Beetlejuice really represents the next step in our technological capabilities. So, I've been working on uh we have a new framework that we've been developing in house. And the new system also allows us to do uh much better synchronization between the music and the light shows and the mechs. So, we can all move those in rhythmic synchronization to give you those really big pinball moments. That's a big thing we wanted to focus on is the pinball moments. So, we wanted to like look at other games and figure out what makes their moments good and just pack this game full of moments like that. An absolute highlight to the film and An absolute highlight to the film and especially this game is the Deo sequence. Uh, in the film, uh, the song Deo starts playing. All the characters in the movie are kind of taken over and they're dancing methodically to it, doing crazy weird things. I knew from the very beginning we had to take over the machine while the song played. So, we went out, we got the Deo song. Oh yeah, it's really fun. And as you are playing this mode, so it starts off with the sandworm singing along to Deo because you know he can dance. He's actually a really good dancer. Most people don't know that. So the mode starts out with him dancing to it, work all night on a drink of rum. We're going to kick the ball out. Now you're going to have to bring all these possessed uh all the items in the game to life and and get them to that possessed state where they're dancing with it. So as you interact with shots, those shots are going to come alive in time with the music. So that's the idea is you're in this dinner party and you're hitting different mechs to get them possessed and even your flippers become possessed. The couch is moving up and down. Beetlejuice is shaking up and down. The salmon worm is dancing and everything is moving to the beat of the music and it just creates a fantastic moment. Beetlejuice himself is going to be over there doing a little dance. He does he hopes nobody sees it, but he's going to be over there doing a little dance, too. Now, one of the trickier aspects of this mode is that your flippers also got taken over. So they're they're going in time to the song, hitting the big beats. 8 foot punch. They're they're hitting all the big beats and it so the whole game becomes completely possessed. And honestly, I dare anybody not to be singing along or dancing along to the song as well. I mean, it just kind of has that really magical effect on everybody where everybody likes the Harry Bellfonte Deo Banana Boat. It it just kind of actually does possess people. I think they knew that when they selected it for the movie. There's this little game from the 90s that actually has this it's Showtime moment that a lot of people site to as a great pinball moment. Well, we have the theme that has it's showtime and I promise you we can make it pretty darn big as well. Uh we're going to be selling quite the experience and it's showtime multiball for people. I can tell Dylan I want you to hold the ball. I want you to get me a low shaker rumble building up and I want to see this style of light show going and then I can call Brady and say, "Hey, this is the exact footage we're using for this scene. I need you to hit these notes dun when they say this dun and then we're going to build it up." I I just get to orchestrate this whole fun sequence using the most talented people in the world in the entire industry. So, Showtime Multiball is like the main So, Showtime Multiball is like the main big multiball feature in the game. Um, so that's when you know you call upon Beetlejuice to help out and that's a whole like carnival based thing which has an incredibly unique jackpot. The super jackpot, the test your strength step right up. Test your strength jackpot. Dylan had this in insane idea about holding the ball behind the drop target. And as you hit it, the amount of time that the ball spends off of the drop target before it comes back down is a direct relation to the test of your strength, which will tie into the size of your score. To make the moments feel impactful, we put a lot of focus into the design of the light system in this game. All the GI for most of the game will actually, you know, fade in and out along with the beat of the music. Um, so it makes it feel like, you know, the game's just hopping. And we've also got a new bar in the back on the backboard. So that just casts some nice light down, gives some great ambiance to the game. One thing that shocked me right away the One thing that shocked me right away the first time I walked up to the game, and I always talk about this because I feel like that's kind of when I get my impression for the year, how this game's going to be. I walk up to it the first time, it's like, how does this make me feel? Just seeing the way that the music times with the lights and everything. And that show of what Dylan did the first time, it's like we actually had to go back on other games. We're like, we need to implement this light system because it was so far above what we could do previously. I mean, it just pretty much put all of our jaws on the floor. One of the first things we are selling people on in this game is that you are dead and you are in the afterlife experiencing these things. Like I said, the game starts with you dying and getting projected into this world just like the Maitlands were. A part of that is getting your ticket from the afterlife. So, you're going to be given your number and when it is now, you know, now serving, when it gets to that number, you can go start your Juno modes up in the waiting room scoop. You can actually also progress these up a little faster. Not like Beetlejuice where he steals the ticket. you're not quite that much of a a stink ball or anything, but uh you can do various things to get to that number quicker so you can get to your mode. So, as far as modes, we actually sort of So, as far as modes, we actually sort of split it into Beetlejuice modes versus Juno mode. So, you can kind of pick and choose the theme you want there. So, on the main uh on the playfield between the flippers, there's seven, eight or so inserts, something like that, that are uh represent the most of the modes. And then you've got a separate set of Juno modes at the scoop, which is like the u you know the office to go see Juno up in the afterlife waiting room. So as far as the rules, what we really wanted to do was allow the player to you obviously visit all those iconic moments in the Beetlejuice film and most of them at any time. So for example, the sandworm you got right in the center of the playfield there, you can start bashing him and start a sandworm multiball or sandworm battle whenever you want. So we've got a dedicated area in the back of the playfield that represents the waiting room in the afterlife. So, uh, up there you can shoot that loop three times. That's like you're knocking on the brick door. So, then you can shoot up the ramp and that's how you get to the lock on the couch. You can shoot up into the pops and that's going to spawn lost souls all around the playfield that you can go chase down and return to the lost souls room. Uh, there's a front entrance to that and a back entrance under the hidden under flipper shop. So, for me, I think my favorite moment is the seance mode. So when Oo starts reading the passages from the handbook and he's summoning Adam and Barb onto the table and you know it's just all green and ominous music and it just makes for a great moment. You can shoot shots to recite the passage in the handbook as o you hear his echoing booming voice with this great music composed by Brady. So new with Beetlejuice and going forward we've got a newer higher resolution display. It's an IPS display so you got richer colors. It it looks far better. It's got a much wider viewing angle, so you know, people on the sides of the machine can see what you're doing. Um, and in addition to that, uh, since our previous game, now that we have more powerful computers, that allows us to do a little bit more in the on the display asset wise. So, we actually have, uh, real time rendered, uh, particle effects and 3D animations that just make that display seem so much more interactive. There's a lot of things in this game that we we just keep finding more room to elevate things and add to them. Like even down to the speaker grill cutouts. You know, before we always did uh special cutouts on the speaker grills. They would be powder coat and your speaker kit would be lit up uh with RGB lighting. Uh for we like I said, we just keep finding more things to add. So this time around, we actually added a really cool sandworm printed plastic to the front of it as well. So, every single release, we just keep finding another thing here and another thing there that makes the whole package look more complete. Well, one of the great things about Well, one of the great things about working for Spooky, one of the several great things, I get to put art on the speaker panels. I get to put magnets on the front door. I get to do cool artwork for the apron that and they and it never stops. It never stops. Everything like this game, you know, it has to be an extension of that property in every way, right down to the metallic purple armor. You know, you don't look at anything on this game and go, "Well, that's not Beetlejuice." Everything on it Beetlejuice. This is a love letter to Beetlejuice. It's a love letter to all the fans of Beetlejuice. Um, it's certainly something that we want to show Warner Brothers because when you have, you know, just huge relationships like that, you want to cultivate that stuff. You want to keep it going. The spooky philosophy is basically what you see over my shoulder. It's like, you know, over the top everything, every inch top to bottom. One of the things I'm especially proud of on this art package is that I got the opportunity to draw Beetlejuice in ways that he hasn't been done before because Warner Brothers is very specific about what they do. But I was able to provide them with my source material and say, you know, here's the body I liked, here's the head I liked, here's this, here's that. And show them, you know, here these four different pictures made up this one illustration. and all they had to do is get it approved with Michael Keaton in which everything was approved. There were no problems with anything. But something like that doesn't usually happen. I have a tendency to kind of push the licenser and Bug's kind of getting used to that with me, you know, he's like kind of like I don't want to cause any trouble. I'm like don't worry, they love this kind of you know, just, you know, go in there and say, look, look, this is what we want to do. We want really want to make this unique. We want to make it special. This movie's been around for 30 whatever years. We've seen these same poses over and over and over again. So, let's try to be as unique as we can. Thankfully, with the assistance of Warner Brothers, we were able to do that by by putting these different things together and them getting them approved for us. So, that's actually very special, you know, because when you're working with Beetlejuice and he's the main character, he's all over the art package. You can't just put the same two Beetlejues everywhere. Like, I work my way down. Obviously, we started with the back glass and I go down the sides of the back box. I do the cabinet and then I'm doing all this. In the meantime, while other guys are getting the playfield together and when you put all the pieces together, I mean, you just you end up with with such a fantastic visual, you know, you just look at it and it just screams Tim Burton. For a playfield, my concept is I usually start right between the flippers. That's the heart of the game. Right between the flippers is the heart of the game. So, you got to start there and then your blood flows out from there. Well, the house is where everything starts. That's where the maintenance live. They they lose their house. The house gets old sold. New people buy it. They remodel it. You know, it's the container that holds that entire movie. You may go to the afterlife, but it's still just an extension of that house. Really, if you think about it, when the movie gets going, at the beginning, you know, the Mlands will travel to their store and pick up art supplies and all that. Once the movie gets rolling, it really never leaves that house. So, it's really the container that holds everything. As far as my concept of the area between the flippers being the heart of the movie, I thought that was the perfect place for the house cuz everything else just expands out from there. Well, what's special about this game and this property really is that if you watch the movie, there's no subtle transitions. You open up a door and you're in another world. You're in a a different design look, different colors. Um it it happens like that. If you watch the movie, that's exactly what happens. you know, you're in a a model, then you're out of the model. You're in the house, you open up the door, you're on Saturn, you know. So, when I approached this art package in particular, I didn't want subtle transitions into different areas. I wanted them to stand out like continents on a map. You know, here's the waiting room, here's the Saturn planet, uh here's the graveyard, here's all the different areas. And I wanted to make sure that they looked like they were individual compartmentalized concepts. Well, one things that's important to me as a pinball artist to to attempt to try and set myself aside from everyone else is that I look at every surface on this game and what its potential is. Uh, for example, there's an area um on midway up on the right side that's the graveyard from the model kit. Well, there's a hole and in that hole I did the layers of cardboard and then the layers of foam and then you know the base and then you've got the fake grass on the top and all of it's you know realistically done. So when you look at it, you don't question what you're looking at. You know exactly what you're looking at. It's where the time is worth it to me to put in to get all of those details. Like I said, we don't we don't want a world of glass that's just under the glass. We wanted the whole thing. When you're standing there, we want you to feel part of that world. And all of those little accents and all those little details help put you there. So, when people talk about having full assets to the film, there's pretty much nothing that we aren't using from the movie in some various mode or experience. I mean, I really want to extend a personal thank you to Tim Burton for writing so many call outs that work perfect for pinball. Uh, that was really cool of him to do so long ago, knowing before I was born that I was going to be needing those to cut out and put in like outlane drains and jackpots and any other place tilts. Uh, there's so many iconic call outs from the movie that just work so perfectly in this game. And we are going to smother you in movie assets that have the video, the sound, the sound effects, everything that you're looking for. Something else that is very elevated in this game, too, is the overall sound package. And that ranges from the sound effects as well as the music. The sound is absolutely perfected in this game in that Danny Elfman world. So, you're of course going to be met with the iconic main Beetlejuice theme. I mean, you all know that the it's it's fantastic. And we actually have multiple variations of that so that it never would grow old in any way. Every ball you're met with a kind of new take on that song. And this music sounds so perfectly from the world. Brady Hearn just did an absolutely perfect job of making sure that he complemented the Danny Elfman score so well. Still brought in his own aspect. And there's so many modes uh where you hit hyper specific things like if you're in the wedding scene, you're going to have elements of like the wedding march in there. You get to as seen on TV when Beetlejuice is doing his sales pitch and he's all rodeoed up, the music's going to completely switch gears and go into a country banjo style for that. There's so many different types of sounds in this games that you wouldn't immediately think that's got to be in Beetlejuice, but when you see how it's used in the modes, you know that it's absolutely perfect. It makes perfect sense. The sound in Pinball is one of the all-time most important things that you have to get right. So when we are merging this beautifully crafted music and sound effects with the actual real movie video and audio, putting those two things together, it is just selling this absolute incredible experience. We have a really I mean we're really proud of our history here at Spooky Pinball. We have 13 probably games under our belt now. I mean we're well above 10. There's very few pinball companies who have been doing this longer than we have, especially with this level of success. So, I I don't want to say it's business as usual at this point because we still feel very urgent every day. Like we we're still feel like we're starting from the bottom on everything, especially with this project cuz it really felt like even if we did a good job, it really needed to be great on this one because it's like you're you're in the spotlight. Everyone's waiting for this. They want to see it. I think we're at a point now where we have the confidence to take the chances that we need to take because we have the team members behind us that'll make sure that it gets done right. One way to make success fairly easy in this industry, in a industry that's incredibly difficult, is just simply listen. When people are asking for something, if they want Beetlejuice, we're going to give them Beetlejuice. If they want the coolest topper they've ever seen, if they like that, we're going to keep that guy and we're going to keep making you the coolest topper you ever seen. It seems pretty simple. When people ask for a theme, we're going to try to be the first ones to go grab that. We want to grab all of the cuz I take it very seriously, too. When our customers are asking us for a theme, I'm looking at it as these people have spent money with us over the years. They've invested in us. We need to return them the products that they want to see. What's really important is that we are giving people what they love about this movie. And something I'd say we're getting even more experienced at is providing the extra bits that they didn't know that they wanted from the film as well. there's, you know, it's sort of a a double-edged sword making steps like this continuously because it it makes for a great product, but it is an insane amount of work. So, we, you know, we're happy that we can continue to put out things of this quality, but at the same time, it's it uh it's a lot of work to do just that. So, but it's a labor of love, I guess. So, you know, there's that. you know, as long as I can outdo myself. And I guess the only way you can do that is you try harder every time. You know, put in more time, put in more effort. You know, it's at the end of the day, this thing has to sit in a game room somewhere long after I'm gone. If this if this isn't, you know, this doesn't represent the best I can do for that particular property at that particular time, I have no business being in this business. Once you see this game for the first time, you're just immediately going to be blown away by the advancements that we've made here and what we can show off in the light shows and the choreography, the synchronization, all that. It's just a jam-packed package of rhythmic fun. Just a excellent game. It's just really, Just a excellent game. It's just really, really nice game. Like just I want to close with this game is just really it's a sweet game. It's smooth. Has all the nice parts that you want it to have. It's slick. I really appreciate the trust that everybody here put into me on this project here and and letting me kind of get to run a little bit more with the layout and really direct the scenes of everything that I wanted in this game. I'm really fortunate to be surrounded by such talented uh people who are literally my closest friends in the world. I I spend every waking second with them pretty much here working on things that we love. and uh we we got to do the most special thing that I've ever gotten to work on in my life. And now you guys get to take a part in this. I I don't know what to say other than I I I don't know what to say other than I just can't wait for launch day. I'm excited for you guys to play it. I'm excited to get this thing out there. I I I'm truly speechless. It's just this it's it's been a great year. We have a great team here and we're we're putting some good stuff together for you guys. We are now serving you on the We are now serving you on the Beetlejuice Collector's Edition. I know you're going to love it. I can't wait for you guys to get your hand on it. And uh yeah, thank you.