Beetlejuice. Attention Kmart shoppers. Come on a little closer. Step right up. Sand worms. You hate them, right? I hate them myself. You
want a cigarette?
Oh, no. Thank you.
Trying to cut down myself. Learn to throw your voice for your bread butter party.
Beetlejuice,
it's showtime.
You know why? Because if I tell you, you'll tell your friends. Your friends are calling me on the horn all the time. I got to show up at shopping centers for openings and sign autographs and like that. And it makes my life a hell, okay? A living.
Beetlejuice. I mean, just alone, everybody wanted Spooky Pinball to do a Tim Burton theme at some point. And we actually managed to narrow in on probably the best Tim Burton theme for pinball, Beetlejuice itself.
Beetleju as a theme has been a dream of mine for a long time. And uh Bug and I share a big love for Tim Burton. Um so I think as far as the Tim Burton movies go, you couldn't pick a better theme.
I'm personally a pretty big fan of Beetlejuice. It was, you know, I loved it watching it growing up. It was one of my favorite movies growing up. So I when I first heard that this was a potential theme for us, I got real excited. I actually started designing the um the PCBs for the marquee and the now serving sign that are in the back of the game. I'm pretty sure I started those before we were sure we had the license sign. I think the the biggest thing going into these projects now is the experience and talent that we have on the team. We have some people that are truly top of the industry. Um from Franchie on art to Bug on licensing. he's going on this incredible licensing run this huge theme and getting all the assets and everything for that. So, when we start a project like this, being able to have the horsepower and the talent to go in and say, "We want to make this feature and we want to bring this theme to life. We want this mech. We want all these parts." And then having that whole team behind you to be able to execute that perfectly is has really helped me do my job because my job at the end of the day, I feel like, is to make sure that these projects get completed to the highest level that they can. Tim Burton and Beetlejuice and this whole world, they surprise you with so many things. You never know quite what you're going to be looking at when you're in places like this afterlife. And you never know really what you're going to see. So having these shots constantly changing and being used in so many different ways really sells that whole underlying theme to the movie as an experience in the play style of the machine.
Something Bug has really preached to me over the years or really encouraged me on is that every shot should do at least three things. Everyone wants to see these games where the the shot just can't do the same thing over and over. It needs to maybe you hit the shot and then you hit a drop target and knock it down the next time and then you hit it and it locks the next time or lifts it or launches it. And we tried to replicate that across most of the features in the game. Something insanely important to me, especially in a standard body layout, is to get the most out of every single shot as possible. I really don't want almost any shot to do just one thing. I wanted to have multiple functions or multiple purposes. And uh fortunately, I have Spooky Luke backing me on any of my ideas. It's actually become kind of a war between us where he's getting too good to where it actually just creates problems for me cuz then I have to build all of them. So, he's he's starting to outpace me on what's physically possible in these games. There's a mech in every area. Every area you go into is going to do multiple different things. Every shot does multiple different things. When we get to the point where we're like, "Okay, this is a great feature and this meets the standard of pinball and what it is, I go to bug and we're like, how how are we going to shake this up? How do we make this different? How do we make this interesting so that when I'm talking about things like I am right now in this silly featureette, how do we make those talking points like here's where we're really pushing it? Here's where we want to do something that you guys haven't seen or develop a technology that we already thought was honestly good or very respectable as a company. How do we take that to the next level?" I wanted to make sure that the layout in this game represented the theme as well as possible. And I think the best way to start that off is by immediately subverting people's expectations when they launch the ball. So in this game, when you launch the ball, timed with the skill shot, there's a chance that you hit the bridge out option, which actually will plunge the ball straight out of the shooter lane and down the out lane as if you lost immediately, but we catch it with a magnet and it throws it back into play just like you got put into the afterlife. We wanted to theme that exactly as that. How does the movie start? Starts with Adam and Barb dying and then they get introduced to the afterlife. So, this game you can start it dying and then you're introduced to the experience that is Beetlejuice Pinball. Previously, if we were to do something like a lift ramp, uh, you know, you'd shoot it. It's a normal ramp and when it lifts up, you shoot in there, it's a scoop instead and it shoots back at you. That's, you know, it's okay. But instead in Beetlejuice, when you shoot a lift ramp, instead of just, you know, going to a scoop, it lifts up and you're shooting up another ramp that is directly underneath this ramp. So, it's a dual ramp. And this dual ramp actually goes up to a habit trail that floats all the way around the backside of the game and loads physical balls onto a couch that will dump them for a multiball. That's a lot more interesting. physical ball locks uh and especially just literal features is insanely important to me and I'm fortunate that Spooky Luke is always able to provide me with those things.
Vug's favorite thing to do when he starts a playfield layout is he comes into it and he says, "How many things can I put in one spot that absolutely will not fit until I hit him? I have to physically hit him. I don't know what else to do." Another example would be typically in an orbit if you were going to shoot it and it's a flowy orbit shot that goes up to something like a habit trail. Uh, normally you catch it with a magnet or something to stop it. In ours, you would shoot this normally very fast, flowy orbit to habit trail shot. And we can catch the ball, drop it down behind a drop target. And now we have multiple options. Most of the shots on the playfield are able to be interacted with in multiple different ways. You might hit a shot that's really smooth the first time. It'll just return all the way down a habit trail. And the next time a drop target might be up, it might capture your ball. And the next time you hit it, it might grab that ball, lift it up, and fire it down the habit trail. Beetlejuice has this habit of popping out of places. He he rises up from things. He pops out of areas quite often. And uh there's no better way to set up all of our Beetlejuice modes in the game than by physically doing exactly that. When you go to start one of your many Beetlejuice modes, he actually grabs the ball. He rises up from behind his tombstone and launches the ball through the tombstone back down to your flipper.
For me, I think one of the best mechs we've ever done. I I love it. It's so satisfying to see it just launch the ball right down the habit trail. So, I actually haven't gotten around to talking about the sandworm mechanism, which uh most people would consider like the absolute main feature of this game. Uh quite honestly, it blends in so perfectly with the rest of the world that it it doesn't stand out as like, oh, that's the one big thing they did. It just all complements each other so well. The sandworm can elude you. So, he can move up, down, right, left, all all sorts of animated. They'll get into the detail of that.
Uh first and foremost, the sandworm eats the ball. Pretty sure one of the first things I told Luke I wanted was a sandworm that does eat the ball. Uh we like our hungry hungry sandworms. What I love about this mechanism in particular, aside from it being in its own dedicated area, there's so many different ways we can have him interact with battles because of the motion capabilities of it of being up, down, left, right. He can be anywhere at any time. And you want to time your shots to land in his mouth so he actually eats the ball so you do as much damage as possible. But on top of that, when he's in the upright position, there's actually two standup targets on the back side of a subway down there, which I'm pretty sure that has to be a first. Shooting from a main level off a slope into a subway to hit targets in the back of a lower area. I wanted a lower play field. Luke told me no. Bug wanted a subway, but then he also wanted targets inside of the subway. Um, and then he also wanted a scoop that was shoved right next to the subway with absolutely no room to screw it in. And then he also wanted to make sure there was a pop bumper on top of that. But that's a true story. The detail of the sandworm is is so over-the-top perfect. I remember particularly how impressed my guy at Warner Brothers was the first time we sent it in and he was just like there I have absolutely no notes. They nailed the paint job absolutely perfectly. And it's surrounded by this sandy feeling dune. When that target bank drops down, the music kicks in, the sandworm rises up, he's roaring at you, he's being all nasty, and it just sets up the whole battle perfectly. And it's just it's all so beautiful and creepy. In most games, I think the sandworm alone would be the main mech of the game. There might only be a couple other little ones, but in this game, it feels like just a small part of what's there. It feels like one shot because every area has another mech that interacts with you. They're all built out. So, the left ramp is actually themed entirely around Dante's Inferno Room. So, aside from having a very delicious, fast, flowy left ramp, it also has a physical mystery roulette wheel. I said it. I said it. A physical mystery Oh, then I didn't say it. a mystery roulette wheel that will uh spin and activate and you can hit the action button to try to land on the award that you are looking for while you're still physically playing with the ball in game. I always feel that putting things into the physical aspect of the game and tying that into your display is a much more satisfying and engaging and uh makes the game a lot more replayable as opposed to like stopping the ball, look at the screen, use my buttons and do something. I like shooting a shot that would give me those elements on the screen. we keep the ball moving and now it's a way more fun game of I'm going to keep the ball alive and try and trap up and hit my shots while I'm interacting with something on the screen at the same time. So, as opposed to a standard left orbit that would go all the way around the game and return to the flipper, a very normal, functional thing to do, uh, our left orbit actually cuts through the pop bumpers, it goes past the upper flipper, feeds up behind the couch, and then returns to the upper flipper so that you can go for interesting combos, loopable shots up there, target shots, scoop shots, a bunch of different options off of that. My personal favorite shot in this game is actually the floating spinner shot to the upper waiting room scoop. So, as opposed to having a closedin spinner shot that's in an orbit or something more standard, you shoot through the spinner and then it actually travels across a wide open space and lands just perfectly kplunk in the scoop in the back. It's the most satisfying shot in the game in my opinion. Every time I hit it, it feels just absolutely right. This actually ties me into my next shot. Uh, after you rip this spinner, you're charging up your inlanes. So, you hit your inlanes and then now the camera shot is lit, uh, which is one of our cooler sculpt features in the game. So, you light the camera shot. You're going to get prompted with this hurry up and a really great sound cue of the camera charging up. You're going to hit that target and Lydia is going to be taking a photo, but when she takes that photo, the whole game gets flashed white like the entire thing just got a very old school Polaroid photo taken of it. So, we had a little bit of success the last time around that we did a special edition topper. So, I immediately called my favorite British person to work with, Gary Tunliffe, and we got him straight away onto the next job, which was, of course, the Beetlesnake topper. You know, in a way, it's it's actually kind of creepy. Like, his paint job is so intense. I actually remember when I sent this in to Warner Brothers, they replied back like, "Are you sure you can make hundreds of those?" And I was like, "Our our guy's pretty good." Yeah. Like, I'm I'm pretty confident in him.
So, the topper in this game is awesome. So, we've got uh we can control the eyes blinking, the light in the tail. You know, he'll make a rattle and a hiss sound. It gets under your skin a little bit. It's really cool. Movement always very important in our aftermarket toppers. So, he's he's scanning side to side like he's looking for the next person to go torment just like he does in the movie.
Like he looks into your soul. It's super creepy and it looks fantastic. And if that wasn't enough, we added the spooky speak feature into it as well, which just is again complete game changer in this industry. And perhaps a secret little hidden mode that you can get by shooting underneath that upper right waiting room flipper. And the interaction goes a lot further than just hitting shots and the characters are talking to you. This is actually the first game ever that you get to talk to. You get to speak to this game and it's going to interact with you based on what you just said.
Spooky speak is a really cool new feature. It allows players to interact with the game through their voice.
So after we were very dead set determined that you needed to be able to turn this game on and start a game by saying Beetlejuice, Beetleju, Beetlejuice, we realized just how big this idea actually was and how far we could take it beyond just doing that one function. What I think is going to go down as one of the all-time greatest Pinball moments, or at least one of the all-time greatest things Spooky Pinball ever did, is the experience of when you have the Spooky Speak hooked up and you turn the game on for the first time, and you're going to be met with a dark game that has one message on the screen. Say my name three times. The game reacts kind of almost nervously, but it's starting to come alive. It's starting to build up like the pulse is just turning on. And you're going to say it a second time. He's going to be a little frustrated like, "Hey, let's do this. Come on, say it the third time." And you're going to say it the third time. And the whole game is going to build up from nothing to 210%. Rumbling, coming to life, lighting up the entire room. He is going to be revealed. He's going to pop out and you are welcomed into the official world of what Beetlejuice Pinball is. So, when you are speaking to this game, it is going to interact with you in so many different special ways. is I mean if you let the game know that you're hungry, Beetlejuice will be there to stick his arm up and offer you a Zagnut bar. Do you feel like singing the Deo song along with the game while it dances? You can start that sequence up right from the attract mode. And we might only tell you half of the things that you can say to this because we want to leave so many surprises for you guys where you're going to be talking with your buddies and you're going to say something and the game's going to react to it and catch you completely off guard. The sky is really the limit on Spooky Speak. Uh, we have so many possibilities of how we can interact in modes, outside of modes, setting up shots. This really isn't just a parlor gimmicky trick. This is a completely new innovative way to experience your machine that has never been done before.
It gives us the opportunity to add a little bit more interaction, maybe some Easter eggs, things like that, just to put the the frosting on the topper. I don't know.
Yeah, I like it.
I don't know. 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 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 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 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 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 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 backbox. 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 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 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, 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 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 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. I'm just really proud to So, the left ramp in this game is featured entirely entirely the left ramp.
Hi, this is Christopher Franchie and welcome to the blooper reel. Hi, I'm Luke and I'm the chief operating officer at Spooky Pitball Zach. Glad as most people know, I'm the Oh, too fast. Slow down. It's hard for me to smile without laughing.
This is good.
That's why I have my notes right here. What else
we got in the notes there?
It's a weird question. Just threw me off my whole vibe.
Good.
It always gets so much more awkward once you get in the dark and everything.
That's how I like to The lights need to be on. What if you get scared halfway through though? Like
My name is Christopher Franchie and I'm the lunch lady at the Sabuki cafeteria.
Wheel of mysteries. A wheel of mysteries and doom. Okay.
Your shirt says poo shell. He's like, "That's why I'm burning."
And I'm running out of breath cuz I'm talking so fast.
Get out of my shot.
Um, Tim.
Hi, Tim.
Hey, Tim's here.
You're in the You're in the video.
He hates cameras.
A big part of the experience of Stop saying experience, you bastard. Closure.
That's what I need is closure.
How many times you hear that in the therapist's office, huh?
I almost said experience again. You're going to get you're going to get an experience super cut out of this.
You're going to do a podcast. They're asking us.
They're like, "Do you do you have any questions you don't want us to ask?" And I was like, "No, you there's no way you could come up with something." They're like, "Do you have a dad?" That's right. Oh yeah.
Oh man.
A big part of the story of this game is the experience. I did it.
You son of a
I still found a way to it.
Slid right around it.
I'm just gonna say it. I don't anymore. Nice. Nice pinball.
So, we've also got a new higher resolution display, IPS display. So, it's got Richard Luke. I'm talking
I wake up in the morning pretty happy camper. Really happy to be doing what I do. I just don't know how to say that without sounding like
trying to put someone through a therapy session. I wake up, I'm happy. I go to sleep, I'm happy. I'm very happy.
Yeah. I'm happy right now. Dad, I don't love you.
This R package took a little bit longer because I had to go in and remove all the extra eyes.
Thanks, AI.
That is all I have to say about that,
man. I don't know. I'm just not a closer, guy. Guys, there's
We're not We're not closing here, Zach. There's no There's no end to Spooky Pinball. Spooky Pinball is forever. I spook.