did. I can tell you this. The six flippers all do what they're supposed to do. I didn't feel anything was a little sluggish.
    18:14
    The flippers on a brand new Guns N' Roses can hit all the shots, hit all the ramps, right? But if there's some flipper fade or if it's not maintained on location after 10,000 plays, you're going to get shots that don't go up ramps, right? We've experienced that on, you know, the Hobbit and the bowling alley. That's just neglected, right? And it's not getting up there and not satisfying. So that's been fixed. Okay. They've listened to the feedback. They're really marketing themselves as we want to have the best machine that's on the market, you know? And so that's what they've done. That's everywhere they've looked at, they could put things. That's what they did from the designer to the coders to the artists and everything. When I was talking to Mark, you know, just going along the playfields, the playfield toys that are in there, there's these, you know, Banshee creatures, right? the flying Ekrons that you match with, you know, you plug your USB port into its backside and then go flying around. So, you know, those are in the game. And a lot of those sculpts and molds, you know, they're already done because there's commercially available toys available. You know, so that helps to be able to use those. McFarland Toys has a lot of sculpts that they've done already. You know, this guy that's done Spawn and all these other things. So, you know, they took those designs and put them in there. But then they also were able to use some of that budget for custom sculpts, like the floating Hallelujah Mountains in the back. They look great. They've got hand-painted elements on them. You know, they're awesome. These Banshee creatures, they come in several different colors, you know, like fluorescent orange, green, blue, purple. And, you know, you're going to get one in your game, and it's just kind of random which one they throw in there. Just like the disc that you got or the sticker on the Platinum record or CD for Guns N' Roses. You'll randomly unbox your game, and you might have an orange, green, a blue, a purple, you know, a flying iguana on there. You know, so that was neat. but I was talking to Mark and I flipped the game over or we went over to a play field that was in production that was fully populated but upside down on the rotisserie and I wanted to really look at like subway wise what's going on here because I was communicating lower play fields and as I was doing that there was not a square inch of anything that you can put anything in I was joking with him I found like a square inch of space all the way on the side of the play field and I'm like you could have put a drop target or something right there guy but like honestly there's no room under this game at all for anything else The lower play field itself, the one where you battle the crab with the actual lower flippers, it's its own self-contained thing. The ball that you play down there with is not the micro ball from Munsters, but it's not a full-size ball either. It's three-quarter inch, so it's kind of between what you would find on Family Guy or, you know, Stewie's Pinball Machine or the Shrek Donkey Pinball or the one on Munsters, which we all know. But the flippers are actually full-size mini flippers, So they're not the tiny minuscule ones that you see on Munsters, almost called the Flintstones, but they are regular size. That ball is captive to that lower play field. It stays in there, and it's kind of cool. It's a cool effect. They went with a smaller ball, they say, because it gives a greater depth. It looks like you're farther in the ocean. I think it works. It didn't bounce around as chaotic as those tiny little balls do, so it was more controllable, so that was super fun. But I want to see, subway-wise, what's actually going on. It turns out there's two scoops in this game. One you can see on the left, which is a traditional scoop that shoots to the right flipper. That's your main return from the subway for your actual size ball. The other scoop up at the top is that ramp that sits underneath that flying banshee creature. You can see this wire form that seems to come up from the play field and then 180 back around, and then it's kind of hard to see where that goes. So what that is is essentially a loopable shot from that right upper flipper, where the shot can loop around back to the flipper. but then when that scoop flap opens up similar to the verters we've seen on Godfather and such then it functions as a scoop from the front that's how you enter the first dive under playfield but if you hit it from the flipper when it's up from the back it'll go and escalate up that ramp in a spiral and then spiral back down to the wire form and return to the right flipper so that was probably one of the most fun shots as I'm playing and I find the ball up on the orbiter in that region of that flipper, it's fun to go and shoot that guy up there So that was really neat. So when you enter the subway system, you go to the first subway area, which has a pop bumper, a single pop bumper, and a set of stand-up targets. I think there's three to four or five in there. The player does control which of these stand-up targets is lit as the ball is bouncing around, and the idea is go through all the colors of the things to build up the score before you go in and battle the crab. If you don't hit it enough times, your ball is returned to you from the other scoop. If you do manage to hit enough, you qualify it, then you go into the mini little battle mode, and then once that is over, it's timed and you can also complete it if you hit all the shots. When that is over, your ball still returns from the scoop. So that's kind of like the flow and everything. It was fun to see that underneath there. We've seen the little guy in the robot mech with the kung fu action arm that comes up and down when the sling gets hit. And some people have said, you know, that's kind of a cheesy effect. I mean, you should have had something more in there. Why don't balls lock inside of it or something? But if you understand it from the perspective of this was an area of the play field where it's already super full of everything. What else can we put in there? Okay, well, here's a little sculpt we can just stick there. They could have just stuck it there as a toy, and I don't think anybody would have cared. But they did put a little mechanical linkage on there so there's some motion. So it's not the most impressive mechanism I've ever seen in pinball, but as one extra other thing where there could have just been a flat plastic, I think it's kind of cool. There's a mess of wire forms back there. There's a Vuck that goes straight up that world tree from Pandora, and it comes down a lowering spiral ramp that feeds into the extreme part of the right upper orbit, which feeds that right upper flipper. And there's repeatable shots all up there. So this game reminded me of parts of Godfather, particularly in the back, where some of those shots are repeatable and you can knock them back and forth, you know, flaps and diverters and things. It reminded me of that. It does have that left upper playfield orbit magnet, when the, that's, you know, the ball lock mechanism that you saw with, you know, Mattress Multiball or whatever it was from Godzilla, Godzilla Godfather. You know, when you hit the balls up there, the magnet will grab it and drop it in there. And then that qualifies your ball lock. And then I guess it must drop into the subway system somehow, man. I'm still not sure, like, where that is up there. It was so crowded underneath that play field. It's nuts how they make that in 10 to 14 hours. It's crazy. I think that's the main shots of the game. There's a lot going on with that ramp over to the left. There's a ramp that you can shoot that feeds up to the flipper system up there. But then also you can get into the left out lane, and then it locks where there's a kickback. Similar to the Elton John kickback Rocketman ramp, that same kind of mechanism is set up on the left side there. So there's components of Elton John in this too, which I think is a good thing. It's like they took the firepower of the flippers from Elton John and some of the cool shots and mechanisms and the flow, and then they took some good parts of the back half of Godfather that seemed to work really well, capturing the ball, loading in the locks and everything, a nice orbit that's really smooth, and they married them together into an underglass world that's fun to play into, right? There's under lower play field areas. Oh, you know, you put the ball lock in there. That's how it gets down to that triple little lock system. I just remembered. Okay, so, you know, the ball's locked down there in that little infinity area with the LED lights under the play field. Those come down. the subway wise into itself then everything's returned to the scoop all right now i figured it out i had to talk myself through it all right so you've got this play field right you've got the pandora people you got um hidden uv lighting everywhere uh you know as you qualify pandora letters on the lower area between the flippers the the p a and d o r a are written in uv ink so they invisible until the UV hits it and then they glow They got that turquoise look to them which fits on the theme It's super fun to get the letters.
    25:51
    And then, yeah, there's gameplay. So there's a multi-ball up there on the upper left, by the way. The magnet drops things in there. And also, if you beat the crab, you go into another battle multi-ball. Those are the two that I had found, the two that I hit the most often. Well, actually, the only two that I hit. There may be more in there. There might be more coded that aren't quite ready yet. I did manage to spell all the Pandora letters. It's supposed to go into a wizard mode at that point. It didn't because it's not quite finalized yet, but that should be in there. But if I was able to get to it, that does speak pretty well. The one time I did that, I think my highest score was just under half a billion points, which was awesome for a Jersey Jack game. My first game was about 98 million, and so most of my games were somewhere right around there. I had a couple that went up into the 300s or so, almost 400, And that's kind of how I was scoring. I did see a couple people that had some billion-point scores. And I think the Eclipse jackpot played well into that. So this is fun. I love this. All right, so there's an eclipse every day on the planet of Pandora in-universe, right, in-game. And so, you know, one of the planets' celestial bodies blocks the sun, and then that's when everything goes bioluminescent. All right, it's been a little bit since the scene of the movie, but I think it's kind of how it worked. So in the game, that's how it works. As you're playing, as you're hitting switches, I think it may be mainly the ones on the left side because that's how the eclipse comes in. they add progress towards the eclipse, right? So the longer you're playing, the more the sun's starting to get creeped out. You know, the shadow creeps across from the left to the right. Things start to glow, you know, dim naturally. And things just start lighting up. You know, the UVs are activated. It's a real, like, nice flowing transition. If you've ever sat in the rainforest cafe, and all of a sudden the lights start getting low, and the monkeys start howling, and then there's a faint crackle of thunder in the background, and all of a sudden, like, the storm is there, right? It was kind of like that effect. It was definitely more subtle and really cool with the lighting effects as it came in. You know, as you're playing, you know, you're in Eclipse mode, right? The Eclipse is coming. The Shadow's running across your play field. Shadow's also progressing across the LCD screen, too, like dimming part of it slightly. So there's some really cool coding that's going on in here, you know, with the screen and the assets that are on there. As it's coming in, you're building up points to the jackpot. I think it's the kind of thing that everything you're doing as you're playing the modes, as you're completing modes, it's adding more, you know, fuel to your jackpot. and then once you're in total eclipse, that's when you can cash this thing in. So there's a right upper ramp that goes right up to a spinner. I think it's the only spinner in the game and then that is the shot. It's not a wide open shot. It's the one just to the left of the right orbit but it's definitely not at the tip of the flipper but it wasn't like anywhere on the lower third of the flipper you're going to get it every time. It's a little bit tighter than that but it wasn't completely unforgiving. It wasn't a total brick fest. I mean, once I got it, I could see how you could dial it in. But it was, you know, I think out of every five shots, I'd hit it maybe twice, once or twice, which, you know, for a jackpot cash out, it seemed reasonable for me. Every other shot on the game, those ramps are, like, wide open. There's a super wide ramp. It's, like, three times the size or three times the width of a normal ramp that kind of goes up to a multi-rodded wire form that feeds into that left wire form situation. If you see some pictures, you can tell what I think or see what I mean. so there's ramps that are easily hittable and then there's this one, the cash out ramp that is fun and is probably the most satisfying shot in the game when you're in the eclipse, everything's bioluminescent the crescendos are hitting you're hearing the Navi call outs get the eclipse, get your jackpot it's ready and it's right up there it's waiting for you man, off in the distance get that thing and when you get it it's great man you can build that thing up to billion point jackpot it seems because I've seen people do it it's a fun game, man. It's a fun game. As you play, the eclipse ends, it slowly returns back to how it was before, and you keep on going. As far as what's deeper into the game, I didn't have enough time to get into that part of it. Some of that part's not coded yet. But yeah, essentially, as you're playing, you're qualifying modes. There's this really cool mode, because the Na'vi only shoot bows with their left hand, apparently. There's a mode where only the left flipper will count. So as long as you're playing this mode with the left flipper shots only, you build up huge bonuses. As soon as you hit the right flipper, it kind of kills it or subtracts from it or something. I didn't quite get into that mode, but I saw other people playing it. So there's cool things in there. There's cool stuff going on. So yeah, game is fun. Don Howell's the topper. Topper's cool. The topper is an LCD screen that's rectangular. It's the entire size of the top part of the back box. It sits there flat with two LED strips, two RGB strips on the front and back of it and then the whole thing hits a 45 degree uh glass it's not acrylic it's a glass and it gives you that pepper ghost peppers ghost holographic effect like you have in the haunted mansion right you know where there's the essentially the glare from the screen is projecting up there just like we saw with the mandalorian topper but it's the entire width of the the topper the entire width of the back box most of the time it's a heads-up display from i don't know some kind of spaceship or something um but it shows like your pandora letters it shows the progression towards the Eclipse, it shows data and information and it updates in a really cool way. In a way that's not just static images that are up there. There's moving stuff. Not that you have a ton of time while you're playing a game to look at a topper, but everybody else does and it's impressive. When you do get things like tilt warnings or you cash out or special events happen, it almost flashes up like a dot matrix type display of warning. Like you would see on a computer display screen. That would take up the entirety of it. Otherwise, it's finished by a horizon of what looks like Pandora in the back, and then there's some architecture there that looks like a viewport out from the bridge of a ship that's lit up. And so the LEDs provide that illumination. Sometimes it's dark. Sometimes it lights up. Flashes does effects and stuff. It looks super cool. The shooter rod is an arrow from the Navi's bow that you shoot with your right hand, and they got away with it.
    31:44
    It's cool. There's fun little hidden things in there. So that was on the CE version. We played the CE cabinet with the CE topper. but with the LE play field. It didn't have those triple illuminating things. And already, it looked great. So those are my impressions from playing, I don't know, probably less than 15 games, because we went over to Interium later that night, and we played, and we got to hang out and talk to everybody else. And it was just a good, fun time. Steve Ritchie was hanging out with us. Man, this is just great. I'm just hashtag blessed. How did I get invited to this thing? How did I get invited? I'm going to go to every one of these I can. It's fantastic. Starting at 8 p.m. that night, it was open to the public. So there's an Avatar limited edition in interium right now in Chicago at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, right across from where Pinball Expo is. So if you're local and not doing anything this weekend, go play some Avatar and go figure out for yourself. As far as having played X-Men, now I was able to get in and play the pro version, play the LE version with Wason, with Jack Danger, in Stern. Incredible. Free Diet Cokes. It was madness. Thanks so much to everybody that got me invited and everything in there. I've had an X-Men LE on order and now I've gone and played Avatar and I'm on record now of saying that Avatar is a better pinball machine so do I regret my purchase of X-Men LE?
    33:01
    not by a damn sight man oh even after playing Avatar you know getting in and playing X-Men again and you know hitting that ramp and having the balls do the crazy things they do you know the figure eight little business that comes back playing in the danger room the Flintstones ramp the sentinels hand bashing his face chipping his chin, playing with the modes and everything. Game's great. I can't wait to get it. People were asking me, Don, so which game is better? Come on. And it's such a loaded question because these are two different, well, five different products, right? Pro Premium LE with Stern, Limited and Collector's Edition from Jersey Jack with Avatar. These are targeting different segments of the market. These are different playing games. X-Men has flow for days, man. It's the evolution of Foo Fighters. There's even more in there. The right ramp on Foo Fighters was very unforgiving. It was very steep. It had to be a fairly clean shot to get all the way up there and then play in that upper play field or just have it come around back. X-Men does not have a ramp that feels like that. Every ramp here is hittable. A lot of side-to-side action with little kiddie pride areas that the ball can bounce into and then come out. All of a sudden, you're in the danger room. You can get in there two different ways. You can get in there and get out. It's not a drain monster at all. That's one thing people were worried about. Guys were goofing around on the stream and their balls were draining. And then people saw these, like, world-class players and designers that were draining balls. And it was like, well, what luck will I have? It's not Ninja Turtles. It's not. What can I compare this to? A little bit more of a forgiving Foo Fighters. It's a fun game. This is a game that novice players are going to have a lot of fun with. Because even if you don't really know what you're doing, aside from maybe trying to hit the flashing shots, cool stuff's going to be happening, right? The diverters that are in X-Men are awesome. You know, we hit the right ramp, hit the left ramp. or what should be in any other conventional stern release should be a horseshoe around that sentinel. If you don't bash the sentinel and you hit around them, the ball should just rocket back at you, right? That's what we've seen. That's what we would expect, and if we saw that, we'd be like, yeah, that's what it looks like. No, it doesn't. It doesn't undist. That's not a horseshoe shot. When you shoot that from the left and shoot it from the right, it's going to go to a different ramp each time. You shoot it from the right, it's going to arc up to one of the left ramps. is shoot it to the left is going to arc around to the right one. It's madness, and I loved it every time. It was weird. Like if you got a shot in there that wasn't strong enough to make it all the way up a ramp, your ball would disappear, and like playing Star Wars, playing anything else, playing Venom, you would expect it to just come rocketing back. But like your ball disappears as it rolls halfway up the ramp, and then it comes on back to you, and you're like, what the hell happened? Where'd the ball go? Why didn't it just come back at me? Everybody's going to have that experience because when you hit, when you rocket up that shot that looks like, because the ramps are hidden behind the Sentinel head. When you rocket up that shot, you're going to expect it to come right back at you, and then it doesn't. It's going to be up on a wire form or a ramp somewhere, and it's not going to be the one you expect because there's diverters that pop up. And even when you do expect it and you're watching it, the Sentinel will break that dang wire form without warning, and then instead of rolling safely to your right flipper, the ball's not rocketing at you, and you all of a sudden have to react to it. So it was very much just a frantic, chaotic, in a kind of controlled chaos way of playing the game. You know, the modes, they're stern modes. I didn't hear a ton of the call-outs that were coded into this game. I think Avatar's code is farther along. You know, in Avatar, when, you know, your bonus shots are ready, when the ball locks are ready, like the Na'vi are telling you, like, you know, what to do. You know, see Vako up to the right ramp, you know. Total Eclipse is ready. Get the jackpot, you know. They were telling you, okay. So while the code is not fully completed in the game, or at least the build that I was playing, what has been put in there feels fully fleshed out. The call-outs, what's happening on the screen, like that's all happening. Whereas X-Men feels like more of a stern release where the game is out, the modes are in there, but you can tell there's call-outs that are missing. You can tell there's other music tracks that are missing. You know, kind of like what we're seeing with John Wick here as it builds.
    37:03
    You know, X-Men, objectively comparing it, is a better game than John Wick, for sure. I'll say that all day. Um, but yeah, but, but playing the game and just the, the chaos that's going on, um, any left and right action is going to cause things to happen. Uh, the other takeaway that I got a lot of questions on this, Don, did the offset flippers throw you off? I can say not at all. 100%. I had no problems with it. I walked up and took right to it. So this didn't throw me off at all. Um, it is fun when you get into the danger room. Now we're used to upper play fields, right? Uh, upper play fields like on a jaws premium where when the ball does get up there, which It's a little difficult to get up. Once it gets up there, you've got kind of one try to do something cool, right? Whether it's hit the stand-up target, hit up into the ramp, or hit up into the ship's wheel. You know, sometimes you can be lucky and stop a ball after it goes to the wheel and maybe try to get it again and then stop it again, you know, if you're lucky. But, you know, one, maybe, maybe two shots is about all you get every time you get up there and then play continues. The danger room, not like that at all. If you enter around the pop bumper in what would be a traditional left-out lane, you can grab, trap up that ball on that mini flipper there, and then just yesterday, I sent this ball through the spinner three times in a row and then went right up on the exit ramp. The Cerebro lock kicked in, held the ball above my left flipper, and the mode played or the little scene or we were going to the future or whatever it was that was happening. Then the ball drops the flipper X has so many cool little areas in it Underneath that left pop or above the left flipper there a curved ball guide It concave to the left And as the ball comes over into that it sling around to your flipper Or if you do that shat transfer up the left flipper, it kind of runs up like a ramp and then free falls out. And sometimes it's heading to the middle. Sometimes it's going to your right flipper. If you catch it and nudge the machine the right way, you can accelerate it and just send it on out there into the sling. It's super fun. like the Cyclops sling on that one side. So there's, there's a lot of just like little things packed in to actually both of these games, both of these games really looked at the play field, looked at the real estate that they had and they thought, what, what is something interesting and compelling we could put there? And then what is something interesting and cool we can put right here? What would be something fun here? We could just put a ball guide up there and not let the ball go under this plastic. And they're like, no, let's make, let's carve out a little area and let's do a little behind under the plastic ramp that comes down. and then that's your little Kitty Pryde shot where your ball disappears and then it pops back again heading down to the left pop-up or left flipper. That was cool every time I saw it happen. Any other game, right? Venom comes to mind. There would be a single stand-up target there and that's all you would get. It would hit the target and then go somewhere else. Like there's nothing, there's real estate behind there that's not being utilized that is utilized here in such a cool and interesting way. And you find little details all around the place. I was joking. I said X-Men, looking at it, It looks like being at the seventh grade dance, and there's some open space on the dance floor in the middle, and then everybody is just around the periphery just loaded with whatever stuff to do. And then when the multi-ball hits, that's when a couple of brave kids get on the dance floor. There's things packed everywhere around there, and when you're in the danger room, it's not like, oh, this is the shot I have to try to save my ball. I did something wrong. It's like, oh, no, it's play time now. It's spinner time. Let's rip it a couple times, build up whatever multiplier there is, and then let me hit the ramp and get out of here, right? It was super fun. When the ball was coming around, oh, God, that cross-field shot up to the left where it kicks over to the right into the wire form to that Flintstones ramp above the apron and then into the danger room, and then when it carries enough momentum to go all the way up and then back through the spinner, just like you can do on Jaws if you hit it from the right mini-flipper up there, like one of my favorite shots of the game, and it comes back to a mini-flipper, and then you can rip it again and then get out of there on the ramp. It was fun every time that happened. Every time that happened, I was excited. Every time that happened, I had my little mini-moment. and there's cool stuff to come. The mirroring on the back glass of X-Men looks amazing, especially how they did Colossus in Mirror. Perfect, perfect. It's like a perfect Stern game. It's what I want from them. It's what I want from them to make. Avatar is just a different experience that's also really cool. And so I say that this is not a zero-sum game, right? If Avatar is good, it doesn't mean X-Men is bad. If X-Men is great, it doesn't mean Avatar is a waste of money. They can both be good games, and then you have limited budget, you know what type of games you like to play. You know if you're a JJP guy, you got seven dialed-ins on Pirates of the Caribbean, you know what you're going to want, right? But if you were playing games like Godzilla and you loved it and Venom, you were a little disappointed, the wick came out and you're kind of not sure where to go, this is a return to form for Stern, for sure.
    41:42
    Jaws was fantastic. This is fantastic, too. In the danger way, so I dig it. So, you know, by build quality, you know, and by budget, which machine is better? Probably Avatar is going to come out and hit, especially the CE. That depth of the ink, nothing I've seen has ever compared to that. That's amazing. And the fact that the screen is, you know, three times the size of the Stern screen with, you know, playing movie assets in there and, like, every shot's got a call out already. Like, it's very impressive. Very impressive. X-Men? LE? I play that thing all day I was telling people it was like this for me, if this helps you I think both games are great, I don't think any game is better than the other there's my take on that but there's some more nuances, break it down Avatar is like, alright I'm going to go to the IMAX I'm going to go online, I'm going to reserve my seat pick the one I want, I'm going to get my popcorn I'm going to buy the souvenir bucket I'm going all in on this, and we're just going to go we're going to lock in, we're going to tune out for a while we're just going to have an experience right? Like you're going to this major production movie. We're going to sit there and it's going to be a whole thing and we're going to like it. And then we're going to need to go and get some snacks afterwards and rest and relax. And then maybe we'll go back to the theater later. That's how that one plays. X-Men plays like, that was awesome. Hit that button again. Let's do it again. Let's play this again. You know, like let's do this a couple more times. I'll try out the different modes each time, you know, see if we can find different pathways to the future, different pathways to the past. Um, you know, we'll try to trigger different multiballs and things. So it was much more of a, like, this is like frantic arcade action in a way that we like in a way that doesn't feel like it's punishing me for being a fan of it in a way that's not a drain monster in a way that like you know respects my time as a player and let's just like go head to head and do some cool stuff oh did you see what the ball did oh my god you hit that ramp three times in a row dude the most we've ever seen is five dude that's awesome that's what X-Men feels like so that's cool so Don which one did you get well I'm in on an X-Men LE and then you know I mentioned that I like to make over games so I've got a couple premiums I'm going to make over too, and we'll try out the custom build shop thing. Let me give some impressions on the Pro, though. I think there's some people waiting for that. So I was able to play X-Men Pro. X-Men Pro does not have the sentinel finger on the left side of the play field. It doesn't have the sentinel deforming the wire form on the right side of the play field. It doesn't have the beast laboratory, which they call it a very target, but not really. It's three rollover switches and then a stand-up target, and it's the really cool mechanical linkage that transfers the energy up there and then based on how hard it's hit, that's how far back it goes and that's how it registers. Don't think of like the ratcheting very target that is then released of antiquity.
    44:23
    But instead of that, you get a leaper, right, which is cool. Leapers are fun. More leapers, more fun. And honestly, provides the same kind of similar connectivity. You hit the spot, a thing happens. That's pretty similar. Where I'm going with this, where I'm going with this, is the Pro has every single ramp shot, every single diverter. It's got a Sentinel. The Sentinel head is not motorized. It doesn't go up or down.
    44:48
    But it's there, and you still bash into it just all the same. It's got every ramp, every ball guide, every ball course, every danger room, every spinner, every flipper. It's all there on the Pro.
    45:00
    So what I'm saying, if there was a Pro to get, fucking my God, you could not go wrong with this thing. You're going to get all the gameplay, all the code. It looks fantastic. This is one of the best pros I've seen come out in a while.
    45:13
    When I think of games, let's tease Venom because it was the last Marvel release. Venom Premium kind of seems like that could have been a pro and maybe added a few more things to the premium to make it a premium. And the pro really felt like a subpar pro, I think. Star Wars feels like kind of a subpar pro. I think there should have been more in there. This does not feel like a subpar pro, folks. If you didn't see the plastic apron, I don't even know. you would even know it was a pro. Throw some Art Blades in there. Go ahead and pre-order one of my powder-coated conversion kits that I'm putting together for this game, and you may be set just with that. I mean, honestly, the game's fantastic.
    45:52
    I think this game, you know, forget my endorsement, this game is going to sell a ton of pros, man. The location everywhere, it's loaded, it's got everything you would want. We made arguments about Godzilla, like that building does add some really commanding cool stuff on the premium, And then there's a very valid argument that the Pro plays faster and is cool. This is the first game, I think, since Godzilla that, yeah, I agree. The Pro's got every shot in it. I mean, let's keep this low-key. But, dude, like, if there's a Pro you would get, like, you know, call up Jeff over at madpinball.com. Get on the list, man. At least get one of these. So, you know, which game is better really depends on the person buying it. Are you buying this game for your location? Then I think there's a clear choice. Are you buying this game for your little man cavern that you've created and you want something flashy to go in the corner that's going to command respect every time someone goes in the room? There's two ways you can go on this, honestly. Which one speaks to you? Are you a more frantic player? Do you prefer to pour your old fashion and go on an adventure?
    46:54
    Gosh, how are you feeling today? What do you want to do today? Do you want to go and have a full theatrical experience? I mean, the speaker quality is better on Jersey Jack. The audio is blasting. The video displays. Come on. The screen is huge. It's high definition. It's fantastic. I mean, the quality of the materials and what you get in Avatar is better. The price is also much higher. It's a very expensive game, $15,000. That's a lot of money for a pinball machine. You could buy, without exaggeration, two brand-new-in-box Stern Pros. You can go get a pro Jaws and a pro X-Men and have two amazing titles that are going to earn you money and still have some change left over based on that. So that all goes into consideration. I've heard people say, like, Don, you need to cancel your X-Men order. Avatar is the best thing ever. For that person, it's absolutely the right thing to do. For other people, it's like I can't wait to get my X-Men. The people that I've played with in the content community that I played X-Men with this weekend, weekend, yesterday. they agree that the X-Men is a hell of a game and they can't wait to get it, honestly. Especially for the price, my God. So the right game, which game is best, that's up to you. You're the only one to make that decision.
    48:12
    And I think, here's the thing. Any way you go, you're going to have a fantastic game and that's a great place to be right now. What else do you have to say, Jersey Jack Bimbo? Avatar's a special film. And I think a lot of it is because you're feeling this connection. not only to the world of Pandora, but to the characters. Oh, Ken. You're so right. The world of Avatar are very relatable. We all want to be more connected to each other and to nature.
    48:40
    What's the best pinball machine? All of them. Let me know what you guys think. All right, let's fill in the comments and everything. I hope this wasn't too wordish or too boorish. I hope you got the answers to everything you were thinking of. I'm still early, man, if I played each of these games well less than 20 times. So, you know, more will come out. These games are going out soon, right? The LEs are getting boxed up right now for Avatar, and they're going out. They're getting shipped. The CEs will be going out in November. LEs are on the line at Stern right now. I can verify. I was there. I saw them. That'll be followed by the pros. So within a matter of weeks, both of these games will be reachable by everybody on locations, at shows, at Expo, wherever, man. They're going to Australia. They're going to Europe. So no matter where you're at, you'll be able to get your hands on them. And then tell me what you think. and then let's play a game together, man. It's going to be fun.
    49:30
    This is Jersey Jack Don out. Get away from X-Men. Sincere and heartfelt thank yous to everybody that made this possible. Zach Sharp at Stern Pinball, Jack Danger, Wason, you guys are just legends. Gary Stern, George Gomez, thanks so much for the hospitality and everybody else that I'm forgetting while I was there. Thanks for the Diet Cokes. Thanks for tolerating me for a few minutes. And gosh, I hope you guys invite me back. I want to see that giant seven foot tall chrome pinball sculpture that you're installing right now in front of the studio. It looks just awesome. I dig what you're doing. Please keep it doing. Everybody at Jersey Jack, Ken Cromwell, thanks so much for reaching out to me and getting me in there. Mark Seiden, your game's amazing. Your team's awesome. The fact that you didn't just design and then hand off, but went through and helped negotiate the licensing and everything and approvals and all the work for everybody that got to get in there. It gets Sigourney Weaver's likeness. It's not an easy thing to get, and you did it. To the people putting in the work to put the UV lights in there. Everybody else that I'm forgetting. Just thanks so much, man, and I really hope you invite me back at some point.
    50:31
    I hope I can continue to make connections and keep spreading the good word about the pinball. And also, thank you to the listeners, man, for coming in and making this happen. The only reason we're having so much fun here is because of the community that we have. And hey, dude, you're part of it, so thanks. And extra topping special thanks to people that have come by and thrown some ducats in the tip jar over at patreon.com slash donspinballpodcast. ball podcast uh you get exclusive things as i hear i might dump them in there uh you we go in the discord in our special rooms and when when i hear cool stuff man that i'm not supposed to share that kind of goes on over there so uh everybody else if it's told in confidence i'll keep it down but like if it's cool you know i'm gonna hook up my homies man as long as the giveaways as well uh we like to do that so uh and thanks special thanks to jeff at mad pinball.com mad pinball go get on their lists man he'll pencil you in for anything i'm i'm i'm probably penciled in on an avatar uh ce as we speak all right later