welcome to the eclectic gamers podcast today is sunday february 16th this is episode 239 I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Tony. Yay. When I'm in Discord, all I see is BroTato. Why are you not done with the Tato? It's hard. It's difficult. Okay. It is some of the characters I do not have a very good luck with. I'm bouncing between two or three games right now, but BroTato is still a major part of that rotation. Okay. I've noticed. Me and Pepperidge Farm and the EGP Discord have all noticed. Yep. I'm there. I've got to kind of bounce between them, and yeah, we're working on it. Trying. Read any good books lately? Yeah. So I finished Wind and Truth, segued from Wind and Truth into – what did I listen to after Wind and Truth? I don't even remember. It wasn't that good. It wasn't any big deal. But then it finished just in time. I finished it just in time for the new Dungeon Crawler Carl book to come out. So I was able to sit down and start that. And that book has been pedal to the metal, just 100% go, no breaks, no slowdowns, no just sheer insanity from the very beginning of the book. And I'm over halfway through. And it hasn't slowed down yet. It is just completely insane. Okay. But you're liking it. I love it. Good. It's great. Excellent. Excellent. I mean, that's going to bother me now. What did I listen to between these two? Who cares? You said it wasn't very good. So just let it go. Let it go. Let it go. That's as far as I go with Disney. I'm not on AGDQ. Their lawyers were sitting there with the stopwatch going on. They can't stop us. I got fair use. I got fair use to protect me. But only a little bit of it. I will say, I will say, I have to make a confession. Oh, no. I must confess. Hmm. Yes. So I've been, I know I've spoken in the past. I've been doing like lots of like the like ASMR sleep. Yes. With like Warhammer. With Warhammer. Yeah. Well, I segued into doing, to having, doing all the like Battletech lore guys. Mm-hmm. Which, to the point where, like, yesterday morning, I woke up and it was playing, and it had just started one that was five hours long, and I listened to all of it. While you were awake. While I was awake. Tony, that's not why they exist for. And, like, to the point where I had to go run errands, and I was streaming it in the car to finish that five-hour run of the lore talking about the history of the Torrent Concordant. And it was all great, and it was fine. And then I got home, and without thinking about it, I realized that I was updating the Rogue Tech launcher, which is the mod I run on the Battletech game. And I'm like, no, I can't do this. It's too late. You started it. I didn't. I didn't start the game. I updated the mod to bring the mod to the most current version of the mod, and I was looking at it, and I'm like, I can't do this. It was still 25% of my gameplay last year. My total gameplay for the entire year. And we're not even out of February. I can't start into it yet again, so I closed it down. But I was that close. I mean, I was like, I like had the torch on the bottom of the spoon. I was starting to, I was getting the spoon warmed up, but I didn't quite pull the trigger. well the thing is that you you were able to recognize the risk and step over it and continue on the path the path to being clean yes so how have you been fine do you have any do you have any confessions no other than i shouldn't really be judging you on brotato because i'm still in the yakuza game uh i've barely been playing it though unlike you when people go into discord they don't see me in Yakuza because I've only been playing it on the weekends because it's just a busy time at work, which is fine. But when I get back home, I'm just not in the mood to play that. I've been playing a lot of Marvel Rivals though. So a little bit of Overwatch as well. And they're making a lot of changes to that game now, probably in response to Marvel, which is a good thing. And then Marvel is making some adaptations because they have big balance issues. What a shock. They have a humongous roster. But I've actually been doing competitive in Marvel Rivals over the last week, and it's still very polarizing. Sometimes the enemy team is just full of babies, and sometimes I am the baby. And I'm like, what am I doing here? I'm getting totally destroyed by all the adults in the room, and it's annoying. And I just blame them all as cheaters. That's how I cope with it. If you beat me, you're a cheater. Basically, I'm like, yep, you're using a Zim for a mouse. That's right. I can smell it. Actually, And Overwatch is really obvious. You can tell when the people are using a mouse, which I don't. On competitive, you're only supposed to be with other console people, so they use a device to allow them to use a mouse. It's blatant cheating, but you have to report it. Oh, speaking of reporting, I am glad to report we have a new Patreon member. Jacob G. has joined. So thank you, Jacob. I'm glad you have chosen to support us, and I hope you continue to enjoy the show. I also have a correction from the last episode, so thank you to Scott V. people are being very judgmental now of all of my pronunciations I've learned so I don't know this is how slow things in so many of these hobbies are this is what it's turned into so anyway I said for sieve I said sieve it's sieve I even checked if the British called them a sieve it's not it's a sieve it's always a sieve it's always been a sieve I'm acknowledging that it's always well normally I would just have said like a colander but I'm not used to saying sieve but i tried to be fancy because that's what i was thinking of at least was some sort of strainer interesting because in my mind a colander is has larger holes than it does but i was still trying to my finer but we weren't talking about like cooking noodles here we were talking about letting some stuff through right right well and that's the thing is so i could have done a filter too yeah but i don't have a filter no i do i have a filter maybe i don't know you obviously have a filter you don't have to beep you nearly as much as we do me yes sure i'm i am i'm really good about self-control so uh we had another um email also regarding pronunciation from brian this is more in regards to the uh discussion from the last episode about modern versus when i'm go and say modern and he and he said he always wondered why in uh mr roboto by sticks he was always hearing it as modern and not modern. And he said, now he thinks he sort of understands why. And apparently he went and looked to see if Dennis DeYoung was from Kentucky or something, and he's like, no, it's Chicago. But it was another Dennis. Maybe it's a Dennis thing. It's a Dennis thing. I'm sailing away. Do you think Dennis DeYoung will sue me for that? Not for that much. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you, Dennis. I'm going to be like Cartman, cover it. Okay, so that's it for the intro stuff. So let's go ahead and jump into pinball. Tony, I just – I don't have a lot for you, and this is not the pinball show, so I cannot pad it all out into 90 minutes of content on basically no news. There's a little bit of news, though. We can make some stuff up to talk about. Oh, before I completely segue in, I'm not going to make something up. I want to ask you this because I think you'll find this interesting. So on pin side, there was a discussion related to the pinball show that I do with Zach Minney. and I had gotten Glenn Fry of the Eagles mixed up with Glenn Campbell of country music, rhinestone cowboy fame. Glenn Campbell? Campbell, thank you. I missaid his last name also. Someone said you didn't say it right, but I think I left off all the letters and just said Campbell or something. I don't know. So Campbell. Campbell. The P is silent? Yeah. Okay, because it does have the P in there. I've never heard of the P. Maybe I just don't pay that much attention. All right. Glenn. We'll call him Glenn, right? He's Glenn. Glenn with one N, not two. Someone else misspelled it. Look, the thread kind of – this is why there's no news. Holy crap. Yes. No, I'm like – I'm just not going to mention names anymore because – I mean, don't get me wrong. People into music can be hardcore about it, so I totally understand. Anyway, that was Glenn. That was an aside. So someone was correcting that I had said Glenn Frey, which I have heard other people say, but they are all wrong. It is Glenn Frey who was with the Eagles. And I had no recollection of ever hearing his name. I had one of his CDs is the point. But that's not the point of this discussion. The point of this discussion is I mentioned that Glenn Campbell, however we're saying it. Yeah, I'm trying to see if the pronunciation. Okay, so Tony and I took a break, and Tony looked up the pronunciation. So it is Glen Campbell, like you said, Tony. You were right. Very good job. So I will try and remember that. All right, so this discussion about Glen Campbell brought up True Grit, the 1969 version with John Wayne. Have you seen that movie? Oh, yeah. Okay. I do prefer the new one. I'm going to go out on a talk. And that's what I – so I said – basically I said, I don't care how to say Glenn Campbell's name because his acting performance in True Grit was enough for me to not bother looking it up. All right. I didn't think it was the spiciest take, but some people really like his music. So I guess it was a little – we got a little bit of heat, but not like habanero, more like jalapeno, right? Just a little bit of heat. All right. So that triggered in the pin side thread on the podcast this discussion because someone really liked True Grit, which True Grit with John Wayne is a good movie. Yes. But they also like Glen Campbell's performance in it. And then I came in and I said, True Grit, the remake is the better movie, just period. It is. And that triggered. I ended up writing like a five paragraph explanation about why I personally feel that the 2010 remake is a superior movie, even if not every single acting performance is superior to everything in the 1969 True Grit. But it all started with Glenn Campbell and then it just spun off into Jeff Bridges versus John Wayne and all of this. And then someone else weighed in and they're like, well, you know, it's to me, it's kind of like 310 to Yuma. Like, I like the original, but the remake's pretty good. And I'm like, I don't remember the original very well. I own the remake of 310 to Yuma. I really like that movie, too. So I thought I would ask you. I was going to ask you to look up how to say Glenn Campbell's name. I was going to ask you, given that, even though it was a completely different podcast, I thought just as an interesting aside, we can couch it as potential themes for pinball. Best Westerns, not the hotel. Western movies. So this is what this is because one of the things that I guess I don't really because, again, this is a podcast about video games and pinball and the other podcast to do is about pinball. But I realized as I was writing up paragraph number four that it's like, you know what? I like and have watched a lot of I have a lot of Westerns. I grew up on Westerns and I was just thinking, you know what? I know Tony likes a number of Westerns as well. So I thought if we were to maybe each suggest, let's say, five Westerns, and we'll leave three, ten, and two are great out of it. Okay. Five Westerns. No, let's do three each. There's six total. Okay. That you would say, like, if you were someone to come to you and say, I want to think about Westerns because I'm trying to come up with themes. But in reality, it's really just an excuse to say, if someone was coming to you and saying, I want to experience the Western genre, what should I watch? What would you tell them should be on your, like, I recommend you watch this. This is a good taste of the genre. Unforgiven. I knew you would say it. I just didn't know if it would be your number one or not. Unforgiven. Why? For me, that movie kind of is just like the capstone of what Westerns started out their life as the kind of campy little fun type. A lot of the old Westerns are very campy, and they've segued into being more and more serious and more and more serious. and then with Unforgiven in the 90s, I feel like it really hit that point to the point where even, especially if you have a background in westerns, Clint Eastwood's role and character and some of the stuff he did and that directly called out to stuff he did back in the spaghetti western days and it was just a beautiful connection to the entire change of what's been in the genre and it's just a really fun movie. Yeah. Okay, fun might be the wrong word. It's dark. It's super dark. It is a good movie. It is. It's excellent. It's got an excellent cast. Richard Harris is in it. People might know him from being Dumbledore, the first couple movies. He's in it. Obviously you got Gene Hackman who rocks in basically everything he been in since the French Connection Yeah I would have named this if you had not And I do like dark and gritty Westerns That why I like the remakes of 310 and True Grit But Unforgiven, for a lot of people, they would probably say it is the best Western to have ever been made. Of course, it's debatable. But a lot of people would say in part because it really captures the – it's a more authentic brutality to how that lifestyle would be in the West versus the more romanticized version that a lot of people ended up growing up with. So yes, I really like that pick. I'm going to go ahead and go with another Clint Eastwood because you mentioned the callbacks to early in his career and say the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is, in my opinion, the best spaghetti Western to have been made. And I think it's noteworthy for people just so that they are aware. Spaghetti Westerns were not respected when they came out. It was seen as a subpar. It's like how horror movies don't get any respect. It's the Rodney Dangerfield of Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns were just not very well respected. It's the third and final installment in the Man with No Name trilogy, which is sort of the loose coalition of the Clint Eastwood-led, Leone-directed films. and but it's the best one for a couple reasons in my opinion one the music the music alone is worth uh worth i still actually listen to the good and bad of the ugly like i blowed up on youtube and listen to it usually at um at least once a week currently i probably hear something from it the uh the other thing is it it's a little more nuanced than some of the other ones in terms of you've got so the title makes it sound like there's a good guy a bad guy and then you're like and someone who's just ugly but none of the characters are nice people they are they all have issues and so it's just it's very sprawling it's got some pretty good cinematography as well so that would be one of my picks what would be a second pick for you jeremiah johnson i you know I'm trying to remember that one. It is... What's it? Is it Robert Redford? Okay. Is that the one where he's got the beard and everyone has the meme where he nods? Yes. The meme is from it. All right. But, yeah, because it is... Yeah, Robert Redford. Basically, it's about a guy who goes up in the mountains to live alone after a bunch of bad stuff happens. But I mean there's some beautiful scenes In that movie where it's Like almost silent There's no talking there's just Him surviving But yeah the meme Of him doing the nod That is from that movie That's a great movie Watched it Not terribly long a couple years ago Okay I rewatched it during COVID So that's It's been like five years ago. Okay. Yes. It's a little bit longer than I think you've indicated. Right. Right. But, yeah, no, that one's definitely always a good time. Okay. All right. I'm going to name one that probably won't be in a lot of top lists, but I think it's a lot of fun. Silverado. I would think Silverado would be in a lot of top lists, especially people from a certain era. Maybe. Because there was that whole thing. It used to be it wasn't uncommon. There'd be – like on the Western days, you'd sit there – because it used to be on like Saturday or Sunday, there'd be a bunch of – pardon me – Westerns on TV. And you'd turn on and it was either going to be Young Guns or it was going to be Silverado that was on. Oh, okay. Yeah. It was one of my – my dad liked that one a lot, so we would have it on from time to time. But it kind of – it plays more into the traditional American Western in that it's a relatively uplifting approach but more modern. Let me make sure I said it right. In the cinematography and such. Again, though, an incredible cast. A lot of them weren't big names yet. So when you go back and you're like, it's got Kevin Kline. It's got Kevin Costner. It's got Scott Glenn. It's got Brian Dennehy. it's oh my gosh uh i think i named most of the big i don't know it's got it's loaded it's got a loaded cast uh danny glover is in it yeah um and so you know the the story is uh is pretty straightforward um it's got some but some of the setup shots do a lot of callbacks to just sort of that uh the golden age of westerns in terms of like you know but broad sweeping dual shots a lot And the thing about it is, even for a relatively modest runtime, all of the protagonists feel reasonably well-developed. So they all have their own personality. And the only other movie I can think of, which could have been in there, I guess we'll see what your third pick is, but would be like The Magnificent Seven, where you kind of felt like you kind of understood each one of them. And it's tough when you get to that many characters. This one is more revolving around five characters, so it's a little easier to give time to Scott Glenn and Annie Glover. But they have their own side stories and such, and they all nicely tie up at the end of it. And fun music there as well, but it's a favorite. Yeah, it's definitely not a bad one. What's your third? My third one, I'm going to say it. I'm assuming it's probably on your list, but I'm going to say it anyway because I can't risk it not being mentioned. Tombstone. Yeah, it was what I was going to do if you didn't. Yeah. Why? Tombstone is just like the classic retelling of the Wyatt Earp story in my mind. And for that movie to have been as good as it is, if you don't know anything about the background of that movie and the like complete chaotic jumble and collapse that was the back behind the scenes of that movie, where it basically ended up that like Kurt Russell like held that movie together by the skins of the skin of his teeth because he wanted that movie to be done and good. and it turned out to be one of the best westerns ever oh yes it is it is you should look into uh some of the stuff talking about the background of it it what seems like a movie that is just wonderful and it's got so many quotable lines and so many super memorable characters and everything sets together so well and to find out that the background was just so bad and they basically just held that thing together and forced it through and made it somehow made the best movie it's just amazing it is uh yeah i've i've watched uh like documentary coverage of the making of that movie and it was i mean there are a lot of troubled production movies that end up turning out really great like the abyss is another good example but but the movie is of all the ones we've named it is the most quotable of any of them and it's val kilmer's best performance he ever gave i also agree with that and it really shines i mean he steals every scene he's in so So excellent pick. Since you said that one, I'll go ahead and tie the bow on my prior reference and say The Magnificent Seven. There is a very good remake with Denzel Washington. I do prefer the original in this instance, not the remake. I just think the Yul Brynner version is – I don't know. There's something about it that feels a little better. But I really do like the remake. And when it's on like Amazon Prime, I will watch it because it's well done and you've got some modern twist. But again, cast of characters bigger. in a way you could shrug and say it's just Seven Samurai but made in the western I mean it's literally what they did but I also like Seven Samurai movies so it's just the idea of a small group of experts helping the little guy in this case a small town resist a bunch of land wannabe robber barons coming in and taking things over but again they all have their own personalities and And it's an interesting little tale of bringing these people together to fight for what's right. But their initial motivations are all quite different. Right. And that's the kind of interesting cultural thing is that in Japan, they did samurai movies just like we do Westerns and did Westerns. And in the similar timelines of the movies, they were big in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It was a very similar thing. It was just kind of a cultural touchstone thing. I don't know. But they all have the same kind of theme and the same kind of feel. They were just the different settings. It's just what it was. So anyway, okay. We did our top six. So yeah, that works. I don't know if it worked for the listeners or not, but you see, and this is what Glenn Campbell took us down. Of all of those, I think Tombstone would be the best for a pinball machine, though. Oh, that's a good way to tie this into the segment. Tombstone, yeah, I suppose so. Of those six? Yeah, I think, I mean, because it's got like the OK Corral shootout and such, there's a lot of, because it's all mostly set in one town, you can really orient a lot of things around it. And it's a well, you know, and it's a pretty well-known movie because Silverado is mostly set in one town. Well, about half the film. But again, it's supposed to be this like a nothing throwaway place, whereas Tombstone is trying to tell you a story about Wyatt Earp and his life after he had been a lawman. And yeah, I agree with you. I think Tombstone would lend itself best. I mean, they did Maverick. Tombstone would have been far more worthy of a movie, though Maverick is fun. And we could have – there are so many potential Westerns that we could have thrown out. And that's not just the ones where we're kind of thinking like the lawman or the fugitive or the cowboy. There's stuff like There Will Be Blood and stuff set in the Western era. There have been some – That wasn't good. There was a resurgence about 10 years ago. I'll say 10 to 20 years ago where there was a big push for really high-quality Westerns, and some really good ones came out of it. It's easy to be dismissive because a number of them were remakes, and I'm always skeptical of people remaking a good movie in particular. though that's a good example where you you lean in on a really solid acting uh the third act is a little weird in that movie so it wouldn't be in my top list but um like it's a little i mean it's a it's a little uh campy at that point i think fine that's what everyone likes to quote i drink your milkshake but but but it's like uh but yeah there are a lot of a lot of those interesting ones where it's sort of like in the west and and stuff ended up happening so it's thinking of daniel day Lewis just got me thinking of a Gangs of New York pinball machine. You know what? It's been so long since I've seen that movie. I've wanted to re-watch it. We're definitely drifting way too far. We're way drifting. The Patreon members are like, I'm unsubbing. Jacob's like, I gotta get out of here. What is this nonsense? Normally this drift happens after the video game segment, not before the pinball segment. Well, but I mean, it came up from a discussion on pinball on a pinball forum, and you know, you brought up a good point. It would make a good pinball theme in Tombstone, so we tied it in. Speaking of pinball themes, Dungeons & Dragons. Fire in the hole? Oh, yeah. Rest in reference. That game's hot. Yes. So if you're not familiar with it, so essentially what appears, as I understand it, to have happened is the LE models went out. The Dragon, because of how much it moves, has run into a situation where the wiring harness has been tied down to the game to keep the wires out of the way on some of them so tightly that it's pulling on the cables at the node board that controls the Dragon. Node board 10, which node board 10 was the node board that had problems in Rush. and when this intermittent connection happens the chip will blow or could it could be an outcome now i do not know of any literally have caught fire it sounded like some people started to say that it was catching on fire and i don't know if there's been a little poof of smoke and people have said it's caught on fire and it's just the chip burning out but the chips have been burning out so stern has a fix and my understanding is people can also just cut the zip ties and give themselves like the wiring harness itself it sounds like has plenty of wire it's just how the line workers in some instances have tied it down and the pros don't have this problem because the pros don't have the full side to side movement so they're not having that strain on the wiring harness right and the premiums haven't gone out yet so it's impacted le buyers so that's been the the discussion but of course when things get blown like on node board 10 they have to get a new node board and so it's been a it's been a thing and of course we always uh pay a lot of attention to all the stumbles that pinball companies have because we know that a stumble on a game can result in what was maybe going to be successful becoming less successful case in point being stranger things and when the demogorgon toys could not successfully eat the pinballs being thrown at it and that was a key component early on of scoring people were like i don't know if i want this lemon so yeah so anyway what do you think about nordburten and here i mean the dragon if you were to breathe fire it's just so hot right now well the dragon were to smolder and shoot flames and stuff that'd be pretty cool like right but i mean but not like this really expensive special effect well i'm wondering if like you know they got engineers if they could figure out a way to take it so there's like a little port on the side, like a gas port where we could put lighter fluid in and then it would have like a little Bic lighter mouth and it would just go But it two Do you feel like those old little sparky toys where you push the button and it just shoots sparks That could be on our Tombstone game. When you plunge, the plunge looks like a revolver, and the chamber will spark. Oh, you just need to have it look like the pistol where you pull the trigger. Yes. But then you just have the old school cat pistol rolls where you put in the cat pistol roll, So every time you pull the trigger, the cap pistol goes pop, pop, pop. Yeah. It would probably be easier and cheaper to just program it so when you pull the trigger, it makes a sound effect. Yes, it would be, but we got – But then you don't get that good cap pistol smell. Yeah, the cap pistol smell. I had so many caps. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Did you prefer the ones that were the plastic that you put in like you were actually – you only had six shots or the ones that you put in where it was just the giant roll so you'd have the revolvers that would have like 200 shots? I preferred the plastic ones because the roll ones would often misfeed and the hammer wouldn't fall on them properly. It would get misaligned so easily. But I had both, of course. I had both. I like the little – because they like always work. Well, it also felt good because the pistols broke open and you threw the old plastic out and you put the new one in and you lock it back into place. Yes. Anyway. All right. I've been enough about Westerns. Enough about Westerns. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Yee-haw, buddy. Oh, yeah. Speaking of caps, Nap Arcade. Actually, I don't know if that's anything to do with caps. It was Nap Arcade. I have a link to this in the show notes. DPX, PXPX. They have delayed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's construction again. Apparently again. I missed the first pause. I should have read. I should have repped Nath. I missed the first one. I'm here now. People can follow the link to read up the actual details because I don't think there's a lot for me to say on this. It's just per the article, Dutch Pinball, which they're doing Alice under the DPX label to create a degree of segregation between the two brands. But Dutch Pinball is still in the process of finishing up their final Big Lebowski builds. Apparently, there's some component, and it's an important component that they need for the Alice game. Maybe it's a capacitor, so it's a cap. Ah! Oh! You did! Saved. and uh anyway uh dpx indicates that they still expect to be able to build all the games by the end of 2025 oh i know what the major component what is it it's fun i don't think given the sales that they care if the game is fun or not that's that's just my opinion and it means about as much as as it costs for you to hear it but um anyway so yeah i mean it's still early in the year but i i don't know this isn't a company that has a great track record for meeting deadlines so right i'm not i ain't holding my breath but anyway you can go to the nap arcade and read the details should you so desire speaking of details did you know this detail tony there's a new pinball company rowdy ramp rounds no that's not what they call it but they should because i wanted to say rowdy ramp crowds like that look it's like the one impression no one said you don't sound like the godly rowdy ramp round i do sound just more rowdy ramp rounds more rowdy it's just all western it's just all westerns that's right now one of the best godly call out games i need to go i need to go change the video game it's cue ball wizard just talk about red dead redemption even though there's zero red dead why did no one ever make us an intro song that was western themed but yeah with caps i don't know because we're not we're not really that liked, I guess. But anyway, it doesn't really matter. Ramps Pinball. That's the name of the company. I believe this is the person who was behind the homebrew of Elf, which you've probably heard of. I did. I don't think I've ever played Elf. I haven't. I've seen pictures and stuff of it. The first game by Ramps Pinball is Road Trip. So it's Ramps Road Trip. I believe it's set to be a 500 game limited run. They're not asking for deposits or anything. I do not know the price yet. They do have a webpage. They're not kick-starting it or anything um it showed up at a show and it's supposed to be at tpf but the the main selling point seemed to be if i were to distill them down which i am going to do would be uh they are advertising that it will allow you to load your own music the game is designed to let you load your own music into the game and then they have a rotating ramp system so think like a carousel kind of like uh batman 66 has that carousel uh where the you know the phone and stuff would turn around but they've got ramp feeds so when it turns different ramp shots happen neat with the interest so it's a it's a pretty clever concept uh so we might get a chance to try that at tpf when we go uh next month but anyway i just wanted to make you aware gosh tpf is like literally a month away at this point yes a month and a week or so yeah about that roughly i know you haven't thought of anything we can't listen to dungeon crawler carl because i'll You have to drive 95 miles an hour to keep up with the action. Well, to be fair, this is not the first book. Yeah. I didn't even start with the first book. The first book's too long. It is way too long. All the books are too long. I thought you already picked something. I have like four ideas. Okay. Tony pre-plans all this stuff, guys, so I usually don't have to stress too much about trying to narrow it down. I have four ideas, one of which is actually a combination of short stories. that are all like three hours long. I like short stories. I used to write a lot of them. But I don't write anymore. It's been too much time. It does take a lot of time. I guess I write a lot of scripts. My hands cramp up. Well, we've got to write our notes for this. I write my scripts up for my watch channel. I've got plenty of creative stuff going on. Whether anyone likes it is another question. It's not for them, Dennis. It's for you. It's for me. That's right. Yeah, but yet given out for public consumption so that it can be criticized. Well, yes, because otherwise it has no meaning. Without the judgment of others, how will you know if your product was any good or not? That's right. That's how the world is. Speaking of the world, part of the world has reached out to us. We already covered a couple of people who wrote in, but this one was a more pinball-oriented one. Chris D. emailed in and said, Dennis, but I'm going to turn this over to both of us. Dennis, can you please take a few moments and explain to me what would be included in a Green Mile pinball machine? Thank you, Chris. I'm tired. I'm tired, boss. I'm tired, boss. I mean, a mode where you need to complete it as slow as possible because you're tired. I think that's taking the phrase a little too literal. I actually think there are a number of things you could do. What was the name of the annoying cop, the evil guard, like one of the most sinister? Percy? Was his name Percy? The villainous cop. It's been so long since I've seen it. He could be a bash toy. That would be an option. Some sort of toy with a mouse could be an option. There needs to be a mode where you're completing shots to finish the setup in the chair and lock the arms in and the sponge. Do you get bonus points if you do not wet the sponge, or do you lose points? See? It's a critical point. But yeah, all those leftover Sparky toys from the old Metallica run, we have a purpose for them now. So there's plenty of iconic – now, how to kind of do like the – what was his name? Coffee and his thing with being able to like suck the sickness and stuff out of things, that's going to have to be on the display. I can't think of a good way to do it in a toy that wouldn't feel like cheesy. But there are plenty of set pieces in that, the hallway, the green mile itself, the prison cells. The layout, I think, isn't going to be too difficult to work within that theme because most of it takes place within the prison. But basically, stuff oriented, you probably have shots around your cast of characters. So you've got your Tom Hanks character. And again, it can be the book version. The book and the movie are very, very similar. I don't know if you've read the book, Tony. I read it before the movie came out. Okay. and it actually adheres very closely so that those would be my suggestions in terms of what you would include but i mean yeah come back next time when we talk about the schindler's list oh oh no no no no i mean i i guess maybe green mile isn't the best team to run with i can't remember the context if i brought it up and said there are other Steven King books i would probably do first i mean it would be the obvious one because people love it yeah i still haven't seen the new movie i never saw the old one because i was too scared of tim curry and the clown curry was so good i was scared though because i had been reading the book i only got halfway through the book because they kept flashbacking uh and i was just like i'm done with this i got like halfway i finished the book i read the book on vacation like camping in colorado it's yeah i don't this is like the only Steven King book i gave up on i've i've read so many of his but now there are a number I haven't read. Like I've never read one of your favorites, the stand. Wow. Never read it. You should read the stand. I probably should. It's, it's good. I read all of the dark tower. I've read all the dark. I've read the entire dark tower. I've read the entire dark tower. Talisman and its sequel. I, you know, I've, you know, there's other talisman coming out. Yes. I'm excited. I am too. I might need to reread them. Yes. I don't normally reread, but it's been so long. I just, I, I can't remember. I literally haven't read black house since black house came out. Black House was good, though. It was. It was good. But I read it when it came out, and I haven't read it since. All right. Video games. Yes, video games. All right. The point being, all of those would make good pinball machines and probably should be done before Green Mile or Schindler's List, Tony. I have so much. Okay. Video games. Looks like it's a lot, but it's not. It'll cut through pretty fast. I actually, there was so much stuff I cut a bunch of stuff out To make room for our western To make room, yeah I will say, we played this game a lot Back on Xbox Castle Crashers Yes, 360 days Yeah, here's the thing It's been 16 years since Castle Crashers came out They're releasing new DLC Wow Only for the PC version And it's specifically to add Steam Workshop functionality so people can make their own stuff for it in the Steam Workshop. Interesting. That'll include a new character and some new player and webinar. For the PlayStation people, during the past two weeks, it was down. They're probably aware because it was down a long time. Yeah, it was down for like 24 hours. Did they ever say what happened? No. They just said there were network issues or something like that. What would we have said in the 90s? No, duh. Yeah. Of course there were network issues. The network was down. We get that. There's just some issues. It's okay. We fixed it now. And for those of you who pay for the PSN Live. Oh, the Plus. Yeah, the PSN Plus. They gave them five free subscription days. For everybody else who didn't get to play games, because even games that don't require PSN Plus to play online were offline. Those people, they were just like, nah, screw you. Nothing? Not even wallpaper for their PlayStation Home or whatever it's called? They didn't get nothing. They got a swift kick in the rear. Get out of here. And then Sony, shortly after that, had their big state of play. where they talked about all the new games coming. Yeah, the only thing I had heard about out of it was the Borderlands stuff. Yeah, Borderlands 4 coming on all systems in September. I think September 23rd. They've also got almost everything they announced is coming to all systems. I saw an article that made the comment after the State of Play. In 2025, Xbox has more first-party games coming to the PlayStation than Sony does. What a strange world we live in. But, I mean, Microsoft does own, like, all the companies now. Right. But they're not holding back. No, no. They've stuck by their whole strategy is clearly we want to be multi-platform. I only pulled out a couple things that caught my eye Shinobi Art of Vengeance a new Shinobi game from Sega but it's a straight up like Metroidvania Shinobi game it's like cool I don't even know the last time a Shinobi game came out I remember playing them when I was like young back when I had you know Hope, Dreams, something like that. And there's a new Sonic Racing coming out because there always needs to be a kart game for every darn franchise. Yes. I don't understand why Sonic needs a race car game. He's probably slower in the car. No, he's slower in the car than he is running. Sonic the bloody Hedgehog. It doesn't have Jim Carrey dancing with Jim Carrey in a freaking cat suit. It's just not worth it to me at this point. Well, I mean, that's fair. but all right. They did enhance the, the they they have released a dragon a demo for like a dragon Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii which I thinking about downloading and messing around with And there's going to be Like a Dragon DLC for Dave the Diver because Dave the Diver is the town bicycle, and it does DLC with everything. I mean, they've got Godzilla DLC that makes no sense. It's just DLC for everything. We talked about Borderlands 4. How do you feel about Claymation? I don't really like it because it's ugly to me. No, you'd love this game. There's a game called The Midnight Walk. It is a creepy first-person Claymation. Everything's Claymation. It's super creepy. All the characters are creepy. The fighting's creepy. Everything's creepy. It is like a Tim Burton, Ellis trip of a game. So I had to throw that one in there because after I watched the trailer, I was just like, I feel like I need to take a shower. Okay, that might be interesting. I feel dirty. It's just wrong, and I'm creeped out. And there's a new Onimusha coming out. way of the sword yes that's another franchise that's been around for a while yeah i don't really know anything about it i never really played much of that uh blizzard has already walked back their plans they announced last year to do yearly expansions for diablo 4 and it's not gonna be an expansion until 26 okay that's quite a walk back so uh but they said they're gonna put out a roadmap of what to expect road map star citizen loves their road maps so we're gonna get you a roadmap let's just let's it's a great company there well i know last year i told you that you'd have an expansion every year but no no but here's a map here's a roadmap for the seasons yeah you'll have seasons uh square enix shut down the ios version of final fantasy crystal chronicles basket gotta have the basket game uh there was a bug that made players unable to access their purchased content and the bug was from some change made in the in-app purchase model and it was unfixable so they're just like oh we're just going to shut this game down it doesn't work anymore anybody who purchased anything content for the game after or for january of 24 on you can apply for a refund to get your money back apparently that's around that's around when the bug came into place they just everything stopped working and they tried to fix it they're just like nope Can't do it. We quit. Overwatch. They're bringing back all the old stuff. Luke Craig. Luke Craig. Luke Craig's back. They went back to six player. I mean, they're bringing all the stuff. They have an arcade mode going. I think right now, maybe it was a couple weeks ago, the moth meta they brought back with the mercy when they first introduced her Valk and she could stack it and do three instant reses in a 30-second window. Yep, they're running that in arcade. Some people love it because it brought back original Doomfist. Because Doomfist is a tank in Overwatch 2, but he's a DPS in that mode. But everyone was like, Moth Matter wasn't good. Why are we doing this to us? They're like, you like the old stuff. Here, pixie dust into your eyes. I actually first found out about this because my daughter told me. They're like, they're bringing back loot boxes. I'm like, why? She goes, I kind of like loot boxes. That's right. That's why they're doing it. People, because the new system is even more frustrating. And I remember going, ah, Pepperidge Farm, remember going and gathering up loot boxes because there would be, you know, a timed event. And you're just like, you open them and like, oh, great, a duplicate. Or, oh, great, not the legendary I wanted. Or, great, not a legendary, period. But now it's like tons of stuff are in the shop. It's too expensive. and some of the, it's either like the laziest skins are there and no one wants to buy them or it's some cool stuff but you don't want to pay like $30. I would say, who doesn't want to buy a $30 skin? the loot crates, and it sounds like, I haven't read up on them, but the brief summary I heard about it sounds like that it's supposed to be a pretty good mix of like stuff that's been out before and stuff, so skins people do care about. Right. So anyway, yeah, the people want it. The people want it. That's not all they want though. No, that's all they want. The people want live service games. Yes, except not from some brand. Right. EA, in a call to investors, they were talking about the failure of Dragon Age to hit their sales goals. Yes, it was very disappointing for them. They only hit half of what their sales goal for it was, and they apparently think they would have hit their sales expectations if it had been a live service game because the people want shared worlds and shared experiences like that. They don't want solo play. People want to pay extra money to have a live service game and all that kind of bonuses. Yes. The backlash from fans has been pretty huge. Fans that didn't buy the game. And the backlash from, like, creators has been to the point of creators were like, if I was making this game and they told me it needed to be live service, I think I would just quit. Because there's certain games that don't lend themselves to being a live service style game. And Dragon Age would be one of them. Or can you imagine any? I mean, here's my thing is this is their thought and there's a new Mass Effect coming. Are they going to make the new Mass Effect a live service online game? Yeah, probably. They are. Let's be honest. It's EA. Of course they are. It's in the game. It's on the Internet. It's in your wallet. It's in your wallet. Transfer to our wallet. Just give me your credit card. Get over here. and you're pulling your wallet. They're just pulling the wallet out of your pocket. You see all these PayPal receipts in your email after you've played a couple of rounds. It just says, uppercut, $1. Uppercut, $1. Heidouken, $4. Shoryuken, $400. I think it's even more nefarious. It's like, you get it, so it's a, hey, you can earn money playing this game. When you beat enemies, you use the special combos and stuff. the player you're beating up on gets charged a dollar and we'll give you 10 cents of that dollar. Don't give them ideas. Look! Yes, it's too late. These ideas flow. I'm a wellspring. And they must flow. It's like all those ads you see for, oh, earn gift cards by playing games on your phone. Yes. Oh, all right. My last little bit. This one's going to be so much fun. Oh, yeah. I heard about this interview happening, so I know where you're going. Bobby Kotick. Bobby. The old Activision Blizzard boss. For years. He made them so much money. And then he made so much money when they sold to Microsoft. Yes. He was on the Grit podcast doing a rather long interview. It was quite a lengthy interview. but in it he claimed that the legal actions about the harassment they were all fake lawsuits okay that was planned by the union to increase membership and that he said that the petition from blizzard employees calling for his removal that was also fake it was just it was all it was all just pretend it was just all pretend it was just all uh smoke and mirrors it was just all a show to try and get more people to join the union. I've got a direct quote here from Kotick. I can tell you exactly what happened. The Communication Workers of America Union started looking at technology. They kept losing because they represented the news guilds, Comcast, and they realized that they were losing members at a really dramatic rate. So they got to figure out, how do they get new union members? So first, they targeted a bunch of different businesses, Google, some other tech companies, Tesla, SpaceX, us. It's the power of unions. I didn't really understand this until we went through this process. They were able to get a government agency, the EEOC, and a state employment agency called the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to file fake lawsuits against us in Riot Games, making allegations about the workplace that weren't true. But they were able to do this. Okay, so his argument is that in America, the problem is unions have too much power. and so they just used their super powerful unioniness and got government agencies to sue him for completely made up reasons totally made up because they're a great place and unions bad yeah there was no real okay i know okay i was just yes the powerful unions uh at another spot in there he'd in that he'd said that that anytime they'd heard about any sort of that issue the person was just instantly fired now he didn't clarify if it was the person who brought the issue up or if it was the person who but they don't even investigate that doesn't that doesn't sound very fair to someone they just fired them is what he claimed yeah sure but somehow all of those other all of those others all those interviews the the hundreds and hundreds of interviews and all of the investigation crisis actors all the yeah it was all fake it's all fake news, crisis actors, all that. He also blamed for the number of years where World of Warcraft was ignored and had no updates or anything like that. He blamed the World of Warcraft movie. Why? Were the programmers working all on the movie? His claim is everybody was so busy trying to do stuff for the movie and that he would have never done the movie, and it was one of the worst movies he's ever seen, and it did terribly. To be fair, that's all true. But I did see the movie. It was definitely disappointing and confusing in a lot of ways. But I've seen far worse video game movies than the Warcraft movie. That's true. It's not BloodRay. BloodRay is one of my favorites. And it has Sir Ben Kingsley in it somehow. It does. And Billy Zane. And Billy Zane. But, yeah, no, he claims that all the delays on the game and all that was because everybody was too busy helping with the World of Warcraft movies for some reason. Well, I guess just everyone else sucks. And I should just believe this rich guy. Yeah, no, obviously. Everything's lies. He's got money. Apparently. Just have faith. He doesn't have a reputation, so he's trying to fix it. Of the heart. I like that it was the... The grit podcast. True grit. All comes back to Western. It's like we planned it. No Glen Campbell to worry about. So it's okay. Who do you think is a better actor, Glen Campbell or Bobby? Bobby. Kotech. Who do you think will give a better performance? Because this was a master class in gaslighting. I'm just wondering. Just curious. I got queries for you. Yeah, it is. Could he bring that sort of moxie to the Western genre? I doubt it. I doubt it because... He'd make an interesting black hat. He'd have to be like the greasy newspaper man or something. Yeah. He'd fit in to, oh gosh, what was that HBO show with Powers Booth? It was a big popular Western. It had Powers Booth. It has the guy who plays the hotelier in John Wick. Deadwood. Oh, Deadwood. Yeah. There had been something for him in Deadwood. Yeah. He could have been some greasy slime ball. but then that's not acting that's just him being who he is well if you don't think we're greasy slime balls you can reach out to us at the collective gamers podcast at gmail.com with your questions or comments uh likewise we're at facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast if you enjoy the show even with its weird uh diatribes and side tangents on on western movies and no no you do like it this is what the people asked for and this is what the show's always been anybody who thinks otherwise is wrong they've just misremembering i misremember yes good point yes you guys have forgotten this is eclectic yeah this is the eclectic this is this is what we're like this is what it's always this is what the show's always always has been and always will be so if you want to support that you can at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers yeah i don't know they're falling for it they're Keep leaning into it. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as a collective underscore gamers. And we should be back in a couple of weeks. Maybe there'll be news. Maybe there won't. Maybe we'll talk about a different genre. I do not know. But until then, my name is Dennis. We could talk about campy space 90s sci-fi TV shows. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. My heart's in it. Maybe. I don't want to talk about sliders. Oh, I was thinking Space Above and Beyond. Oh, okay. I should have deserved more. I was thinking like Farscape and stuff. Or Earth 2. A lot of these I haven't seen. I'm much less versed in this area. Until then, I'm Tony. Bye. Gaslight.