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Pinball Industry News: October 2019 Re-cap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 15m·analyzed·Nov 1, 2019
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TL;DR

October 2019 Pinball Expo recap with Super Canasta and Kelts reveals; Stern dominance and venue logistics.

Summary

Jonathan Euston and Martin Ayer recap October 2019 pinball news, focusing heavily on the 35th Pinball Expo in Chicago. Key announcements include two new games revealed: Super Canasta by Quetzal Pinball (designed for Spanish manufacturer Bittronic, priced at $5,250) and Kelts by Haggis Pinball. The episode covers Stern's factory tour, the new Stern Pin Lounge venue arrangement, tournament logistics, and Cassandra Peterson's appearance for Elvira game promotion. Technical discussions address game design decisions, feature cuts on premium models, and post-Expo interviews.

Key Claims

  • 35th Pinball Expo was the best show in at least the last 10 years

    medium confidence · Jonathan reports hearing this from attendees but acknowledges he hasn't attended previous expos for comparison

  • Vendor hall was completely maxed out with vendors for the first time

    high confidence · Martin explicitly states this as a sign of industry flourishing

  • Some vendors complained about lost sales due to people being drawn to separate Stern Pin Lounge instead of vendor hall

    medium confidence · Jonathan acknowledges hearing complaints but notes this improved after Friday

  • Super Canasta is designed by Antonio Arturo of Quetzal Pinball for manufacturing by Bittronic, a Spanish coin-op equipment company

    high confidence · Martin provides detailed explanation of the design-for-hire arrangement

  • Kelts pricing is set at $5,250

    high confidence · Jonathan explicitly states the price point from Haggis's registration process

  • Stern factory tour buses left hotels around 9 AM and people were still queuing at 11 AM

    high confidence · Martin provides specific timing details

  • Three games were on Stern's production line during the factory tour: Elvira, Star Wars comic art game, and Jurassic Park

    medium confidence · Martin lists games he understood to be in production, with some uncertainty in tone

  • Cassandra Peterson appeared at two separate signing sessions (Friday and Saturday) rather than dressed as Elvira

    high confidence · Both hosts confirm attendance and note the professional appearance decision

Notable Quotes

  • “It was a very good show. I've heard people say it was probably the best Expo in at least the last 10 years”

    Jonathan Euston @ early in episode — Sets tone for positive Expo assessment and establishes benchmark for show quality

  • “Everything about the show, it just got bigger and bigger this year. It really is bursting at the seams, that hotel.”

    Martin Ayer @ venue discussion section — Indicates physical space constraints and growth trajectory of the event

  • “The vendor hall was completely maxed out with vendors, something that never happened before, which is a good thing. It's also a sign of how the hobby or the industry, if you want to call it that, is flourishing”

    Martin Ayer @ vendor discussion — Documents industry health through vendor demand metrics

  • “I managed to blow one of the fuses in the back box”

    Jonathan Euston @ Tokyo Perfect Drift discussion — Self-deprecating anecdote about limited hands-on time with unreleased game

  • “They turned up and they weren't taking pre-orders, but they were asking people to register their interest in buying one, and they set a price point on that at $5,250”

    Jonathan Euston @ Haggis Kelts discussion — Documents pre-order strategy and official pricing for new homebrew title

  • “The Black Knight is literally from the back box overlooking you playing the game. The movement of the head, that was rather smooth, I would say. So that looked very nice, very interesting.”

    Martin Ayer @ Black Knight topper discussion — Describes innovative topper design with mechanical action

  • “If you're paying a premium price, then you might expect as well that the cool features that the designer intended to [be included]”

    Jonathan Euston @ Elvira premium model discussion — Raises concern about feature cuts on premium-tier models versus budget justification

Entities

Pinball ExpoeventRob BurkepersonJonathan EustonpersonMartin AyerpersonSuper CanastagameQuetzal PinballcompanyAntonio ArturopersonBittroniccompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Bittronic (Spanish coin-op manufacturer) entering pinball market by contracting Quetzal's Antonio Arturo to design Super Canasta; indicates market expansion beyond traditional manufacturers

    high · Martin explains design-for-hire arrangement and Bittronic's established presence in coin-op market

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern conducted extensive factory tour (buses at 9 AM with queues still forming at 11 AM) and integrated Gary Stern for welcome reception; demonstrates established tour infrastructure

    high · Martin confirms attendance and timing; notes Stern's organized tour process and merchandise booth; Gary Stern attended as welcome figure

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Kelts represents trend toward simpler playfields with single level, no ramps, cartoon-style artwork; positioned as nostalgia callback to original Lexi Lightspeed visual style

    medium · Jonathan notes Kelts follows trend of simpler playfields; describes artwork as similar to original Lexi Lightspeed cartoon approach rather than photorealistic

  • ?

    event_signal: 35th Pinball Expo described as best show in 10+ years; vendor hall maxed out for first time; industry growth metrics strong

    high · Both hosts cite attendee feedback and vendor participation records; Martin notes vendor hall filled completely for first time

  • ?

    leak_detection: Tokyo Perfect Drift game visible at Expo alongside Super Canasta; game had been previously known through pictures/flyers but physical presence at show confirms continued development

    medium · Jonathan notes Tokyo Perfect Drift was known about but not seen by many; both games displayed together at Expo

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.405

0:00
35th Anniversary Pinball Expo Super Colossus from Quetzal Pinball Revealed Kelps from Haggis Pinball Also Revealed Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and with me is... Martin Ayer, I'm the editor of Pinball News and welcome to our monthly recap of all the happenings in the wonderful world of pinball, and this time we're looking back at the month of October 2019. Right, and it's been quite an interesting month. It certainly has.
0:42
Dominated largely for us, I know, by the Pinball Expo show in Chicago, where there was an awful lot happening, but there was a certain number of things happening before and after that, and we're going to look at all of those in this recap. Right. So to start off with Pinball Expo, first of all, congratulations to Mr. Rob Burke, the organizer of the show, for the 35th edition. And I think I have to applaud him for this edition because it was a very good show. I've heard people say it was probably the best Expo in at least the last 10 years, and I wouldn't know if other ones were better because I didn't attend any of those. But it was a very impressive expo, I have to say. It was, I agree.
1:35
And that is, I would say in part, it's almost in its entirety due to the great team who are working on the show. It's not just a one-man operation, of course. Of course. Rob and Bridget together do a huge amount to bring the show together. But there's so many other people, I couldn't even begin to name them, because if you name one, then you'll just leave other people out. But working in the game hall, the vendor hall, the tournament, working on all the seminars, setting up all the stern pin lounge, and the Horror House event and the exhibition of pinball history. It just goes on and on and on. Everything about the show, it just got bigger and bigger this year. It really is bursting at the seams, that hotel. They need more space, and there's no more space, really, they can do. They can use it, because unless they start expanding into non-conference areas, which is a possibility, but it's going to be difficult and pricey, I'm sure. Right. And that show has probably gone as big as it possibly can do while it's at that venue. Right. So, yeah, and so what I understood was that the vendor hall was completely maxed out with vendors, something that never happened before, which is a good thing. It's also a sign of how the hobby or the industry, if you want to call it that, is flourishing, I would probably say.
Keltsgame
Haggis Pinballcompany
Tokyo Perfect Driftgame
Stern Pinballcompany
Stern Pin Loungevenue
Elvira: House of Horrorsgame
Cassandra Petersonperson
Black Knightgame
Jurassic Parkgame
Star Wars comic art gamegame
Deadpoolgame
Iron Maidengame
Among Usgame
Gary Sternperson
Pinball Newsorganization
Pinball Magazineorganization
  • $

    market_signal: Stern Pin Lounge venue separation drew crowds away from vendor hall, impacting vendor sales on Friday; organizational trade-off between manufacturer showcase and retail floor traffic

    medium · Jonathan and Martin both acknowledge vendor complaints; Martin notes improvement after Friday; debate about venue layout consequences

  • ?

    community_signal: Cassandra Peterson appeared at Expo for Elvira game promotion; inducted into Pinball Expo Hall of Fame; noted as professional appearance rather than character costume

    high · Both hosts confirm Peterson's attendance; Jonathan notes two signing sessions; Martin discusses cost implications of costume vs. professional attire

  • ?

    announcement: Two new games officially revealed at Expo: Super Canasta by Quetzal Pinball and Kelts by Haggis Pinball

    high · Both games displayed at Expo; Jonathan and Martin provide detailed descriptions; price points confirmed ($5,250 for both)

  • ?

    product_concern: Jonathan raises concern about feature cuts on Elvira premium model (Sanity Falls ramp removed); questions why premium-tier game would have cost-cutting measures vs. pro model positioning

    medium · Jonathan notes photo of Nordmanite version with steeper ramp that was cut; expresses confusion about premium model economics

  • ?

    technology_signal: Black Knight topper prototype features innovative mechanical head design with synchronized lighting and movement; represents advancement in topper animation technology

    high · Martin describes smooth movement of mechanically moving Black Knight head synchronized with speech; notes this is more interactive than previous topper designs

    • 3:21
    Although I also did hear some vendors complain that they were not quite happy with the way the whole Stern Pinball Lounge was organized, in the sense that it took a lot of people out of the vendor hall to stick around in the stern room, basically, resulting in not as many sales as they were hoping for. But, okay, so there's always people complaining about something.
    3:53
    And obviously everybody's free to go where they want to go. But still, okay, I can understand that not everybody might have been pleased with all the people being drawn to one area of the show instead of them walking around.
    4:12
    I've heard the same issues being raised. I think some of the vendors were less than happy with the level of business they were doing, but that was up until Friday. That may have changed a bit on Saturday. I don't know, but there always can be a danger when there's so much else going on around the vendor hall and not actually within it, people are going to be drawn away. And if all the new Stern games, or nearly all the new Stern games, are in a completely separate room, yeah, people aren't going to be in the vendor hall, and that isn't, of course, how it used to be, because Sterns or Marco used to have a big display in the vendor hall, and you have to give credit to the organisers there them that with all that space being taken out, they managed to fill it all with other vendors. Right. So there was no gap as a result of that. But, yeah, it did mean that the people were, if they wanted to play the new Stern games, they would go into the pin lounge, as it was called, which was next door, and spend all their time in there and not be wandering around looking to buy things in the vendor hall. Right. So, aside from that, I did not hear that many complaints, or actually none.
    5:36
    Mostly that people were really impressed with the show and that everybody was happy. Absolutely. I think it was, as you said, it was the best show for years, and that's due to the amount of time and effort put into the planning of it. And that was clear. And it was a huge number of volunteers that made some very subtle changes. like moving the entrance to the vendor hall round to the front, moving the tournaments into their own little area in a separate room rather than being in the corridor. And that area was then available for other companies, like T&T and Scorbit as well, to be out there showing their wares.
    6:19
    So, yeah, I think that rearrangement worked well. Right. Speaking of the tournaments, I understand you had quite a long day on Sunday waiting for the tournaments to finish.
    6:32
    Yes. Sunday was supposed to be just the classic, say, just, but the classic tournament playoff. But also it ended up including the final of the A Division, which was held over from Saturday night because of the way the rooms were set up. And I was saying before about how they're kind of at maximum space now. some of the rooms had to be sort of like dual purpose or repurposed for instance the seminar room had to be pretty much shut down and all the chairs cleared away so they could hold the autograph session in there on a Saturday afternoon and then put back again for seminars the same kind of thing happened with the tournaments, the tournaments were in the back half of the Botanic Garden ballroom, I think is the name of the room while the pin lounge was in the front, well front half front two-thirds, maybe, of that room. And on Saturday night, at 11 o'clock, they had a kind of end-of-show party there, which was a ticketed event, and that was due to start at 11, and that involved a lot of very loud music, a lot of dance music, and the games were opened up for everyone to play, including the tournament games, which meant the tournament games had to be finished by 11 o'clock, but they weren't. So they were a few minutes late, and they didn't get the final of the A Division done, so that carried on to Sunday morning. So that took place, and then the Classics went on as well, and one game in particular, I think it was Car Hop, was a very long-playing game for the Classics, and that delayed things somewhat, and we didn't get out of there until about 6.15. That's when the final was decided. I thought I'd be away by about 4 o'clock or something like that, But there we go. It was fun to watch anyway. It was some good games, some entertaining play. And congratulations to all the winners in all the divisions. There was an A and B division in the main flip-out tournament, classics, there was a women's tournament, there was a kids' tournament, and there were probably some other ones as well, which I don't know, as well as other tournaments or other competitions that were held, not necessarily at Expo, but for Expo attendees to play in. Right, okay. So now before we move on, two things I need to comment on. First of all, for everybody who did not go to Expo but still want to be in on the seminars that were held at Expo, you did an amazing job as always, but even this year, bigger than before, with video recordings of almost all seminars, I have to say, which are available on your website, pinballnews.com. Thank you very much for reminding everyone about that. Yes, indeed. 30 seminars on there, as well as videos of walking through the vendor hall, the game halls, and other places.
    9:31
    So, yeah, I spent pretty much two and a half days sitting in the seminar hall with a laptop, sound mixer, three cameras,
    9:45
    and a couple of laptops, recording all this stuff and writing reports as it was going on. So I actually didn't get to see very much of Expo at all. I was only free for about an hour each evening from about 11 until midnight.
    9:59
    Yeah, when I got a chance to go and get some dinner. but on the plus side there's 30 lovely seminars there for you to watch and listen to and I will also plan anyway over the next couple of days just to run those through and produce mp3s of them twos over those people who only want to listen to the audio rather than watch them, then they can do that as well so check the website for that and thank you for bringing that up right, so, and the other thing I want to point out is that you and I both talked to organizer Rob Berg on the Sunday afternoon of Expo when the show basically was over. The tournaments were still going on but Rob was available and took 15 minutes out of his busy schedule that day to talk to us about how he experienced Expo and his plans for the future and so on and we'll be inserting that or playing that interview later on in this podcast we'll first cover all the news from various manufacturers that has been, that ties in with Pinball Expo and after that we do the interview with Rob Berg and then we continue with the news from manufacturers that doesn't tie in with Pinball Expo Yep, sounds like a plan to me Okay, right So, where should we start? Start with our headlines, then? Yes. Well, I'd say to the surprise of many, two new games were actually revealed at Expo. One that I absolutely did not see coming, and one that was announced, but everybody was like, well, we'll still have to see whether that will happen or not.
    11:56
    But it did. Yeah, it was there. It was not the container load that was promised. Okay. But, okay, so let's get to that. Yeah, let's get to that. First, let's start with Super Canasta by Quetzal Pimbal. Yeah, that was a surprise. I mean, I knew Antonio was working on another game after Tokyo Perfect Drift, which we did know about, although I don't think many people have actually seen it for real. They've only ever seen pictures of it or the flyer. But that game was there as well, Tokyo Perfect Drift, and we'll get on to that in a minute. But, yes, Super Canasta, a reworking, well, maybe that's not even fair. It's a totally new game with the same kind of title as a very popular Spanish title based on Galasta 86 which sold very well and did very well for operators in the Spanish market a basketball game Galasta being Spanish for basket or hoop and the original 86 version was a I really shouldn't call it original because it's got nothing really to do with the new one but other than the name but that was a very simple single level game and maybe that was why it was very successful. I don't know. It was very simple to understand and difficult to master game. But the new one has a lot more bells and whistles on it, as you would expect in today's market. Right. Has a couple of stainless steel ramps. It keeps the basketball. Well, in fact, the 86 Canasta didn't have a basketball hoop, but this one does it's more like the I would say Space Jam version or NBA type, it's a backboard with a magnet which can grab the ball and drop it into the basket how that will survive the problem has always been with those back panels having a grab magnet is after a while the ball keeps slamming into it and it sort of beats up the magnet and it flattens out and gets dented and damaged to the ball as well, but we'll see how that goes with the Super Canasta game. But it looked great, I thought. What were your impressions? It was a very colourful game.
    14:30
    For a first showing, I was actually impressed. The artwork looked very good, I'd say. obviously there was no reference in like it's not a license so you can compare it to like what a character is supposed to look like but it looked like a fun game to flip and what's also interesting to notice is that I think if I'm and you might have to correct me on this one because I didn't sit on the seminar but the game is actually designed by Antonio Arturo of Quetzalpinball, but he did it for a larger company, and that larger company is actually going to take it into production. So that's not something that Antonio has to worry about. Yeah, that almost mirrors the Tokyo Perfect Drift game, which was built or designed for STR Pinball. but Canasta, the super Canasta, is actually built for a company called Bittronic who build slot machines and other types of coin-op equipment in their factory in Murcia in Spain and they're looking for a pinball to add to their range so they contacted and contracted Antonio to do design and arrange for all the artwork and the graphics and the sounds and everything to be done, so they can then manufacture it. So yes, absolutely right. He doesn't have to build it himself. Right. And supposedly this is going to be quite a production run, at least with a big company behind it. You might expect it. They're not going to build like a dozen games and that's it.
    16:29
    No, I hope not. They are a well-established coin-op manufacturer and seller, so I'm sure they know the market and know how many they can sell. Right. So I played a couple of games on it. In all fairness, it was rather late. I don't remember exactly.
    16:51
    I remember it flipped well, but in terms of gameplay, that's about all that I remember. so it does have an LCD in the back box doesn't it? there isn't one in the play field but there is a panel in the back box much like Nemo and Captain Nemo which was the first Quetzal game right so and of course Tokyo Perfect Risk game was also there you got to play it and to break it as well yes unfortunately i think that again was late at night after all the seminars had finished uh i did pop in and uh quickly had a a quick game on uh on tokyo perfect drift but unfortunately um i guess it had been a long day by that stage but i managed to uh to blow one of the fuses in the in the back box so uh that was the end of that for a while and uh after that i had to go back to the seminar room and carry on working in there.
    17:55
    But again, from what I flipped, which was probably 30 seconds worth, it seemed like a very fun and a very, well, a beautiful-looking game, actually. I think the artwork on it was great and totally in keeping with the theme. But I'd like to experience it a lot more and hopefully get the chance to soon. Right. So while we're on the subject of the closing of the vendor night at Expo, the only downside, I would say, I noticed that some vendors were already packing up like around 8.30 on Saturday evening while the show was supposed to last until 10 o'clock. sure I can understand that if you have a long drive to go that you want to start packing up earlier but that's the whole reason why they didn't include a Sunday so that you have the Sunday to drive home well that's right and there is an official two hour packing up time on Saturday night from 10 until midnight for vendors those who want to get away maybe that encourages people to think oh I don't need to stay Saturday night so I can pack up and be out of there by midnight. But, of course, if it takes you longer than two hours to do that, then you need to start earlier. So I'm not sure how well that works out. It's good in theory, but if you've got a complex stand, something you can't tear down and put in the car and be out of there by, or be out of the hall anyway, by midnight, then it encourages you to start doing that process earlier, doesn't it? No. Okay, so. Oh, well, that was just a side note. Then moving on to that other new game that was revealed at Expo, and we're talking about Haggis Pinball's Kelts.
    19:52
    Yeah. Now, we'd seen something from Haggis Pinball. I don't want to say it was a prototype even or even a concept game at the Texas show, the Texas Pinball Festival in March. Yeah, what we saw was a blank white wood with a bunch of targets and some metal pieces, and, well, that was about it. And there was a section where a display would go in the play field, but other than that, you would not be able to tell what to expect, so to speak. no and if that was the true state of the game at that point then over the next what would that be seven months I think they've come on in leaps and bounds and really put a lot of work into developing their Celts game and making it into something that actually looks like almost a finished product something that's almost sellable I again I wasn't spending much time the vendor hall, but did you get a chance to have a look at the game at all? No, not at all. It's a pity.
    21:07
    I did walk by it, and I figured, like, I'll come back to take pictures of this later on. And when I came back, the playfield was already removed, and the cabinet was being shipped somewhere else.
    21:22
    So I didn't even get to take pictures of it. Okay. Well, I did quickly. I got a, it's on the video that I did of walking around the vendor hall, but also I got some pictures of the play field, the cabinet sides, the back panel, and the back box sides, so you can see what the game looks like, and even if you don't get a chance to play, I didn't get a chance to play, because I wasn't there for long enough, but there seemed to be a steady line of people, and I never saw the game actually have any issues, that's not to say it didn't and of course I wasn't in there very often but I didn't hear anybody complaining about that in fact I didn't actually hear any comments about it at all and I'm sure if it had been problematic or somebody had said oh that's a heap of junk they would have said that if that's what they thought so I'll have to put it down as a win for Haggis Pimble They turned up and they weren't taking pre-orders, but they were asking people to register their interest in buying one, and they set a price point on that at $5,250.
    22:36
    Right. But it's interesting, it kind of follows the, I won't say it's a trend, but we've certainly seen it a few times in the past of simpler playfields. It's a single level, it's got no ramps. it's got some drop targets three clip again a couple of scoops roll over lanes, two pop bumpers which is unusual and features a little cartoon style artwork on the playfield and cabinet and I think it tried to capture some humour elements in the artwork as well the artwork style, not the humour actually, the artwork reminded me a bit of the original Lexi Lightspeed look in the way that it's done as cartoons rather than any attempt to make it photorealistic.
    23:29
    And as you said, it's got a playfield LCD, which is a portrait-shaped one, vertical orientation, and a backbox LCD, which is quite large, actually. It's about the size of the Stern ones, I think.
    23:45
    So there's a couple of displays there to drive. but even so quite a simple play field but it looked good from what I saw what they've done so far well it looked good I read one comment by someone who wasn't that impressed with gameplay but I figure ok that could rules can be changed and the game can improve if after enough test play turns out like, okay, maybe we should change this to that or something like that. So I'm not sure whether that will be the case. And I'm just basing this on one comment that I read online. So I don't want to give it too much attention.
    24:37
    But in terms of code, okay, we will have to see how much fun the game is. But in terms of cosmetics, it looks pretty good. Yeah, I was impressed by how far they've come since the Texas show.
    24:53
    But neither of us played it, and neither of us got much experience of even getting our hands on it. We'll probably just leave it there and congratulate Haggis on bringing their Celts game to Expo. As you said, not the numbers they were hoping, but certainly a very good sign of the progress they've made. So congratulations to them. Right, okay. So moving on to Stern Pinball, who was dominating the show in multiple ways, I would probably say. Obviously, there is the Stern Pinball Expo Tour on the Thursday of Pinball Expo. I didn't get to join because I only flew in Friday afternoon.
    25:38
    You were there. I didn't get to join the tour. I didn't go on the tour because I was, not because I was banned, but because I was actually back at the hotel. I had to set up all the stuff for the seminars, which started at 1.30. So, and with a whole new rig for the recording and having to do all the PA and microphones and stuff and projectors and screens and all that kind of stuff, that takes about four hours to set up. and as a fact we also people wouldn't know this but those who went to the seminar room when we first got in there about nine o'clock the whole room had been set up ninety degrees the other way so all the chairs it was basically the stage running down the long wall and all the chairs were in front of it really close and in shallow rows but very wide which was no use at all for our use. So the whole thing had to be dismantled, including the stage. It all moved up to the other end of the room, all the chairs reset and everything before we could even start setting up. So that was fun. So it was just as well I didn't try and go on the factory tour or we wouldn't have done it. All those farce. What a surprise. Yes, that was about an hour of rearranging that room. The workers work very fast and they're very efficient in doing it. But even so, I come into the room and go, this isn't going to work. So a series of frantic phone calls, and suddenly the place is like a beehive. They're really rushing around and doing their bit. And an hour later, the whole thing's set up again, 90 degrees round from where it was originally. Right, okay. But, no, yeah, I didn't do the factory tour is the gist of that. But those who did go on it, I think thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean, Stern have got this off to a fine art by now. They know exactly what to say, where to show people, the routes to take, the handouts to give people. Gary Stern was there. He was back from his recent travels and welcomed everybody. But the factory tour was certainly going on for a long time. I think it was meant to start at about... The buses left just after nine o'clock from the hotels, It was about half an hour to get down there.
    28:08
    And by 11 o'clock, people were still joining the queue to go around the factory. Oh, wow, that's normal. Yeah, yeah. But I think it worked well, and they certainly had a nice merchandise booth there, selling all their clothing and other swag, which people seemed to appreciate.
    28:30
    And I think overall it was a big success, and I didn't hear any issues or any complaints. I don't think any secrets were gleaned from what upcoming titles might be. I think they're all pretty used to making sure there's nothing lying around the factory which might give any clues for anyone. Right. So, the way I understood it, three games were on the production line. Obviously, Elvira, House of Horrors, the Star Wars comic art game if I'm not mistaking and I'm trying to think what the other oh and Jurassic Park I thought yes so yeah and obviously all of those games those three titles were heavily presented at the Stern Pym Lounge that we mentioned earlier Elvira in the Premium No, was it the Limited or the Premium Version? I'm not even sure At this point No, the playfield's the same So I wouldn't like to say I guess it would be the The Premium Would be the first one Right, although they started Building the Limited Edition ones First, because they wanted to ship those And make sure that those are out before Halloween. So, oh well.
    30:02
    So the Elvira game was heavily presented in the Penn Lounge. Jurassic Park was there. A few Star Wars comic art games as well. I've seen Black Knight games, both the Limited and the, or the Premium, and the Pro model. Deadpool was there, Iron Maiden, and amongst us, of course. So basically all the latest term titles were present in the pin launch. And the pin launch also had a prototype topper for Black Knight.
    30:38
    Yeah, that was looking good. I didn't get to see it in action, to be honest, because the only time I was there I was too busy doing other things. But I guess the fact you noticed it means that you saw what it did. Yeah, so the topper is, if you have in mind the back panel on the playfield of Black Knight, it has this sort of gate with a fire behind it. That's actually represented on the left and the right side of the topper, and in the center is the head of the Black Knight, which is actually moving and lighting up while it's in sync with speech. And so the Black Knight is literally from the back box overlooking you playing the game. Right. And the movement of the head, that was rather smooth, I would say. So that looked very nice, very interesting. And, yeah, it's nice to see a topper with actually some mechanical action.
    31:53
    I mean, we've seen toppers that are sure there's some blinking lights, but nothing really happening. But this one actually is very interactive.
    32:06
    So, yeah, that looks very cool. And I'm curious how it tested. That obviously was a prototype, and I saw only one, so I'm not sure whether there were more, but I'm curious to see when that will go into production and so on. So that was interesting, I think. Obviously, in the same pin lounge, Elvira had her stand where she was doing her autograph sessions.
    32:37
    Well, I should probably say it's Cassandra. Right. Cassandra Peterson, who plays Elvira, but she was never dressed as Elvira. She was always herself. Right. In all the appearances, I suppose if you want to have Elvira there, you have to... It costs access. Yeah, you have to pay more, shall we say.
    32:58
    So that didn't happen. But Cassandra seemed to be very pleasant throughout and seemed to be enjoying herself at the show, I think. I hope so. Compared to the Texas Pinball Festival from 2017, I'd have to say that I got the impression that the line in Texas was a lot longer for people to have their photo taken or get a signature from Elvira or to Sandra Peterson. But that being said even though the line was smaller at Expo there was still a line all the time So I not sure whether the length of the line in this case matters but it was something that I did notice And you also have to consider I think this is correct, that she was actually there for two separate signing sessions. Yes. One on Friday and one on Saturday. Right. So people had a chance to spread their time or whenever they wanted to go out there. I do have to say that I was slightly disappointed to see that there was the Elvira seminar where Elvira basically appeared for 10 minutes as a special guest, or she was announced as a special guest, got inducted into the Pimble Hall of Fame, and 10 minutes later she was gone or leaving because after that it would just be technical stuff that would be discussed. And I was like, well, she could stick around and comment on that as well. But apparently she had other plans. Oh, well.
    34:46
    Yeah, I actually heard originally that she wasn't going to be saying for that long. She was just literally going to be turning up, just saying a few words, and then disappearing after about a minute. But she did join the panel, as you will see in the seminar video. and spent, as you say, about ten minutes there answering questions about her role in this game and previous games and the work that she did for it and what she thought about being part of the pinball history and having three games based on her character.
    35:22
    That is an accomplishment, we have to agree on that. It is. And obviously driven by Dennis and Greg and their promotion, their love of working with her, I guess. And I think for that reason alone, it was right that she was inducted into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame.
    35:46
    And so she received a plaque for that. And soon after that, yeah, she went off. And the rest of the panel who also worked on the game could get on and answer some of the more technical aspects of how the game was put together and designed, really, in the first place. Right. One thing from that panel, since we're talking about it, that actually dawned on me after the panel, and it's a pity that I didn't realize that during the panel, as you may recall, a photo was shown of the Nordmanite version of the playfield that had a steeper ramp on the left which had what do you call it two hills in there so to speak oh right yeah Sanity Falls one on Whitewater yes and that was taken out for budget reasons, apparently.
    36:56
    Although Greg did mention that it was rather difficult to make that ramp, and it caused a lot of balls to roll back. But if it was just for plastic cutting measures, a couple of other features were also taken out. And later it dawned on me, like, no, hold on, this is a premium model. The cheapest model is the premium model. Why would there be cost-cutting measures? I mean, if you take stuff out for the pro, I get it, because you want to make a cheaper model for operators and people who don't want to spend that much money on a game.
    37:34
    Sorry. But in this case, if you start with a premium model, then you figure you get all the bells and whistles that the designers come up with.
    37:43
    Well, obviously any game is going to have a bit of material that it has to stick to in order to achieve either the target sales price and or the profit margin that they want to make on each game.
    38:01
    And I don't think you can necessarily directly relate the game, what's on the game itself, to the cost of the game. If you look at a game like The Beatles, for instance, you know the actual what's it's a single level game that there's it should be relatively cheap to make compared to many of the stern's later games but of course the price doesn't doesn't reflect that so um even if you add in the cost of the license the stern want to keep a certain no prestige to their games they don't want to sell them off a cheap price they want to sell a premium at a pro price. No, I get that.
    38:40
    Then it muddies the waters when it comes to different segmentations of the market. Right, but if you're paying a premium price, then you might expect as well that the cool features that the designer intended to be in the game are actually in the game. Well, of course, ideally you would never find out what those features that were taken out were.
    39:01
    Well, that's where Pimble Magazine comes in, because we love to report on that kind of stuff. And I'm glad that these photos were part of the presentation of the team, because a lot of people actually love to see that kind of stuff, to see what's in the game or what was supposed to be in the game and what was taken out or how the development of a certain mech went. But that sort of dawned on me after the seminar. I was like, well, oh well. And I might still not be right. And sure, apparently there is cost-cutting on premium models as well. But it's not something that you'd expect. At least I figured, like, hold on. If you're paying a premium price, then why cost-cutting? But okay, it might be me. Anyway, I hope the people that bought the game or are going to buy the game will enjoy it. and to help them enjoy it there have been a couple of code updates in the past month, it was released with version 0.85 code sorry, 8.3, absolutely right 8.3 was the released one, since then it's been 8.4 and 8.5 is the current one right which adds some extra sounds but I don't think it adds any Elvira speech or but I know from talking to people at Stern there is more Elvira speech to come in the game and also there's a lot more stuff to come from Tim Kitterow who does the main commentary of the game and a lot of extra voices in the game as well so yeah he's doing multiple voices in the game and yeah And personally, I don't want to sound too harsh, but I really hope there will be a lot more humor in the game, because that's how I got to know Elvira sort of in the first place, the double entendres and so on. And so far I didn't hear that many jokes or double entendres or funny stuff. so far. I wasn't giggling that much when playing the game. I'm not sure, did you get to play the game during Expo? I know you played it after Expo at a local arcade. Yeah, I got to play it a little bit during Expo, although obviously the games being in the pin lounge, it's very noisy in there and in the evening there's often music being played so you've got no chance of hearing anything. But I did get to hear some of it and I found that I liked the flow of the game, that was the immediate thing that struck me the ramps aren't that steep, the ball seemed to be going up ramps that you think it's not rolling fast enough to be able to make but it does, so that's good what I did what I was rather disappointed with was all the intros they had to all the various movie modes because they're long, they're very long they feel like they're 20 seconds or 30 seconds long and you really don't care about most of them and after you've seen them once you just want to press both flipper buttons and just get on with the mode so that means there's a huge chunk of the video that is pretty much wasted so I'm hoping there'll be more as you say, there'll be more sort of throwaway lines little quips, little double entendres and one-liners in there that will make you laugh during gameplay rather than everything being, you know, let's stop the ball, let's play a video.
    42:55
    Then we get back into the gameplay and we don't hear from Elvira again until the ball stops and we do another mode. Yeah. Speaking of stopping the ball, I heard quite a few people complain, actually, that during the start of the moving mode, not every game holds the ball where it's underneath the house where it's supposed to be but actually the ball basically got loose and continued gameplay while the playthrough was almost completely dark so that might be a bug or something hardware wise that they might want to take a look at in production Yes, I think that's fair and also of course you do it in software as soon as I don't know if there's a sensor on the way into the house but if that's triggered while the movie's playing or any other playfield switch is triggered a slingshot or whatever then abandon the lighting effects and take it back to normal gameplay mode Right, ok Now, there's two more related topics to discuss in the sense that we might actually see a new title before the end of the year.
    44:14
    Yes. I think we might be seeing something. I haven't had this confirmed by anyone at all, but I've got a sneaking suspicion we might be seeing something from Brian Eddy before the year is out.
    44:29
    That's about time. Yeah, I know. He was announced, I think, It was probably even at that same Texas seminar in 2017 where Alvaro was,
    44:41
    or the same show where it was announced, I think, I think George Gomez announced that Brian was working on a game. No, I think he said he was actually a senior designer at the company at that point. And, yeah, in all that time we haven't knowingly at least seen anything from him. so I'm hoping we might get to see something before the end of the year I don't know we'll get anything for IAPA in November, I think that's probably a bit too soon but we might get something before the holidays so maybe in the London show in January EAG International, we might get a chance to get our hands on that Right, so Brian Eddy was at Pinball Expo on, I think it was the Saturday, and I got a chance to briefly talk to him, and obviously the most asked question to him during the event was, when is your game coming out? He couldn't say anything about it, so he didn't, other than that that was the most asked question to him.
    45:50
    So, oh well. So he didn't say anything. but okay let's see let's wait and see personally I think an early January announcement would be soon enough that they because then they have something out to go to the Consumer Electronics Show which I think in January and that's immediately followed by the EAG show in London as well yes good call the CES show could well be a good one to launch and it wouldn't be the first time they'd done that. Right.
    46:27
    And obviously speculation is running wild on what Brian Eddy might be working on. Since we don't do speculation, we're not going into that. No, let's stick with things which we know have happened. And we were talking about code updates to Elvira just now, but Spinner has been bringing out code updates for other games as well. Right. I suppose probably the biggest one has been the Jurassic Park update, which went from a seemingly minor step of 0.90 to 0.91, but they've added a huge amount of extra features and adjusted various scoring opportunities, brought in some additional videos and sounds, and also changed the way some of the options or some of the features in the game work and added other options which weren't there before. So there's obviously still a lot of work going into Jurassic Park, and I think I've got a chance to have a decent play on it.
    47:33
    We would have been after the show, actually, when we went to some of the arcades in Chicago, and in particular at Lemmings, where they just have a couple of nice pins. and the Jurassic Park Premium there. And, yeah, I'm really starting to enjoy it after getting to get some hands-on time in a more quiet, relaxed atmosphere.
    47:56
    I found it confusing to start with, but I think now, having played it more and watched some of the tutorial videos that have been produced by Stern and by Keith in particular, it's all starting to make a lot more sense. and I think he's added all the fossil awards now, or him and the team, so they're all in the game, and I think it's shaping up to be a really nice game.
    48:25
    Good. Okay. And, well, the last thing sort of tying in with Stern Pinball, although no longer, that would be the let's call it the splits between Christopher Franchi and Stern Pinball which I'm not sure whether it's a really big surprise but obviously Stern Pinball have not been using the services of Christopher Franchi since the Munsters he did go on Canada's Pinball Podcast earlier this week where he had an interview of an hour and a half about why he left. And basically it appears that it comes down to Gary Stern not approving of Christopher Frenchie selling licensed artwork at various pinball shows out of fear that Stern might get into difficulty with licensors, while, according to Frenchy, there is an unwritten rule for artists that they are sort of allowed to sell some artwork in low quantities at events like Comic-Con and what have you, and nobody from the licensing department will care about it or go after them. They're just like, okay, that's a little bonus for... These are official artists that worked on the game, and now they're selling off some stuff, and fine, let them do it. But apparently that was a returning conflict, probably, and that resulted ultimately into Stern and Christopher Frenchy parting ways, which doesn't mean that we've seen the last of Christopher Frenchy in pinball. Frankly, he's already involved with another company.
    50:36
    Yes. Don't tell us about that. Well, that other company appears to be Chicago Gaming, who at Pinball Expo revealed a gorgeous topper for medieval madness. I have to say and apparently if I understood it correctly that topper is partly designed by Christopher Frenchy hmm not entirely sure which part he did then because there's not a huge amount of artwork to it there's the model and there's a back panel right to it so maybe it's that but that looked like it was part of the castle from the back box over the Translight. Right. It could be that he did some sketches for it, and after those sketches, the model was made. I'm not sure. I tried to get some info on that from Christopher Frenchy, but unfortunately he hasn't gotten back to me. But what I understood is that he was involved in the design of a topper in some way, and that topper would be revealed at Expo. and the only topper Chicago Gaming did reveal was that Medieval Madness topper, which makes me conclude that he was sort of involved in that. And if I'm incorrect, then I stand corrected. Okay, because we both went to Chicago Gaming, and I don't know, separately though, and we certainly got to see the original moulds for those models that were used on the topper and we saw how they all fitted together and the name of the artist who did it, who made those, they were 3D printed originally and then turned into mould.
    52:24
    The name of the artist who did that was Mooted and I don't think it was Mr Franchi who was involved in the design of those and then they were painted by Matt at Back Alley Creations.
    52:39
    So he was the one who did the painting of the models that were then, at least in the prototype form. Well, maybe Chris threw the plastic castle in the back. I don't know.
    52:49
    Oh, well. Perhaps we'll get back to you and we'll update everyone with the news on what Chris did in that a little bit later. But also, there are a few other items of news before we move on to some of the other companies. We mentioned earlier that Cassandra Peterson was inducted into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame. but she wasn't the only inductee this year because also Pat Powers, who's in charge of the service department, I think, at Stern. I don't know his exact title, but he was inducted as well. So definitely, I think you could almost officially call it the Stern Pinball Hall of Fame these days because I think everybody who goes into it is a member of the Stern team, one way or another.
    53:41
    And also, talking of Stern, Gary has been travelling around, as he does, visiting various trade shows in countries around the world. And I think you spotted him in Brazil, is that right, John? Yes, at the Brazil game show. Okay, so he was there. And also, he's been, actually I'm not sure whether he was in China, I suspect he was. No, it was in China. What's rather interesting about that, that show was actually in September. But on Stern's Facebook, they waited about a month before they published those photos.
    54:21
    Because I know that show was in September. So it's rather strange that they waited so long publishing these photos. But indeed, Gary has been traveling. He was in Europe first and then flew to China.
    54:39
    Well, he's quite a globetrotter. I'm pretty sure he's making enough miles in the air. Yeah, that's just from business. He likes to travel as well for personal relaxation. But there's still a couple of extra things. There's more code yet that we didn't mention. That was for, I mean, last month we had the big news about the major rewrite of the Ghostbusters game. Right. And how the way that game played or functioned had changed radically with the new version, which people have been waiting years and years for. So there was a lot of joy when that finally came out. Well, this month there were a few minor tweaks and bug fixes to that release. and so there's a new version of the Ghostbusters code came out. If you've installed the new version with all the new gameplay, you should definitely get the tweaks and the bug fixes installed to go with that. And then, although we actually mentioned it in passing, as regards to Pinball Expo and what was in the Stone Pinball Lounge, this was the month where the comic art editions of Star Wars were announced, we haven't actually covered that as a specific launch but Star Wars as you know was originally based when it came out from CERN on the first batch of movies but now they've brought out comic art versions based on the comic books of the Star Wars universe and they are There are two versions of that available, a pro and a premium, not a limited edition this time around. I'm guessing they want to stick with the limited edition of the movie version to be the limited edition. Right.
    56:40
    I haven't really got anything much more to say about the comic art edition. I don't know, have you? No, I think the artist was called Randy Martinez. I say that from the top of my head, but it might be something else. I think you're right. I couldn't remember his name myself, but I think he said it. It sounds absolutely right.
    57:03
    And yeah, he works for Lucasfilm, and he's done comic art for Star Wars before. And he was very happy that his art got included on a pinball machine. And he got to do two models immediately.
    57:24
    Yeah, I think it seemed to get a very warm reception from people who like the comic version of the Star Wars universe. Yeah, the interesting thing is I recall when Star Wars came out and people bought the game and played the game nobody was actually that impressed with the game. And now that there is a comic art version, everybody is like, oh great great, yeah, it looks a lot better. but the gameplay is still there. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's just another means of selling the game, isn't it, without doing too much. I don't know what else is. I don't think anything has changed as far as the LCD displays go. I think that's the same. Right. And obviously the playfield design hasn't changed at all, although the artwork has.
    58:17
    So it's a fairly easy win for Stern, is they can rebrand it effectively in that way. They'd be repackaging the same product, but people weren't that impressed with the product in the first place. So it's sort of strange to me that people now all of a sudden are hooraying this new game, because once you start playing it, it's still the same game that people didn't like. But I might be wrong.
    58:47
    Might be a completely different gameplay experience. due to the comic art on this game. Yeah, well, it's all a package, isn't it? So if it makes it more enjoyable for people to be able to look at the comic version of the art, then fair enough. I don't suppose anybody who owns the game is going to sell it and buy the comic version, but it might pick up a few extra sales for the company. So, as I say, a fairly easy win for them if that works. I think that's everything I think from this month from the Elk Grove Village factory right, yeah, so but obviously the industry is bigger than just Stern Pinball other manufacturers have there's news on those as well let's start with Jersey Jack Pinball they revealed their collector's edition of Willy Wonka and you made quite a list of what's in there yeah, the collector's edition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory comes with a mirrored back glass a candy red metalwork or armour depending on how you want to call it some interior, some cabinet interior decals unusually it actually comes with some custom game speech by Julie Dawn Cole who plays Veronica Stolt in the movie. So that's just for the collector edition. So that's a nice little extra. The shooter rod looks like the gobstopper that spins around in the game. I'm not sure how comfortable that's going to be to hold but I think you don't really use it very much. So I don't think it'll be a problem. But it looks very nice. It also has a different version of art on the cabinet, and it's on the super-thick glossy radcals, which Jersey Jack put on there or make available or put on their top-end machines. It has different playfield art because it has... Well, it's sort of the same, but certain colours have sparkle added to it. They do, yeah. Yeah, it sort of highlights various areas of the playfield underneath the clear. hopefully um it also has a topper which um frankly i thought it was a little bit disappointing it's a color changing topper it's a bit like the you know the wizard of oz type um yeah plastic sheet um that's bottom lit and um it's three-dimensional i think so it does have like the Wonka bar in front, so it's layered, but when you compare it to some of the other toppers that are out there, like the evil madness one or the black knight one, yeah, then that's a world of difference, I'd say. Well, maybe that's, I mean, I don't think that's an area where Jersey Jack has really sort of investigated sales of dynamic toppers for certain games so that you can buy as an aftermarket add-on but you know other companies are looking at that obviously with Chicago Gaming doing their medieval madness and Stern making a big thing of toppers but anyway getting back to the list of other changes also got it's got cabinet bottom lighting so it's got lighting strips running underneath the cabinet, like the floor, which you can obviously buy as aftermarket ones, but these are integrated into software as well, so that's good. I think you have to be careful if somebody uses a table lift to lift your machines when moving them around, make sure you don't crush those strips of LEDs. It also comes with an autographed plaque, autographed by Jack, Pat Lawler, designer of the game, John Yowsey, artist, and three of the kids from the movies. Or movie, I should say.
    63:03
    And I think that's the full list of what's available in the collector edition. Yeah, and the good news is, if you're in the markets for a collector's edition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, apparently they have not sold out yet, so you can still order one. And they are being made at the moment. They are making them, shipping them. They are not going to be making any more limited edition games for the rest of 2019. That's right. Yeah.
    63:34
    They do have games in stock. So if you're in the market for just a regular limited edition, then that's still not a problem, and they might be able to ship you a game immediately. but if you want a collector's edition then that's being built until the end of the year I think and so the waiting times for those are not that long either and besides building the games there's also been working on software updates so there's been new code two versions of code this month from version 1.25 and version 1.26 which have added a new mode, more speech, more awards for random awards and for when you collect certain numbers of bars, and also a number of bug fixes to try and sort out any issues with the game that can be done through software. Right.
    64:34
    And I suppose we'd also congratulate Jack Guarneri on his 62nd birthday, a late celebration because it was on the 10th of October, but it falls within our remit of looking back at the past month. So happy birthday and congratulations, Jack. Yes, absolutely.
    64:54
    Moving on to American Pinball, Josh Kugler and Joe, I forgot his last name. Schober. Yes, they did a seminar at Pinball Expo where they talked mostly about Oktoberfest. And the good news is a new code update for Oktoberfest has just been released. It's code 191024. That's a date, in fact. It was released actually the 28th, not the 24th, as the code would imply, but still. And this code update is huge. And I have to say, I visited American Pinball the Monday after Pinball Expo, and I got to play Oktoberfest in their lobby for, I'd say, at least 20-plus games.
    65:54
    And compared to how I know or remember the game, the current update is impressive. it really turned into a very fun game.
    66:11
    Well, I have to agree with that, because I played it before the show. I went to Pac-Man Entertainment with our phoning guest, actually, because we never get to actually talk to him, so I thought the only way I'm going to get to talk to him is to go to Chicago and talk to him. So Gary Flower and I went to Pac-Man Entertainment and we played Oktoberfest. That was in fact the only game we played there. And as it turned out, it was running this new version of code in pre-release form. Right. I didn't realize at the time. It was sort of like the game was on test, basically, with the new code. Yes, that's right. and I should probably have been given a bit of a clue by the fact that as we were playing it,
    67:00
    who should wander over and start talking to us, but yes, Josh Coogler and Joe Schuber, who obviously keep a close eye on the game to see whether anything froze or locked up or whether there were any display issues or lighting issues.
    67:14
    And we had a good chat about how the code works and it wasn't really until, I think I had a chance to play it at the show, it wasn't until after the show where I went to go and play a good friend Octoberfest I realised that he was running the latest release code but it looked a lot earlier than the version that we were playing Some of the animations didn't look anywhere near as polished, particularly the corkscrew one, and I know they talked about that in the seminar. Right.
    67:44
    But yeah, it definitely did make... I said to him, you know, you should update your code, because this isn't the latest one. He said, yes, it is. I said, oh, I must have been playing an earlier one then. But yes, it does, there's a lot more voice calls That's something I really noticed To tell you what to do at various points in the game And some other music tracks as well Much improved animations in certain places And apparently some bug fixes Which I don't know because I've never experienced any bugs But it was fun playing We actually went back to play Play Oktoberfest the very next day and Josh and Joe were still there. Troy had gone home. Troy must have gone home in between when they shut down the bar, but they were there and actually playing the game. So we got to play a four-player game with them and they were able to explain how various features work. So it's always good to play a game with the people who really know how it works or at least how it's meant to work. Right. So here's a note to everybody who played Oktoberfest and thought like, this might not be for me.
    68:55
    Really, you should give the game a second chance because with the new code, it's a lot more fun to play.
    69:03
    And seriously, I really enjoyed myself and I was really impressed with how the game improved, so to speak, from earlier code that I remember playing. Yeah, I agree. I had no idea what I was doing when I first played it, and I thought I was going to be in that situation when I started playing the latest version, but it tells you what to do, and it tells you why you should do things, so it makes a lot more sense. So, yeah, software can radically change how a game plays. Yeah, absolutely. And there's even more news from American Pinball, although I think we have to be a little tight on how much we reveal, but I think it's safe to say American Pinball have been working on a redemption game, which is designed by Brian Hansen, who you might remember from Capcom Pinball, and I think he also was briefly involved with Jersey Jack at some point. Yeah. It's a redemption game. It will be revealed at the upcoming IABA show, which is this month, I think, second week of November, something like that. Well, I can say, I think without giving too much away, it's a large piece, as you say. Yeah, it's not like pinball size or smaller, no, it's a lot bigger. It is, yeah.
    70:41
    Okay, well, we're not saying more than that. I'm not sure whether I can reveal the title or not, But I saw the game when I got the tour, when I visited them, and I thought, like, how kind of you guys to theme a game after me.
    71:01
    Very good. Yes, I hadn't put that together, but, yeah. Well, you always need to say what it is now or nobody's going to get the joke. Well, I guess they will figure it out when we start talking about it. next week. But it has to do something with my origin and what I do to get to... Route transportation. Yes. Okay. Right. Well, it's interesting that I know, I think we both spoke to Val and other people at the company, and they are very keen to get more sales from...
    71:38
    Well, sales to operators. Right. They want to get their games out into bars. And obviously, you know, a game like Oktoberfest should be a natural fit in many different bars and breweries.
    71:51
    But I think they're feeling that they haven't got the distribution network set up in order to get the games to potential buyers. So they're looking to get more into operator sales, and I would suggest that maybe the redemption game is also part of that push to get into that market. If they come up with just a pinball, then people who are running family entertainment centers or other similar arcade-type places may not be interested in just pinball, but if you can come up with a couple of games, one of which is a redemption, then you probably get your foot in the door a bit more easily. Right. And personally, I think at the moment, the operator market is the market that might be the easiest to grow your numbers in.
    72:48
    For many years we heard that Stern had been selling like 50% of their games to operators and the other half to collectors and home users or rec room buyers. and they call that the three-legged stool. But that three-legged stool basically turns out that operators, well, many of the operators in America are actually pinball enthusiast collectors that have no more room for their game at home, and instead they operate it in a local barcade. but that basically meant that the the portion of games actually being sold to operators in the sense of really arcade operators as their business that has been shrinking for years and years and years and personally i think that might have to do with how pinball has been earning on location i think if there would be a manufacturer that would focus on actually pinball making money on location instead of focusing on making games with deep rules so that tournament players are happy and home youth owners are happy because they get to play 45 minutes of a game without being bored by it. I think manufacturers that would focus on these operators and just giving them a simple game to operate, that could actually be a very big market.
    74:32
    Oh, yes, I agree that simpler games for operators are something which, you know, Scone have been pushing towards as well with their pro models. That's the whole nature of the three-model range. Yeah, but I still think it's slightly different because even the pro models are rather complex and for the average player are way too complex to understand. And I think operators are more looking for something that if a 10-year-old kid walks up and starts playing the game, he has immediately to understand what the goal of the game is or what he should be doing or aiming for. And with all the respect, with the current pro games, they might be priced slightly cheaper, but they're still not that easy to understand. Well, it is interesting that the first two games that we've covered, the first two new releases that we covered from Quetzal and from Haggis, are both relatively simple playfield designs. Right.
    75:40
    And from that, they'll be relatively simple rules. And it doesn't stop there, because there's another manufacturer working on a simple game, which we'll get to after the Rob Burke interview. So hang on, there's more coming.
    75:56
    Okay. Right. So I think, apart from the fact that American Pinball were cagey about saying anything about their next title at the Pinball Expo, they did reveal their third game will be Game 3. Wow. I don't think anybody saw that coming.
    76:21
    So anyway, that's about a good point to move on from American pinball. Right. And who should we go to next?
    76:34
    Well, let's see. So the plan was to stick with the pinball expos topics first. I think we covered most of those. I think we have, yeah. Yeah, okay, so this would be a good time to skip to the interview that we did with Mr. Rob Berg, organizer of Pinball Expo, where we talked about him after the Expo, and we asked him how he felt or how he was looking back on this year's edition of Pinball Expo. So, we're here at the conclusion of Pinball Expo 2019, 35th edition, and we're here with Rob Burke, the main organizer of the show, with his team of course, he's going to do it all by himself. Not forgetting Bridget, of course. Oh, wow, he's been a team at Bridget, right? It's become a family affair. Right, so let's look back at, give a brief overview of this year's show. What were your feelings? Are you happy with the way everything Well, for me, sometimes I sit back and just cannot believe it's gone this many years. Yeah. Because in any event you do, especially one person doing the same event over and over again, you wonder how you could even come up with the material to make it interesting. What can we do next year? And to be honest with you guys, every year I do this show, I think to myself, how am I going to top what I did the previous year? So it always seems to happen, though. I go to other shows, get some ideas. I think about stuff that people want to see.
    78:14
    And at the end of the day, you know, the show is for the people, for the collectors, for the pinball community. And as long as they're happy, I'm happy. And, you know, I'm always looking for suggestions and ideas from them because you never know what may come out of their minds as far as what we could do to make the Expo even a better experience for everybody. So, from my experience, I'd say it will be difficult to talk this year because you really went all out. Yeah. You know, every five years we go all out, to be honest with you. So, what concerns me the most is, to me, the most colorful people that come at the seminars are those guys that have been involved with the industry for a long time. so whether it be the Valley guys or the Pat Wallers or Larry DeMars or some of the great Williams guys Steve Ritchie Mark Ritchie George Gomez the list goes on and on but the point being either these guys won't be around forever or two they just don't want to be involved in the expo they just want to enjoy their retirement so it's an ongoing battle for me but to me nothing beats the old stories that come from these guys because they're so rich with history. Right. I would say that it does seem as if, looking at the show, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And with that, you're actually, you're using the whole of the hotel. Yeah. Aren't you? There's nowhere else you can, unless you go into the parking lot out here. The hotel actually offered, That's a great idea for next year. Yeah, the hotel actually offered tents if I wanted to do some tents outside. But, you know, if you've got bad weather, that's not so great of an idea. Yeah. Is there any way you can expand the show even more? I mean, you've got so much to be packed in. You could almost do with a little more space. Yeah, I was told that the restaurant actually has a banquet facility or an area that would house the same number of people that are housed for the seminars. Oh, yeah. So I guess, in theory, I could have it. Yeah. unfortunately they want to charge and it's a pretty hefty charge just to rent out the room for three two or three days but that thought that idea is out there but you know when I took over the show a couple years ago that's one thing I want to do is get the whole hotel to do this show and use every available inch right well the interesting thing is a couple years ago people were saying like if you want to play pinball this is not the show to go to. That completely changed. If you want to play pinball, there's really like hundreds of games available here. Yeah, our count this year was not quite as high as I wanted. I think we're 460. I was hoping to hit 500. But I guess after a while, who counts once you're past 300, I'd say, is the magic number because there's machines everywhere. But, you know, just so everyone gets a chance to play and experience pinball, that's why we're all here. Right. I asked you this question earlier and you said nobody's really asked you this before. When you first started back with the very first Expo,
    81:37
    did you have any sort of idea of the format of the show? Were you taking inspiration from any other events that you've seen or experienced? Yeah, another hobby of mine is I enjoy fireworks. and there's actually an organization that promotes fireworks. There's more for firework enthusiasts called the pgi.org. But I've been involved with that organization since the 70s. But I kind of got the format of our show based on the format of how they did their events. And they still do. They're celebrating 50 years this past year. and since then a lot of other shows follow the format that you established for pinball shows yeah exactly right and it seems to work people like the educational part of it they like to meet some of the artists and designers and of course they like to play with the machines so it's easy for me because I thought from day one when I did this show that in order for Expo to survive and do well it needed the support of the industry so that was one of the reasons why I live in Ohio but a Florida show takes place in Chicago here. It's the heart of the industry. And for me to ask someone to speak or come to the event, basically it's a drive from their house to the hotel. You know, you can do it relatively easily. Versus the other shows where the promoters are at the mercy of flying one guy in, two guys, three guys maybe, but to fly in 40, like, forget it. You know, it's just not practical. It's not realistic. So that was definitely an advantage we had. Right. So, as an organizer, obviously there's a lot of work up front, and then there is the hour that the doors open and everybody basically, well, it's stuff like people are already in the hotel and they come down, the show star is a bumper block and lots of familiar faces, but what I'm wondering is, as an organizer, do you still get the chance to actually enjoy your own show? And the answer is maybe 50-50.
    83:53
    You know why? Because there's just always so many little fires to put out. When you think you want to relax, something comes up. I had an opportunity to have a drink with Tom Neiman from Valley last night and Paul Ferris and Bill O'Donnell. and I met him across the street there at the local pub.
    84:20
    I would have one fire by the time he got there. By the time I got there, they were done drinking, done eating, and they were ready to head home. So the point is, the idea was there, but you've just got to put the fires out and take care of the show for it. It's show number one. Yeah, yeah.
    84:37
    But despite all the hard work that goes into it, You still, your enthusiasm for putting on the next show seems to be undiminished, if not grows more with each one. You said you want to top each previous show. Yeah, in a way, it's more of a challenge now because being a showman in the way that I feel I am, I want to put on an event that I feel people will leave feeling like they got their minds worked. So it's more challenging for me to come up with more ideas or something we can do to make it interesting for you guys to return and for the people to return. So you won't ever get to the point where you put on the perfect show and you're just going to copy that every year from the moment? Yeah, you know, like this year was pretty perfect. Well, you were pretty perfect, but I mean a lot of people spoke very highly of it. but you know you wonder how you can keep that emotional high year to year it's really really difficult in any event there's always something that people will find fault with whether they mean to or not and from lower outside of the club you know they're right I miss this here I miss this little thing so it's the details is what people remember well there's quite a few details over here in the sense that there was so much going on.
    86:02
    Whether you were here just for one day or for the entire event, it was basically an overflow of pinball. You know what it is, John? I think it was pinball overload because there was so much going on. No matter what level of interest you are in this hobby, there was something for everybody. And the problem is, is it getting the point? maybe there's not enough hours in the day to do another thing. So the question is, do we extend another day? Instead of starting at Wednesday, do we start at Tuesday, for instance? Or continue on the Sunday. Or that's another option. Because there just isn't enough hours a day, and typically times a good travel day. You know, we feel we're commercial vendors, and we want it to be a good experience for them. But to ask them to stay half a day on Sunday, or whatever, it just doesn't seem fair to me. Yeah. Because they want to get home, they got a life, they got a family, it's true. But most of the other shows are on Saturday nights and Sundays. Right. And they're sort of used to that. But then again, we start Wednesday. They start maybe, I think, Thursday or Friday, whatever it may be. And you have vendors coming in from pretty long distances as well. Right. So the drive home's not just, you know, an hour or so. It's like a roll of dice. You know, you try, you get one idea, and maybe three of the vendors like it, But the majority don't like it, or vice versa. So you've got to really think a lot of decisions out.
    87:33
    Obviously, you're already looking ahead for the future. Because obviously, you have the days left. So are we, next year, going to be the West End? The West End. Same hotel next year. Okay. Under contract. And it's just a matter of, you know, the other thing I'm struggling with is I may find a larger venue here or there. but some of these venues charge enormous electrical fees.
    88:01
    Yeah, true. So I'm battling with that now, but if the fees are double or triple what I'm paying now, do I still move? Well, maybe not. Maybe, and the saying goes, maybe it's not so bad after all. The grass isn't greener somewhere else. Yeah, yeah. So these are struggles I had to deal with to try to determine what to do. So you're all looking at other venues to see what the exceptions are. So the dates are already set. Are you willing to announce these? Yes! I'm going to have you announce them since you guys are the first in the news. Who wants to announce it? I have no idea what the dates are. Well, you tell us. I'll tell you when it hits the 20th. If everything makes sense in the time that I'm reading. 18th, 19th, that's three days, right? 18th, 19th, 20th, so 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th.
    88:54
    Let's look at our calendar. We're talking 2020 here. Yeah, so it's that week in October next year. So, if you went to Pinwall Expo, mark it in your calendar because you might want to return. And if you haven't been here, then you definitely have to mark it in your calendar because you want to be here. And this, the hotel rooms here often sell out very quickly once the deal is available. like any of these events, more and more this time. Because once people hear that it was a great opportunity, a great experience, then they say, hey, we've got to join the crowd. So all people are able to book their hotel room for next year? Yes, sir. All right, okay. Well, there you are. Is there a code they need, or just ring up and say, we're coming for Pinball Expo? Just say, yeah, you know Martin, and that should be all you need to know. Okay. I'll take my usual cut. Yeah. I'm checking here so the October 19th
    89:54
    so Wednesday was the 12th we got a fun assignment we'll let you know fans after and regular we'll look it up and we'll add it you know we'll just send it out sure but we had a great adventure here and for anyone listening to this podcast we want you to know that our intentions are to keep the men in the door and not go backwards. So it would be a great experience for those who haven't come. Honestly, guys out there,
    90:26
    I think what I really enjoy is the most of the international flavor. Jonathan, you and Martin coming in, because for me to see them is exciting because they're getting a chance to meet a lot of great pinball people from America or all over the world. So it's kind of cool to hook up with you guys, putting a name, a face to name, and just seeing all the great people out there in this community. Right, it's not just Martin and me, there's a lot more international visitors. I've seen people from Japan and... Italy. Brazil. Germany, Brazil. We had several fans from Spain. Yeah. Plus, I think the games I brought from Spain were such a big hit, we'll probably bring them back again. But it's not just for activities, it's things that their own unique pinball market and it's a cottage industry that kind of started from scratch. But they have got some really cool games. So, you know, I hope I opened up the idea for your listening audience to email me with their thoughts or ideas. It's brkpinball at gmail.com. We'd be sure to share anything you might want to share privately or whatever, but we want the show to be great. Great. Well, thanks very much for joining us and talking through this year's show. And congratulations on your 35th show, your exact 34 years of Pinball Expo. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. And hope to see you guys next year. I look forward to coming back. That's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. It's an absolutely wonderful event. So I love being here, being a part of it. You know what I think we're missing, though, is a mascot. We need like, I don't know, a bear or something to be a mascot. A dog, a certain kind of breed of dog, I don't know what. A squirrel, I don't know what. Well, a cow. If you have any ideas, a cow would be a good one. A cow would be a good one. A cow.
    92:30
    Get some free milk and catch a cow. Well, if any of our listeners have any ideas for what would be a cool mascot for the next year. Yeah, call them. We can't do a Greco, but that would be fun. But think of some ideas, bring them in. We might incorporate something new next year.
    92:48
    Well, thanks for your time. Thanks for organizing such a great show. And we look forward to coming back next year. Great. See you guys again.
    92:57
    Okay, well, thanks to Rob for taking time out from, obviously, It was a very busy time for him to talk to us about the show and his plans. And as you can see, or you can certainly hear from Rob, he's very upbeat and happy with the way it's gone and has big plans for the future as well. Yeah. Although it appears that we might be sticking or staying in Wheeling while I was actually hoping that we might be moving to Schaumburg.
    93:26
    Yeah. Well, certainly next year we're going to be back in Wheeling. and the dates for that, as you heard, are already set. So as Rob said in the interview, it's important that if you want to guarantee yourself a room at the West End that you book that early because they do sell out, as we've learned from experience. So don't hang about unless you want to find cheaper accommodation elsewhere. then personally I've always found it worth the extra money to be in the show hotel just for the convenience of being able to return to your room at any point. Right, okay.
    94:09
    Now there are a couple of other manufacturers that were not present at Pinball Expo although some had a tie-in and by that I mean Spooky Pinball who were not at Pinball Expo, but they were at the Pinball Life open house, which was held the Thursday and Friday of Pinball Expo, where they auctioned off Total Nuclear Annihilation number 550 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund or something like that. Yeah, I can't help you out on that.
    94:56
    And obviously they modded that game heavily. It looks very beautiful, actually. So that one was auctioned off, as well as the very first limited edition of Medieval Madness remake, which came from the personal collection of Doug Tuba. Right. Which included the topper as well. And I think we forgot to mention that. Medieval Mantis is now equipped with the larger color display.
    95:36
    Yeah, the limited edition one certainly is. Yes. But that was included in the auction at Pinball Life. Right. And I think in total, the auction raised over $28,000 for diabetes research.
    95:58
    Research, yeah. Yeah. So. Congratulations to everyone involved in that and for the generosity of both Spooky, Pinball and Chicago Gaming in donating these games. Right. And while on the topic of spooky pinball, we mentioned earlier that they will finish the Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle production by the beginning of December, as expected. They did actually show a topper Which is currently being developed For the Alice Cooper game Which Is an interactive topper as well With lots of lights Interacting with gameplay But there's also like A bottle brain That is moving from left to right And There's four Like meters that could be volt meters or whatever that are also moving in sync to either the left or the right where the right means that they're full on and yeah it looked like a fun topper that goes with the game not sure when that will be available but it's in development and people got a chance to look at it seems like everyone is making toppers these days yeah apparently there's a big market for pinball toppers obviously everyone's got high ceilings in their game rooms I think Scott Denise announced on Pinside that there will not be an additional run of total nuclear annihilation in between Alice Cooper and the next game that goes into production from Spooky Pinball.
    98:04
    And the new Scott and Izzy game has not been announced yet either. But you'd expect that to happen any time between, well, rather soon, because I figure after Christmas they want to go into production with something else.
    98:22
    Yeah, absolutely. assuming that Scott's Game is going to be the next one on the line or the next new release, I should say. Now, obviously, they could go back and remake some other titles if they had the demand for them. But, yeah, you'd think Scott's Game, which has the code name, I think, of Haunted House Party, but that obviously isn't the real name,
    98:47
    we expect to see that very early next year. Right. And, yeah, we're all curious to see what that will be like. I think I read some comments that, I'm not even sure what I think, what I read was that Scott is very happy how his new game is coming along. So, okay, well, we're curious. I'm surprised. Well, it could be that he's on a designer's block or whatever you call it, and that he might not be happy at all.
    99:20
    But apparently that's not the case. Good, good, okay We did We were talking about Toppers just now And Chicago Gaming's Medieval Madness one With the The LED lighting And the models of the Trolls and the King We should also mention Just in passing there That The new Medieval Madness Version has RGB lighting across the entire playfield, including GI, which is something that the original Medieval Madnesses didn't have. Now, talking to Chicago Gaming about that, they do plan to make an upgrade kit available for those people who bought the original Medieval Madnesses with just the plain white lighting. We're still talking about the remake ones, right? Not the Williams ones. Yes, absolutely, yes. The original remakes. Yes, good point. This won't be retrofitted into the Williams games. For those who bought the first run of Chicago Gaming, Medieval Madnesses, they will be able to get an upgrade kit to give full RGB lighting throughout the entire game. No details on pricing on that yet, or indeed exactly when it's going to be available, but it's certainly in Chicago Gaming's plans to have that available. if you'd like to benefit from all the wonderful lighting effects that the new system has. Right. Okay. So, I'd say we...
    101:03
    Let's move on to someone who is actually producing games, rather than somebody who not So let go teach your backyard then and find out what the latest news is from Dr Pinball and how Barry getting on with his plans to put the game back into production. Right, well, I haven't spoken to Barry a lot last month. The only... Well, I did a briefly text with him, where he basically announced I'm too busy building games. I will not be giving my presentation as promised on the Dutch Pinball Open Expo because that will cost me a week and I can't afford a week because I'm building games. So the good news is, he's building games. More importantly, he's even shipping games. Yes, I've seen pictures of what I would take to be new build games arriving at buyers' homes. Those are people who bought the new games or paid the money recently, not the early achievers who should receive their games later on down the line. Yeah, but these new customers are actually important because they bring in new money, which is much needed to make sure that Dutch Bingo will get to build these games for the early achievers or pre-order buyers, depending on how you want to call it. So Barry and Goose are currently in their new facility They are building it Who's Goose? Goose is It's a new name Well it's not a new name actually It might be a new name for some people But Goose has been involved with Dutch Pinball Since the very beginning I think he was even part of the design team and he's still an associate, I'd say, in some way, close friends of Barry, and he's involved in, the way I understand it, building the games together with Barry at the moment. Currently they are cranking out like two to three games a week, which are being shipped out as soon as they can. So once the game is ready, tested, burned in and everything, then ship it out the door.
    103:39
    And I understood from Barry that he's already talking to several parties for outsourcing certain assembly work. Where we're talking about sub-assemblies that need to be assembled separately, and then as an assembled piece gets fitted into the game. and he's looking to source that out to some local parties and he's having conversations with them so that's a good thing as well and that should make it a little easier for them to speed up the process of building games and I also know, I was told that they were still waiting for I mean, now I'm trying to think what the correct names are. Basically, they were waiting for racks and such to store parts in, because everything was still mostly on the floor, and they were looking for parts like, oh, we need this part, where is it? And now everything, the shelving system and so on, is apparently in place, which makes it easier for them to get to the parts that they need. and that also improves the, or makes it easier to build the games and quicker to build the games. Yeah, and so you don't hurt their back so much bending over all the time to pick up parts off the floor. Right, exactly. So that's about the news that there is from Dutch Bimble at the moment, but as far as I can see, it's all, they're building games, they're delivering games, so that's all good. They didn't have any presence at Pinball Expo, though, if you were to try and sell their game. I know something about that. Actually, there was supposed to be a new-built Dick Lewarski game at the Cointaker booth, but apparently DHL, who was shipping the game, messed that up, and they didn't get it through customs in time. That's at least what I understood.
    105:54
    That's a shame. I'm sure people would have been interested in seeing the quality of the new games coming out of the factory. But hopefully they'll get to see plenty of those machines around before too much longer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm confident that they will.
    106:13
    Now, a game you may not see around, unless you happen to visit China, is a new, I wouldn't say it's an announcement, but it's been teased by Mike Kalinowski of Homepin. And it's aimed primarily, although not exclusively, at the Chinese market. And I think Mike's very keen to point that out, that it's not something which would be of no interest to Western buyers. It's just that the way it's been built and designed it's done in Chinese at the moment and it uses a Chinese theme which is familiar to Chinese players or buyers called China Zombies and you've spoken to Mike very recently Jonathan we have an interview with Mike coming up so are there any other details about this game and whether we're going to see it in the UK or the UK, the US or Europe or anywhere else in a westernized form. Yes, well, the game is currently being developed.
    107:33
    In the interview, Mike will exactly tell you how far they are along, but he expects to go into production in like a month, which is rather soon, I'd say. Really? Ambitious. so the theme is China zombies which is something according to Mike everybody in China is familiar with and he sent me an email where he explains that unlike zombies in the west that tend to walk with their arms ahead of or forward it. China zombies actually hop, and they have created a mechanism to create a hopping zombie, China zombie, that is on the playfield, which should be rather entertaining, I guess. I'm not sure. Overall, it will be a very simple game. It is primarily, or they coded it in with the display and the voice calls in Chinese, but there will also be an English version.
    108:51
    Right. So if people in the West are interested in getting this game, they can. And if they prefer to switch it to English, that should not be a problem. If they prefer to have it in Chinese and not understand a clue what's going on, that's also an option. But like you said, last night I spoke with Mike Kalinowski, and I was lucky enough to be able to record that conversation, and Mike gave me the okay to actually publish that in our podcast. So why don't we have a listen to what Mike has to say about the game? Okay. China is on this. Cool. obviously, well you didn't reveal anything of the playfield yet no, because actually we're still finalising that art, it's been changed about six times and I've only just firmed up the lamp board layout so that sort of clinches the layout that we have to run with but they're still playing with the artwork for that so we're not sort of, that's it's close but it's not finished just yet so the gameplay is pretty much cemented but there's a few movement bits there too but But it's a simple layout with a single ramp and return rail.
    110:13
    But it's a fast, fun sort of layout, open, very open play field. And it's targeting, remember who it's targeting, it's targeting new players who have very likely never even seen a pinball machine at all before. So it needs to be very, very obvious what you've got to do. It can't have hidden things or deep meanings or hit this target 20 times to do something else and then get in the ramp. No, none of that stuff because the players that it's aiming for don't understand even how to hit the ball with a flipper. You've got to show them where the flipper buttons are. So, you know, it's just, it's got good sound, it's got good graphics on the DMD and good music. and it's a good light show and I have to keep them intrigued at least.
    111:08
    Right. So how come China zombies in the sense that, from what I understood, this has to do with when people are dead and buried.
    111:25
    It's almost like a sort of a funeral type of thing, which doesn't seem to be that. No, it's very well known in Chinese. We looked at several different things to go down the licensed route and figured that this was an easy way into the market with a well-known theme that's not licensed because we really want to keep it as budget-priced as possible. And that's our foray is to get it as cheap as possible. Every single Chinese person instantly recognizes what a Chinese zombie is. They all know it. so it's firstly it's recognisable and then they're drawn to the machine they say oh we know what China Zombies is but what's this weird machine so it attracts their interest to the machine which is what we're aiming at we can worry about licensing and increasing the price down the track but our main thrust is to get it into the marketplace at a price that's competitive to Stern and Stern machines currently are well forget the fact that there's an extra 25% on them at the moment because of the trade war, but they sell here 64,000 RMB. So you do the math yourself.
    112:35
    They sell for 64,000, ours sells for 34,000, half the price. Right. And theirs now, that 64,000, is plus 25% currently with the trade war. They're better than half price with a Chinese theme, with Chinese writing, with Chinese on the DMD, with Chinese call-outs and, you know,
    112:58
    I believe it's going to appeal to them better. The staff here love it. They've obviously had a great deal of input into it. And when is this game supposed to come out? We're just finalising that mech I sent you the picture of, which I thought was a good teaser picture for a mechanism.
    113:15
    That's probably a few days to a week away from being finished and then we can order the toys. They're just 3D models we're using at the moment, of course, 3D printed, just to get the sizing exact and so on. And we can order the models, but the artwork for the playfield, I'm expecting that any day. I've had a few preliminary ones sent to me. They're just dressing it up. So the minute that's done, we can build a final playfield, and we're pretty much ready to go within the month, I'd say. Any big trade shows coming up?
    113:46
    There's one in Beijing, but it's not until early next year. We're going to attend a couple in China with this machine. We just heard this morning, in fact, from a guy that lives near us that the Beijing one's a big show, so we're going to go to that. But we're looking for some mostly, we're looking for some that are out in the sticks a little bit rather than the big city ones because we want to get out into the marketplace where they have never heard of pinball. and all the artists in these places have just got dance machines and video games, upon row of video games, driving games, that sort of stuff. We want to get to them because that's where we see some future for us. Okay, cool. So, any word on who designed this game? Was it either the well-known pinball designer hobbying off in his spare time or is it some local new guy that just has its first attempt at designing a pinball game?
    114:46
    No, it's basically two older machines cobbled together. It's pretty simple. We picked the simplicity of a couple of older games and cobbled them together. Right. And then added a few bits of twist of our own. But it's pretty basic and simple.
    115:06
    It's got a couple of features from the new game that's released, but it's not any game in particular. It's not, you know, it's just something that's fast and easy and lots of shots. Don't know how many shots. I didn't count them. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six or seven shots around the top.
    115:28
    It's got a scoop. And it's got a lock hole and it's got a Newton ball and, yeah, a lot of few little extra thingies like that. Okay. It's not intended to be a high-end pinball machine at all. It's not intended to be compared with anything that's currently released. There's no intention on our part for it to be compared to Elvira or Swords of Fury or whatever it's called, or Octomafit. Yeah, the intention is for it to not be compared to any of those. It's a standalone machine, and something that we have gleaned from certainly in this market, and I'm not sure about the West yet, but every single Chinese person has had a gut full of LCD everything. It's on their watch, it's on their phone, it's on their computer, it's on their TV, it's on their bus, it's when they go to the subway. Everything's got an LCD screen. That's the last thing they want on their new toy. Sticking to DMV deliberately because it's totally different. They've never seen a DMV before.
    116:35
    They're curious about it. They love it. There's other factors there too. If you introduce an LCD, you've suddenly introduced $100,000 of costs to get stuff to put on the D&D, and then people whinge that it's not appropriate or it's not enough or it's just not. And so, yeah, that's not the direction we're heading. We're heading in the direction of making an affordable machine, not a machine that's got all the bells and whistles and it's double the price. Right, okay. And in terms of voice calls and so on with this game, did you hire some professionals to do that or is it just a bunch of people that you fit like, hey, say something like this and this and that's fine?
    117:19
    It's a bit of a combination because we actually did pay someone to do, two people, a male and a female, to do the Chinese voices, but a couple of them we just didn't like. So we re-recorded those ourselves and they came out much better. Just to keep it in keeping with the... It's more the, it's just the flow of everything. There was nothing wrong with the voice. It just didn't sort of flow when you're playing the game. That's all. It's pretty tricky to get that right. We have actually replicated everything on the D&D, all the videos and the call-outs and everything have been replicated in English as well. So we can build an English version, but that's not what we're concentrating on right now. Right.
    117:59
    But like I said, our primary focus is to get some machines sold into China because that's where we've got our advantage. over every other manufacturer. We're already here.
    118:09
    We can do it in Chinese. We can do it at a price that better suits their budget. And we're stupid not to take advantage of that. Right. So based on the art, I'd say it's not a too serious take on zombies. It's not light at all. No, no, no. It's very light. There's no blood and guts. There's no gore. There's no arms ripped off or, you know, heads being bitten off. There's none of that. It's all light and breezy. Yeah, it seems a bit comical in a sense. It's comical and it's even a little bit sort of Scooby-Doo-ish. So it's light and friendly. I mean, Scooby-Doo gets into that sort of mischief and scary stuff, but it's all light and breezy and easy. It's not heavy stuff.
    118:54
    Right. That's an interesting interview there with Mike. And I think he's obviously got a very clear idea of exactly what he thinks the Chinese market is looking for in a pinball game. It's obviously very different to the much more mature market that we have over here in the West. Well, I think, but in all fairness, if you look at the development that pinball has gone through the past decades,
    119:26
    I'd say for a territory like China, that is completely new with the concept of pinball, I think it would be a smart move to sort of go for an easy-to-understand, almost like EM type of playfield, maybe with one ramp or something like that, but nothing too complex.
    119:53
    And hopefully it will have an interesting gameplay to keep players interested in the game. But I can understand that it's just a matter of like,
    120:07
    okay, shoot a bunch of targets, get a bunch of tickets, and that's it. Well, it does sound like he's got a massive price advantage over any Western companies, particularly Stern trying to sell into that market.
    120:22
    Firstly, for the lower cost of production from being out there, but also with all the tariffs and taxes that are imposed, and even more at the moment with the current trade war going on between the U.S. and China. So, you know, being able to sell at a half price or less of a Stern game, that's got to be an attractive purchase for an operator who is, you know, maybe a little skeptical about this pinball thing and may have tried it in the past and found it not to be accepted or not to be taken on board due to the complexity. So, yeah, well, he's trying new things out there. So good luck to him, I say. Yeah, I'm very curious to see how this will turn out. Best of luck to Mike. And obviously we'll keep you updated on this progress. And a blatant plug for the Pinball Magazine newsletter, Mike did send me some exclusive photos that have not been published before.
    121:31
    And these will be part of the Pinball Magazine newsletter with the recap of October 2019. So if you're not a subscriber yet, make sure you're subscribed to that newsletter so you get a first peek at these exclusive photos. Okay, very good. So we haven't really got any other news, I don't think.
    121:58
    The Suncoast pinball, as far as I can tell, there's been no further development in that business. And they filed for Chapter 11 last month, as we covered in that podcast. and I've been looking for any further documents that have been filed with the court that might have progressed that and I haven't seen anything. But the parent company, as it were, the Suncoast Arcade, still seems to be up and running and advertising and posting on Facebook and carrying on as if everything is fine. So maybe they have managed to come to a deal and Suncoast Arcade are still making the video games. Although they do still call themselves Suncoast Arcade and Pinball, but there's no trace of any pinball involved, and Suncoast Pinball website doesn't exist anymore, and neither does their Facebook account. So it doesn't look good for pinball production from Florida. Right. Oh, well. Speaking of Florida, obviously the Houston Arcade Expo is coming up. Which is not a million miles away from Florida, I suppose No, no, yeah But also the Ayapa show Yes Is coming up in Florida That is actually in Florida And usually there's also the I think it's called the Free Play Florida Which is tying in with that show I think either the weekend before or the weekend after I'm not entirely sure but that's also an interesting event to attend and also if you want to get a look at American Pinball's Redemption game and you find yourself in the position to visit the IAAPA show then that might be a reason for you to go there at the Houston Arcade Expo Deep Roop have announced that they will be sort of showing or testing I would probably say the Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland prototype I actually talked to Stephen Bowden who is working at the company while he was at Expo and he said that he will probably be telling everybody it's not finished it's a prototype it's still in the works And, oh well, that's about as much news as I got from Deep Root Pinball.
    124:43
    Other than that, obviously Dennis Norman, who was also at Expo, who is designing for Deep Root, is not allowed to say much, but he's really hoping that their games go into production and that they can start showing them off, because what I understand or what everybody is telling me is that they really are excited for what they are working on. So that's a good thing, I guess. Yeah, great. So if you want to see what D-Root have to show, in whatever format that is, then get yourself along to the Houston Arcade and Pinball Expo, which is held at the Marriott Westchase on November 15th and 16th. Right. And while we're on the topic of pinball shows, the weekends of November 9th and 10th, the Dutch Pinball Open Expo will be taking place, which is the biggest pinball event in Europe, I would say. this year it will be held in the city of Zwolle which I don't suppose will ring a bell with many people but okay, it's in the Netherlands it's near Amsterdam it's like an hour away from Amsterdam something like that and I've been getting a lot of questions from people like who will be the special guest because usually we fly in a special guest I can't confirm it 100% yet, but we're looking to fly in Mr. Doug Watson.
    126:30
    That might still fall through. So it's not, I'd say, keep an eye on the social media that is related to the Dutch Pinball Open Expo, where this will be confirmed if it all will happen. But I'm very happy that Doc Watson is available and interested in coming over. Now it's a matter of can we get the tickets within budget and all that kind of stuff. And with less than a week to go, or sort of, yeah, it will be a tight promotion. but nevertheless, I think Don Watson is a very interesting and big name that a lot of people might be interested in listening to what he has to say. Yeah, he's got a huge back catalogue of work, not just in pinball, but in other areas as well, and he's a very eloquent speaker about that work and has some great stories to tell, Some of which, of course, you can see in the seminar that he did at Pinball Expo, but he's got far, far more to tell, and obviously signing stuff and relating personal details about how certain artwork was created and the story behind it and the other possible things that could have happened. Yeah. The way a game turned out. There's so much you can learn just from seeing somebody and being able to ask them questions in person. It would be fantastic if Doug can make it. Yeah, I would be very happy if he could. And what's interesting, usually when I'm approaching potential special guests and ask them whether they want to do a seminar, first of all they ask, how long should it be?
    128:26
    And when you tell them an hour, they look like, ooh, an hour, that's a long time. In this case, Doug was like, oh, I can easily do three. yeah I'm sure he could so actually I look forward to him doing that because he has great stories going back all the way to let's say Pantera Barracora that's the early 80's we're talking about when he was working still working at posters right so and of course he also did Attack on Mars which is a game that a lot of people are familiar with and he even helped design the topper for the Attack on Mars remake. Right. Wow. And, of course, there'll be some other seminars taking place or talks.
    129:14
    I heard a story about a couple of guys, and I've never heard of them before, who might be giving out some kind of prizes as well.
    129:23
    I don't know how that works. Those two idiots, yeah, I've heard about them. They always ruin the Texas Fist and Pinball Festival.
    129:32
    But if you're interested in winning some interesting free goodies, then, yeah, those two idiots will be presenting. I think they call it a quiz or something, but it's so easy that... Anybody can win a prize. Exactly. You don't know anything. Because they don't know anything either. Yeah, so I don't know why they keep doing this, but really somebody should tell them that they need to stop with that. I think it just must have a big storeroom full of pinball stuff they need to get rid of. Probably, yeah. But I did hear they have some very cool items from Jersey Jack pinball that they are going to give away. So maybe if you're like, hey, I got these nice, I don't know what you call it, display area, And that produced some cool pinball playfields. Pinball, yeah. What do you call it?
    130:38
    Translite? No, no, no. I think he provided a couple of the miniature figures that go on Tiled In. Okay. Oh, right, okay. It would be either Bessie or the QED guy, I suppose. Yes. Right. Oh, wow. Well, then. Oh, and the Goff's Buffer. The spinning one? Oh, don't say too much, because some of that might not make it into the quiz. That's right.
    131:10
    Oh, well. Oh, now we've got to give it away. Okay. Right. Yeah. So that's coming up not this weekend, but next weekend in Zwolle in the Netherlands. Yes. At the Dutch Pinball Open Expo. Right. Okay. And, of course, if it couldn't be more inconvenient, guess who's calling?
    131:34
    Oh, really? Right at the end? Oh, well, I know. I spoke to him the other day, so we can't have a lot of extra news to impart. Oh, well, then let's forget about it. I mean, yeah, we've both seen him. Yeah. Okay. I don't suppose he's got earth-shaking news, so sorry, people. But, okay, we've got Gary Flower calling in, as always, at the most inconvenient time ever. and since we're already running for, I think, close to two hours. Oh, goodness. Yeah. This is crazy.
    132:06
    Oh, yeah, not anyway, so too bad. Sorry, Gary. That's all problems. Yeah. Okay, well, I think at that point then we better call this to a close and I think it does demonstrate exactly what an incredibly busy and newsworthy month October has been. Yes. So I'm expecting November will be more of a quiet month, now that I think show season is sort of coming to a close.
    132:42
    Although we'll certainly have some information from Houston to talk about. Yeah, and of course from Florida as well. But, yeah, we'll see.
    132:56
    Oh, well, there's always stuff we don't see coming. So make sure to tune in next month again for our Pinball News and Pinball Magazine monthly Pinball Industry News recap. Sign up for the Pinball Magazine newsletter, which is free, by the way, and we don't spam you. We just send out one newsletter a month with a summary of all the pinball news with illustrations or images and what have you and links to where you can see more.
    133:30
    Very good it is, too. I certainly read it, even though it always brings me more information than I knew. So I think it's definitely worthwhile signing up for that. And I'd also recommend that you, if you haven't already, check out our coverage of the Pinball Expo show on the Pinball News site. Because, believe it or not, I've almost finished all five days. I'm just finishing off the tournament coverage from Sunday. And then everything will be done. And, as I said before, you can watch all 30 videos of the seminars from Pinball Expo 2019. Okay, then we'll cut me another week, but I still have to go there because, obviously, I missed most of Expo. And even while I was there, I missed most of the seminars. Well, big thanks to Rob Burke for letting us put all this online. So that's a huge, great selling point for Bimble Expo of having all these industry speakers right there on the doorstep. And as you heard him say in the interview, and to be able to put all those online in a way we were never able to do it before is a massive bonus. So thanks, Rob, for that. Yeah, absolutely. So, okay, without further ado, thanks for listening, and until next month. Yes, goodbye. Bye.