Just when you thought it was safe to hit back up on the airwaves, Don's Pinball Podcast is still soldiering on. We've got a lot of news to cover. We've got some stern stuff. Some P3 Multimorphic is in the news. We've got some big drops for barrels of fun. Can't wait to get into it in a little bit after this sweet musical drop. 101 episodes now? Are you serious? Are you even kidding me right now? Hey, thanks everybody for listening and enjoying episode 100. I've recovered from it. It took me a few days. But I've got back. I pulled slack. I rolled back. I've refreshed. and I've flushed my system with electrolytes. We are back and ready for our sober journey to continue. But man, that was a ton of fun recording. Thank you again to Orbital Albert and everybody else for following through. Kind of like 500 people listened to that within the first 24 hours. That was nuts. And I really do strongly appreciate all the shout outs I got from the people in the creation community and everything else. So before we begin, go ahead and hit that like and subscribe button. Wait a second. This is a podcast. Let's just get into the news. P3 Multimorphic has been screaming through via Naps Arcade and other outlets. They have been hard at work on their Multimorphic machine, or P3 is the machine, Multimorphic is the company. I'm still confused about that. But nevertheless, they have upgraded several little bits of their machine. Sounds like they had some components that may have been prone to wear, and so they've been redone with stronger materials. I like this. Continuous quality improvement. Not a bad thing. I guess they also have a new plastic housing for the upper flipper so it's not completely hidden which I like you know I'm not in the target demo for you know one of these machines here but I do appreciate these things it is fun to play I've warmed up to it you know initially the first time I set foot in front of a multi-morphics p3 machine was a tpf two years ago and I thought okay kind of kind of fun but I'm still confused on what exactly you know this product is now i've been able to play it a bit more i've played through uh final resistance i've played uh uh weird owl uh lexi light speed cosmic art racing heist which is solid game uh pretty fun you know i'm not churning at the bit to get one in my game room but i do like playing them on location i and i agree it is it's real pinball you know i dig that um but what they've been doing is upgrading the machine which is awesome um i wonder if they will get to the point where they release like a version update like the VP cabs tend to do. But these new machines are, you know, being put together. If you're already a pre-existing owner, they're also putting together these upgraded parts and sending them out to you. So that's nice that they're providing that upgrade for their pre-existing installed user base. And from my, you know, kind of query of the diaspora out there, the people that own the P3 systems tend to really like them. I like to tease these guys a bit. And I did jump in the thread that was talking about this and you know kind of uh facetiously i jumped out there and i said hey if these p3 machines are so great how can we never hear about anybody buying more than one of them huh you know the joke there being that this machine is designed to be your your one base unit that you then sub in these different modules for right so that you don't have to buy more than one of them if you want a different game and then you know i i swear like these guys had me going for a little bit. Two people came in there. Someone was like, actually, I do own two of these machines. And then some guy, Wes, was in there like, hey, actually, I have three of these because once you get to eight to ten modules, it's better to just have more than one standalone unit machine. And I was like, my God, these people exist. And they had me going for a little bit. They did have me going for about a day and a half until I was like, ah. And they were just sending me photos of three of them all together saying that, you know. It's like Back to the Future, right? When Marty goes back to 1955 and he talks about having like two TVs and they're like, who can afford two televisions? You know, you know, I wouldn't, I bought, uh, you know, two of the, the new spooky games. They do play differently, but I thought that was still a little bit silly, you know, to go ahead and buy two games with, you know, the similar shot layout. Uh, it'd be like buying a family guy and Shrek, I guess, but this would be even, even worse because like, this would be like buying two PlayStation fives, you know, and putting them right next to each other. So you don't have to like take a discount and switch it to a different machine when they're basically digital now anyway anyway it was a little weird we had fun in the thing but they had me going for a little bit they had me going that people would actually own more than one you know p3 unit uh in other news from p3 they are uh expanding their uh uh warehouse uh capacity so that wait time of 11 months is definitely going to come down i dig that because there's nothing worse than waiting for a game for over a year uh just to get it by the time you finally do get it you don't want it anymore because 10 other new things have come out in that interim So that's great that they're doing that. The rumor now, so, well, they've come out and confirmed that they do have a new game coming out. That we kind of know. The rumor is Princess Bride is coming out for this machine. That's going to be the killer app. You know, Weird Al had me looking seriously at the machine. Princess Bride is putting me kind of almost over the top. You know, I'm going to wait and watch and see what happens. But if I for sure had one of these machines or, you know, had access to one, you know, I'd already be on a preorder list to get me that module. So I can't wait to see what's going to happen there. They've confirmed new games coming out. They haven't said that it's Princess Bride, but they've kind of suggested fairly heavily that a new game would be playable at TPF. That's probably where we're going to see it. That's probably where I'm going to get to play it. I'm so excited. I can't wait to get in front of that. Now, the Ultra VP I mentioned, I do have a virtual pinball machine. Kind of early on in my hobby, when I had one to two regular machines, I looked at getting a virtual because I thought that would be the thing that would keep me from having 10 machines in my downstairs basement. We all know how that went. But what I do like about it is it is a way that I can play those classic Bally Williams games, play some other rare and hard-to-find stuff, you know, in a full-size cabinet. So I went shopping around for quite a bit on the YouTubes, looking at every review of virtual cabinets, and I came across Rec Room World Ultra VP cabinet They sell for to new They are showing up now on the used market And at first I jumped on Pinside and it really there was a dearth of these available but now I've come to find them. Somebody out in the East coast, mid Atlantic region had a fairly good price around $6,000, 6,500 or so for an Ultra VP. I think it was a 7.0. They're up to the 8.0 version right now. The thing I like about this machine, of course, is it's filled with the haptics, right? It's got the solenoids, the coils, the gear motors, so it feels and looks like a real machine as much as you can get, right? Now, traditional pinball will always be better than virtual pinball. That's no secret. But having 1,400 games in one box that's full size with a coin door and, you know, buttons and a real stat on the plunger rod, so it's like one-to-one with the screen, that's about as close as it gets. so I was wondering if the P3 would come out with like different versions like are we ready for a new version of this game now that it has these upgrades or is that something they're tracking internally just something I was thinking about but right now somebody does have a 7.0 Ultra VP for about eight grand up on pin side maybe you can wheel and deal there a little bit but you know if you thought about these I'll give my stamp of approval on the Ultra VP as being the only cabinet I've seen that I really would put, you know, close enough to regular pinball that you still get that same fun gameplay and it doesn't play like, you know, one of those 4k toys or whatever, the ones that were at Expo at Games Makes, you know, that's more of like the toy level. This is more of like a professional commercial built machine as close as you could get. Now, your other options are to build one yourself, that would be cheaper. And then you could have a lot more control over the customizability. But that takes a lot of know how the second best thing would be to find somebody that has this know-how and have them commissioned to buy it for you. Otherwise, the Ultra VP is good. There is an outfit out of Australia. I can't think of the name, but they also look to have a product about at the same level. Of course, it's coming from Australia, so shipping is going to be a lot more. When I was at the IAAPA Expo, I did see Ultra Cabinets, not Ultra VP Cabinets, but Virtual Pinball Cabinets of a similar scale on the show floor from this either Taiwanese or Chinese company that was selling them. It looks like a similar setup, a little bit more budget on the build of materials. they were wanting $4,000 for the unit price. So, you know, I see it coming around. Maybe we'll see the prices of these things start to go down, the quality continue to improve. I did pop on YouTube and I saw somebody's already emulated Pulp Fiction. And actually, they put what they call a PUP pack on it, which is, it's an acronym P-U-P. But basically, on the back glass, which is also a screen, they display, you know, full scenes from the movie with full audio assets and all that business. They operate in that kind of gray area of licensing because it's completely unlicensed. But that is an option. It was kind of cool to see that. You know, I've seen the Ultra or the virtual pinball tables have caught up with games as recent as James Bond now. So it's an option. Go check it out. And you know, if you want to come by the arcade and play it, happy to have people do that. You know, it's fun. It's fun. I can go over there and play Fathom right now if I want to. So that's my Ultra VP talk. What else is going on? Venom got a code update. We'll talk about Stern here a little bit. So I'm digging this new code update from Venom. Of course, I don't have the machine anymore, but this 0.97 code, I did read through what it adds, and it adds a ton of achievements, which I'm totally down with. Now, I had Venom down here for about 500 games. It's sold. It's out in Minneapolis now. Minneapolis, sorry. Sorry, Minnesota people. I get corrected all the time about that. The cool thing is, because of Insider connected, I can go to any Venom machine, swipe in, and I'm right back with all the things that I've unlocked. All of my progress is still there. I can go play this game still. And so I can't wait to go hit this again. Hopefully if I can find a premium on location or maybe one of these LEs that are kicking around for like sub 10K and go play that again. There's more voice call outs. And it looks like one other thing that they have added is actually some specific lane call outs for shots. Like, you know, when you have a shot that's coming up, I guess they're going to have a character, either the one you're playing as or Venom or Carnage or something, kind of give an audio call out about what lane should be shot next, which is nice because for this kind of frantic machine, oftentimes you're in a multiball. Otherwise, because of the play field is fairly well open, the ball can move pretty quickly. It's nice to just hear that audio cue that, oh, I need to kind of focus on the right orbit without having to look up, look behind the sculpted badonkadonk of Doppelganger to see if that insert is lit at all. So it's nice to hear they call it so i want to go and play it with this new code on location somewhere i'm excited about that so way to go stern let's roll right into a production update march i've already seen uh so some pretty some uh pre-orders uh emails come out from some distributors including mad pinball jeff and mad pinball email him if you want to get in on this uh but march we're looking like we're gonna get at least jaws pros run uh i mean godzilla pros uh jaws premiums will be run in March. I think they're starting the Jaws LEs this week. I've heard that from a couple different people. But they're going to run Star Wars again. I think it's Star Wars Premium and then Jurassic Park. That perennial favorite. So if you want to get in any of those, brand new in box, contact your distributor. Go email Jeff right now. He's got some capacity left if you want that new, new in box. Otherwise, it is completely a buyer's market all over Pinside. I'm just going through there daily, just like looking and imagining. And I've even gotten to the point that I'm entertaining a toy story collector's edition because those can be had for around the $9,000 range. They come and go. They go pretty quick at that range, but man, a $15,000 Jersey Jack collector's edition trim level for sub 10K, that has me interested. That's in my wheelhouse. That's in my Venn diagram of affordability and desirability. Boom, I'm right there. So as soon as I can meet Elton John there, if that happens, I would totally go on that. I've even heard, dear listener, about Godfather CE's loaded with the gold lions, the gold chromed wire form ramps going for sub 10K in certain situations. With that banger topper with the coils inside of it, the knockers going off with the guns, love it, love it. I would entertain that for sure. So great deals that are out there. New games are still being put in boxes. Jaws LE is about to go out on location, the only trim level that really none of us have played yet. Can't wait to see that. Can't wait to see that sweet shooter rod they got. And then hopefully they'll, they'll come out with those for the, the rest of the machines here soon. Um, and I excited because March means that when the premiums are run I in on that first run and I can wait to get my Jaws Premium unbox that thing and just start I got some powder ideas I want to do with it I got some upgraded armor that already on order from Cab Custom It's going to be fun. I love grabbing a new game, unboxing it, and just pimping it out from the floor to the ceiling, man, you know, from wall to wall. What else is going on? Got an email from Jeff. He also has some more of the recent run games from Stern still new in box. So if you're looking for things like Adventures, Infinity Quest Pro, Foo Fighters Pro, he's got those. Interesting, he's got an Elvira House of Horrors Premium. They did run those again recently, and those had been, I mean, these things come and go in availability, but they are definitely available now. If you want them new in box, you can get them. And Guardians Pro from the most recent run, those are still available new in box. Like, you know, these things aren't commanding, like, high flipper prices. Like, you can walk in the door, MSRP, maybe a little bit less, and get yourself one of these things. Iron Maiden Pro as well. So I want to plug that for my boy. He hooks it up. I'm already down on the next Stern Cornerstone. I think we'll see that sometime by the summer, maybe May, maybe May or June we'll have something else revealed. I've been trolling through the pin side threads now. I'm kind of warming up the pin side a bit more. It's fun to go in there and just, you know, while away the hours going through the threads. It's got that old early 2000s layout. So, you know, you get to scroll through 20 comments, then hit another page, make that load instead of just like one continuously updating thing. But it is what it is. It is fun to read through the rumors on the next Stern Cornerstone. It's been kind of all over the place. I hear people that seem like they're fairly certain and they're still saying things like Indiana Jones. I'm hearing Raiders of the Lost Ark. I've talked about this before. Of course, the Pokemon rumor will not die. If it's not an official plan with Stern, I really want to will it into existence at some point because, you know, playing pinball and having the code where it is now to where you can collect characters, unlock things, level up, man, just get me at that, man. That will cause me to drain dollars at the arcade for sure, rather than just competing on points, but competing on progress. And I think the thing that really is kind of like the, I don't think I would call it unsung hero of Insider Connected, it's a killer feature, is the fact that when I'm playing a Stern game and I'm logged in, I feel like, you know, I'm not wasting time, I guess, or wasting effort. When I go to play another game, it's like, man, you know, Elton John's right here, but it's like, I'm not even getting anything for playing this other than it's the experience of playing the game itself, you know, but like, it's not like I'm building towards something. So, you know, this insider connected really is shaking and changing the whole industry. I love that because hopefully that's going to pull more people kind of into this thing. Like, let me sign into an account and like, you know, build up some points, build up some credits, you know, online leaderboards, all that stuff. And I don't see any way to put the horse back in the barn when it comes to that kind of integration. So hopefully some of the other companies, at least the, you know, the ones that make games in quantities, especially for locations can get in on that. I'd love to see Jersey Jack do something like that. I think they have access to the capital that it would take to get something like that going. And when they kick Scorbid to the curb, I kind of thought they were already working on implementing their own in-house system, but so far, nothing's really been shown about that. You know, hearing Jersey Jack's got some killer licenses coming up, that's all my rumors I got for them. What else do we have? What else do we have? Oh, let's stay on Stern for a second. Black Knight Sword of Rage. Now, I apparently have done a great job about letting the community know that I'm interested in getting one of these games. You know, at some point, I'm not dying, you know, pay any price. Money's not an object. Get it in my game room now. but what I am is kind of open to if the right game comes along at the right time I'd like to go on it so uh Mr. Zachary Mennie from Flip N Out Pinball he just posted up a $10,000 Black Knight Sword of Rage limited edition uh loaded with some stuff as well um for you know that pretty good price even came with the official topper um and no no less than 25 people immediately started DMing me saying hey you know if you've seen this this is the one go on it so thank you so much people for for letting me know. I did see it. Where I'm at, I'm really looking, and this is sacrilegious for me to say, but I'm really looking for the Black Knight Pro. I do like that fast gameplay that it has. I've played the premium. I've played the LE. They're great games, but they do command much higher of a price. I mean, they're still in short supply. Black Knight was a game that came out when they weren't making a thousand LEs. So, you know, I agree. It does look really good. I do like upper playfields typically. But you know, it's going to cost four to $5,000 more, sometimes six than what I can get the pro for. So I'm looking at getting a game, I want to play through that code, play through the battles, have Steve Ritchie yell at me, I want to put that topper up on top and just marvel in its presence, you know, for about eight to 12 months, and then you know, get it on to somebody else. So you know, it's not the killer app that I'm looking to drop like premium coin to have like the best experience with black knight humanly possible but i am looking at getting the game you know in-house not on location someplace where i can just crank the tunes and just get intimate with this game for a period of several months so that's what i'm looking for i've gotten to the point now that i've actually put up a wanted ad on pin side uh so you know you know and these games they tend to go when they do go up on pin side they do come up with some frequency every few weeks another pro will come up there they do tend to sell pretty quickly and they've They've really dwindled in supply. That one in Virginia Beach is still listed as pending. I'm still kind of interested. I don't know if the sale is going through, or maybe it's gone and they haven't got to it. But I got my hat out there. If it falls through, I'm still interested in trying to negotiate a price there. But what I'm hoping is somebody else has one of these. Maybe they're not playing it as much as they used to before. They're taking a look at the landscape of what else is becoming available and thinking, you know, I could probably cash this game in for something else and be even happier than I am today. And so that's what I'm looking for. The person that's not a completely motivated seller, but somebody that maybe has one. And for a quick phone call and email, the thing is sold, cash is in your hand, and then cash plus a couple thousand dollars gets you a Jaws Premium maybe, or Pokemon, Indiana Jones, whatever the next Cornerstone is. Maybe you want a Labyrinth. Maybe you want a P3 and go at it. Maybe you want to get an Ultra VP. Anyway, if you're that guy with this game, collecting dust you had it for years You just don play it very much anymore Maybe you decorated a bit Maybe you got that awesome shooter rod and you like you know maybe just give a phone call to don uh see if he interested well i get some cash in my hand you know he come pick it up no big deal he'll take it out of my basement he's got all that fancy equipment and everything maybe that's gonna happen so i'm floating that out there so yeah talk to your friends and neighbors your grannies and your grandmas you know if they got their black knight sword of rage and just sitting there as a place to set their old fashions while they're listening to some killer swinging 20s tunes off the old Victrola, maybe let a brother know. That's what I'm putting out there. All right, so let's segue back to where I was talking about Labyrinth. They get two barrels of fun because this dropped on us yesterday. Did you guys see this? Pdubs Arcadeloft. I had no idea who this guy even was, but he not only has himself a Labyrinth already, which makes me super jealous of him. He's also got a great goatee, so double jealous. Triple jealous, he had on like eight people from Barrels of Fun, and they did an 80-minute live stream last night. And I managed to catch the last five minutes of it, and then I rewound everything and watched the entirety of it in the back. They talked about the development of Labyrinth, plus where they are now with the game. So I got invoiced in the last week for Labyrinth. Invoice is now paid, and I heard that shipping is supposed to happen for me like sometime like this week like today tomorrow i should be getting a bill of lading i can't wait we've already seen the monster crates at the factory ready to go out that have that cool goblin topper the box looks like a wooden crate with goblins in it looking out at you i can't wait to get this thing uh but it was a great great listen to now it captured a lot of the main points that we've heard from barrels of fun so far where'd the name come from why aren't you the mystery pinball company how'd you land labyrinth what's your scope scale what are you looking at doing you know why are you doing one trim level instead of the industry standard of all three like they address all those things that we've heard before but they were able to kind of update us with new information like where the code is at right now that was exciting so uh there was uh you know David Van Es of course was there brian savage the chief creative financial officer chief chief business officer i think he calls himself along with uh phil Robert Blakeman trent Bowen Kerins and Eric were up there. The coders, the animators, the rules designers, the game testers, like everybody was there. It was great. So it was cool hearing from everybody all at once instead of just, you know, the mouthpiece from the show floor. But it was great to hear that they've got like tons of lines of dialogue for the topper specifically now. Before when we saw this amazing topper, we saw the lights light up, we saw the two outer heads turn, and occasionally you could hear something coming from, but it wasn't a whole lot. That was back in October at Expo. Now there's a ton more dialogue from what they're telling um that's integrated in here more interactions between like gameplay and the topper where you know the topper can actively comment self-deprecate yourself itself cheer you on i can't wait to hear more of that um and that code drop is supposed to be happening like this week they said so uh you know fairly soon we should have you know the first kind of comprehensive code update for labyrinth and it's going to have a lot of that integration with the topper man if you've got room in your heart for labyrinth and you've got room in your game cave for a topper there's a lot worse that you can do than this one i can't wait to get this um you know i i reserve the topper uh you know as soon as the game was revealed i put down my deposit fomo was driving that a little bit uh i've since been very happy with that after i've gotten to play it of course played at expo played on location in a few places love me some labyrinth can't wait to get it um but uh you know just just having like muppets up on top of the machine like talking to me like like i love it i hope this will be the standard bear for where they're going forward i would love for a company to get the muppet show and put stantler and waldorf up there you know the two old guys from the balcony that were always giving fozzie bear such a hard time how much fun would it be to play pinball with those guys ridiculing you and like cracking wise make that game for me today somebody spooky if you're listening barrels of fun jersey i don't just somebody please do that and do it justice and please integrate sandy duncan somehow that would be amazing um they also uh i think it was eric was talking about the uh the wizard mode uh for labyrinth is almost done now most people myself included have difficulty getting to these wizard modes ever he said don't worry about that you will be able to start the mode you know from a new game you get yourself one ball and play all the play yourself through the jareth wizard mode i love that they do that i love that there's different modes that you can play with pinball machines. It's not just, you know, start from the beginning every single time. You know, this time, if you want, you can pivot and just play through the wizard modes. Big Lebowski does that. It's got a great wizard mode. It's not terribly difficult. It's super fun and has one of the best endings I've ever seen, you know, for a wizard mode, either, you know, ones that I was watching on streaming or in person. If you have a chance, like go to a home use only Big Lebowski, play through the dude abides, the wizard mode there at the end. It's super fun. Shoot each one of the character lanes and then a qualifying shot and you just play through each of the characters and then you end with the final scene of the movie it's just it's it's perfect perfect i love it so i can't wait to see what barrels of foot brings to us with the final wizard mode with the jareth goblin battle uh with labyrinth and i'm happy to say that it's on its way so we get a five-way race what game's gonna get here soon uh i know joss premium supposed to be in production in a couple of weeks labyrinth sounds like it's about to get on a truck and head up to wisconsin And we got Spooky and Dead Heat with their two new games. And then Pulp Fiction, the horse I didn't even know was going to be in a race this year. It may actually happen. So we'll see. I'll give you guys production updates as I hear it. But that's what I know about the news and the rumors in the pinball space for right now. I think that is the state of pinball for this week. So be sure to drop me emails, follow the Facebook page, like and subscribe, do all the fun stuff. Buy Girl Scout cookies. The link is still active, you guys. and for you Patreon folks, I dropped you some goodies today. More, of course, will come as it comes. Love all you guys. I got a bunch of new merchandise coming. The new logos are dropping. I just ordered all the stickers today, so if you want to get in on that, email me. Of course, if you're on Patreon, you can free stickers whenever you want. Holographic ones are coming. The banners are being ordered. T-shirts are just around the corner, so if you're interested, let me know, particularly what size, what color you want, and I'll make sure we order enough. Can't wait to see everybody in Texas. It's going to be amazing.