Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 4th. This is episode 262. I am Tony. I'm Dennis. Well, it's the new year. Happy New Year, Tony. Happy New Year to you. An exciting 2026. It's been great. I saw midnight roll because my neighbors decided to start shooting fireworks like 20 minutes before midnight, and they kept shooting fireworks for like another half an hour. They buy them on the 4th, and they save them. They save them for this. They did a full display, apparently. I mean, they ran for almost an hour, and they were shooting fireworks. That is pretty intensive. Because, yeah, my dog is not a fan of the fireworks. And we knew there would be some fireworks because there's always, you know, a couple. No, no. No, no. It was like an entire show. Like she was losing it because we didn't tranquilize her because we figured there'd be a few fireworks and then it'd be okay. Oh, boy, was that a mistake. That's right. And now you're dealing with that residual trauma. I mean, I dealt with it for a little while. Okay. And now you're not. the scratches from where she was trying to bury herself in me while I was asleep. She was trying to bury herself inside of me. She was trying to get deeper, deep away from the sand. She was trying to Empire Strikes Back me and burrow into my belly. I was initially thinking of the scene with the Vader duel, so it took me a bit to realize. We were back on Hoth. No, the beginning. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I thought they smelled bad on the outside. I almost made the joke. I decided not to. So what have you been doing besides saving your dog's mental state? I finally finished the main story of The Expanse. Oh, in the books. The novels. Yeah, I finished all the novels. I'm a little over halfway through the short story collection. And then I'll be done, and I have to find something new. Um, I've been doing, uh, that's what I tech, is it red technique? I, I audio booked those cause right currently I'm, I do both. I listen to audio books while I'm driving and then I read normal, but I don't read what I'm audio booking. So I'm like reading other things as well. So I've been doing a lot of reading lately. I've, I've taken a, not a lot of time off, uh, but because of how the holidays fell being on Thursdays. I've taken the last two Fridays off because I have to burn time because I'm going to lose it. So that I had long weekends. So I've been playing a game I picked up from the Steam winter sale, which is Absol, which is a roguelite beat-em-up. I've heard it described as like Golden Axe, or you could see it as like, you know, the old double dragon type, you know, it's that kind of, it's a beat them up. Uh, but it's a roguelite. So you go, so every time you fail, basically like your character is immortal, uh, and you die and you're re and you restart and, but you get, you gain levels and you, you earn the ability to pick up new skills. So each run is easier, but I find it, I really enjoy it because how they've done it is because they know that, Oh, you're gonna have to keep replaying these forward sections there are um side quests and things that only get unlocked after you've done a certain run and then it gets to the point where you'll start skipping huge sections of the level uh like straight toward farther along and the enemies start getting harder um so as you're making the runs it's not just you're not repeating the same beginning level constantly because there's like three routes you can take straight out the door uh and each route changes slightly so I haven't beaten the game yet but I've been steadily unlocking everything I've concentrated on just there are four different characters you can play as it's a multiplayer so you can play online or local co-op and have a couple players at a time I've not done any of the co-op play but I've just basically I'm maxing one character out and then I'll start working on another and it's been really enjoyable there is this there's a side quest where like there's a goblin that it wants your help and you're like oh yeah sure no i'll help you whatever this is great and you help him and and and that triggers one of this game state changes and suddenly um almost all of the goblins that John Youssi that normally you fight he was a nice one no suddenly they're all based on him and they're all much more powerful than the other guy. So it's like, oh, good. I just made my game harder. Great. Yeah. But that's to help it progress your character. It did. It did. I mean, it's been enjoyable. I also, during the winter sale, I picked up 40K Rogue Trader, which is the Warhammer 40K roguelike, or not roguelike, I'm sorry, the 40K RPG that's super popular and has reviewed really well. but I've not started it because I'm pouring almost all my time into Absalom. Yes, Absalom is the bro-tato of Goblins. It's the bro-tato of late December. Yep. That's what it is. It's the bro-tato of late December. It's what it's become. Mm-hmm. But, I mean, 40K ain't going anywhere, so. Right. I'm sure it'll be like every other RPG that I've picked up over the years where I'll either play it and get deeply involved in it and burn through it and nothing, or I'll play it and then I'll get bored of it and it'll sit on my computer while I wait to get back to it, but I always find something else to do until finally it's like, I need space. So I'll just delete it because it's been so long I know I have to start over because I can't remember anything that I was doing anyway. Yeah. We'll see. That's the spirit. So what have you been up to? Not a lot. I had a few days off here around the New Year's time period, so I did finally finish the single-player campaign in Battlefield 6. It was, I'd say, about the standard length you would expect from a shooter. And then I still don't understand the story, though. It's just like whatever. Isn't that the one where there's like mercenaries and evil mercenaries? Yeah, the mercenaries are like taking over. Like they're fighting NATO. Again, so I'm trying to suspend disbelief. I'm really struggling. I'm really struggling with the plot. So basically the plot is we don't want our sales to be bad in any specific nation. So we're not choosing a nation to be the bad guys. we're going to make them mercenaries kind of except the bad guys uh mercenary companies have been hired by certain countries okay so so like they some countries have turned to them as a new like a rival to nato and apparently they have enough tech then they just go on the offensive against nato it's and so again i but i'm like i just i don't know i feel like i missed a few pages of the script somewhere where it was all like like the groundwork was laid instead it seems to just be like all right there are these two yeah there are these two forces probably because there isn't like a warsaw pact anymore so what would be against nato um i guess we have to make up something yeah but anyway yeah it's it's this is like right up there with the uh the red dawn reboot where north korea yes and you're like really it's like you know what it worked in the 80s thinking that Russia and with Cuba with Cuba and everything. Yeah, no, sure. Okay, that works. But but I mean, the new native or the new Red Dawn, that was in the 2000s. And it's like, oh, you know, that was that whole what was it? Olympus has fallen. Yeah, that was the North Korean thing that came out at the same time. White House down did, which I think was just like white supremacist terrorists, which was probably even harder, more far fetched. Right. In terms of like getting control of the building. But anyway, so now I am playing Jedi Survivor, Star Wars Jedi Survivor. Yeah, but that's the one where you're not fighting the Empire. My name's Cal. You're the Empire. It's all about the Hutts and their mercenaries. Yeah, apparently. Now I've run into a lot of mercenaries. There are battle droids, which is neat because it is fun to hear them talk in their silly little, their innocent little battle droids. They're going around being like, I'm the best shot ever. I am going to find this person and then I just force push them so that's been going alright I'm not very far along in it alright pinball pinball there's not not enough like there's some stuff about like getting your order in on Dune and all that but we don't really usually cover stuff like that so not really any news news per se we're expecting the next Stern to be released sometime this month so we probably will have something on the next episode But I did have an image to share. I might actually try and put this in as our cover art for this episode. But Tom H. wrote in basically he's just like he had a I create a rendition of the Tom Selleck pinball machine from our discussion with a mustache topper. And the A.I. tool even named it Mustache Mania Adventure. So for internal notes, Tony, I've included what it would look like if Stern were to have done it. so you can get a sense of the full potential. But I may see if I can get this to show up as a – That's the one topper that I can say would be totally worth it. The topper is awesome. It looks like they actually made it out of Tom Selleck's mustache. They just would trim it and build it up over time. I think Tom Selleck's mustache should get a lifetime achievement award. I also like the tools font was basically, let's do this like it's a Star Wars toy for Tom Selleck mustache mania adventures. But anyway. No, it's great. It's great. So I just wanted to share it so you could see it. But thank you, Tom, for doing that. David D wrote in. This is not David Dennis, David D from Silver Ball Chronicles, incidentally. I thought I might need to throw that out there in case David listens. and the subject was about how to enter v-pin virtual pinball on the cheap so here's what he wrote hey dennis merry christmas i hope you and tony along with your families have a wonderful christmas got a question for you what would be the least expensive way to run virtual pinball games i've got an old xbox one at my house but it's in my living room serving as our blu-ray player I have an Intel NUC computer in my home office. I downloaded Steam and purchased a few games, but noticed quite a bit of lag when I hit the flipper button. It doesn't help that my home computer doesn't have a separate video card. So, should I move my Xbox to my office? I like all of the virtual pins available on Steam, but it seems like they're not all available for the Xbox. Am I correct? So maybe a Steam setup is the right way to go. how could i do it how could i do so on the cheap refurbed one requirement i do have is that i want to plug in an external monitor not sure if the hand console already has an hdmi dp output or should one wait for steam to release their cube computer much thanks love your show best of health and success to your families in the new year well thank you david for the question tony um all right Let me answer the quick part of this. Yes, if you want to do – now, he's not talking about building a virtual pinball cabinet. So if you want to do just digital pinball and you want the most table options, you're going to want to do a PC solution, not a console solution. Correct. Because you are right, David. They are not all out on Xbox in particular. I don't think there's any console that – there's just more games overall, especially if you want to get into the really niche, weird stuff outside of – We're all about the weird stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's like a Demon Slayer thingy that was its own standalone pinball game that I have on Steam and stuff. So PC is the right answer. Tony, how would you go about doing this? Because I'm guessing his lag is because he's got an integrated graphics card and you really need a GPU. I would say the cheapest route would just be to get a GPU for the current computer. That would be the cheapest, easiest route. Um, other than that bill, getting a dedicated computer that's more designed for gaming would be the next option that I would, uh, recommend with the caveat that with Ram prices, it's not going to be as cheap as it was, as it was a year ago. Uh, not even close, uh, waiting on the steam cube, not worth it because they're already talking about pushing the date on that release back several years. because of RAM prices. Just like all that kind of stuff is being talked about. There's rumors already flying that the new consoles are going to be pushed back several years because RAM prices have gotten just so insane. That's going to be your big driving factor. It's going to be what the RAM prices are doing. And I know this is more video game section-y type conversation, but one of the big things that's happened recently is with the increase in RAM prices, at this point RAM prices are averaging $10 a gig and going up. And it used to be $1 a gig was what it was. But now we're up to $10 a gig. So if you get 32 gig of RAM, it's 320 bucks. And that's why you're looking at, you can get like a high-end, at this point, the really high-end video cards. It'd be cheaper to buy a car than some of the high-end video cards right now. But for what you want to do, you don't need a high-end video card. You can do with a low-end video card, especially one that uses older generations of RAM that are not the kind of RAM that they're using for the AI data centers. Which one? Are they just using DDR5? Yeah, they're using DDR5 is the big one. There are still things out there that utilize DDR4. You can still get some DDR4. So it not as good overall But for what you wanting the best thing I would do a route I would say your cheapest route would be to go and grab a couple hundred dollar video card It won't be as high end as you'd necessarily like, but for just playing virtual pen, it'll be way better than that onboard, and it'll make everything more doable. I think that's the cheapest route. I think that's right. I think that's a smart move. It's going to give you the – you're going to want Steam for what you want to do. Or at least you just – let me just say you just want to have a PC for what you want to do because it's going to give you the most versatility on accessing pinball games, a variety of pinball games, as I mentioned. Video cards, yeah, especially. You just need to look up what your Intel NUC will allow you to put in, like what its port style is or whatever to make sure, and then just order an older video card. But as Tony has noted, virtual pinball is not intensive on video cards. It's just you want the GPU to offload the work. I'm guessing that the lag is because your CPU is trying to do the work of rendering the graphics, and the GPU is going to solve that problem for you. There is a chance that your lag is actually a settings issue, and you could go and experiment with that. But since you've already acknowledged that you don't have a standalone GPU, you need a standalone GPU. Yeah, it's your cheapest option. It's not hard to install them. It's going to give you the output that you want to use the external monitor, like the new video card, even an old new video card or used video card. It's going to give you a variety of ways that you can output to multiple monitors, output to an external source, whatever you want to do. So all of that's going to be really, really easy to do with just dropping a card in. Now, I will give you another option that will give you some viability without taking up your computer or having to go through all that. It'll be slightly more expensive. But currently, you can get a Steam Deck, which is Steam's handheld. Oh, that's right. For like $400. but they make a dock just like there's docks for the switches so you can hook it up to a TV so you can get a Steam Deck, the dock and then get yourself a standalone Bluetooth controller that you can use and you could hook that up to a television or be able to play it on the go you're going to want a television honestly because of how pinball is oriented. I think that's one of the biggest things with playing virtual pinball on a computer is your screen size is so deeply cut down. We've talked about it in the past. The issues with streaming pinball is because of unless you're intentionally streaming for somebody who has a vertical monitor and let's face it, only the most hardcore of hardcore people have vertical monitors. I don't even have a vertical monitor. Yeah, not even townhouse. To be fair, if I had a third monitor, it would be a vertical monitor, but I don't see the need for it otherwise. But that would be the only big thing. It's much easier to play on a larger screen. So trying to play virtual pinball on a handheld Steam Deck, I don't see how you could do it. But using the Steam Deck to power through a dock to a television could work, especially if you've got a good size tv most of the at least the larger pinball virtual pinball games do allow you to change the view modes so what they tend to do is you can just go into a into a more zoomed mode uh but you have to be comfortable with that you're going to have constant panning the camera will be panning up which always nauseated me and i didn't i like i just don't like trying to play like that because that's not how the real experience feels to me right so i would always zoom out and have the ball really small uh and that's where in a handheld scenario though it might just be impossible but that's going to be i mean that will be hundreds of dollars more than just buying the video card so i like the idea of just buying the video card is the cheapest of the answers here i the the steam deck is just because i think by the time you get the dock and a game pad or standalone game pad and everything you're going to be talking 600 um in which case you're i i once upon a time i would yeah i would have said you were getting into just buy a new pc yes but the pcs that used to be six to eight hundred dollars are a thousand plus now because of yeah cost yeah so but he might have other things that would be served by a new pc too so at that point maybe it's worth doubling your budget and and get that's why I think going, especially if he's got an older system or you want an older video card, just go on eBay and find something. Like, I just retired my old computer. Like, it had a standalone GPU card that sits in the computer because I didn't. I cut the internal hard drive out and put it in my new system because why wouldn't I? Right. And I went ahead and I took out the DDR4 RAM and threw it in a box in case I run into someone who needs DDR4 RAM. Right. So everything else is worth nothing to me. Nothing. Burn it. Burn it. Burn it all. Okay. I only, because the pinball section was so short, I went ahead and I just created a little discussion topic for us. It doesn't have to be very long, but I just thought, what are you, Tony, hoping to see out of pinball, like the industry of pinball in 2026? Do you have any wish list? I did this on my watch channel yesterday, and I was thinking, yeah, I might actually lend itself. further just coming up with some things that hoping hoping we would see in 2026 could be about some of the rumored themes or it could be just like a new thing like uh i'll i'll open with i'm pretty excited even though i'm not inherently a pokemon fan i'm pretty excited to see what because i'm assuming it's going to be game driven and i've just i've wanted to see more video games done into pinball they're like the most popular homebrews like the sonic one metroid one like There's all this desire for it, and the manufacturers just seem like they're bent on never letting us have video games turned into – every rumor we hear about one that's going to happen, like Cuphead, ends up not happening. So I'm pretty excited to finally see one. I'll believe it when it comes out. Yes, and it'll end up being based off the cartoon. But I don't know. So I'm looking forward to that. I think that'll be pretty – I'm just really interested to see if the community is going to latch onto it the way I think they will. because I think that's going to do very, very well. See, I agree with you, but again, we have to put our biases into it. I mean, as a big video game fan, I think there's a lot of video games that would lend themselves well as pen ball fodder. And it would open up a lot of stuff that I think would make for more options than just grabbing movies and bands. Yes. My guess has been that the manufacturers are just worried that the nostalgia isn't there with the market that buys pinball, and that's why they don't want to take the risk because location play. I think this would be done if location play was as big as it was in the 90s. I think it'd be a no-brainer to do modern video game licenses. But I think there's just this fear about taking a chance, and then the ones that they're confident aren't to gamble, like Mario, like Nintendo isn't dealing with them in price ranges that they want. Or Nintendo would be like, the only way there will be a Mario pinball is Nintendo spins up a pinball division and builds it. So that's been my guess, but I think we might finally see the tide shift on that. So that's one of the things I'm looking forward to. Yeah, I honestly – Hoping. I'm hoping. Yeah. I would like to see, and this is such low-hanging fruit. Low-hanging fruit is the tastiest fruit. This is the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Because we can reach it. I would like to see prices remain steady for the year. You know, most of them have held for so long now. I know. That might be not as low-hanging, as realistic as maybe we wish. I know. I know. It's just one of those things because ever since we did that jump where a lot of the big names are, we're talking 12,000 and 15,000 a machine, I'm at the point where it's like, can we just hold it another year? Just hold the line another year. I'm not ready to where a non-insanely limited machine is coming in at 17 or 20 grand. Yeah, I don't know. And the question is, especially in this economy, is how long can the hobby hold prices increasing like that? I mean, you bring up a good point because I was very impressed that they did hold. I thought it was a smart business move for 2025 to continue to most of these manufacturers hold their pricing. Obviously, Stern held their pricing even with Spike 3. J.J.P. held their pricing even with Harry Potter. But, you know, the buzz has been about, and I brought it up too. I mean, there's a lack of consumer confidence right now in the U.S. The tariff situation and more, I think, importantly, the retaliatory tariffs have ended up putting a lot of pressure on the foreign markets that U.S. pinball manufacturers were selling to. Like Canada, I believe, charges a tariff now on the pinball in punishment for the U.S. instituting tariffs on Canada. And the landscape kept changing in terms of what those rates were and everything else, at least ours, because we can't be consistent. But it's all part of the whole tariff game is getting played. But it's not been good for pinball overseas because countries fight back a lot of times when these things happen. All that to say that I feel like there's a big lack of consumer confidence. That being said, it does appear that a lot of pinball got sold in 2025. So it feels like what we see with the economy versus like did the manufacturer sell less pinball in 2025 than 2024? I don't think so. I think they sold more. Now, was that because they held prices? I think in part. Was it because the themes were better in 25 than 24? They definitely were. So I don't know. So I – but the reason I bring it up is why – and why I think you're right that the pricing – I hope that the pricing holds is I do not think that the themes of 2026 can match what we got in 2025. And people will debate that because it's going to come down personal. Yeah. Because – all right. So there's things like there's rumors about obviously Pokemon. I've heard Gen 1 Transformers for Stern. I've heard Spooky might drop Goonies, that that's one that we've been hearing for a few years now that they've got. That Back to the Future might come out of Dutch Pinball in 2026. I doubt it. But, again, we know they have it. So, okay. Well, I mean, Goonies has never been done before. Gen 1 Transformers is a big nostalgia hit. Pokemon is a pretty big deal if it ends up coming out this year. but i mean you know harry potter was like the best thing that had never been i mean it's a better theme than back to the future and goonies a bigger theme it is that way better is totally up to you um but you know having that the the you know the hit dune movie uh you know beloved series of books which you know huge nostalgia angles even though the movie was new that that could really draw upon And, of course, there was another Star Wars, which I've heard was a really steady and actually sold quite well moving up into Christmas, like all the Star Wars homepins always did and everything. Right. Star Wars. It's Star Wars. And. Probably outsold Xbox. Yeah. Well, I mean. Yeah. Poor little Xbox. So I just I there are some pretty exciting things that I'm excited to see in 26. But I, yeah, I agree with you. I hope the pricing holds because I just, I don't think it can be, it was a crowded year this year. I just, and I don't think 26 is going to be like that. And I don't think, I think there are a lot of people ready to save some money. Let me put it that way. So, because 25 didn't have a lot of blunders in terms of like, like what didn't click. All right. Merlin's arcade didn't seem to click with a lot of people. but that's a slow production company. Walking Dead Remaster was probably a blunder, but it's a remaster. It's not a cornerstone. It's not like how the response to John Wick initially was. I mean, 2025 had really solid releases, broadly speaking. I mean, Evil Dead did great. Obviously, Beetlejuice is coming out, being into homes in 26, but it was already announced in 25. Right, and it sold out in 25. Yeah, and I mean, If they do something like Goonies, I'm sure that'll sell out just as quickly as Beetlejuice. If you're doing that one, Spooky, sell more than 999 of them because you will. Let me just assure you. Now, this could be my bias fitting into my nostalgia thing. I think Goonies is a better theme than Beetlejuice. I like the movie more than Beetlejuice, so I would agree. but I don't have a huge nostalgic fondness for, like, for me, if we're going into, like, classic 80s style, I'd want Big Trouble in Little China before Goonies, for example. Yeah, or Gremlins. Gremlins, but again, that wasn't a movie I revisited a lot. I've probably seen it more than I've seen Goonies, but not by a lot. Yeah, I mean, I'll agree with you there, because, like, I can't tell you the last time I watched Goonies or Gremlins. I know I've watched Goonies in the last 10 years. I don't know that I've watched Gremlins this century, but I watch Big Trouble like once or twice a year. Yeah, but again, for a smaller brand, you're going to do a limited run. I think Big Trouble can work fine. It's not a good theme for Stern, but I think for a smaller company. Anyway, okay, so lower prices. This is just a wild hope. I would love to see something really innovative. I don't care which company. Just something really innovative. And it's tough. It's tough. Innovation on demand is a big thing. But I mean, I don't mean like spooky speak. I want something mechanical. Just something really interesting. Even if it doesn't work that well. It's just something really interesting. You don want your pinball machine to come out with a meta quest so you have to put on a VR helmet No Not just like sticking a bunch of RGBs everywhere Right And saying hey look we innovated something No I mean like a kind of like well I mean Harry Potter had the rotating staircase which was a great theme integration But we've seen that style of thing for I'm thinking like a really cool ball lock approach. That would be. Yeah, that would be interesting. Yeah. Something that's sort of a fun visual spectacle. It doesn't have to be like a change the world type. No, it's just. Something new and interesting. But yeah, kind of like when Aerosmith and Houdini came out and they had the catapult systems that would launch the ball. Like that was – it's pretty innovative. I'm not saying like they invented ball launching. I'm just – like the way it all got rolled together. Like I don't know, something where maybe a magnet is throwing the ball into a – like you make a shot and the magnet holds the ball and then a magnet then pulls the ball into the ball lock. Like maybe a double magnet. Why have one magnet? We can have two magnets. Second magnet. Is this the year of the return of the very target? Possibly. I'm trying to think. There was a company that kind of did something like that a couple of years ago. And then last year, one of the game reveals has a thing that kind of functions like a very target, but it wasn't a true very target. Maybe. What about the roto target? Oh, wow. Are you hoping to see the roto target come back? Who doesn't want to see a roto target? If Jack Dinger was still designing, I could have seen it. The next thing we need is a return of the gobble hole. The community will never embrace the gobble hole. Granted, Nick Baldrige did it with his vampire game. So that's the most recent gobble hole I can think of. Actual, real gobble hole that truly just gobbles that ball away. And it's gone now. I would like to see, come on, let's have another center pop game. It's been a while. Let's have a center pop. I still follow the CenterPop thread on Pinside. And in the last couple months, people have identified two more vintage games that had CenterPops that hadn't been on the list. So it's exciting to see. There actually are quite a few that were once upon a time. But again, we've not. There supposedly was one, the Sega, the Japan-only Sega, had one that was electronic in the late 70s or 80 or so. Which I've never seen. I've just seen the flyer. there hasn't been one since the em era aside from that one that i am aware of yeah so actually yeah that's what a good idea yeah i'm hoping to see an actual center pop again if if jack danger was still designing i think maybe there would have been some i don't think he's a center pop fan but the roto target maybe yeah been a chance uh i don't think any of the designers and no offense those of you who are designers who possibly are listening but i don't think any of you are brave enough to use this stuff. Do it. Do it. Was the gauntlet politely thrown down? Do it. I'm just saying, you know, you could have guts or you could be coward. I mean, I don't know. You decide. That's up to you. I mean, it's only your career on the line. Like, which first major failure? Don. You're at American Pinball now. Why did I do the run target? Well, the collective gamers threw down the gauntlet, and I was like, yeah, I can do that. And apparently, no, I can't. Stern's Eternal Investors financials come out. They're doing the 2026 recap. They're like, we normally would round to the hundreds, but we had to go single digit on this game. It's so collectible. I will say I have a personal hope, goal, one might even call it a resolution. Resolution. I'm going to try and get back to spending some more time doing location pinball because I didn't go to a tournament last year. I didn't either. I haven't since I started my current job. And I only went out and played location pinball like three times in the entire year last year. And I think that those are rookie numbers. Yeah. Considering I used to at one point a minimum of twice a month just for tournaments. and then I was going and doing a lot of other extra on non-tournament days. So I'd like to push that back up. Like the discussions we've had about tournaments and how popular it's gotten in the air and how long tournaments run and how much I might not go to a bunch of tournaments, but I need to do more location play. Especially because we have several good locations. We do. And several more than we used to have but I still don't go nearly as much as I used to. I haven't even been to the Chitroo's Caboose restaurant since they've gotten pinball. They have games there now. Yeah, I know. I've not been to it either. I mean, I've been to one of them a couple years ago that had one machine at the time or two machines at the time, the one on 87th. That might be the one that has the assortment now. I don't know how many they've got. But I know. Yeah, I should do more. I do miss the social aspect of playing in the tournaments. I do, too. I just don't. Every time I think about doing it, I just think, oh, my God, I'm going to be there five hours. And then I think, am I being arrogant and thinking I'm going to last that long? And I'm like, even when you don't get that far, sometimes it would be that long. So it's really not saying a whole lot. I mean, we've been eliminated pretty quickly before, and it's still been like 9.30 or 10 o'clock. The problem, this is so whiny as an aside. But the problem for me, like at 403 Club, got to be the point where we were consistently not being able to hit the restaurants we wanted because they were closed. Because our tournament that started at five ran until ten. It would be after ten we would be eliminated. I'm like, that's a long time. And it wouldn't be at the end. No, we're not like in the top three. No. It's like, this is just, it's just too much. That's just, I can't give an entire day to pinball. It's just my life doesn't like that. So I think what I really want to do is try, not necessarily every month, but I want to just get a day or a weekend day and just go somewhere and spend an hour or two playing. Yeah. Yeah. And I might try and branch out. Because normally at this point, because of their closeness, I go to Nub's or Pizza West. But I need to branch out. There are so many other locations. So many. There is no reason I can't go to the 403 Club at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday and play pinball. Yeah. You tell them. That's on me. There's nobody for me to tell. That's me telling myself. I mean, you can tell them you're on your way. I don't know what they're going to do for you. Make sure they're open, I guess. Yeah, we've run into that with nubs. We have. We have. It's like, oh, surprise. It's flag day. We're closed. Yeah. So it's like I have to figure out the holiday schedules. All right. Video games. All right, that's it for pinball. Okay, so my Steam year in review came out. Yeah. I always like to share my numbers because it's... Yeah, you're proud of that. I'm proud. Yes. Pride. Pride. I'm so proud. Okay, so I played 34 games this year. That's actually five less than last year. So I played more... Too much bro-tato. Probably. I unlocked 244 achievements. Oh, hundreds of them. That's 40 less than last year. Oh, well, Bro-Tato wasn't very generous with the achievements. Yeah, obviously not. 85% of my time was keyboard and mouse games. You are playing on a PC. Yeah. They're right there. Right. But there are several games that I do play with a game pad. my top three games I bet you you can get two of them in probably the order well I didn't name one of them did I? well the other one would be Battletech you betcha which one do you think was first? Brotato no no you spoke more about Brotato on the show than you have about Battletech because I think people are tired of hearing me talk about it They're tired about hearing about all of it. Here's the thing. You're the one who keeps bringing Brotato up because I've not played Brotato since October. Look, it's a meme now. It is. It is. My number three game, by the way, I don't think I ever mentioned on this show at all, Tower Dominion. No, I don't recall it coming up on the show. Yeah, that was my number three game. My number four game was Hades 2. Okay. Though it was interesting going through my deeper stats because the month of July was basically one game. It was called Starcom. There was like everything else was just tiny slivers of what I played in July. Because I played that game beginning to end, beat it, and got the majority of the achievements in the month of July. I did the whole thing in like 10 hours. Oh, okay. that's like the primary game I played for that entire, for, for the entire month. That game, that was his first play in July. I haven't played it since July. Well, you beat it. I beat it. So, so problem solved. That game, that game grabbed me pretty big back in July. So, um, we'll see, uh, how, how all this stuff, uh, goes for this upcoming year. I, my, I'd had a goal of playing last, the last battle tech and I failed. Well, That's a new year now It's like my comfort game It's my I'll just Play for an hour here or there But it's the game I throw on To play for a little while Into the big stuff You were speaking about Battlefield 6 Van Zampella The co-founder of Infinity Ward And co-founder of Respawn Entertainment And the current head of the Battlefield franchise was killed in a car accident on the 21st of December. This was on Reddit. Gaming subreddits all over the place. He was huge in first-person shooters. He was the lead designer for Medal of Honor Allied Assault, which I think most people love. I consider that one the first true, truly good World War II shooter. When I think about the oldest World War II shooter that really grabbed me, it was that one. And then after changing companies, well, founding company, when they founded Infinity Ward, he was lead on there with the original Call of Duty. And every Call of Duty until Modern Warfare 2. And then from there, he went and helped found Respawn, which is both Titanfall games, Apex Legends, Star Wars Fallen Order, are all Respawn games. And then after that, he was put in charge of the Battlefield franchise and could very well be considered the reason Battlefield came back so strong with Battlefield 6 from where it had been. Yeah, 2042 was a real low watermark for them. Yeah. So that's a big loss for the community because he was our age. So, yeah, that's a lot of history and what I consider like the core, like seminal of that genre of first-person shooter. Yeah, he was like the John Carmack of the first-person shooter. Exactly. Yeah, he was very much, he was the center of that style again. Mm-hmm. So, and that's a huge game. I mean, Call of Duties, Battlefields, those games are huge. The, what are they called? People consider them now, there's a special subset of first-person shooters that I don't remember what people were calling it. And now I'm thinking, I guess John Carmack, in fairness, is also the John Carmack of first-person shooters. He is. He is. But this is a different style. This is a different style. His were not military style. These are military shooters. Yeah. So, yeah, these are the kind of military team shooters. Carmack was, you know, Doom and Quake. Yeah, that was back when the first person shooter was being pioneered in its early era, though they had some interesting stuff later on that Carmack's worked on. But anyway, that's I'm moving it into left field here. Yeah. But I mean, I mean, but that's what it is. It's a pretty big, pretty big loss for the video game community. Yeah. Yeah. we'll have to, we'll obviously see what happens as, because a lot of this stuff, a lot of these companies have continued on. Infinity War may not, you know, he wasn't with them anymore, but they have continued on. And for a long time, we're seen as the strongest studio of the three that rotate through Call of Duty. Respawn, of course, is still putting out products and such. And so, yeah, we'll have to see how they adapt to this surprising change for them. Right. And we'll see, because it's interesting, because Respawn is still under the banner of EA. And with EA's recent purchase and coming out of being publicly traded, which the shareholders voted and approved the sale, so the only thing left is for all the various governmental approvals for that to go wholly back into private owned by the Saudis and a couple other smaller companies. So we'll see how that affects everything else. Yeah. Michael, oh, man, for considering how hard my name is pronounced, Michael Konicki, he was one of the co-founders of CD Projekt and GOG Games, has purchased 100% ownership of GOG Games, which is the GOG for those people who don't play a lot of computer games it's you know grand old games they're kind of a Steam competitor but one of their big specific things is they started to do game preservation especially of old games like really old like DOS games and the like before companies would go and oh here we updated this to come out you could still buy those games on GOG GOG would have them And GOG would actually build in executables that would do the necessary to make them be able to run on modern machines. Like I have on GOG, I have all of the original Wing Commanders on GOG. But because of how those games were coded back in the day, a lot of games utilized their internal clock speed. It wasn't written into the code. It was based entirely off of the speed of the machine. So when you try and run a game that was designed for a 486 on a modern computer, the clock speeds were so fast they're completely unplayable. Sometimes the games won't even run because the clock speeds are so fast. So GOG had originally created shells and emulators basically to allow you to run those older games. And he said when they picked it up, the plan is to maintain what they've done, which is the preservation of games, continuing to offer the older titles, as well as they sell new stuff too. So it's just there, and he has no plans to change the routing. He's just taking it fully as owned by him. Okay. uh online the steam trackers online have come up with the top 10 uh best-selling products on steam uh over the holidays so from the 23rd to the 30th of december so basically everyone got their steam cards or oh okay okay so it's just that period it's just this period it's just the seven days of of christmas so when everybody got gifted steam cards and gifts and everything uh and honestly i I didn't see any real surprises in here. The number one is Ark Raiders. See, I didn't know it was that popular. It is the, like, giant multiplayer game right now. Every time I turn around and see anybody talking about playing a multiplayer game, it's Ark Raiders. The only other ones out there that you really hear a lot about anymore is Marvel Rivals. And you still hear a little Overwatch, but mainly, but I hear Ark Raiders because everybody thinks it's the best multiplayer. game out there right now. Steam Deck, which is the reason I said products and not games, but they had Steam Decks were super popular this year. Battlefield 6, Claire Obscure Expedition 33. It won everything. Except for when it got taken away from it. Baldur's Gate 3 still for like three years running now. Until the murder orgy comes out. That's what you got to settle with. that trailer it's quite a pivot that is quite a pivot I mean it's 100% Larian going well you know there was a lot of things we wanted to do and Wizards of the Coast wouldn't let us because of branding like murder orgies so we're going to pivot hard I cast murder it's an Aoe it's a whole new beaty to ready to train enemies go ahead and write that time down so you can delete that one that's fine unless you want it out no I'm perfectly fine because technically that was PG until your brain gets a hold of it. Oh, man. It just... I flashback to Final Fantasy XI on the beach because that's about the time where Black Mages get their first AoE spells. So in Final Fantasy XI, for those of you who never played it, you literally would stake out areas and have pullers pull mobs in but everybody was playing in the same area and if somebody miss pulled and things went bad everybody in the zone had to zone out to reset aggro or die and i just remember playing that so often and then just seeing the local chat just in all capitals being like run run yes yes yeah yeah and it was almost always because some black mage leveled up and got, oh, I've got Faraga. Cool. Ed Boon. And then they instantly die. And their whole team, instead of sitting there and dying, just accept it. They run. And they act out everything. They bring everything in. What was it? Gargoyle Citadel. Oh, yeah. That was really proud. Where you had to run up the stairs. Yeah, because people would be downstairs with the hard stuff. And they're running up. and they wipe all the 20-level lower people on the upper floor doing the easier stuff. Right. It's just like, great, you just killed the entire zone. It's like, congratulations. But Black Mage got to go Ed Boon. That's the rule. I do have the Citadel and just that game in general because that is like the one game where I really focused in on doing something specific other than just being DPS, and that was pulling. And that game was so big and massive into your pullers because you would grab a mob, not aggro any other mobs, and drag it halfway across the map to where your team was set up. It was so specific of a skill, and I did it so much. I have great fond memories of that game for that. Yeah. I was on number six, number six. EA Sports Football Club 26. so that's because they didn't want to use the FIFA title anymore so that's the new name because they didn't want to pay FIFA to say FIFA Dispatch was number 7 which I mean it's a great game a lot of fun that narrative telltale style was really well done in that game I really enjoyed it it's not necessarily child friendly since there's nudity and alcohol and sexual situations uh in that game but it's still a lot of fun uh cyberpunk 2077 this one was probably the most shocking no man's sky of the current generation yeah i mean that game is for it to still be ranked this high i know they've done a lot of work to bring it back from where it was when we played it when it was so janky but but i was really surprised to see it this high um Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 not a huge surprise that game reviewed really well and Grand Theft Auto 5 I mean it's the newest Grand Theft Auto game it's Rockstar Skyrim it is definitely it's also the oldest game on this list by a lot yeah so CES 2026 starts this week. Oh, okay. I think Thursday or something like that, Wednesday. Later this week, CES starts, which doesn't have a lot normally video gaming, but it's been very common the last few years for like Stern to have some stuff there. Yes, they're usually there. I think the big thing of interest is going to be where pricing is because of the RAM problem. Ah, yeah, good point. I mean, there's already been a lot of talk. Phone prices are going to be going up. PC prices are going up. I've seen a lot of talk that there's issues with development cycles because there's RAM shortages, and it's more expensive than it was. So some of the development cycles have been set back on some things. um the uh amd and nvidia uh sounds like they're gonna have significant gpu increase cost increases across the board which is no surprise uh so it's definitely going to be a big uh effect overall on the technology industry we'll we'll see what comes out of it and then of course There'll be all the interesting, silly little things like, oh, I've got a laptop that if I would need more screen space, I hit a button. And because of the foldable screen, it unrolls and gets taller. Or apparently Samsung has a folding phone that folds into three pieces instead of just two. My dad has one of the folding phones, and he likes it because it easily fits in his pocket. See, I will admit, I am tempted that if I had been in the phone market, I would go folding next time when I go back into the phone market. My phone is new enough because I broke my old one, so I had to get a new one early last year. So I'm not going to be in the phone market for a while. but I've been looking at them and considering them and I really am more interested in it now as a multifunction device, especially to replace my tablet. Right. So I have a phone that has also got enough real estate to utilize as a tablet as well. That's a good point. So that's kind of my consideration on that matter. We'll see what happens. I've only gotten to play around with one folding phone. I've got a coworker who has one. It's an older one. It's not one of the ones where it opens up like a book. It's where they put out the folding phone to make it smaller. So it folds in half so it's a little square, and then you open it up. Yeah, that's his style. Yeah, so that's what he's got. The screen looks good. It seems to work pretty well for him, so it's interesting. The only other thing I really have Is Games Done Quick starts In four minutes No, sorry, 38 minutes It'll be going by the time this goes It'll be well on by the time As we record this, it's starting in like 38 minutes So Yeah Are you looking forward to any of the runs? Like Octopath Traveler They are doing the speedrun Octopath 2 Any of the Zeldas All the Zeldas are probably going to be in there. I would say I'm looking forward, like the ones I might look into is the Doom Eternal, because I've not played Doom Eternal yet. What about the Hades 2 run? The Hades 2 run, just to watch people be much better than I am in that game. Maybe they're bad at it. Not if they're speed running. Oh, okay. I'm not very good at that game. That is one of those games, because I know when I looked, the speed run for it is all weapons. so they're going to speed run it with each weapon. Yes. I have like one or two weapons. It's just like the first 80s where there's like one or two weapons that I'm really good at. For achievements, I worked with all of them, but there were certain ones that I just – like some I grew to like and then there were some I just never got into. Right. I never loved the bow, for example, in the first 80s. I didn't either. How could you not like the machine gun? See, initially I got frustrated, but it depended on the talents. And then there were other talent builds I got with that that I started to like it. So that was one that grew on me. My big one in the original Hades was the fist brass knuckle. Yeah, those were my favorite. Yeah. It gets back to my Borderlands one days when I played the melee character. Right. And just punched everything. Just punched everything. And in Hades, too, I prefer the faster. That's just my preference is the faster, more dodgy weapons. Yeah. But I said there's not a lot right here at the end of the year. everybody's being off or at the start of the year well at the start of the year but because all of our news came from the end of the year it did that it's old there's not a lot going on there's not so but we did it we did we updated everyone so it's been like so this is 26 we started in the 16th yeah this will be our 10th year yeah this is our Starting around February 1. Yeah, because we started in, I think, around. Yeah, it was right at the end of January. Sometime in February. End of January, end of February. I think it was, yeah, end of January, start of February. It's been a long time. It's been a long road. But we'll be at Texas Pinball Festival. I guess we could. I think we've announced that, but I'll announce it. We got our media passes, so we have that. I've got the hotel room booked, so we will plan to be at Texas. So if you're at Texas and John Youssi us around, say hi. As always, yeah. Yeah, and we'll try and cover – there's a lot of stuff that came out in 25 that Tony and I have not been able to find and play. So this will be our opportunity. Yeah, we are going to be good. We're going to finally get some hands on. I still haven't played Harry Potter. I haven't either. I literally, on the day after – on Boxing Day, I went out to Nubs to see what new games they had to play. And it was literally the one new game for this year that I played. I showed up and I'm like – D&D. Yep. Which we'd already played. It's a good game, too. It's a good game. No, I played it. I played... Adam's Family? Adam's Family's not there anymore. It's been replaced by Monster Madness. Okay. But, yeah, I played it. I played Monster Madness. Monster Bash. Or Monster Bash. A couple other things. Medieval Madness. Monster Bash. Oh, okay. No, no, no. It is Monster Bash. It is Monster Bash. Okay. I just, I've got the two, I was crossing the two in my head. Well, they're the same era. So, yeah, Monster Bash. So I played it, I played Little of Everything. There was a surprisingly large number of people in there for the time of day on a Friday, but I guess it was the day after a holiday and a lot of people were off, so. Yeah, they just didn't want to cook. Okay. Well, if you want to reach out to us, you can email us at collectedgamerspodcasts at gmail.com. You can go to facebook.com slash collectedgamerspodcast. If you want to support the show, you can at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We have three tiers available, the cheapest of which is just a dollar a month. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we will be back in two weeks. Will Pokemon be out? Will it be Transformers? Will it be something else? No, none of them are going to be out this early in the year. Normally, there would be a reveal in January by Stern. A lot of times, actually, they've done the reveal, the teaser in December, which has not happened. Not that I've seen. Yeah. Let's be realistic. Anything they do will happen the Monday after our next episode. It'll either be tomorrow or the Monday after our next episode. Oh, dear. That would be... Well, we'll come up with something regardless. We'll make it work. Yeah. Until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.