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BDYETP 71: The One Where We Talk About James Bond (and review Godzilla)

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 47m·analyzed·Oct 7, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Bond 007 review: restrictive license, poor code, launch disaster, aggressive pricing model.

Summary

Nick and Kevin of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball review Stern's new James Bond 007 pinball machine announced in September 2022, covering the Pro (Dr. No), Premium (You Only Live Twice), LE (Thunderball), and 60th Anniversary editions. They discuss controversial design choices including the phallic rocket toy, restrictive licensing limitations, bare-bones code from programmer Lonnie Rapp, a problematic launch with leaked photos at IAPA, and aggressive pricing ($7k Pro, $9.7k Premium, $13k LE). Kevin shares his decision to swap Walking Dead for a Bond Premium despite violating his own rules about letting games mature before purchase.

Key Claims

  • Steve Ritchie had completed the Bond playfield before leaving Stern, but George Gomez scrapped it and created his own version

    medium confidence · This story goes that this is the game that Richie was working on before he left Stern, and he had even completed the play field, and then he left. This is not his version of the game. George Cosmes, I guess, scrapped the Richie version.

  • Bond was pushed into an earlier release slot due to production backlog from Rush, with Venom originally scheduled for the April/May slot

    medium confidence · They got so backed up with demand and supply issues is that they skipped the game that was going to come out in April, May, and they pushed it back... So now Bond is released... Bond was the game that's going to come out after it

  • Bond is currently shipping as a shell game with copy-paste code and lacks polish

    high confidence · Now we're starting to see some videos of gameplay, and it's like a shell of a game right now. It's got, like, copy and paste code in there.

  • Lonnie Rapp's code is characterized as minimalist and repetitive, typical of his 2010-era Stern style with few modes and simple mechanics

    high confidence · when you think of the 2010 stern of five modes, two multiballs, that's your Lonnie Robb game... Your modes are like, shoot this shot 15 times in Transformers, right? Just grind it out.

  • The Bond backglass lacks the James Bond/007 branding, only appearing on the arch and under the coin door

    high confidence · it doesn't say james bond or 007 on the back glass at all or the translate uh it says it on the arch and it also says it under the coin door

  • Stern's Bond launch was delayed and disrupted by Queen Elizabeth II's death, causing pushed-back announcements and leaked photos at IAPA

    high confidence · after canceling their earlier launch due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II... The release was a disaster because leaked photos, pushing it back because of the Queen

Notable Quotes

  • “It's a vibrator that they stuck in the game. Like, it's supposed to be a rocket, and all the rocket does, it's, like, on a spring, and you hit it. Like, what is it with Stern and putting shit on a spring and calling it a toy?”

    Kevin @ ~18:00 — Criticism of the Bond rocket toy as a phallic, underwhelming mechanical element that resembles Mando's problematic design

  • “Lonnie could be getting coffee for them. Who knows. Oh Indiana Jones, everybody loves that one. I bet he was the lead on that one. Yep. Oh Jesus. The sole programmer on Indiana Jones turn 2008. That game is terrible.”

    Nick @ ~42:30 — Damning assessment of Lonnie Rapp's programming on Indiana Jones as textbook terrible rules design

  • “Now you can't put out. Now it's like I've gotta I've gotta be hopeful that Stern especially with the price increase Which we haven't gotten to yet Is not gonna let this game be bad”

    Kevin @ ~45:00 — Kevin expressing hope that Stern won't tolerate poor code quality on higher-priced games

  • “If if the company sees these flippers taking these games sitting on them and then selling them for prices like thirteen thousand dollars they're just like well why don't we why don't we get this money instead of them”

    Kevin @ ~55:00 — Theory explaining manufacturer's rationale for aggressive LE pricing based on secondary market flipper activity

  • “It's a low bar Kevin yeah this is this is like i look at this art package and i was like this is i could do this art like it's literally just take all the movie posters and put them next to each other in photoshop”

    Nick @ ~70:00 — Criticism of 60th Anniversary edition artwork as lazy graphic design, not creative art

  • “But Bond is towards being more positive. I remember in the late 90s, Circus City had box sets of VHS, cheap. I just bought a ton. I've watched almost all the Bond movies, or at least a lot of them.”

    Kevin @ ~28:00 — Kevin's personal Bond fandom influenced his decision to commit to the game despite concerns

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyGeorge GomezpersonSteve RitchiepersonKeith ElwinpersonLonnie RapppersonJames Bond 007gameKevin Manningperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Mixed but predominantly negative reception to Bond reveal; complaint about 'boomer-themed pinball' branding; criticism of lack of James Bond branding on backglass; concerns about theme relevance vs Monsters franchise comparison

    medium · Hosts cite headline 'certain pinball releases the latest in their line of boomer themed pinball machines' (Monsters, Bond); question why 007 not visible on backglass when Bond brand is still culturally relevant

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Lonnie Rapp's programming style identified as 2010-era minimalist with ~5 modes, 2 multiballs, repetitive shot sequences (shoot same target 15+ times); contrasted with contemporary Stern code quality expectations as unacceptable for premium pricing

    high · Nick: 'when you think of the 2010 stern of five modes, two multiballs, that's your Lonnie Robb game... Your modes are like, shoot this shot 15 times in Transformers, right? Just grind it out.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bond's rocket toy criticized as phallic, underwhelming vibrator-like element on spring; lacks meaningful mechanical function despite occupying valuable playfield real estate

    high · Kevin: 'It's a vibrator that they stuck in the game... What is it with Stern and putting shit on a spring and calling it a toy?' Speculation it was supposed to rise from playfield before being cheaped out.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin's 60th Anniversary edition positioned as contrast to Gomez version; Elwin historically receives less restrictive licenses allowing creative freedom (referenced with Godzilla), while Gomez lands major restrictive IPs (Bond, Star Wars)

    medium · Kevin: 'freedom that Elwin had probably with Godzilla and using those assets... Richie always got the, quote-unquote, best licenses right? The top-line, like Bond, Star Wars, Led Zeppelin... all these ones are super restrictive'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.323

0:00
All right, coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got James Bond 007 revealed by Stern. We'll talk about that. And we're also going to review Godzilla. All that and more coming right up. God, I'm going to shoot a jet pod. I need a wrap.
0:30
I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super jackpot in my life.
0:42
That's right. And now, the Hall and Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka. Boom shakalaka to you, Nick. It's October. I actually heard that. Did you hear it? I think it was coming through my mic. It was cranked. At least I know where we're at in the podcast. You got to hear it a little bit. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to October. It's October 6th, 2022.
1:14
The bald guy, that's Kevin. The skinny guy, that's Nick. If you're following along at home, right? Yeah. So what's new with you? Yeah, it's your boys. I don't know. I normally see you like a million times. I haven't seen you. It's a genuine question for Kevin saying what's new with me. Dude, yeah, it's been insane, right? Like we've tried to schedule this podcast like 13 times, I swear.
1:37
I've been busy. I've been traveling for work. I've been traveling for pleasure. So, yeah, I think I just got sick from all that. So that's good. But other than that, the usual. Yeah, and I've been going to like 100,000 soccer games because my son is in soccer. So like three or four times a week, I'm out there doing that, doing the dad thing. So, yeah, Nick got sick from pleasure. Today we learned. That's right. Yeah. Well, you know, anytime you travel on a plane. So I went to a concert two weeks ago. I was down in Virginia for a good old Pat McGee band, my favorite artist. I haven't seen him for 20 years, so that was fun. And then I was traveling for work, so I went to a concert.
Nick Lane
person
Lymanperson
Godzillagame
Indiana Jonesgame
Transformersgame
The Walking Deadgame
Mandogame
Batman 66game
Pinball Newsorganization
IAPAevent
Corvettegame
Avengersgame
Thunderbirdsgame
Buffalo Pinballorganization
  • ?

    event_signal: Bond launch plagued by leaked photos at IAPA (UK industry trade event), Queen Elizabeth II death causing announcement delay, and uncontrolled internet spread of unofficial images despite Stern damage control attempts

    high · Kevin: 'The release was a disaster because leaked photos, pushing it back because of the Queen... once it's on the internet you can't pull it down it's like who who thought that was a good idea'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Bond severely constrained by restrictive licensing; backglass lacks James Bond/007 branding (only on arch/coin door); movie clips used instead of creative custom content; 60th Anniversary art described as lazy Photoshop of existing posters

    high · Nick: 'This is not art that's creative... literally just take all the movie posters and put them next to each other in photoshop.' Hosts note this goes back to restrictive license limitations.

  • $

    market_signal: Bond pushed into earlier release slot due to production backlog from Rush; Venom originally scheduled for April/May slot, now delayed further; supply/demand constraints forcing reordering of release schedule

    medium · Kevin: 'They got so backed up with demand and supply issues... they skipped the game that was going to come out in April, May, and they pushed it back... Bond was the game that's going to come out after it'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Steve Ritchie's completed Bond playfield scrapped by George Gomez upon Ritchie's departure; represents potential creative loss and significant design rework at late stage of production

    medium · Kevin: 'This is the game that Richie was working on before he left Stern, and he had even completed the play field... George Cosmes... scrapped the Richie version, and this is George's game now.'

  • $

    market_signal: Aggressive pricing increases across board ($7k Pro, $9.7k Premium/$1k jump, $13k LE); manufacturers testing price ceiling based on secondary market flipper activity at $13k+ asking prices

    high · Kevin: 'everybody's pushing the price ceiling... if if the company sees these flippers taking these games sitting on them and then selling them for prices like thirteen thousand dollars they're just like well why don't we why don't we get this money'

  • ?

    product_concern: Bond shipping as shell game with bare-bones, copy-paste code from Lonnie Rapp; code quality between Batman 66 launch and slightly better; expected to take year+ before code matures to acceptable state

    high · Kevin: 'We're starting to see some videos of gameplay, and it's like a shell of a game right now. It's got, like, copy and paste code in there.' Hosts describe it as marginally better than Batman 66 launch code.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Bond release schedule shows three-month gap between LE/Premium shipment and Pro homeowner rollout in spring; questioned why game was rushed given staggered delivery timeline

    high · Kevin: 'They're gonna do le's and pros and then there's like this three month gap and then they're gonna do pros in the spring for homeowners so it's really weird uh so makes you wonder like why rush it'

    • 2:24
    Oh, Nick, we just lost your audio. Oh, you're back. I'm back? Yeah, you like went robot on us for a second there.
    2:34
    Well, secret's out. Yeah, Nick's a robot. Okay. And your audio setting changed back, so you're quiet again. You know, podcasting is easy. Everybody should podcast. Nick, why don't you, while I play with this, you can talk to our partners.
    2:52
    Yeah, we want to thank our partners. First of all, there's Martha making an appearance. Martha. All right. Good timing. Yeah.
    3:02
    This is really good. All right. Our premier partner, Pinstadium Lights. Pinstadium, illuminating your pinball machines with an app controlled to iOS, Android.
    3:14
    It's smart. It's very smart. Use coupon code BUFFALO, save 10%. Thank you, Pinstadium. You got pinwoofer, pinwoofer.com. Upgrade the sound of your pinball machines. Especially, listen, if you've got a music pin, that's a no-brainer. Just do that automatically. We've got Flippin' Out Pinball, FlippinOutPinball.com, the only place, in my opinion, where anybody should be buying a brand-new in-box pinball machine, the best customer service in the industry. That's Zach Menne. We've got Titan Pinball, TitanPinball.com for silicone rings, tools, pinballs, and pinball accessories. I highly recommend their flipper guard. Then we've got PinballEDU. edu go to pinball raffle.org for your chance to win a pinball machine and also to support charity yeah pinside.com the legendary place to get into fights about anything and everything um that's pinside.com we love you pinside.com pinside.com helped me sell my uh walking dead so thank you i appreciate that great marketplace come at pinball come at pinball.com for led lights all All right, the old school OG sponsor, We Love You, Kama Pinball, and then finally Jersey Jack Pinball, maker of the most beautiful pinball machines on the planet. Kevin. You nailed it. Good job. Am I still a robot or did I transform? No, you're good. I got your audio levels cranked up. Yes, well, you never know what I said. I said some really cool shit, you know, and the Internet didn't like it, and it muted me. There you go. That's how the Internet is sometimes. Yeah. Well, why don't we cut to the chase and get right to the video? That's 100% right. So if you're following along in the chat and thing, I won't go into that, but 100% right. I'm hearing that from everybody. People are saying don't do that. This is dumpster fire at this point.
    5:00
    All right. Top story of the month. Stern officially sort of launched Bond, and then they officially launched James Bond. James Bond 007.
    5:11
    I'll read you. This is coming to us from Pinball News. after canceling their earlier launch due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Stern Pinball today officially announced details of their latest James Bond 007 Cornerstone title. This is on September 22nd is when the story was written. The George Gomez design game will initially come in three versions, the traditional pro, premium, and LE models, with the limited edition restricted to 1,000 machines. There will be an even more super limited edition 60th anniversary model designed by Keith Elwin featuring all the actors who have played James Bond, including all 25 films. This will be limited to 500 machines with details to be released shortly. Each of the three versions announced today is based on one of the classic Sean Connery-era James Bond movies. The pro is Dr. No, the premium is You'll Only Live Twice, and the limited edition is themed around Thunderball. So there's a trailer. They released some trailers. uh here we'll take a look at the pro here uh based on dr no um i think the weirdest thing to me and i'm sure i'm not the only one making this observation is that it doesn't say james bond or 007 on the back glass at all or the translate uh it says it on the arch and it also says it under the coin door on the front uh but otherwise you gotta you know the big thing you see is dr no It's like kids these days aren't going to know what Dr. No is. Are they?
    6:36
    No, it's odd. There's no doubt that's odd. A lot of people have pointed that out, and it's weird. Yeah. The Pro is very yellow, right? What's your take on the Pro? Not a lot of yellow games.
    6:52
    You mean in terms of the aesthetics of it? Yeah, I guess just the first impression of how it looks. It's not something that I love. I mean, here's the thing, right? Like, you go back to, you know, quote-unquote iconic art. Is this, like, to me this is not, like, iconic in the way that, you know, Led Zeppelin's first album is. You know, I defended that staunchly on the art.
    7:16
    This, you can argue, is iconic because it's, you know, at least the back glasses of the movie poster is my understanding.
    7:24
    So, I don't know. Every game usually looks better in person, but I feel like this art appeals way more to Bond fans, especially the early movies with Connery.
    7:47
    It's what they know. They know this art. If they're not a pinball people and they buy it and they put it in their house, it's like it nailed it. Right. Versus like if you did custom art for it, you know, it's still the pinball people, the bond people are still going to buy it. But I think this is fine for them for pinball people. How do we like to dissect and look at it? A lot of times we want something customized then. Yeah, it's not maybe it's not the best thing in the world. Right. Yeah. I saw a great headline. I think I can't I wish I remembered which website it was from, but it was not it was not a like a pinball site. It was like Boing Boing or IGN or something like that. It was like certain pinball releases the latest in their line of boomer themed pinball machines.
    8:30
    It was like monsters. And I forget what the other one was. And a double a seven doctor. No, it was like, all right. Yeah, I can see that. It's definitely.
    8:39
    Yeah. Go for it. I just, you said monsters, Kevin, you know, it gets me excited. Like not in the right way though. I just can't believe monsters was a game that they made. Um, we joke. There was like whopping two seasons on this game. That's like, you know, the series is 60 years old. Like, Bond is, like, iconic Bond movies are happening today, right? Oh, yeah. So. It's still relevant. Yeah, Bond is not, like, I know they went with boomer era Bond. So, yeah, in the defense of that, sure. But still, like, even Bond from the 60s, that theme is super relevant, right? Yeah. And I know somebody's going, oh, they're still doing the Monsters, like, they'll do a Monsters movie or a play or whatever. It's not like Bond, though. It's not like, Monsters is not like Bond. yeah bond never really left the the public consciousness right there's always every few years you get a bond movie and you know and now now we're you know i'm seeing headlines about what's who's the next bond gonna be and all all sorts of stuff like that so it's it reminds me of doctor who in that way like you know it's just got yeah been continual uh it's started a long time ago but it's still relevant today did you say what you thought of the art and they yeah i mean it's okay like the i can see you know they they it's very much like oh here you can theme it after this movie and here's the poster and some other art and you have to use this because yeah uh this is already approved from uh sean connery and yeah so that's what they went with and you know if you're a fan of these movies and it's obviously like art of the era so it's cool in that way right like it's got that retro aesthetic going for it but um i think the the biggest miss This is because, like we were talking about, 007 James Bond, people know that still, and that's not obvious. When you're in an arcade and you're scanning the lineup, you're not going, oh, James Bond. You're like, Dr. No, I'm going to go play Star Wars or something, right?
    10:32
    That's weird, and this goes back to these restrictive license, right? So the story goes that this is the game that Richie was working on before he left Stern, and he had even completed the play field, and then he left. This is not his version of the game. George Cosmes, I guess, scrapped the Richie version, and this is George's game now. But it's just funny. Richie always got the, quote-unquote, best licenses, right? The top-line, like Bond, Star Wars, Led Zeppelin, Game of Thrones was super popular when he got it. It still is. But all these ones are super restrictive in terms of what can be done and often lack the ability to get super creative with it, like the freedom that Elwin had probably with Godzilla and using those assets. So it's just kind of funny. They definitely treated Steve Ritchie the best because he got whatever the best license is. But it's not Stern's fault when the licensee wants to be restrictive, and this is what you get. This is it. I think this is – we were talking in a chat with Patrick who gets mentioned on this podcast on how every episode, God bless him. I was hanging out with him last night.
    11:45
    Yeah, so I never put much thought into the release of Bond, but I remember when Rush came out and then Stern's like, oh, we're backed up, so normally they would have come out with a game. Rush came out in January, then usually they would have come out with a game in April, May, then they would have came out with a game around now or later in the year, right? So three games a year. So what happened because they got so backed up with demand and supply issues is that they skipped the game that was going to come out in April, May, and they pushed it back. And everybody was saying that this was going to be Venom. I heard maybe rumblings of a Bond, but everyone was like, yeah, Venom's coming along. So now Bond is released. We saw some videos. The release was a disaster because leaked photos, pushing it back because of the Queen, et cetera. So now we're starting to see some videos of gameplay, and it's like a shell of a game right now. It's got, like, copy and paste.
    12:39
    code in there. I'm hearing... So what happened? Well, Patrick said it must have been that Venom was supposed to be next, so you would have probably got this really polished game, especially if Venom was going to come out in April, right? It's probably really polished and ready to go. It's going to be super polished by the time that thing comes out. Bond was the game that's going to come out after it, so now Bond is coming out. Now it's going to start shipping I think the pros maybe in November, and then premium le's in december but we're seeing that as a shell of a game which sucks all right like the one the one advantage of having to to wait and having games pushed back it's like well gee now they're going to ship with code and everything's going to be working great that's not the case though but um it sounds like again going back to the the licensee the licensee probably put pressure or made stern release it to coincide with the 60th anniversary celebrations of bond that's been going on in the UK. So that all makes sense. This is the joys of, you know, you get the biggest license, you get an awesome license like Bond, but these also tend to be the most restrictive things on the planet. So you're going to have to just deal with it. That's it. You know, you're going to get it. It's just going to be like all videos of movies. Like movies are going to play movie clips in the thing, which is not creative, you know, rather than like customized stuff. Who knows? you know like that's that's it all right that's the downside that's the downside two points uh first uh kyle bassa and chet says at least they don't have the name displayed in 20 spots which i will say yes that's a good thing and i also wonder if they're gonna do like a 007 james bond topper for these games like you think of like adam's family or whirlwind where they put like the actual name of the game of time i wonder if they'll end up doing something like that it's not a bad idea yeah well you can take that idea yeah toppers let's go uh the other thing was can we talk a little bit about how ridiculous the launch of this game was you mentioned you alluded to it a little bit but you know they were bringing this game to iapa which is like the big industry trade event the the one in in england and they're setting this game up but they didn't have their like launch ready to go but so somebody took pictures and put them on the internet because of course when you set up a new game people are going to take pictures of it and then people start shooting video and then it's like stern's trying to like pull stuff down and it's like once it's on the internet you can't pull it down it's like who who thought that was a good idea yeah who knows who knows what happened i mean it it wasn't great um everything about this launch and getting pushed up and not really ready of a game and i don't know should we talk about is it time to talk about the dildo that's in the game we can't yeah let's move to the play field i jumped i jumped the gun yeah well you know this is this is the pro play field oh god yeah by the way i mean i'm technically in for this game right now we'll we'll talk about that oh yeah yeah you went all in it's a pocket rocket there you go sergeant ski nailed it dude There's, uh, yep. And then he, so, uh, let's start at the back. So, uh, back left, you got, you got the rocket that bounces around on a spring.
    16:02
    Uh, and then you got, uh, in the upper right. I think you went through that way too quickly. You could spend at least a minute on the, on the rocket on the spring. I mean, you know, I thought of, I thought of Mando and he had the, like the flappy dong that you shoot and they're like, wait a minute, we can do better than that. Let's, let's put a full rocket in here. It's, it's funny. I mean, you referred to the Mando thing as a dong, and I was like, yeah, we're a dong. I mean, like, I never really saw it that way, but, like, this is a dong, dude. This is a vibrator that they stuck in the game. Like, it's supposed to be a rocket, and all the rocket does, it's, like, on a spring, and you hit it. Like, what is it with Stern and putting shit on a spring and calling it a toy?
    16:42
    Like, I almost think it'd be better if it did nothing. I mean, I don't know. It looks silly. I heard speculation that it was supposed to be like It was supposed to rise out of the playfield And they cheaped it out But I was like that might have been worse Seeing it come out of the playfield You know what I mean Well at least that's what rockets do They don't wobble and vibrate around That's true At least you're like Rockets are phallic to begin with But that's what it does It comes out It rises out of the ground Anyways A little more time on the rocket for Nick.
    17:22
    The shots on this are cool. It reminds me of Corvette a little bit with the cross playfield shot. The ramps there. I think that was Gomez's first game, right?
    17:37
    But the left orbit reminds me of his original Avengers. That long left looping orbit that turns into a ramp. in the back right of the machine.
    17:50
    Then it feeds around to the left flipper. Then the two side ramps on the right go to the right. There's not much for toys on the Pro. You don't get the moving jetpack bond. Bond on a wand. I love it. Bond on a wand, that's right. I like that. um there's the you just got a plastic here a booty rate of the uh the action scene under playfield action scene that's kind of like a creature from the black lagoon or whatever on the far left you got the the car with the ejector seat so that's a that's a toy that carries over from the the premium and le models which is pretty cool um yeah other than that it's a bunch of bunch of shots and it doesn't it doesn't do it does virtual locks and that's that's a pretty common thing for a pro versus a premium um but yeah there's the there's the pro uh let's go down let me find the bear with me everybody as we scroll down all right there's the there's the premium uh i like that better i like this better yeah me too everybody says it reminds them of thunderbirds which i can see you know like the color scheme wise but the art on uh on thunderbirds was not the problem. It was literally everything else was the problem. Plus, they're fucking puppets in Thunderbirds, right? Aren't they puppets? Yeah. I don't want puppets in my house. Marionettes, yeah. Martha would, I think. I feel like she's got some marionettes in her house. Oh, she fancy marionettes. That's a fancy Kevin correcting me and my puppets. That's right. Puppets go on your hand. Marionettes are the strings.
    19:29
    Right? That's the difference? Oh, what a victory. What a victory. He's got schooled-down puppets. Yeah, he did. Go hang your head in shame.
    19:37
    Alright, so it's got, so these, so the left side of the cabinets tend to have like a, kind of like a montage of the poster art. And then on the right are like actual movie posters. Different, it looks like maybe that's the album. I don't know, I can't really tell. I'm not, I don't know this era of Bond at all. Like, are you, are you, how much of a Bond fan are you? Have you seen all the Bonds or just like some of them or none of them? I mean, the Bond in general is appealing to me. I wouldn't say I'm a huge Bond fan, but when I heard about this theme, I was like, yeah, I like this theme. A lot of times, themes are either neutral or I don't like it. And then there's never a theme like, oh my God, let me get my wallet out immediately. But Bond is towards being more positive. I remember in the late 90s, Circus City had box sets of VHS, cheap. I just bought a ton. I've watched almost all the Bond movies, or at least a lot of them. I can't retain any memory of them. but you know yeah it's a solid it's a solid theme yeah i uh i'm kind of the same like i've seen like the bonds that have come out as you know since i was like a teenager basically so i remember golden eye and and on from there basically um any of the older movies i've never seen or if i've seen they've been on tv and i haven't really paid attention or something like that right um yeah so let's do a batch that i thought i thought i loved mando as a theme yeah i do i like that i don't i like that as a theme a lot for sure yeah i don't know it's a good show yeah so let's get down here okay so here's the premium play field and i shrunk it down so you could fit a little bit more on the screen um so you got the rocket in the back thank god still there uh but you have a physical ball lock there so you shoot it in and the ball's kind of like stage behind the rocket which is pretty neat because i'm on a wire form um yeah bond on a wand that picks up the ball reminds me of rescue 911 it flies over and you drop it on a target uh does not look very exciting from what we've seen of gameplay so far uh i was actually thought that was going to be a lot cooler than it actually is so far but you know it's there maybe they can do more with it in code or it's we're just not seeing all that it can do yet maybe you get the action under playfield action battle sequence on the far left there with the ejector seat there or whatever it is the eject launcher and the right side of the lower right side of the game looks pretty much the same it's got the ejector seat car it's got the two ramps on the far right and that's pretty much it so you jumped in on this game real quick This is the LE We can show that off real quick Somebody say too quick So you sold your Walking Dead And you're grabbing a premium Is that the plan? Well yeah right now it is I'm absolutely violating all my Rules if I Go through with this Which my rule is Let the game Come out for a while so they work out Any issues with it You know, it's not like an LE, so you can let it sit out for a while and then see if the game's good with code. You know the code's going to be bad out of the gate.
    23:01
    And, you know, Lonnie Rapp is on the code is, I think, sort of just a, I'm sorry to say, he doesn't really do interesting things in pinball code. He kind of comes out with, like, just enough to barely get the job done. And, like, we're in a different era where, you know, every code that, like, Stern's been releasing on games are just killer. Like, they're just really good So it's not like it was 10 years ago So yeah, I mean, but I'm also like in this mode where You know, this year I got like three pinball machines And I switched up my lineup a little bit And it's been a lot of fun Like, it's just, my collection is kind of getting stale Walking Dead's been one of my favorite games for a long time But I just don't play it And it's weird to have games sit there and not play it So I'm thinking, you know what It's been a lot of fun rotating things out I like the theme, what the hell Let's swap it out, let's get Bond And then part of the thing is Just with prices going up It's kind of like you sit around for a year You might be paying more And then with supply issues I commend my strategy When I'm doing I don't think, I wouldn't have bought this game If it was straight up for cash When it's like selling a game that I'm not playing And then you know To buy the premium It's just you know Several hundred more dollars then That's a different story It's easy I've gotten so much I've put in so much money into Pim all the last 10 years That I'm not It's not as painful to get a game When I can just swap one out Absolutely and chances are the games that You bought them at a lot less than you're able to sell them for so that takes away some of the pain too right yeah so uh sergeant ski asked what lani has done um i pulled up his uh his resume on pin side so uh oh man not good pro uh transformers the original avengers the 2011-2012 avengers by the way that's the new one so the the caveat that you need to know is like he's not always the only one working on these games so yeah uh when you look at something like uh i think like star trek he worked with dwight right um yeah dwight i think came in and fixed it yeah mustang he's the one who saved that game it was terrible i sold it before he fixed it wwe kiss is like your prototypical lani rob game like yeah he's when you think of the 2010 stern of five modes, two multiballs, that's your Lonnie Robb game. Dude, then he copied and pasted it into Aerosmith. Right, and your games are... Your modes are like, shoot this shot 15 times in Transformers, right? Just grind it out. No creativity going on there at all.
    25:58
    Yeah, Aerosmith. Guardians. I think somebody else worked on Guardians, too. Guardians copypasta. Yeah, exactly. um stranger things uh but he's done a lot like when tron like he started but then lyman finished it up and added sea of simulation and the end of line jackpots and stuff like that so adding the more interesting things uh on top of uh lani's rule set rolling stones avatar uh iron man big buck hunter somebody else but you also got like also lyman was on big buck Lyman was on Iron Man Lyman was on Avatar Lonnie could be getting coffee for them Who knows Oh Indiana Jones, everybody loves that one I bet he was the lead on that one We gotta check out Indiana Jones Uh Yep Oh Jesus The sole programmer on Indiana Jones turn 2008 That game is terrible If anybody wants to see a textbook example of terrible rules go play that Yep It a game that would be coveted by collectors because of the theme but it's just so bad that nobody cares. So there you go. There's your rundown on Lonnie Robb games. Sorry, Lonnie. But, you know, like I said, and also that stuff was, like, barely acceptable 10, 15 years ago.
    27:19
    Now you can't put out. Now it's like I've gotta be hopeful that Stern especially with the price increase Which we haven't gotten to yet Is not gonna let this game be bad Is not gonna tolerate Shit code on this It's gonna take a while for the code to get good Especially when they're basically Like not far into it at all So it's gonna probably be at least a year Before we're anywhere with the code And we really see what the game's like That's my prediction Right so let me uh let me grab the pricing here's pricing all right you ready so the pro is 69.99 it's like no that's not too bad that's pretty in line with past pricing right the premium 96.99 uh so 9700 so 7 000 for the pro 9700 for the premium then wait for it the limited edition is 13 000 holy shit what a jump yeah um so you know everybody's everybody's pushing the price ceiling seeing how high they can go and you know we talked about this with toy story it's like if the company sees these flippers taking these games sitting on them and then selling them for prices like thirteen thousand dollars they're just like well why don't we why don't we get this money instead of them so um yeah if that's what the flippers were getting then uh that's what people are willing to pay and you know for a theme like this i think there is going to be an audience out there for it uh as long as the game is is good enough right i appreciate that the pro didn't see that big price jump. I don't know why the premium had to, though.
    28:51
    If you're trying to deal with the flippers, they're not really flipping the premium as much as the LEs are.
    28:56
    How much did that go up from the last time I didn't compare? Like $1,000. Okay, yeah, that's pretty significant. Yeah, for sure. The pro went up like $200 versus the premium went up like $1,000-ish. Yeah.
    29:13
    That's the... Well, you know, thanks flippers you really did it all right anything else to say on uh uh on bond i mean we saw a little bit of video uh the code looks like bare bones you've said that a few times it looks like it reminds me of uh it's a little bit better than uh batman 66 when it launched but not much batman 66 is like your box of lights yeah i don't know we'll see if i get it i mean right now that is i got a hole downstairs but i was i was talking to you before we started the stream i'm think about maybe just maybe i get a big buck hunter reloaded and then i wait a year to see what bond's like there you go i don't know yeah i mean countdown in that hole they're talking we didn't talk about this like the the rollout of it so they're gonna uh they're gonna send some out to they're gonna do le's and pros and then there's like this three month gap and then they're gonna do pros in the spring for homeowners so it's really weird uh so it makes you wonder like why rush it you know if it's not going to come out that quick anyways but i guess if you're going to put them out on route then it needs to be something there yeah we didn't talk about the l1 edition right oh yeah not really um i don't think is there pictures here there's like one leaked picture of course there is um because they they could not get it together oh here's one um over on this week in pinball so this is uh i think looks yeah it does look really cool that's what it is yeah they just took took everything just like packed it all in there but it says 007 on the back glass so there you go that's a win yeah it's a it's a single level play field game uh designed by keith ellen um 60th anniversary edition you can see a little bit closer up of a shot there so there's a spinner on the right oh my god and there's like a 007 um target thing back there i guess i don't know it's hard to tell But it's weird that they go with 007 From a branding perspective When most people just call Bond or James Bond Like most people like Everybody knows what 007 is right But like that's not like what you default to When you're talking about Bond You say Bond movies You're like oh do you watch the 007 movies You're like fuck is wrong with you Oh just say Bond I know It's better than saying Dr. No I'll give him that It's a low bar Kevin yeah this is this is like i look at this art package and i was like this is i could do this art like it's literally just take all the movie posters and put them next to each other in photoshop and then take all the logos and slap on the side of the cabinet this is not art this is graphic design this is not art that's pretty ugly too it's just ugly that's worse than the other things that we looked at yeah it's it's just super lazy but whatever oh that's restriction it's probably restricted restrictions again and if you're trying to get everything in there and these are the assets you have go ahead and slap all this crap on there and then we didn't talk about pricing on this one yet this is a call for pricing game so if you remember the the most recent call for pricing game was elvira 25th anniversary or 40th anniversary whatever anniversary it was um and that was like 25 000 games so good luck with this everybody they're really they're like well we'll put Keith Elwin on this we'll charge $25,000 and it's got a lower bill of materials so they're gonna make a killing on these games so good for you Stern you're really doing it all right I bet it'll be fun though and I heard we might have access to to play one eventually for a mutual friend so maybe we'll get to stream it for you guys that'd be fun all right anything else on bond did we cover it all i think so good job yeah we're good okay you did it all right uh what's up next nick did the uh the rundown so what's up no yeah shit um oh boy spinal tap oh spinal tap all right i got that i want to save my voice but i guess we'll talk about this garbage all right so i'll this is coming to you from pinball news again after months of development and teaser images taiwan-based home pins much anticipated this is spinal tap game much anticipated uh yeah i don't know that's a bit of a stretch has debuted at the pin fest show in newcastle australia pictures from the show were posted by tony pinball sit on the pinball inside thread about the game and are used with permission of home pin head mike kalinowski So yeah we've seen the cabinet They've posted pictures of that Oh man you want to talk about bad art Oh god dude that art is so Fucking bad It gets worse as you scroll down Yeah So bad That is The green line too That is bad It's super fucking bad What is How hard can it be to find somebody to not just do shitty art like apparently hard you know art's not easy it bad art is easy good art is is very difficult so yeah this is bad and uh it just looks so cheap says spinal tap looks better than l1 bond uh highly disagree highly disagree the cabinet baby i'll give you that outside the cabinet yeah outside the cabinet looks better this playfield though that is that is hideous yeah i was like i like how they made the in lanes pure white so when you get those ball ball trails you're gonna show right up on those in lanes smart be like yeah i like the rainbow on the play field look at that goes to 11 no yeah it goes to 11 i don't know if you knew that about spinal tab but because you know like really big not only you know like massive 11 insert it says this one goes to 11 and a huge font at the bottom because that's how amp volumes look They light up from pink. They got a lot of pink in there and then lime green. That's the colors.
    35:12
    Yeah. You know what? They have a, I remember seeing that they have a high speed, the getaway in their factory. And that's like the exact same layout of high speed in the middle, you know, with the RPMs.
    35:29
    It's like just modeled after that. Except it's a dial now. and there's a you know so we can scroll through this piece of garbage a little bit uh this has got some ramps this inner one they shot some video and it was super clunky and the ball didn't go up there and the call-outs were terrible it just kept saying shoot the spanner shoot the spinner like a thousand times with no context and the rules were garbage and uh yeah there's little guitars and there's a pickle and a double neck guitar and oh i hope they have the uh the hot glue i'm necessarily that oh so the back box is fun because it's got a full lcd screen but it's also got uh dmd because the lcd screen just shows like videos from the movie and of course it says turn it up to 11 at the bottom of the big screen if you didn't get that joke yet uh but then all the like rules and stuff take place the quote-unquote rules take place on the the dmd area um uh oh i want to see that i really wish the uh the hot glue picture was in here because they had so there's a drum set in the back uh right of the game and it was literally just like hot glued in place afterwards is some there i don't know if it's their distributor or something in australia posted on pin site about how oh these are just uh test models and these aren't production and of course you say that after the fact not you you roll it out to the show you assume you're getting a finished product but allegedly they just like slapped some of those crap together at the last minute which you know not a surprise not a surprise based on the the makers of the legendary thunderbirds the worst ranked pinball game on pin side thunderbirds how did how do you make thunderbirds and yet you're on game number two how is that possible how is this guy still around making games you know some fucking money laundering scheme like i don't understand is there some insurance fraud going on like yeah i mean we've seen worse in pinball right no one's buying how many thunderbirds they sell 40 like yeah like less than 100 it had to be right yeah makes no sense yeah i don't know i don't know it's yeah where's where's the money coming from to run the factory and employ the people and obviously they're not paying anybody to code the machine because it was like barely anything going on in there so uh yeah i mean i guess if you're a huge spinal tap fan i'm sorry i'm sorry but we're moving on don't do not buy that game that's that's my recommendation i haven't paid it played it but i have played thunderbirds and i've seen enough of this one to tell you don't buy it there you go don't buy it uh what's next we're going to uh there's a rumor that there's a Pulp Fiction game being done by Chicago Gaming. Oh yeah, here we go. It's a single level machine, and it may be revealed before end of 2022. That was an article from Nap Arcade.
    38:27
    Yeah, so I was talking about this with some pinball friends last night too, and I was like, it was funny too, because we were talking about I met one of the local so we have a couple local folks who have robbed zombies, and our friend Matt has been going over there trying to fix them so i met the other rob zombie owner last night at the concert that i went to and he was talking about how terrible that was but then we got into talking about pulp fiction and he said uh i'm gonna i'm gonna call zach and put my put my order in just based on the theme so there you go theme man theme will get people to get their ball never learns people never learn yeah it could be a terrible game but because it's pulp fiction i love pufferfish and it's a great movie but uh cgc has never made a new like pinball machine from the ground up they've only done remakes to this point so we don't know what their capabilities are from a programming perspective or a rules perspective or you know even like a mechanical design you know designing their own max and things like that although if it's a single level play field there's not as much to worry about there um but you still gotta come up with a creative play field and a good rule set i hear they have chris franchi is working with them who's you know he's he's done good art for for stern in the past um so they probably have that locked down but who the heck knows and i know they work with uh um roger sharp so licensing is probably legit they're not gonna start a kickstarter to get their license after they design the game like some of these folks do but uh yeah that'd be cool uh i would be interested in any pulp fiction if it's not ridiculously priced and it's fun yeah all right we're going to oh man pinball adventures what we're gonna document their incompetence on youtube apparently this is from nap arcade too do you want to come over and watch on my big screen kevin yeah let's get some popcorn i've got popcorn so they're they're they haven't even like shipped any of their first game funny factory yeah they've been talking about for fucking six years or something yeah as long as we've been doing this podcast i feel like we've been talking about that But now he's going to... Let's move on to Elements.
    40:37
    Fledgling pinball developer Pinball Adventures, that's putting it kindly, has been showing off its transition to a new facility on its social media account. The new facility... Is the facility here? Because it looks like a... Skipnade pointed this out. It looks like a UPS store that they moved into.
    40:52
    It's pretty good. Yeah, there you go. There's a good shot of it. Isn't that what it looks like? It's like, here's a... Why are you working on game two when Punny Factory is not even shipped? Yep. How does that even remotely make sense? What kind of... Somebody tell me, what kind of scam is going on here? I'm not into the scam worlds. Like, what is going on? What kind of tax fraud? This is Canada, so like, what kind of tax fraud's being committed? What kind of shell company is this? This is fucking... Something's up. Some fraud's going on. Well, he's got that extermination business that's funding this, right? We figured that out. It makes no sense that he's not... He's been developing this game for years. Like, it could be six years later. It's got to be close to it. And then he's talking about moving on game to two, but it's not even done with game one. That makes no – this is not a complicated game, Pony Factor. It's a single-level game. It's not complicated. Yeah. It could be more basic.
    41:49
    Real basic. But let's look at elements. Did you take a look at this – there's like – it looks like a fish tank in the bottom of the cabinet. I don't know what the hell's going on. It's got cabinet – inside cabinet art that goes all the way down to the bottom of the cabinet. Why? Yep. And then there's stuff on the bottom, like a dead fish and a, I don't know, octopus or something in the back there. I don't know. I don't know, man. But he's got a powder-coated cabinet assembled, and he's got art.
    42:16
    What is that shooter ride? What is going on there? I don't know. I'm a little nervous. He's going to document it, though. Yeah, well, let's all, you know, maybe we'll have a watch party on the Twitch channel, and we can watch some elements together. That'd be good. Thank you Penelope Ventures Queen trailer isn't a complete dumpster fire Tell us about that Nick Oh that was my note I thought their trailer No I thought their trailer was well done Whoever they paid to do that trailer I think did a really good job Did you watch it? Yeah I did it was pretty good Yeah it gets you excited And stuff You know I don't think this game looks great at all and we can kind of tear it apart. But, like, the trailer, they were competent in doing a good trailer. Yeah. I'll give them credit for a well-edited trailer for sure. Yeah. They spent some money on that. Yeah. That's it. That's all I've got. Okay. Yeah. So we saw the ball. It was like a very Stern-esque trailer where you got up-close shots of the ball moving around the play field. So you don't really know what's happening, but you can just kind of see how the mechs work and how the ball moves around the play field and, you know, rock and roll and whatnot and fat bottom girls were in there so all the all the horny old men get all worked up about that so they got that going for them uh what's uh oh down here uh weird al oh i threw this one in so weird al um hit they hit 1.0 congratulations to the multimorphic team uh i got to do the uh the uh first stream of it and i made it all the way to the end of the game and beat the damn wizard mode on the stream what more do you people want i crushed it it's time to sell no it's fun so what's cool what's cool about well and it's a module it's not like a whole game so that's the beauty of the p3 i get i'm like i'll just throw heisting back in for a while and then i'll come back to this um but i uh what's cool is like it reminds me of big final heist a little bit it's like its own mode but this is even more so it's like the speed run mode where you have to run through all the uh all the different scenes of the the game and yeah there's like very specific quick objectives you have to do in like it starts off at 30 seconds i did i think it is to hit two shots then you move to the next one and then how fast you do it the extra time you have carries over into the next one so you can build up your time as you go and the speed runs and it keeps track of all your your split times as you go so you can try to improve your times if you fail out of the mode it drops you back out but then you can go back in and pick up where you left off so that's really cool too so i really like what they did here it's a it's something we haven't seen to this level um you know we've got i think tna had the first like speed run mode in uh martha martha just went through your room and distracted me did you see you saw i sorry she wasn't on screen though so She's going to the hot tub. She's like a robot. You missed that. Came out of her bathroom. Yeah.
    45:24
    Yeah. So this is a great time. If you want to see it, check it out on the YouTube channel. I highlighted that game. But it's funny because I had put together a whole, like, I spent time, like, setting up a save state so I could get to that mode and show it off if I didn't get there on stream. And then I just ended up going through and blowing through it. So I crushed it. That's right. Pat myself on the back. I did it. good job to the Multimorphic team and it's a good time. I also found a bug that they fixed like the next day so that was good.
    45:53
    Alright up next oh yeah this was a good one. Good in a bad way but it was just like you know something's a little fishy here so this is Bitronic the folks that were making that Super Hoop game we showed that off a while back.
    46:10
    They had a massive fire at their factory so it makes you wonder did they just want to get out of the pinball business this is a way to do it or uh this is a bad situation either way but uh that's one way to exit the pinball industry that's for sure but according to the post they're gonna rebuild and and keep things going but i don't know things are looking pretty rough i hope hopefully everybody's good over there but uh yeah one way to get out real quick all right so talking about let's go over here oh where is it uh i didn't load that one up the trident pinball did you check those guys out at all i did not no all right so we want to talk about non-manufacturers here you go we've got a new uh oh yeah dreamer it's like a new one every podcast this is uh god octomods yeah oh this is actually there's two links i want this other link because this is good where they actually start selling them the trident pinball diy homebrew kits uh is developing a new company side gig uh diy homebrew kits for your pinball machines uh and it's available now so we can go over here and check it out so for 2200 you get a diy homebrew kit produced with the end user in mind want to create a homebrew but don't know where to start this kit will have you flipping within a few hours with hot bumpers slings, flippers, lower lane switches. The included Cobra pin board, like never heard of that before, where'd that come from, will be pre-programmed with all the quote-unquote normal mechanics and switches set up with included diagram. All the user will have to do is mount and run wire, easy diagram included. The kits come with the following parts, single board computer mini PC running Linux, and mission pinball framework. The Cobra pin board, power supply, blank white wood with trough flippers, slings, lower guides, pre-cut jigs for inserts, pop bumpers, switches, etc. Two flipper assemblies, two flipper two slingshot assemblies, two flipper assemblies three pop bumpers, four lane switches, one four ball trough, a lower inner lane guides, wiring diagram, six rolls of wire user support and option to pre-cut other items if the customer provides the cut file three weeks so $2,200. I don't know if it doesn't come in a cabinet, it sounds like. So this is just the play field, right? Yeah, no pictures of like this?
    48:47
    No. I have no take on this. I have no idea even where to... Yeah. There you go. The thing was, they were talking about the original thread. He was saying, what if people wanted to make their own homebrew games based on whatever themes they want to? And it's like, well, yeah, you can make one and then you can't, you can't sell it or license it out unless you get the license. And you're never going to do that if you're just making homebrew stuff. But I guess if you wanted to do something like that, you could, but you could also just get a P3 and it's going to be more expensive. But there's already all of this hardware and assist. The system has been more developed. There's a whole community behind it. and it already does all the flippers and the slings and you just drop into your back module. So if you're going to homebrew something, that seems like a better way to go if it was me, but I can see the appeal of wanting to make a whole play field yourself too. So I don't know. But it just seems like there's a lot of solutions out there already that you could go with that have been established and they have more developers behind it. There's more community doing stuff with Mission Pinball and Fast and the multi-morphic P-Rock boards and things like that. So, I don't know. It just seems like a why bother at this point. Or if you're going to do it, use one of those platforms that already exist and just provide the play field and the slingshots and all that. But whatever. Go out there, and if somebody buys one, let us know how it goes because I'm skeptical.
    50:20
    Sign me up for skeptical too. Yeah. Speaking of skeptical, how's that for a transition? ballarama we haven't heard from our friends at ballarama in a while but um this comes from swings i'm pin side he said check the link of their patents and two of the three are available to view going to be some heavy mech heavy play fields and potential nightmare to service with pass-through mechs so here's a few screenshots of the multi-faceted arcade device like a multi-level drop slash pivot back target interesting idea but makes the layout seem a bit repeated so it they their big idea was to take say a drop target and wait for it it's going to go through two play fields instead of one two levels of a play field and it'll drop down on both play fields at the same time oh my god what an innovation uh they're really doing it so there's that and here's a here's a side view where you can hit it up top hit it down below it's gonna drop Wow. Real exciting. Who gives a shit?
    51:25
    Oh, my mic's on, huh? What's the point of having a two-level playfield if it's going to have the exact same mechs on it?
    51:32
    It's just overcomplicated, not a demand. Look at that. Look how stupid that is. Dude, it's super dumb. It's super dumb. It's who cares. Yeah. You know what's great? Drop targets are great. What would we do? three drop targets all at the same time. It'd be great. Oh, my God. Yeah. No, dude. This is from a guy who can't discern attack from Mars coming out in the 70s or the late 90s. I mean. Oh, it's the same thing except it's a pop bumper on two levels at the same time. Pop bumpers.
    52:08
    Oh, my God. Yeah. There you go. That's ballerama for you. So dumb. Yeah. I don't even have the heart to make jokes anymore. I'm just straight up, this is dumb. It's dumb. Next. I put the amount of effort into the Ballerama jokes as he puts into his fucking ideas. That's right. But we got to check in on our friends at Ballerama every once in a while and let you know what's going on. Because I know you people like it.
    52:37
    And last but not least, TNA 2.0. Spooky announced Total Nuclear Annihilation 2.0. And I didn't load it up. but it's the same game with all the fancy stuff built in and Scott just released some new code and, uh, it's, it's coming out soon. They have not sold all of them. It's, uh, they announced two, I think it was a two run of 250. I'm pretty sure you can go to the spooky pinball website now and still get one because they priced up in $9,000. And that is a lot of money compared to what I think there were 5,500 when they came out a couple of years ago. so they're really shooting for the moon on that one and there you go, what do you think about TNA 2.0 I mean I wasn't interested in it at the other price point, I thought it had some good music and jams, it was fun for a while but you know it's got the usual spooky issues in it and I don't think it's like longevity type of game right so yeah and why would you buy that game at that price point when you can buy a Rush or Godzilla or a new Bond even I don know what the compelling reason is Yeah I think that the best their best selling point advantage is coming out with a game like but maybe you can't do that in this market. Um, that price point, I don't, I don't get it. It's not, it's not for me. It's not for me. Let's just put it that way. Yeah. I mean, it's a great game. I love playing it. I would not want it at that price. Right. So sure. And that's, I think a lot of people said the same thing and that's why you can still buy them where you know there was a lot of folks who wanted that game there's i remember seeing chatter about tna 2.0 for a while like when's that coming out i want a tna i love this game and then it's like oh it's nine thousand dollars maybe not maybe not maybe not all right um anything else before is it time is it review time do you want to give some updates do you want to do some Oh yeah I've been playing recent Last couple weeks Godzilla Nice Especially because we got to review it right So I was going heavy on that And then prior to that Mando These games are so different like Mando and Godzilla Super different so like When I get in the mood for one of those games I'm not in the mood to play the other one Like Godzilla is like more constant It's more forgiving it's just kind of like an even pace of like fun i would say and excitement mando is like i'm on the edge of my seat like every next every shot could be like the end of me so it's it's a really intense game so um totally different experiences which i'm glad i have both um and that's that's probably for like the last month i've been playing them rush is not rush is just i i i i still love rush if I had to keep one it probably would be Rush out of all three of those games but I've just been spending some time with the other ones Sure, Rush got 1.0 code when are you going to beat the game? Come on, 21-12 let's go. Yeah, I know I don't want to I'm afraid to because I know I can get to the end of it. I see a lot of people getting to the end of Godzilla that came out with the 1.0 code too and I guess Godzilla just ends when you beat it, it's one of those What do you think about that by the way? What do you think about Pinball Machine ending when you... I'm a fan. So I played Dialed In. The one day I was like, I'm going to stream Dialed In tonight. And then my first game of the night, I beat it.
    56:21
    Start to finish all the sim cards. And then I got to the end. The ending is anticlimactic. And then I'm also like, okay, I kind of don't want to play this game anymore.
    56:32
    I'm a fan of games ending. I feel like I could see the, the, if you're playing competitively and you make it that far, you want to keep going. And, but chances are, if you make it that far, you're not getting beat. And, uh, yeah, I'm done at that point. I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of just being done.
    56:50
    Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, I don't think I have strong feelings either way. I totally get that point. And then, like, the quote-unquote pinball purist in me is, like, you never beat pinball, right? Like, you always lose at the end. Like, you lose when all your balls are drained, right? Like, you're down to none left. So kind of like, I don't know. No strong feelings either way on it. Yeah. I think TNA was one of the first games to do that. And then we saw it in Alice Cooper, I think, ends when you get to the end of it. Heist ends when you get to the end of it. So it's a trend, I think. And I think that comes back to the, you know, we talked, you know, a couple years ago about how the new generation of designers and programmers are coming in. And they grew up with video games and they're bringing more of those concepts into pinball. And I think that's an extension of that, right? Because people play for progress versus points sometimes. and when you're playing for progress, you're going through a story, you get to the end of the story, the story's over, right? Like at the end of Heist, you're on the Heist, and you go through the whole storyline, and then that's it. It makes sense, and you're done. Weird Al is also the same way. You get to the end, and then it's over. So I'm okay with it. I like it. I'm done.
    58:10
    All right. Should we review it? What do you think? Yeah, let's do it. So where's my intro? I don't know where all my stuff is. All right, here we go.
    58:20
    Let's go. all right we're talking gondola it's uh released by stern in 2021 one it's designed by keith elwin with art by zombie yeti software by brett rubin mike kizavat and rick nagel and signed by jerry thompson the pricing uh is this current pricing or launch pricing launch i believe i think i pulled that from uh let me go stern's website let's this is my fault guys it did okay though overall right kevin yeah so we have it at 69 for the pro 9,000 for the premium. Did everything increase? All the games?
    59:21
    Yeah, they're talking there's going to be another price increase in January. Holy sh... Really? Yeah, I think like a $700 price increase or something like that. To everything? Yeah.
    59:34
    So premium's going to be over $10? Or it's just under $10 I think is where it's going to be. $89.99 is what Stern says. This is Stern's website for the premium, which is less than Bond premium. And the Bond premium is pretty much $9,700. Yeah, so that's where you're going to have $9,700 for your premium on Godzilla. On these older games. Gosh, so the other games are going to catch up to Bond levels. Got it. So they're not going to jack up Bond again in January. No, no, no. Yeah, so the older games are going to go up. Get one now if you can find it.
    60:09
    Seriously, get one now. Are you buying one? uh i haven't announced it yet okay but i am getting one yes uh so that was one of the the we didn't talk game room updates for me but avengers is going bye-bye because i'm getting the game that i wanted to get in the first place and that was godzilla um i was able to track down a premium at msrp uh with no shipping so i was like let's go um so patrick's gonna buy avengers and james is gonna buy patrick's uh gnr and james is gonna pick it up and drop it off and i'm just gonna sit here and he's gonna leave me money and take my game it's gonna be great uh but i'm getting a guzzly little premium uh it's the uh 2021 game from from keith ellen let's start off talking about the arch uh by zombie yeti why don't you do the honors because you have one of these sitting in your game room yeah i mean the the art's absolutely beautiful as zombie yeti always delivers on art i'm you know I always kind of say this, like, I'm not for a busy art style, and that's kind of Zombie Yeti. He's pretty busy on his art. It's fantastic. It's beautiful. But I think sometimes on pinball machines, less can be more, because sometimes they help shape the shots or show you the shots. But I think on this game, it's a little more – he does a better job of kind of outlining the shots. I don't know if you agree with me, Kevin, on that. I think, and it's not like I went back and looked at his other games, but I think this is, like, kind of perfect in terms of doing all his quality and detail, but also having kind of clearly defined shot lines in many ways. Yeah, I agree. I think Deadpool was the game that he, like, went the craziest on as far as, like, just loading it with art, which I love, but it's also, I can see your point where it's, like, you kind of need, it's harder to track the ball when there's so much going on, right? and especially on something like Deadpool where it's so red like everything's red even the lighting is red out of the box so something like this does a better job of kind of defining it while also having his awesome art everywhere and it looks great this is like the epitome of a great pinball art package in my opinion I agree so I mean like again I've always liked Zombie Yeti like in terms of what he creates I don't always think that they fit well in a pinball machine but I think this is like maybe he recognized that or whatever but this is perfect this is like I can't imagine it aren't being any better it's everything you want it's got the defined lines but also you hardly lost out on any like detail right like it's perfect yep exactly what do you think about I'm not going to say it Godzilla looking like a watermelon no Martha pointed out on the stream oh the other thing that we talked about on the back last yeah we won't we don't do yeah okay but can i can i say my favorite arty art detail is the pop of carpet in the building oh yeah i love on the premium and le only they don't get it on the pro well that's why i had to get the premium because uh oh yeah this is spoiler alert like i'm reviewing this from the premium perspective um and look i'm not like you know sometimes pro is a great version this is like one of the best games ever made this is this is you get the premium on this game you just do you gotta like donate blood whatever like this game's too good not to get the premium um we're gonna talk about that more later on but i just feel like it has to be said i can't wait sometimes to the end of the podcast i just like to put the shit up front um but yeah get the premium yeah so here's the there's the premium play field um yeah it looks great i mean like i don't think there's one cabinet that i like more than the other i think they're all really great just in different ways um there's not usually in these three art packages there'll be one that's like yeah i don't love that one as much but they're all really cool right just with i mean godzilla's awesome monsters and you put different monsters in different positions and i don't know i think you just kind of crushed it all the way around yeah yeah um yeah so uh yeah as far as like how i'm approaching this review I've played both models quite a bit. I think I've played the Pro more. I was actually just out playing the Pro last night before the concert I went to. And, yeah, I like them both. I love the toys on the Premium. Obviously, that's why I'm going for the Premium LE toys. I'm going for the Premium. But the Pro is just super fun as it is, right? It's just a great game. You can't go wrong with either one. So yeah, Godzilla. But anything else to say about the art? No, I see some people in chat. They're like, oh, I got the Pro. It's like, okay. I mean, get the game. Better than not having Godzilla. Get the game. I don't want to see regret on this. But why did you get the Premium and not the Pro? It's all the extra toys. I think the building's really cool. And the bridge is awesome. And the MechaGodzilla's cool. They're all really cool. they're like the kind of toys that I like in pinball, like interact with the ball, do something interesting and different. Right. Um, I mean, you could argue that the, the buildings, like the, the time expander and, and, um, on a doctor who, but it's, it doesn't, it does ball diversion and things like that. So it's, it's different, you know, it's sure it goes up and down, but it does a lot of different things. Yeah. It's way more than, you know, I originally thought it was up and down. Right. And you're like, okay, well, does you really need to see that trick every time. But like you said, it does, it does divert the ball. The ball kind of goes at different points at times. There's like different levels to the building and the ball will divert based on those levels. And also what I didn't immediately recognize before I even got the game was that like, you can shoot the ball through the building like you can the pro, but also you can hit the building. Um, maybe that's on the pro as well, but I, I thought that was cool. we're jumping around and that's fine but like I would say that I think the building school my favorite toy in the game is actually the bridge surprisingly enough I like how it just kind of violently shakes and wobbles and when you finally destroy it the thing kind of like does like a medieval madness type of you know violent back and forth opening up and then what really surprised me with the bridge was when you get to the bridge multi-ball and it's ready and you shoot at the bridge and the ball kind of is going towards the bridge but the bridge breaks it can fly off that thing and that was like and sometimes it flies off and the man that grabs it sometimes it just flies off and like you can approach it from the left or right ramp I don't know how the game decides like what ramp you have to hit because it's different sometimes but like that was like a surprise in pinball that I really loved when it first happened and I still enjoy it I think the bridge is like the unsung hero of the premium and Ellie. Yeah. The, has your plastic broken underneath the bridge or no?
    67:19
    So I, on my version, they scaled back the plastic. Oh, cool. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Cause I know I had seen people were putting like metal things there instead of the plastic in some instances and things like that. Yeah. And plug for Dr. Ben, he's got that. So if you have that version, And then the other thing, we'll just tackle the toys now Might as well You got the Mechagodzilla, so that actually changes I always talk about this Like when you have a game That changes the geometry of the playfield I think that's usually fun and cool You don't get that on the Pro This is, it starts off With a spinner, the spinner's more forgiving And wider on the Premium And Elliot's actually easier To hit that, and then once you Hit that enough times, it kind of rotates. It's like a lazy Susan type of thing, and then becomes stand-up targets to hit. That's his shield and barrier. So again,
    68:17
    there's legit, I think, really good toys on this compared to how we were just talking about Bond, and seemingly those toys are not on the pro and premium. They're not... They don't seem like it is caliber to get super excited over going from the pro to the premium. Of course, we haven't played Bond yet, so we'll reserve judgment on that but on this um there are i think significantly good toys to uh nudge somebody in that direction you can tell like this license is like not not only is keith ellen an amazing designer right he's the best thing going at cern right now but this is also a theme and a license that he loves and he can put he put that passion into this game uh on all levels so like all these toys are really cool interesting unique and they fit the theme right it's not just like oh i think of tron it's like oh tron has discs in it so we're gonna put this spinning disc in it that we had in pirates of the caribbean and that's gonna be our toy you know it's like uh no we're gonna do some really cool custom stuff that uh fits the theme and is also fun to shoot and has cool like they create pinball moments i know that's kind of a cliche but they do right the building collapsing the bridge collapsing uh the ball getting held on mecca godzilla's chest Those are all, like, cool, interactive, mechanical things, and that's what I like to see. Yep. Agreed. Yeah, so it was hard not to jump into the toys, but let's go back and talk about sound. So I think you could probably talk to this better than I can, but I've heard a lot of this game, and I really like what I hear. Yeah, a couple things stick out to me. I like the announcer voice. It's great. Like, look, I'm not, like, a Godzilla fan per se, so I don't – I probably watched the movies when I was a kid, but I don't remember much.
    70:06
    But the announcer voice is really good. It lends, I guess, authenticity to it. You can switch to Japanese narration, which is, again, that's like a nice touch, right? Like it being thematic and, you know, showing that this is not just let's get the job done, but actually putting some thought and passion. And that's an extra cost that they didn't have to do. And this game still would have been amazing without it, and yet they do that. You know, sound effects are great The only thing that, like, to me I find the other voice in the game Annoying It sounds like a cross between Peter Griffin from Family Guy And Nathan Lane The shoot the whamps guy Shoot the whamps I don't know if that's him I'm not even going to try to do an impression I'm not feeling it But it's I've seen other people on Pinside So I don't, it's not just me, but thankfully the announcer. I think it's funny, but yeah, I can see how it might be irritating after you hear it for a while. Yeah, well, it's not just the, I don't even know if he does the ramps or whatever. I'm not, the announcer might, but you spend some time with that guy and let me know if you. All right, I'll report back after I have him in my house. I'll be curious, I'll be curious. But then you get into the music and the music's really good. it's got i would say kind of like a 90s um driving guitar maybe alternative like vibe to it like that era um so yeah it's kind of you know generic but generic rock but but good right it gets you pumped it's fitting so uh great great sound package overall yeah i remember uh we were playing it was so we played this on the bro show recently your your new premium and i was like oh this This one kind of sounds like Danger Zone. Is it when they do the jet fighter? Is it during jet fighter when that happens? I don't know. I like that song. I like the Titanosaurus, like, 80s-ish song.
    72:11
    Like those in, like, the Martha Likes the Power line song or whatever that plays then. I said those are all really ones that stand out and are good. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
    72:23
    Good music. So, good job, Jerry Thompson. He does a good job because I like his work on Ghostbusters a lot when I had it too. So he does a good job of taking these licenses and really integrating the feel of the era. So he had songs in Ghostbusters that were, they reminded you of the music, even though they didn't necessarily have the license for all the songs that were in there. They're very evocative of that era. So he does a great job. I'm a Jerry Thompson fan, I think. No, I'm just going to say, I mean, Stern across the board, I don't, we don't always, at least I don't really pay attention a lot to the name of the person who's on the audio, but like, it's all, it's usually consistently good across the board, no matter who's working on it. Like that's something that I think Stern deserves a lot of credit for. It's just, they do good sound and good music overall. Yeah. It's, it's funny when you, when you look at some of the stuff that like some of the newer manufacturers put out, it's like sound and lighting is the, it's like night and day between Stern and JJP. and you see with like Scott Denise's games are really good because he's a very talented person, but it takes a lot of work and it's an art, right? It's not just like, oh, I'm going to make these lights turn on and off and you need to choreograph all of this stuff to make you feel good about your accomplishments and get the feedback from the games that you need to know you're doing the right things, right? Yeah, for sure.
    73:50
    All right, that works us right into display and lighting. so uh i think this game one of the things that i really love about this game so uh one of the um things that kind of pushed me over the edge to getting this is my son and i played it when we were on vacation in florida we're just dying like looking at the video clips they pick for like the different parts of the uh you know when the tilt animations and the guys dancing around or like the derpy like godzilla that comes up when you get power-ups and things like that it's they're just so good and they always make me laugh and i just they just you get exactly it goes back to the the point of like you know somebody knows the the source material inside and out when they're like oh this needs to be this really goofy looking version of godzilla right here or you know godzilla comes in and he like throws something you know super cheesy looking i love all that stuff yeah i like uh godzilla when you get like the secret combo his eyes like he looks like back and forth like it's that's the one it's good it's so good you're right again this is a game that's like a labor of love like zero phoning it in zero like this is like 100% we're gonna make the best i love this theme we're gonna make the best game we possibly can yeah and godzilla is cool because it works in two ways right it's also it's funny in that like goofy campy way but it can also be like badass like godzilla's coming in multi-ball starts and Godzilla comes in and starts smashing the buildings down so you get some of that too. It's not just cheesy jokes all the time. It's also like, oh, there's jet fighters and tanks. It kind of works on two levels, I think. It captures what I think Godzilla is. There's champiness and cheesiness, but there's also a really cool kind of premise.
    75:38
    It's a great pinball theme, no doubt. The Sega one we haven't talked about the sega one the sega beta godzilla pinball machine in the 90s and that's a cool game but you know it's nowhere near as good as this one right no i mean no it's i mean none of the 90s games well i mean first of all like you know williams kind of had more of a magic than uh sega or anybody else did but like even you know the best williams games just really cannot compete with what we're doing now in pinball in terms of rules and um you know the presentation right with lighting and sound it's just uh we're a different level now and rightfully so we're several decades ahead of that yeah absolutely yeah no no doubt there all right so let's talk gameplay i'll let you take the lead on this because you've got a lot more uh timing on it than i do i mean i played it a lot but yeah i would say this is um a very accessible game and i think this is why this game is sitting at number one on pin side um you know i've witnessed what happens to games that are difficult or hard or brutal like with the market the way it is so many people coming into pinball right now if you don't make a game that's accessible you're gonna have some some trouble winning everybody over um godzilla works because it's accessible to um all skill levels somebody who's just you know doesn't nerd out isn't competitive you know the casual pinball player could probably do something cool um the game's got some pretty easy shots to hit i would say if you miss a shot it's pretty forgiving because it's it's it's wide open um even more casual players can certainly start stringing some shots together you know a lot of the shots like the right ramp is is wide open um there's a number of shots that it just flows well the the shots are kind of naturally where you think they're going to be on the flipper. So then you start stringing some shots together and you feel pretty damn good. And better players are just going to string even more shots together and feel even better.
    77:44
    I find that I don't have to aggressively be on edge when I play the game. I'm always, every shot's going to be my last kind of deal, and I've got to be ready to make a save. So it's a little more of a casual experience. But it's casual in the sense that it's forgiving, but it's a game where the ball is kind of always moving, right? You're not stopping, catching, and shooting. It's actually hard a lot of times to trap the game up on the flipper. It just wants to roll right off. It's always got a lot of momentum on it. So the thing's kind of constantly in motion, kind of moving. Thankfully, you know, there's moments in time when, like, on the premium with Mechagodzilla, the magnet will grab it and give you a chance to breathe. the super jackpot shot that's lit through shooting the building I think it's called super jackpot I don't know where you have to shoot the orbit yeah destruction jackpot that's what it is and these things are like concepts that he did on Avengers where the Hawkeye shot and the Hawkeye shot seemed cool where you hold it and drop it and you gotta hit it and time it But that always seems super brutal to me. Like, I don't think I ever hit that shot. Maybe Kevin can hit it. It's rare. Yeah, it was like a cool idea, but in execution it wasn't fulfilling and it became frustrating. Versus now, like, the speed's reduced of this because it's not dropping vertically. I think it's more fair. It's still challenging. And it just feels great, right? So, yeah, that's my assessment. I would say it's like a medium playing game.
    79:21
    You know, it's not super long. that's not like you know black knight brutal or iron man brutal anything like that it's just medium and obviously if you're you know you catch a wind and things are going great in your favor then it does become longer playing and i think the way it doles out extra balls um it's kind of logical feels fair feels right and we'll we'll keep you in the game and keep it going yeah i uh so one one toy we didn't really talk about was the magnagrab like post captive ball thing yeah that's really cool like you don't see that anywhere in pinball it's like so it's basically a giant magnet core but the way they control it like they can move the ball around in it it can whip it up the orbit and feed your flipper it can drop it down and so it does all this cool stuff and you know even little stuff like that is like that would be a major mech on some of these games but that's on the premium le you almost forget about it because there's so many other cool things on this game yeah and and and that like i don't i don't think that works as as well as it can like the magna grab so like the magna grab has a like you can light it and it grabs it and that magnet will also stop it like when you have you're ready for ball locks um or the destruction jackpot so it just works it's like a magnet but the magna grab is supposed to i guess like the get again it's supposed to kind of swing it momentum and when you hit both flipper buttons you can time it so it might go behind the upper left flipper problem is like problem is that it doesn it It doesn throw it up the orbits like you were suggesting at least not on mine it never does And it does kind of swing it a little bit but the way the game works, sometimes it's caught behind on animations, and there's a delay in the magnet grab, so by the time it stops losing its momentum, then it will finally drop it, and it's hard to really do what you... Granted, this is not needed to progress in the game in any way. I think by its nature is supposed to be more of a rare thing, but that doesn't, I don't think that works exactly the way, you know, in kind of theory it should work. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
    81:27
    I will say, you mentioned like waiting for animations to catch up, and I think that's like the one ding I would give this game is, man, sometimes you're just waiting around a long time for stuff to happen, and you're like, I just want to get back to playing pinball. and it's like the Godzilla multi-ball intro is cool, but I don't need to sit through it every time. Like, let me advance through this. At the end of the ball, like, there's all these animations that play when your bonus is countdown, and I appreciate a good bonus countdown, but it just seems excessive on this game sometimes. Yeah, no doubt it can definitely be sped up, and sometimes the animations do stack in such a way that, like, something you did a while ago finally catches up, and you're like, wait, what? Like, it's not instantaneous. So, yeah, it's like a minor quip, but if you're going to try to improve this game in some way, it could be sped up at times. Yeah, I also can appreciate you getting a break, but maybe just not quite that long.
    82:22
    Yeah, let's get back to it. The other thing, gameplay-wise, I want to mention, you talk about how it can be hard to trap up. I also feel like we were talking about this last night when we were playing the pro.
    82:33
    The shots are easier to make when you're shooting them on the fly, like the scoop by the saucer. it's almost impossible to hit from a trap but if you're shooting it on the fly like i hit it most of the time when i'm when i'm shooting it on the fly same with the the left orbit the left ramp um i i was shooting that way better on the fly oh okay yeah maybe it's just me my gameplay style but yeah i don't i didn't notice i mean i don't maybe it's your gameplay style and familiarity with the game um i mean it's a testament to how well it flows right um yeah I guess I don't necessarily have that problem I think one thing that As we're talking about this So This game has like a number of skill shots Which is cool Like Yeah A number of ways to do skill shots The problem is Some games like mine And I'm reading on the forums It seems like The plunge is not clean So the one that we have on location Kevin at Masuda Child Is like Plunge is perfect Alright My game is not perfect and like there's nothing I can seemingly do to make I can move the play field around a little bit it looks like it's lined up on the ball um I've got my my pitch level right like it's just like nothing I can do to get it feeling as good as the one in Masuda Chow's and like that that becomes a problem in the sense that like they've programmed in these cool skill shots but it becomes more of a luck fest I feel like I just really have like zero control when I when I release that thing I have no idea what the ball is going to do I've at best a general idea of what it might do um and i don't know if that was just like it's designed in a way that it's just there's like no wiggle room for variations in manufacturing right that's sure when they design it's fine but then you start manufacturing there's like little variations and that that's enough and it doesn't seem like there's an easy way to just get it as good as it can be because like i said i played the game of pseudo childs and it's perfect it's not just like oh it's pretty good it's like feels great yeah i agree yeah because i was i was playing it last night you know you can get the short one easy the shoot around shot um yeah so i could see how that would be frustrating if it's not working well on your game um so to anybody listening who's having that problem i haven't spent a ton of time on it number one um something weird like stern had like a playfield like stabilizer kind of like from shifting left to right and i guess they removed that were saying in chat and allegedly they removed that because they don't their new cabinet design doesn't need anymore well that doesn't make any sense i can move that cabinet left and right like ease like it's got a lot of play in it so i'll move it i'll get it centered on the um plunger which is nice at least i don't have to move the plunger around and play it with it that way um but the other thing that i did that might have made it a little bit better is like the um screw on the ramp in the shooter lane i somebody said they loosened theirs a little bit and it helps and i loosened mine a little bit and it might have made it like a little bit better it's still not still not where it needs to be but hopefully that helps somebody yeah well yeah like you said these little tolerances in manufacturing can make a big difference especially on a like a precision uh shot like that and we you saw it with key flakes those quick turnaround loops that's what's in the back left orbit shot it like kicks it up that so you gotta get a really good shot to get it up there and if like on jurassic park some of the screws were sticking out a little bit or it wasn't like assembled quite right and i can like make that shot of break fast if it's not in there right yeah i mean overall this this uh i love that this is an original layout and you get tons of points for that not only the original layout it's a original layout that plays great feels great to shoot it's very satisfying um that you know upper Who doesn't like the upper left loops? We've seen a lot of these games now where you can just do that repeatable loops. It rewards you for doing so.
    86:29
    It's really good stuff. I like the left orbit shot. That's really a ramp that goes around. So, yeah, I mean, it's just nice. It's refreshing to play a game that isn't like any other game. Yeah, and it's easy to make a different play field that's very bad. Yeah. Spooky. That's why there's a risk. That's why there's the risk to it, you know? like that's why i'm sure like a lot of the veteran designers just stick to like what they know it's too much of a risk but you know i would don't give a fuck yeah he knows he knows i i feel like this is the game where he finally figured out that everybody cannot shoot like he does and he scaled it back a little bit you know jurassic park was really cool but some of the shots were really hard uh and even on avengers some of the shots even the right orbit i almost never shoot it because it's just in a weird spot and if you're keith ellen i'm sure it's no problem it's like oh i just shoot this orbit as much as i want but you know godzilla i feel like you found kind of the sweet spot where uh the the everybody can have some fun on this game you might have a hard time with the left orbit shot but you're gonna be able to shoot the the right ramp and the big super jackpot loop and everything like that you're gonna be able to do um do most of that without Not much hassle. Yeah, I think every shot in the game is fair. Every shot in the game is really good. Again, majority of shots are easy. Even the ones that are a little more difficult, I think, are perfectly in the realm of difficulty. I want some shots that are a little more difficult, like that left spinner.
    88:02
    Let's have a shot that requires you to be a little more precise. That's pinball. Every shot in Mandalorian, you need to be precise. That game is like every shot is precision. And, again, like having shots that require position are difficult makes the game more exciting because you're on your edge of the seat of, oh, my God, I could lose the ball. Like this is failures looming, and then you make it and you feel satisfying. When you have shots that are really easy, that's fun, but also it takes away some of the drama. So I think overall it's a good blend. Overall, the shots are easy, satisfying, and accessible, but there are some ones that, you know, you're threading the needle a little bit, and I think that's great. For sure, yeah. I was joking that Eberra is the mode where you shoot the center spinner a bunch, you shoot the right spinner a bunch, and then you hopefully can shoot the far left spinner.
    88:51
    Most of the time you're hitting that flipper instead. Usually one shot to that, you're good, though, mercifully. Yeah, the rules are good in that way.
    89:00
    Let's talk some more about the rules since we're starting to get into rules. What do you think about the rules on Godzilla? I can't fault it in any way, man. The rules seem great. Like, you know, I love the option of choosing the battle modes and then how it opens up later on and being able to choose what city. So you can play the game a little differently every time. There probably is, like, an optimal path to victory, but, you know, I mix it up. I play differently. I like how you can stay in a city and just try to build up and do, like, you know, like, there is, like, selecting a mode, and the mode is essentially fighting, doing a battle against a monster. But you're also, when you're not in a mode, you're playing through the game in a way, like a scoring sense. So I guess I would say the, I never really thought of this. I guess like the, there is modes, and the modes are the monsters, and you play through the monsters to kind of progress through the game. But you don't have to be in a mode to, like, score necessarily, which is cool, right? Like, usually games are either like, oh, it's going to be a mode-based game, or it's kind of like an open-ended scoring game. You know, like, I don't know, maybe consider Metallica like an open-ended. There's not modes in Metallica, right? It's kind of open-ended scoring. So, like, in this, there's kind of both, which is the best of both worlds. So I like being able to have some decisions. I like not a strictly linear game. And, again, I think he does – he improves upon other things he's done. And maybe the credit goes to the person who did the rules. but like on Avengers there's that cool concept with Doctor Strange and you get X amount of flips right?
    90:44
    That's cool the first time but then I kind of find it annoying and boring like the more I've played it, it kind of wore off on me but on this one they have I think it's Terror of Mechagodzilla they do that but they do that via like a multi-ball which makes it a little more interesting because you're naturally going to flip a little bit more it's a little more exciting and then um you sort of don't fail on that then it just becomes like an open-ended multi-ball and like how you've done in each round is the value of the shots so i again like i see that i see that the good core idea you know in avengers but i see it kind of perfected in godzilla yeah yeah it's cool it's cool to see the evolution of like yeah because it's like oh that's cool limited flip mode what what more can we do with that and you know what what do people like about it what don't they and we can even improve on it and make it better that's the talking about rules like they just got to 1.0 and it felt like every time a code update came out for this there was some awesome new feature like there would be rules and like bug fixes and things like that but there's they're always adding so much more to this game and that was another thing that kind of pushed me over the edge to buying one is like there's so much to do in it there's all these cool modes There's all this stuff to accomplish. You're going to be enjoying this game for a while. Yeah, so Blueberry Johnson, I'll give him a shout-out because he's our man on the street usually. Good stuff in the forums. He says, I don't know. There are a bunch of tough shots on Godzilla, Left Spinner, and Scoop are tough. So, yeah, I don't think we talked about the Scoop a lot. The Scoop is the tough shot on the game, I would say. Yeah. You know, my percentage on hitting it is almost like 50%, and it's got a pop-up over there. And I like that. I mean, I don't want the scoop to be super easy. That's where you start a mode. That's where you get the upgrades. That's fine. The left spinner is a tough shot, like I said earlier, but you can also pretty much ignore it for a lot of the game. You don't have to hit that tough shot to progress through most of the game. So, anyways. Thanks for stopping by, man. I appreciate seeing you in chat. Yeah, the pop bumper there is not as brutal as you think it might be. It doesn't destroy you. You're like, oh man, that's right by that out lane And it's cool, it's a nice You know, it's a pop bumper At different spots, a different way to think of the pop bumper Right, like, rather than, oh let's put This game's got to have three pop bumpers Let's put them in the back right corner You know, like Yeah, it is, like, you know, let's try it down there It makes sense, and now it's a saucer And by the way, shout out to Some of the modders, so Shout out to Chrome Candy Highly recommend his mods for this game, and then Leor's UFO threw that bad boy in there.
    93:32
    Again, I'm usually traditionally not a big mod guy, but I've been going crazy with some mods on this game because I think there's really high quality mods, and I kind of want to make this game a real world under glass as much as possible and perfect this thing. Are you getting plastic trees or no?
    93:51
    I've not seen the plastic trees. See, I'm doing that Kaiju Yeah And Believe me We'll be showing that off When I get it Yeah So it replaces this little sign Right here Yeah The battle sign right Yeah Yep What else Oh and I did Powder coat Oh yeah The game It's Martha's game By the way God bless her She gets You know She's got some good games She's got good taste We'll talk more about powder coating Because I want to get Pinball Refinery on here to talk about. We'll continue my story from the summer. Lessons learned. But shout out to Pinball Refinery who did a fantastic job on powder coating. It's the only place I'm going to from now on.
    94:38
    And to answer Blueberry Johnson's question, yes, we did the non-manufacturer updates already. So you'll have to rewind the VOD if you want to check it out or wait for the podcast to come up. It'll be up on there. Yeah, that was one of the things, like talking about mods. So I started, i i didn't really pay attention to the mods i i had seen some of that but not being an owner you don't pay as much attention but there's just so many to go through and it's like man there's like six different pop bumper mods and there's ones with different like light up boards and i like the one from uh hooked on pinball that's coming out it's all chrome it looks really cool so uh man tough decisions i know uh i was talking to patrick he said he's getting a different one he's getting the one with the breakout board and a different light show and stuff so it's like all right i'll check out his i'll check out dude he's not messing around yeah no he's not yeah you should uh throw a pin woofer in yours is it did you put one in yours or no no i just i i i put the pin woofer that i got into rush because i go music pins first but you know if you get your hands on one i think this is a good game to put it on because the music and sounds good and and again godzilla's like the keeper right like that's that's the one we can you not you don't mess around with. Yep. It's cool. So what else we got? We got, uh, we talked about rules, um, and last ability. I mean, I think this game is a keeper. Yeah, it's totally a keeper. Um, I think this is a game that very easy to recommend, you know, this, this is going to be a huge seller for years to come rightfully. So, um, you know, I'm not, I've not been it yet. I've not gotten super close to beating it, which is fine. The worst thing I can do is beat a game.
    96:21
    Sometimes I wonder if subconsciously I hold back. Because once a game gets beat, then it kind of sucks. But, yeah, I think Last Ability is great. I think there's a lot of content here. It's just a lot of fun.
    96:33
    Yeah. I can see it being a long-term keeper. Like I said, every code update that came out, they were adding tons of new features and stuff to it. So, yeah, it might be a more forgiving layout, not quite as brutal, like you were saying, shots are further back, so you can have a better shot at saving your ball a lot of the times. But, you know, as long as the game fits the rule set, the rule set fits the layout, then it's a good match. And I think that's exactly what you have here.
    97:00
    Totally. All right, what do you give it, Kev? All right, I'm going to give it a nine. I think this is like, I struggle, like, I don't, like I want to play it more in my house before I rank it. Like, I feel like it's like a nine and a half, but I don't know if it's that good. I feel like it is, but I don't know if it is, but so I'm going to, I'm going to put it at a nine right now and we can, that can be to be determined. And once I get more time on it in my house. And, and do you differentiate between the pro and premium when you give it that rating? Like, I know we don't normally get into that, but we've both played it. I think they're both really good, man. I don't think you can go wrong either way, but the, toys and stuff on the premium are really cool I think it's a great game either way yeah this is the first game that I reviewed on the podcast I'm going to give it a 10 out of 10 oh shoot perfect 10 from Nick dude I don't know how you make a better pinball machine like you can have other pinball machines that are 10s but I look at this game and I struggle to think what could they have done differently that would have made it better And a lot of times that's where you differentiate and you start lowering the rating of a game where you're like, oh, they could have done this, they could have done that. This could have been a little better. You know, like you get into that, but it's a total 10 out of 10. Total 10 out of 10. I can't disagree with you there. It's the same thing. It's like, well, so I was just judging for work. I judge award entries for other chapters of this PR group that I'm in. and I had one entry was like, you know, I was going through the, going through the, the rubric. I'm like, well, they did that. They did that. They did that. And I'm a, I'm a tough grader, man. If I find points to take off, I will take them off. I couldn't find, I was giving him a hundred and I was like, you did it, man. Like, good job. So I can see, I can definitely see this being that kind of game. Well, yeah. Um, good on you for getting the game. I mean, look, look, I said premium is the way to go. And I stand by that, but no, not to anybody who has the pro and for whatever reason you have the pro it's a great game you're better off having this game than not having it so however you gotta get your hands on a game uh i totally recommend it it's hard to go wrong this game is is just a good example of just how good pinball can be awesome and uh to blake's point you know how's the chipping and pooling on your on your godzilla I won't go into it too much Okay Because there's a case going on My distributor is helping me Okay But I will say this And this is disconcerting On the quality end of things So whenever I get a game I always take a piece of clear vinyl Which I prefer over Mylar It's a little thinner And I put it in the shooter lane I don't do a cliffy in the shooter lane You can always put Clippy's later on, right? Like, Clippy's covered up completely.
    100:06
    And even with, like, 150 plays, it has chipped through and worn away the wood there. This is lowering down the trough stream to the lowest setting. Yeah, that was going to be my question. This is after having the game for a little over a month. I've never seen a game wear like that. ever. You know the Walking Dead I sold?
    100:34
    The game's seven years old. God knows it's over a thousand plays. It's nowhere on the shooter lane. The Rush looks fine. Led Zeppelin, which I've played God knows how many hours and plays over the last year, looks great.
    100:51
    That's really concerning, especially on a game where a lot of us are like, this game's a keeper. I don't know what to make of it. It's really weird and really bad and it also tried to burn down your house but the game itself is really good yeah if you want to hear more about that go to last month's podcast then you can hear all about that the trials all right so that's gonna do it we do have stay tuned though we got a brand new episode of topper's hog with the goring coming up so so don't go anywhere but uh before before we wrap it up you can give us a follow on all our social media channels check us out on twitter instagram youtube facebook and join us on discord at discord.gg slash buffalo pinball shoot us an email we haven't gotten an email and if somebody that's i want somebody to send us an email you can say say whatever you want in the email we'll read it on the uh what we might read it on the show next month um you can email us at talk pinball at gmail.com uh you can support the channel through twitch you can subscribe with your twitch prime account for no extra cost if you have amazon prime over at twitch.tv slash Buffalo Pinball. We have a PayPal account if you want to just drop some cash. BuffaloPinball at gmail.com and you can leave us a review on your favorite podcast listening platform of choice if you could. So we don't have a lot of reviews on Spotify and on Spotify, if you're listening on Spotify, all you have to go in there is click the five, the five stars. It's just real quick. It's right on the page. Boom. Give us a five. Appreciate that. It'll help bring us to the top of those rankings when people search for Pinball. uh, under views on Spotify. So, all right, until then, uh, anything else to, to wrap up the show? What, what's the final word, Nick? Go out and buy a Godzilla.
    102:36
    Go out and buy it. Get a rush too. You're crazy not to have a rush too, but yeah, get both those games. Just like that. Just, just buy both. That's what Nick Lane says. Don't be afraid to sell games. I was afraid to sell games for a long time and I thought, I'll never get rid of this game. But you know, once you rip the bandaid off, um, you know it's fun and easy if you've got a game that you haven't played in months or even a year why do you got it go out and get one of these new games they're fun play more pinball yeah it is fun to get new games like i that month where i got both weird al and toy star is like oh man there's like so much pinball i'm gonna play more pinball it's so good to have the serotonin hit you forget when you're unboxing that game and before you get to the part where it doesn't boot up or When you're unboxing it and you see the truck come, you kind of forget that. Like every second, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, you're hurtling towards nonexistence.
    103:36
    Buy a pinball machine. It'll make that weight even better. That's right. All right. And you know what else makes it better? Topper Talk with Gorin. Bye, everybody. it's topper talk with gordon right now let's all have some fun this is about plastic on top of your pin and go and buy one now there's a topper here and a topper there you're a topper they're a topper everywhere a topper it's critical to the gameplay experience you must buy one now it's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Gorin.
    104:18
    Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Gorin. The part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Now today we're going to be talking about the topper or the topper and topper for the topper for total nuclear annihilation. So let's head into the office and let's have a look at it. Okay, so here we are in the garage. So let's dive right into things. Total Nuclear Annihilation was a game that was designed by Scott Zanissi. It was a homebrew initially. He started the project back in 2015. He brought the game to Pinball Expo in 2016 and then Spooky Pinball actually produced the game in 2017 and they initially made 550 units. But now spooky pinball's announced they're going to uh make 250 more uh of the game and uh that's on sale now now the cool thing is is that total nuclear annihilation actually came with a topper which for every game sold which is something you really don't see nowadays a lot of companies will charge extra for the topper so tna um has a red beacon on top it's interactive depending on different parts of the game. It will spin, it will light up, and it really adds that overall atmosphere to the game that Scott's created with the lights and the music that he's made, and then Matt Andrews' art as well. But the funny thing is, is that, so the game comes with that topper, but there's also a topper almost for the topper that's for sale, and you can view it here. um it's it's technically mounted to the back box of the game but it stands above the beacon uh and all it says is spooky pinball hot pinball action um now you may be wondering what uh why there's such a simple topper and that's actually paying homage to high speed which also came with a beacon topper back in the day so um that topper uh was a beacon looks a little different from TNA, but very similar. And it also had a hot pinball action topper with the Williams logo on top. So that's just a fun nod to Williams. Now, a cool thing about this run of, or TNA in general, is their topper is actually a slot machine topper, Scott told me. I guess it was simpler to just purchase slot machine toppers rather than assemble and create their own beacon themselves when it's already been done and are mass produced for the slot machine industry. Now, the last thing I want to say is I did mention that, you know, the hot pinball action topper is an upcharge or was an upcharge, but for the new run of 250 units, as a surprise, Spooky decided to throw in that topper with the other topper and have each one signed by Scott Denisey and labeled with the year as well, which is pretty cool. So it's a very simple topper, but especially the beacon, it really fits with the theme and adds to the overall gameplay experience. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Topper Talk with Goran. Tune into the next podcast for another episode. And as always, get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk.
    107:31
    I haven't watched one of these in a while. That's great.