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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast June 2025 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 10m·analyzed·Jul 1, 2025
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TL;DR

June 2025 pinball news: Predator licensing issues, surprise Ligabua Queen retheme, Steelbound P3 game, Harry Potter success.

Summary

Pinball Magazine and Pinball News recap June 2025 reveals three major game announcements: Pinball Brothers' Predator with licensing constraints on Arnold Schwarzenegger's likeness/voice, a surprise Ligabua (Italian rock band) retheme of Pinball Brothers Queen by Pedretti Gaming, and Nick Baldridge's Steelbound RPG adventure game for Multimorphic P3. Jersey Jack Pinball's Harry Potter launch is performing exceptionally well across all three editions (Arcade, Wizard, CE), with strong arcade edition sales surprising leadership and zero reported reliability issues post-launch.

Key Claims

  • Predator Pinball cannot use Arnold Schwarzenegger's close-ups or voice due to licensing restrictions

    high confidence · Daniel Jensen interview confirmed they lack approval for Schwarzenegger assets; using placeholder voice actors instead

  • Predator Pinball was revealed early (2 weeks prior) possibly due to licensing timing around the 38th anniversary of the original 1987 film

    medium confidence · Hosts speculate timing may have been driven by anniversary or licensing constraints rather than production readiness

  • Ligabua is a 'very popular Italian rock band' with ~3 million Facebook followers, been active since early 1990s

    high confidence · Martin Edmund provides detailed background on band; confirmed by Pedretti Gaming partnership announcement

  • Ligabua Pinball is the first pinball machine themed around an Italian artist or rock band

    high confidence · Martin Edmund explicitly states this is a novel achievement in pinball industry

  • Ligabua Pinball is a retheme of Pinball Brothers Queen with new artwork, callouts, and music

    high confidence · Martin confirmed directly with Andrea Pedretti; playfield layout unchanged from Queen game

  • Ligabua Pinball will have 10-unit signature edition (signed by lead singer) and unlimited arcade edition targeting Italian market launching end of summer

    high confidence · Martin's reporting based on confirmation from Pedretti Gaming partner

  • Steelbound is a Multimorphic P3 game featuring character progression, career/relationship choices, giant robot piloting, procedurally-generated dungeons, and 80+ music tracks

    high confidence · Official announcement via Nick Baldridge's For Amusement Only Games newsletter; playable with any P3 module (except Portal which will be added)

  • Harry Potter arcade edition has sold 'several hundred games' already, performing better than expected at lower price point

    high confidence · Jack Guarneri states sales numbers in interview; notes surprise at arcade edition uptake

Notable Quotes

  • “So they can't use him either, which is a bit of a problem, but not too huge...they've now got voice actors to alani voice”

    Martin Edmund @ ~11:30 — Clarifies licensing constraints on Predator Pinball beyond Schwarzenegger—actor Sonny Langham (Billy) never signed merchandising rights

  • “I was the only one picking up on this...it was no problem to re-theme this design with Liga Bua”

    Martin Edmund @ ~25:00 — Reveals Martin's exclusive scoop on Ligabua announcement; confirms easy retheme process due to Pedretti/Pinball Brothers partnership

  • “This is before we've actually even seen it yet...there's a lot of work to do”

    Martin Edmund @ ~37:00 — Steelbound announced before gameplay reveal; emphasizes scope of upcoming P3 title

  • “I think if you put it in a butcher shop, it would make money...wherever you put this game, it's going to make money”

    Jack Guarneri @ ~62:00 — Jack's confidence in Harry Potter's universal appeal across location types; bullish on arcade edition revenue potential

  • “The arcade edition is earning extremely well. If I said the number somebody would just say it just not true”

    Jack Guarneri @ ~65:00 — Indicates arcade edition revenue performance is unexpectedly strong; implies numbers would be questioned if stated

  • “I'm always thinking that if I didn't hear something said that I just didn't hear it happened anyway...I looked at the reports...everything's working great”

    Jack Guarneri @ ~72:00 — Unusual claim of zero QA issues; Jack expresses skepticism of his own positive report before confirming no problems detected

  • “It's a game you have to keep your eye on the ball all the time because it's moving, it's moving fast”

    Martin Edmund @ ~75:00 — Describes Harry Potter's fast ball movement and unpredictable flow; notes moving staircase feature affects ball routing

  • “They were busy. You know, he knows that I could probably find my way...I took a four-hour train ride with three different trains”

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonMartin EdmundpersonPinball BrotherscompanyDaniel JensenpersonPredator PinballgameLigabuaperson/bandLigabua PinballgamePedretti GamingcompanyNick Baldridge

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball at Chicago factory with rotating production across three Harry Potter editions; second assembly line being set up; actively hiring

    high · Jack Guarneri confirms factory presence, production schedule (Arcade/Wizard first, then back to CE), and recruitment in Illinois area

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Martin Edmund experienced Harry Potter as 'sensory overload' due to fast ball movement, unpredictable flow from moving staircase feature, and high content density across 7 movies/multiballs

    high · Martin's detailed gameplay observation at Pinball Heaven Open Day; notes difficulty tracking ball movement and spell features as casual player

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Heaven Open Day (June 21, 2025) held at UK headquarters; featured Harry Potter CE game, free entry, charity fundraiser for Make-A-Wish, included dinner/quiz event at nearby hotel

    high · Jack Guarneri attended; Martin Edmund played Harry Potter CE at event; described logistics (plane/train/boat/bus to Tarleton, Lancashire)

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Predator Pinball cannot use Schwarzenegger close-ups or voice due to licensing restrictions; actor Sonny Langham (Billy) also unavailable as he never signed merchandising contract

    high · Daniel Jensen interview confirmed licensing gaps; placeholder voice actors currently in use

  • $

    market_signal: Harry Potter Arcade edition performing unexpectedly well with 'several hundred units' sold at lower price point; operators and location owners buying across all three tiers (Arcade/Wizard/CE)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.392

0:00
Predator Pinball Revealed Ligabua Pinball Revealed Steelbound Pinball Revealed Interview with Jack Mulary Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined by... Hi, I'm Martin Edmund, the editor of Pinball News, and Jonathan and I are here to look back on all the exciting events in the pinball world through the month of June 2025. Right, Pinball Industry.
0:40
Yes, that's right, in this next edition of our Pinball Industry News Fincast. Right. So, well, for starters, in case you missed it, two weeks ago we actually recorded a bonus episode all around the reveal of Pimple Brothers Predator. So we're just going to talk a lot about that game now because everything that we could discuss about the game, including an interview with Daniel Jensen.
1:11
The ego? Yeah, it had been published two weeks ago in the previous bonus episode. Yeah, where is he?
1:20
Right. But anyway, in the meantime, there have been some gameplay videos being released, also with commentary by Daniel Jensen explaining what he is doing, or whatever the player is doing at that time. It was a pre-recorded and edited gameplay video.
1:48
Yeah, so there have been a couple of gameplay videos. That one, and there's been one since that says it has no commentary on it and it's just game sounds for those who complained that they couldn't hear any of the game sounds because Daniel was talking over the top of it. And I think the sound in the game has become a bit of a point of contention, I think. Good job. Yeah, well, if you listen to our interview with Daniel as our bonus pincast, you'll have heard where he told us that they had access to all the assets in the game, video and audio, with the sole exception of close-ups of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays Dutch in the game. but you said that in the movie and in the game it didn't matter that much because you take the role of Dutch in the gameplay and bring together all the members of the team who could be featured in close-up and in wide shots well it turns out now that they not only cannot use Arnie's close-ups they also can't use his voice or at least not at the moment all these things are liable to change, of course, with licensing restrictions that come and go. But also... ...not being approved yet. Right, good point. Using placeholder call-outs, so to speak,

  • Harry Potter has experienced zero reported reliability or design issues post-launch across all editions

    high confidence · Jack Guarneri: 'knock on wood...so far so good' and confirmed checking reports and talking to customers

  • Jersey Jack Pinball is currently rotating production between Arcade, Wizard, and CE editions of Harry Potter with second assembly line planned

    high confidence · Jack Guarneri states production schedule and mentions hiring in Chicago factory

    • Jack Guarneri @ ~48:00 — Jack's humorous account of his UK travel logistics to Pinball Heaven Open Day; casual tone indicates good relationship with Phil Hanson

    person
    Steelboundgame
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Harry Pottergame
    Jack Guarneriperson
    Pinball Heaven Open Dayevent
    Phil Hansonperson
    Andrea Pedrettiperson
    John Chadperson
    Ryan Claytonperson
    Multimorphiccompany
    Arnold Schwarzeneggerperson

    high · Jack Guarneri: arcade edition sales 'nice pleasant surprise'; reveals specific revenue claims are credible but suppressed due to skepticism

  • $

    market_signal: Ligabua Pinball pricing not yet announced; assumed to be 'same ballpark' as Queen game (Pinball Brothers title)

    low · Martin Edmund explicitly notes assumption without pricing confirmation from Pedretti Gaming

  • ?

    announcement: Ligabua Pinball officially announced by Pedretti Gaming as Queen retheme featuring Italian rock band; 10-unit signature edition plus unlimited arcade edition for Italian market

    high · Martin Edmund's scoop confirmed directly by Andrea Pedretti; Ligabua lead singer signed 8 machines at Campo Volo concert (120,000 attendees)

  • ?

    product_strategy: Predator Pinball revealed early (2 weeks prior) with incomplete code (missing LED displays in apron); hosts question whether announcement timing was driven by licensing anniversary (38 years since 1987 film) rather than production readiness

    medium · Hosts note game wasn't shipping until August post-Italian holidays; missing LED displays in recent gameplay video suggests early code

  • ?

    product_concern: Zero reported reliability or design issues on Harry Potter post-launch across all editions; unusual claim requiring Jack's confirmation after initial skepticism

    high · Jack Guarneri explicitly addresses lack of mechanical problems; admits testing assumptions but confirms checking reports and customer feedback

  • ?

    product_strategy: Steelbound announcement (no gameplay reveal yet) indicates upcoming Multimorphic P3 release later in 2025; 80+ music tracks composed; artwork by John Chad completed

    high · Nick Baldridge official announcement via For Amusement Only Games newsletter; music available on composer website

  • ?

    technology_signal: Steelbound on Multimorphic P3 designed to work with any module (except Portal pending); character choices/dungeons vary by installed module; save/swap module feature enables different playthroughs

    high · Martin Edmund details procedural generation and module flexibility; confirmed playable on any P3 with Portal support coming

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Ligabua (Italian rock band) represents first pinball machine themed on Italian artist; potential market expansion strategy with band-specific rethemes for territorial licensing (e.g., Rammstein for Germany mentioned as possibility)

    medium · Martin Edmund notes novelty of Italian artist pinball; hosts speculate on retheme potential for other regional/territorial artists (French, German acts)

    • 3:18
    to have something for current... But also it turns out they can't use any of the character of Billy, who's played by Sonny Langham, because Billy never signed a contract to allow his likeness and voice to appear in any of the merchandising or sub-licensing, whereas other actors in the movie did. So they can't use him either, which is a bit of a problem, but not too huge. Anyway, so as it turns out, as Jonathan said, they've now got voice actors to Alani voice. to me didn't sound very convincing you thought it was ok when he was doing the get to the chopper well it's been 40 years since I've seen the movie I don't recall the exact call out but it sounded Arnie like to me so I wasn't like ah that's not Arnie no it sounded like could have been Schwarzenegger the accent is there well there wasn't an awful lot of audio in the gameplay video that we saw at least a lot of voice calls. So I think that's something that's going to be encoded in and will hopefully make it more of a realistic and cohesive package than it is at the moment.
    4:40
    Well, it was obviously early code, because in the video that I saw just a little earlier today, which was the one without the commentary, there was a lot not happening in the game. those displays, those LED displays on the apron, for instance, they weren't lit even. So that's the encoder here. It raises the question with me, why was that game announced two weeks ago?
    5:10
    And the reason I'm saying that is, okay, software isn't done yet, but I also understood they only start shipping games somewhere around August after the Italian holidays are over.
    5:28
    So I get that you're building games up front, but there was no known, as far as I can see, and I'm not on the inside of this, but it looks to me like they could have waited until they were ready to start shipping and have further developed code and do the reveal right at the beginning of August or something like that. Yeah, I actually thought that would make more sense, given the fact that it gives them some clear water between their launch and the Harry Potter launch and the King Kong launch, which made last month and the month before very, very busy. They came to buy new games by the August or the end of late summer. people might have moved on those games or be ready to buy a new one. Yes.
    6:20
    So I was just wondering about that. So it's potentially a licensing restriction as well. Maybe they had to launch it when they did. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, there is some anniversary coming up, or it was last month.
    6:36
    I think it was the 38th anniversary of the release of the original Predator movie in theaters. The big one, 38. Wow. Yeah.
    6:52
    Yeah, that's right. Like being revealing. No, I'm not going there. Sorry. Okay. Right. Well, I think that's the Pinball Brothers news for this month. Well, there is some with the Roberts related news that, well, actually brings us to our second headline.
    7:17
    Okay, let's go there. Yeah. I'm going to leave you with this because you were the one who discovered it and reported on it with a nice scoop in Pinball Magazine. Yeah. Congratulations on that one. Yeah. Tell us what it was for those who haven't read it yet. Yeah, so it came to my attention that the weekend of, well, Friday, June 20th, Pedretti Gaming, who is partnering with the Pinball Brothers in Euro Pinball Corp., but they showed a video of a Ligabua pinball game. It's actually called that, Ligabua pinball game. And for those not aware, Ligabue is a very popular Italian rock band headed by Luciano Ligabue.
    8:11
    Having lived in Italy for two years, I'm quite sure the pronunciation that I'm giving this is correct. But it's a very popular rock band. They've been around since the early 90s. Close to 3 million followers on Facebook. And I haven't even checked Instagram. but it gives you an idea for just a band that is singing in Italian.
    8:35
    Yeah, I've never heard of them before. Yeah, very limited, and you're very rock-oriented, I know. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, so I'm pretty sure you would definitely appreciate this music.
    8:48
    So a very, very popular band. So the first thing I noticed is there's this sort of open party-type tent, which turns out to be a side area of a concert area, open air, with eight of these Ligaboo pinball games set up. and I was able to find a short close-up of the playfield and I instantly recognized it as a re-theme of Pimble Brothers' Queen,
    9:28
    which sort of makes sense because Queen as a rock band has a guitar on the playfield and so on. So new artwork, new call-outs, new music, and off you go. But at the same time, nobody was reporting on this game. And unlike Emma, I was the only one picking up on this. So I reached out to Andrea Pedretti, who confirmed that it is indeed a re-theme of Pinball Brothers Queen. And, well, since they are collaborating in Euro Pinball Corp, I suppose the lines are very short. short and it was no problem to re-theme this design with Liga Bua. In the videos shared the next day, Saturday the 21st of June, Liga Bua, the lead singer of the band, actually signed all eight machines in the tent and what I found out later is There will be a signature edition limited to 10 units, so I suppose that's those 8 and 2 more. And there will be an unlimited arcade edition at the end of the summer, which is aiming for the Italian market. That makes sense. It's also the very first time that there is a pinball machine themed around an Italian artist or rock band. So, indeed, I got a scoop without knowing it, because I received a press release without any photos. The photos were added later and weren't even that many. But apparently I was the only one who got the press release. So it's all published on pinball-magazine.com. It is a very nice looking game. I have to definitely admit to that, and I am very appreciative for being handed this scoop without knowing that it was a scoop, actually.
    11:40
    And I'm happy to report more on the game, of course, but do check it out on the Pinball Magazine website. It's at the top of the... Well, you can't miss it, basically, if you go there.
    11:51
    Yeah. Did I forget anything? Oh, yeah. We don't know any pricing yet, but I assume it will be in the same ballpark of what the Queen game would cost.
    12:02
    That's an assumption, so don't hold me responsible for that. No prizes have been announced yet. In a very sharp eye of you, you noticed that there's a mix of Italian and English text on the playfield.
    12:20
    I suppose that the Italian texts are probably song or album titles. used in the game. Yes, I mean, it's called Ligabue Pinball Game in English. Yeah, which for Italy, for the Italian market, probably would have made more sense to call it Ligabue Flipper Game, as pinball machines are in Italian called Flipper da Bar. So basically, flipper that you play at a bar. Pinball, so, anyway. Anyway, good for Pedrecchi Gaming I suppose, and obviously they have all the experience in building this machine, since they already build many Queen games. Indeed, it is a very bright and flashy game, it's a bit too garish for my liking, but I dare say if you're into the band, there's a lot of references there, to albums and to band members and songs. Right. They've recorded. Yeah. There's a radio.
    13:31
    Yeah. The Webby Stadium in Queen has been replaced by a pair of sunglasses. Mm-hmm. With the red stuff called guitar. Mini Playfield is now a white guitar. Instead of red in Queen. Yep.
    13:52
    But other than that, it looks very, very similar. It spells out Mario on the right rather than Queen. And, yeah, it should be. I mean, the artwork is sort of fairly basic with lots of red and stars and a few sunbursts here and there. But, yeah, I think it's a good use of an existing theme and it makes you wonder whether this is going to be rethemed for anybody else in the future. Right. And I'm also curious how this will do in Italy, especially it being such a popular Italian band, because it might open up a whole new market if you're just aiming at one territory in Europe.
    14:37
    In the sense that if that license is very popular in that territory, you might end up selling a lot more games than you would have with a different theme based on the same layout.
    14:52
    Yeah, I would just know quite how much effort, how much work it was to re-theme it in terms of software and display animations. Because you can imagine they could sell different band-themed games in different territories. could be like a Rammstein game for Germany or a, I'm trying to think of any other artist, more focused on one particular country, but I'm sure you know better than me. Well, yeah, well, there's also like French rock stars that sing in, are very hot in the French market. Out of the box are not very well known. Personally I'm waiting for a Sabrina Salerno game. Well who is it? Yeah exactly I was going to say if you take any female Italian artist then it has to be Sabrina Salerno. But oh well so that's the big news from Pedrecci gaming completely out of the blue because I wasn't expecting a game. And if I was expecting a game from them, I was expecting it to be the announcement of a new remake.
    16:11
    Yes. Since Pedretti themselves around New Year hinted at possibly Tales of the Arabian Nights being one of the upcoming remake titles. They also hinted at Theatre of Magic, but I think that has been... Yeah. I don't think that's going to happen. No. Yeah. Okay. So, well, on that, as I understand it, Liga Boer will be playing a smaller venue very shortly. Well, they'll also have the pinball machines set up. Yeah. Well, smaller venue. A bit of hospitality. So just to be clear, this game was revealed at the Campo Volo music arena in Reggio Emilia,
    17:00
    which is in between Bologna and Rimini, for those aware of Italian topography. But there were 120,000 people attending that concert.
    17:17
    It gives an indication of how popular they are. Yeah, and the next event where the Pimble machines will also be present, I think there's only 50,000 people showing up, or tickets sold. So still quite a crowd, I would say. Yeah, you might get to see more video of the game, maybe some gameplay. I don't know. Yeah, probably. Nice to see. Yeah, I'm sure we'll keep an eye on that. Okay. And you guys do it on your own as well. Well, not really. I've been talking to Nick Baldridge, famous for many things, including his for amusement only games company, which has produced a number of games for the Multimorphic P3 pinball platform. Nick's obviously also very talented in the bingo and EM area and collaborates with Ryan Clayton on the Coin-Op Carnival publication, which only had one edition so far, but hopefully there'll be more coming. I know Ryan's certainly been very busy with his book, including his own book, his One Bite at a Time. But hopefully the two of them will collaborate and get the next edition of Coin-Op Carnival. But in the meantime, Nick has been working on a new game for the P3 Pinball platform called Steelbound. Now, if you're hearing this, then Nick has just announced Steelbound on his For Amusement Only Games newsletter. And you're also going to read about it on Pinball News, where we have an article live right now. so it's important to say that this isn't a reveal of the game you can't see any of the game what it is, it's an announcement of what's going to be in the game and it is revealed so it's like a pre-reveal it's an announcement rather than a reveal so it is a novel role playing adventure game where the player after they graduate from high school they have to make a number of choices for their character throughout the game which kind of determines their career path the friends they bond with what kind of leisure activities they want to get involved in all of which things that go to decide their future it's kind of like you know a second life type thing but it's more than that because they also get to pilot a giant robot which allows them to explore dungeons collect treasure and even unearth, get this, some dangerous truths about the world of pinball. Oh, my God. Yes, I know, dangerous.
    20:07
    So there's a lot in it. There's a big cast of characters. There's some great music in it, which you can actually listen to. I think there's about 80 tracks you can listen to right now from the composer's own website, which is available through Nick's For Amusement Games link and also on the People News article. And it has artwork by John Chad, who is a famous pinball artist and author. So it's unusual in a couple of ways. First of all, most P3 games are either limited to one particular playfield module or they put the barriers up, the walls up halfway across and then allow it to be played on any. Well, with Steelbound, you can play it and complete it with any of the modules installed, with the sole exception at the moment of Portal, because that's the new one that hasn't been included yet, but it will be.
    21:19
    But depending on which module you have installed, various aspects of the game change. who have different choices, who have different characters, who have different options, which allows you to play it up to one point, and you can save the game, you can put a different module in, pick up the game from where you left off, and then things will be somewhat different this time around. Or we could start it with that one and swap over to another one at any other point, assuming we have multiple ones. So very interesting, and also a bit like the Dungeons & Dragons game, the dungeons in this game are procedurally generated, which means that they're different every time you play the game. Although if you save the game and restart it again, it picks up with that same dungeon layout. But if you start the game again, the dungeons are pretty different to how they were last time. So that's, yeah, as I said, there's a lot in the game. This is before we've actually even seen it yet. So it's going to be launched in a few months' time, but there's a lot of work to do, and just a heads up about what's coming up from Nick and his team and for amusement games, for amusement-only games, I should say, which will be a little bit later in the year. Well, it's always good to hear that there's new games coming to the Multimorphic platform, making your game more valuable, so to speak, and more diverse.
    22:48
    It is just a download. Just purchase it from the website and it gets added to your library. Right. Which is that easy. Okay. So I guess there was no other news from Multimorphic at least that we... No, not that I could see. No. Okay. Then let's round it up and let's continue with Jersey Jack Pinball, who of course at the beginning of June reviewed the long-awaited Harry Potter pinball game. and it's been quite a successful launch for them. We discussed about that we actually waited with our pin cost recording until the game was revealed. We had an interview with Jack Warnieri last month. We did.
    23:36
    And guess what? We will be talking to Jack again today. Yes, that's right. Yeah, we're going to catch up with what's been going on over at Jersey Jack Pinball because Jack flew to the UK during the month of June, and he was there for the Pinball Heaven Open Day, the first ever Pinball Heaven Open Day. Good heavens. He was held at the company's headquarters near Preston in Lancashire, and that was on Saturday 21st. He was there to talk to guests about the new Harry Potter game and other things that are going on at Jersey Jack Pinball and about setting the company up and where it's going. And there was a collected edition of Harry Potter set up in the headquarters of Pinball Heaven for people to play for free. The whole thing was free. It was a charity fundraiser, raised money for Make-A-Wish, which it certainly did. But you can read all about this and see Jack and the game and all the other games that were set up there. a big selection of games across three different units in the courtyard that has like nine or ten different units there for different businesses. Well, three of them were used for this Pinball Heaven Open Day and full of machines. And everybody had a fantastic time and there was free pizza, free drinks, and then afterwards there was a dinner back at a nearby-ish hotel where people were able to carry on playing the Harry Potter game.
    25:23
    So they were able to get into the hotel? They did, yes. It was in the pavilion there where the sit-down dinner was, and a quiz as well was held, not on pinball, but about more general knowledge. Okay. So, yeah, it carried on. So that was Jack in the UK So I had a chance to chat with him then And of course we chatted with him last time For the launch of the game And we're joined now by Jersey Jack Bigelow's founder Jersey Jack himself, Mr Jack Guarneri Good evening Jack Hey guys, how are we doing today?
    26:00
    Good, how are you Jack? I'm well, I'm over at the factory for a few days this week Okay Fantastic. Well, you and I met just a few days ago, about a week ago, when you were over in the UK for the Pinball Heaven Open Day. How was your trip to the UK? It was great. It really was. Even though I took a plane, a train, a boat and a bus to get to the English countryside where Phil's place is in Tarleton. Yeah, he didn't have somebody pick you up and give you the luxury treatment?
    26:32
    I think they were busy. You know, he knows that I could probably find my way. I haven't been there, but it's a big country. You don't realize it until you take a four-hour train ride with three different trains.
    26:47
    It was very scenic, but it was nice. It was relaxing. I slept. I ate. I had a sandwich. I had a tuna fish sandwich with corn on it, which I never saw in my life. But it was actually pretty good. I guess that might be an English thing, right, Martin? I think it probably is, and normally it's the mayo mixed in. It had mayo too, yeah. Yeah. It was different. That's why I bought it. So it was pretty good. Good. Well, you weren't over very long.
    27:14
    What, about three days and you were back? Yep. I wanted to go home because it was Jack Jr.'s birthday. It was the 24th of June. I wanted to get back. But it was a great trip. It was really nice.
    27:27
    Fair enough. So now you weren't back home for very long because, as you said, You're up in Chicago now at the factory in your office there. Yep. So what's going on there? Is it all from Steve Ahead making Harry Potters? Yeah, and they put me on the line to, you know.
    27:45
    They could use some extra hands. They asked me, and, you know, I said, you better open up and keep an eye on what's going on.
    27:55
    They're going great guns. I mean, they're building games, and they're boxing them, And I signed a bunch of games, and I signed some play fields, and I signed a whole bunch of signature cards that go on the CE game. And I did all of that. They got me good with that. I've been in a few meetings. And it's just great. It's a great place to be, especially when you have a hit game like we have that we're fortunate to have. And which models are currently in production? Right now we're building the Arcade Edition and the Wizard Edition. And then we're going to go back and build more CE. So we're going to rotate the three of them, and we'll get the second line up. If you have anybody that's semi-skilled or skilled people, we're hiring. We're looking for some good people to work on the assembly line.
    28:49
    Right, okay. So you're off you go? yeah well I suppose you have to be in a elk grow village neighborhood I mean well or at least Illinois so to speak well maybe an hour radius or something like that you know people come from distance because it's a good place to work a lot of nice people here right so well if you're listening and you're like huh I could use a change of scenery on my daily route to work and this is your chance if you're recently retired and you have nothing to do your wife wants to throw you out the window it wouldn't be a bad thing if you know how to use tools and you could follow directions and you'd learn workstation it wouldn't be a bad thing I didn't know I was going to come on here and ask people to come to work but you never know how things are going to go with us well we're always hiring If you guys want to relocate, you're welcome to.
    29:53
    Now, we'll go back to the... Yeah, me? Yeah. You can play test the games. Oh, that would be good. That would be a dream job, I imagine. Yeah. So, what's the next part?
    30:09
    You can ask the games custom, Jonathan. Right. Yeah, so I was getting back to the... You're building the arcade version and the wizard version and going back to collectors edition, you said. Obviously, this is an unusual game in having those three different levels.
    30:28
    Has the split in sales of those been more or less what you were expecting when you came up with that three-tier idea, or has it thrown up some surprises and won more than you were expecting?
    30:43
    Well, so far, sales were very good. thank goodness for everybody all the people that ordered games so far and the arcade edition is a nice pleasant surprise because there are several hundred games sold so far and more every day and I don't know that we would have sold those games because I think it has something to do with the price point and how much is in the game and how much we didn't take out of the game like I said, the playfields are all the same the toys, the rules, everything is the same between the wizard and the arcade version so I gave everybody a hard choice I think you did and I think people really appreciate the fact that you haven't dumbed down the cheaper model, the arcade version and kept everything on the playfield which is excellent I think a lot of thought and a lot of attention went into the idea and the execution we have customers location customers, operators that still put CE games on location. Today Peter Rose from Brooklyn with his new location he just texted me a picture of his CE. The box just arrived today and at some point in the next month or so we'll do a lunch party there but some locations want the CE, they want the high end game and some locations are cost conscious and they want the arcade edition. And I can tell you that the arcade edition is earning extremely well. If I said the number somebody would just say it just not true but get a game and put it on location and see what it does It screams take my money to a plane customer on a location Harry Potter
    32:43
    It kills everybody. Right. So is this a game that, I mean, you've done movie licenses for various movies, But Harry Potter, would you say this Harry Potter game is something particularly for movie theaters to put in their lobbies and what have you for people coming to the movies to play it? I think that. I think if you put it in a butcher shop, it would make money. I think wherever you put this game, it's going to make money.
    33:21
    If there's people there, they're going to want to play it. I think it's just that simple. Okay. So, well, America is different to Europe when it comes to locations where people actually can play. I've seen people machines placed in pizzerias for takeout, basically. But while you're waiting... Those are great locations. Those are great locations, pizzerias, laundromats. We're always good. People have to wait, you know, for their clothes to dry. They're not doing anything. we had cab garages we had of course a bar like a you know bar and grill kind of place I had a location years ago it was a hardware store and the guy liked games and you know he made enough money to pay his rent every month so it was he'll go anywhere with his people and you don't really disrupt people either games a lot of times the volume is down on the games and people come with headphones today and they plug in and they can hear the sound of the game without disturbing people in the location. So a lot of options today that we didn't have years ago. Right. Yeah, talking about hardware store reminds me of the Logan hardware downtown in Logan Square. Now that started out as a hardware store with a hidden arcade at the back that you had to know about to get into before it turned into an arcade. Yeah, it's kind of like Sunshine Longomant. It's kind of like Sunshine Longomant where you have to walk through the door and all of a sudden the launch and after comes a beautiful establishment.
    34:55
    Yeah, world famous now, of course, for the quality of the games. Now, so games are going out to customers in their dozens or hundreds.
    35:08
    Once they started going out, were there any sort of issues which came up with the game which needed to be addressed in later games? I mean, it typically happens that, you know, you find a part that, you know, the ball gets stuck there you have to redesign that part or maybe the bend on it isn't quite right. I'm going to knock on wood. I hope that's wood.
    35:35
    So far so good. I mean there really hasn't been much of anything to speak of with the game which is extremely unusual.
    35:45
    I'm always thinking that if I didn't hear something said that I just didn't hear it. It happened anyway. But I looked at the reports. I talked to a lot of people that have the game. And so far, everything's working great on the game. You know, we had a software update. I think last week it was 0.73. So we're getting closer to 1.0. It's not a box of lights. It's just, Martin, you played it. What did you think of the game? because you pushed on it to play it.
    36:19
    Well, I found it a bit of a sensory overload, to be honest. Not in a bad way, but because I wasn't expecting the game to be as fast as it was. And I felt that having played a couple of games, I'd missed a huge amount that was going on in the game, and particularly on the display. Now, if you remember, when I played it, I didn't even get to see any of those spells that you cast during the flipper button combos. and I don't know if that's because I didn't start them or they went on and I was busy doing other things but the ball moves around so fast on that game and comes out in unexpected ways partly because of the layout of the game and partly because of that moving staircase feature it means you're never quite sure where the ball's going to be I found the flow of it to be excellent but as I say, it's a game you have to keep your eye on the ball all the time because it's moving, it's moving fast, and it's not necessarily going to go where you think it's going to go. So I'm sure after a while you'll get used to it and you'll know where the ball's going to come out. But for me, as a beginner, I couldn't really track the ball up and look and see what was going on because it was rolling so fast all the time. As a beginner, I'm not sure you can qualify as a beginner.
    37:40
    Well... That was luck, but I don't, even then, you know, I felt that I just fairly scratched the surface of what was going on in the game, because there was so much content in there. Now, I'd only played, like, two movies or something like that out of the seven, so there was an awful lot more to go, more multiballs, and, you know, I wanted to play it again, but it's that kind of event where you play your game and then you move out of the way and let the other people, and particularly people who got the money who might be interested in buying it, give them the chance to play and experience. And I hope that proved to be a worthwhile visit for you and for the game and that you gained some orders from that. It was great. And Phil and Vicky and Little Beatrix as our hosts it was great and then afterwards I thought I was going to a wedding when we went to the country club and he had the whole thing yeah I really thought we were at a wedding it was beautiful and the food was great and the company was great it was really good when I put you on the easy mode in the pinball in the Jersey Jack pinball game changer with the QR code I put you into easy because I wanted to see what you could do, and you got like a billion two. And the game was doing things that I never saw and that nobody there certainly didn't see, and you had a crowd around you, and it was like, okay, let's see what Martin can do on easy. You're giving away the secret now. Yes, it was using that proprietary game changer system, which I think is a great idea and gives you a huge range of options and things you can do in the future with it. Yeah, it does. And with every game we do, we try to introduce some new technology, and we've been working on that a while. And I think for locations, it's good. For home use, it's good.
    39:53
    And you're able to play without being frustrated and actually get into the game and learn more. and I think it'll build some new players and get them into the game a little further because you don't want to get to a certain point and then you lose your ball and you start the game again and you get to a certain point just like banging away at a wall, you know, with a little hammer trying to knock down a big stone wall. Yeah, I mean, to me, it seemed like something you could build on in the future if you wanted to go down a personalization route, you know, rather than having one code that's easy for all your games. you have your personal code, and you set up in your app on the phone what level you want to play at. So every game I play, I want to be on easy, okay? Then whenever I put my QR code up against the machine, it puts it into easy mode.
    40:45
    Other people can have that differently. And it can still be called your progress as well. Yeah. And in this case, we have it set now, so it only is the one game that you play. or if you push the button, it'll normal play. So it doesn't have any permanent effect on the game itself. Is there something you could see rolling back into previous games?
    41:11
    Yeah, we talked about that. We can do it. We have all these same operating systems in all games. If we did it, and we went all the way back to Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit, you'd have to have a camera kit and a new back glass, but it's doable. You know, it's doable. We want to see, you know, we really want to see what the reaction is and so far the reaction has been great. Yeah, there seems like no downside to it really. And you're using hardware in the game. We didn't charge anybody extra for the feature, it's just something that comes with the game. True, and makes better use of the hardware that's already there. Exactly, exactly. right so now the game's up and running and there are no issues with it and you're churning them out and sending them out to all the customers, is that basically it for the design team? we all go on vacation now and we all go on vacation now well now the really hard work comes we don't run a sprint we run a marathon So now you're building games, you're shipping games, you're selling more games. As we ship more games, we sell more games because more people see it in the wild, they play it, they want to buy it, or they want to order it to operate it. And it's really a sweet spot to sit. It doesn't happen often. I've had it happen to me before in the past with other games, but it doesn't happen often enough. But it's great. When it happens, you're very appreciative, and everybody's happy with all the hard work and energy and effort they put into it. Right. So you'll be going around the shows, promoting the game, you and Eric, I guess, and other design team members as well. I think the Dutch will probably have JP will be there. I know that, maybe.
    43:09
    I don't know how I'll make it to Dutch Pinball Open this year, because I'll be at IAPA. Ah, yes. I have an overlapped Dutch Pinball Open. If you see me at Dutch Pinball Open, it only means that I'm there like a day and a half. And I was looking at flights, and the flights are ridiculously expensive right now. So I'll see what happens in the next week. It's a lot cheaper, so we'll see. I'm not saying no. I'd love to be there. I had a blast last year. The venue was great. The people were great. I got picked up in a Rolls Royce. and it was wonderful oh you too yeah and we hired that guy for the entire weekend and he was there the whole weekend too very nice now one of the things which wasn't fully programmed when I was playing it was the topper on the CD judging by some of the social media posts I've seen it's coming along in leaps and bounds and more and more is being added to that Where is that at the moment? Because I think people were saying it doesn't really, well they thought it wasn't doing very much at that time. Well the projector wasn't working in the beginning, it wasn't programmed, the lighting wasn't programmed, so there's some other features on there that aren't programmed too, there's a mechanical feature that's not programmed yet. It's a pretty cool topper. If we ever meet, we'll probably have a date for a Harry Potter show.
    44:36
    So far? You know, everybody's opinion is valuable, but I think it looks pretty cool. I'm happy with it. So you're saying people should wait to see how it ends up then? Yeah, I mean, it's not, the pie isn't baked yet. Leave it in the oven a little bit more. It's almost there. You're almost ready for it. Almost.
    44:59
    Okay, well, we talked to you last month. when the game was revealed. Obviously, you had a very successful launch. Congratulations. Thank you. Especially on a title that so many people had high expectations of.
    45:16
    It looked like people are really pleased with the game, so congrats with that as well. Any reports from operators that are already operating the game on location, where it's, I assume, is getting a lot of play or any of the pinball shows?
    45:40
    Well, at the 75 Gaming Expo, the game won Game of the Year. So, you know, I don't know how much... And we still have six months to go. Yeah, I don't know how much is behind that. It's very humbling. It's very nice that I can say we have an award-winning game.
    45:57
    You know, we'll take it. We'll take it. I'm not above that it's great the locations that have it as we're talking there's only about 25 arcade editions out there in a while which is nothing and I said right now they're on the line right now so in another week there'll be a lot more so as they get out guys are seeing what they are the players are seeing what they are and the cash box is filling up and Bill accepted the filling up and swipe cards and dingy credits. So I expect really great things and great things are happening. So we're very appreciative and we're very humble about it and we're just keeping our nose and our head down and we're doing our work, what we have to do. Get more games out there.
    46:50
    Right. One of the things which I think I've spoken to you about before, but other people have mentioned to me that they don't quite understand how the allocation of collected edition games is decided. Because they're described as being built to order, but there isn't a defined number that's going to be made, or at least not publicly. So what is the limit? Do you decide at some point, OK, we're going to close this out,
    47:23
    last orders for collected editions, and then that's it? or are you going to keep building them as long as people want them? Well, we're going to have a date, and we're going to call it, and we'll give people a notice. They'll have a certain period of time. They'll know when it ends, and that's it. They're limited to that time period, and they're built, as you say, they're built to order. And, you know, it's hard getting all of them out. You want to really get them all out at once, but we can't. We can't. Some people are going to wait. The people that order first are going to get first, and the people that order later will get it later, and eventually the end of the line gets to the front of the line.
    48:07
    There's an ice cream store not far from my house that we go to often, and not often enough, but we go often. And you walk in there, and you get like number 12, and they're at number 14. so you gotta wait like a hundred numbers to come back around to you know like how could they be at number 16 I just put 12 down in the machine and I'm like holy crap I was in Eden Alperger in Vegas and they went through 95 orders in a minute in a minute? no not in a minute in a no in a half hour they went through 95 orders I was like wow wouldn't it be great if I could make pinball machines at that speed I'm wacky because everything I relate to the company I'm going somewhere and I'm like ok they did 95 orders in a half hour you know I mean if you build somebody asked me today how many games you build a day I said not enough that's how many but again it's a good problem to have It's a good problem to have. There are people that aren't building anything or selling anything. So, again, we're not bragging.
    49:30
    It's just a great thing. You work to get something, and everybody worked very hard to make the game. And it's nice to see people smiling, playing the game, and see all the social media posts, and everybody happy with the game. Is it not advantageous to you to have a steady stream of games being manufactured rather than having a big rush of games being built at once, as far as stock control goes? Yeah, I wish it was that way all the time.
    50:03
    It's just not. The nature of this whole thing is when you change the models, you got like a an effect like just like whiplash because you're changing gears and you're going between different production you gotta change all the parts on the line you gotta retrain people and then you're building what you're building and like Elton John is a great game and we're delivering more parts to build more Elton John games because demand is there so Maybe that'll go on one of the lines, and we'll be building Harry Potter on the other line.
    50:46
    You've got to go with what the market wants, and you've got to go with what the market doesn't know it wants yet. You have to anticipate things, because you're ordering parts in the thousands, and you're taking a best guess on what you need. So there's a lot that goes into it. And to keep everything running and everything the way they do, it's a lot of energy and a lot of effort that everybody puts into it to keep the line running and keep games coming in, lots coming in and games going out. But that's what we do. I guess every part has a unique lead time on it. Some things will be weeks, some of them will be months. and today with the way the supply chain has been since COVID you know before COVID it was just in time during COVID it was just in case you know you ordered parts just in case and you needed to stock different things you had different vendors had different problems different issues and after COVID there's different vendors and different problems different issues and you can get something I said this many times you can get something from a vendor that it's made perfectly before and open a box that comes in the following week and then made wrong because somebody different interpreted the drawing differently, they've been something a certain way that wasn't called in the drawing.
    52:15
    I mean, there's a million stories. I mean, everybody that makes anything write a book on old stories. And they're all the same story. It's human error. People aren't perfect, I'm not perfect, then it's not a perfect world, and things are going to be made wrong, and it happens, but that's why you inspect things when they come in, hopefully weeks and months before they need to get to the line, because if you didn't inspect something, and you bring it to the line, and it's bad, guess what? The line's shut down for a long time, because the vendor isn't going to just turn around and make something for you. They may not be local, and they may not be able to put it into their schedule, So a lot of logistics, a lot of planning goes into it. It's not easy, but it's what we do. It's kind of fun, actually, to accomplish those things. Right. So to bring up a completely different subject, you usually attend the licensing show in Las Vegas, right? Yeah. I believe there was one, I believe either last month or end of May, something like that. Yeah, so I'm not going to ask you any specifics about Future Games, but you as a manufacturer entered this industry in 2010, and you already had a license by then, but since then many other pinball companies came and some went as well.
    53:54
    But can you talk about how the licensing climate has changed for pinball companies now that there are so many more companies attempting to get licenses?
    54:06
    Yeah, well, they're not attempting. Some of them are getting licenses, which is good. And I haven't, there's nothing so far that I wanted that was in play that I lost to anybody. So luckily, we've been successful with the things we wanted. There are things that I wish we could get that we can't because other people were there before me and they got them or they had a relationship I didn't have or they had luck that I didn't have or they paid maybe more than I would have paid.
    54:47
    And maybe I would know it. You can go to those companies now and tell them what type of joke. Well, there's a couple of companies that have a couple of things that I would love to have. And I believe we would do them better because I'm Jersey Jack and I have to say something like that. I wish them the best with what they have. and it's become a more difficult landscape because you have competition, which is something that I'm happy about. I encourage competition. When you had one person doing anything, you can't have an auction on one person. Nobody's bidding against you. It's like there's no real,
    55:26
    you know, nobody's twisting your arm to make something better if you're the only one making it. I ask for certain licenses. Some things are not available. Our category is different than a lot of categories. If you were making a Halloween costume,
    55:40
    you make the costume and it's approved. If you're doing the famous lunch boxes and simple things like T-shirts, you go to them with a design that's out of their style guide. You show it to them. It's approved. It's done. You're finished. With our category, which is amusement games, there's a lot of different versions that you submit for approval and they're iterated so you might have a concept for artwork for the play field you might have a concept for artwork for the back glass and for the you know animation and things like that and you have to submit every single everything to people that a lot of times are not familiar with what we do and how we do it and they're going to approve it or not approve it or tell you to change things and make this lighter, make that darker and you say well this is an image right from your style guide and they say well we want something the blue is not the right color make it a different shade of blue and it's their image and likeness that's in their style guide so you have a lot of that you have a lot of other people trying to get licenses that you're trying to get. And the only way that I've been successful, well, not the only way. The biggest way I've been successful is by proving what we made in the past and what we would make in the future. To represent their intellectual property in the best way, in the best integration, in the best effort, in the best of every aspect of what we do. And I believe we have the edge on that It's not that I believe that other people's games aren't as good as ours, but I believe we make a great product to represent the IP for the license that I'm going for. Right. So, now, as you said, designing a pinball machine with all its artwork and use of clips and so on, it's a very big task. And that's an understatement, I believe.
    58:01
    Have you ever dealt with a company that said, like, oh, no, we're not doing pinball because that's too much trouble for the licensing department. We're staying away from that. Forget it. I haven't had that yet.
    58:14
    It wouldn't surprise me if one day somebody said that to me. And, you know, a lot of licensors, if you're successful making a lot of games, they stand to make millions of dollars in royalties. And it's a lot of money for us, but it may not be a lot of money for them because they're making, you know, a lot of money from doing other things. A lot of companies have streaming services and cable companies and all kinds of other interests. When you look at companies like Disney, and I think MGM is owned by Amazon right now, and you look at companies that have other properties like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, Paramount, Warner Brothers,
    59:05
    you're dealing with a lot of big companies. They're not really a little company. and even though you're giving them a lot of money, it's really not a lot of money for them. So they do appreciate you. I mean, everything adds up and all the licensing they do, I'm sure. But our contribution to their company is not going to move the stock. It's not going to be at the bottom line of an annual report. It's not going to move the needle much. but you know having said that they look at what we do as in some ways as a vanity project because it gets their brand out there, it's a different vehicle it's living, breathing, it's something that's in the public domain it brings attention to the brand and they can brag that somebody made a pinball machine there are a lot of people call me, email me every week if I don't get two suggestions for a game this week I'll get four the next week everybody and their grandma wants to fly jets everybody and their grandma wants to design a pinball machine or has an idea for a pinball machine or told me something that I knew already and respectfully I say thank you we might be working on that already but it's people's passion I had somebody send me plans to a pinball machine you know handwritten plans and it was so much detail I just I sent the guy a note and I sent him I like some goodies and a shirt and a hat and stuff like that I said thank you but probably won't be able to do that But then there are bands, there are people that represent movies, different properties, licensing agents that are getting in touch with me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or every different way to get a pinball machine. And you can't do it. I can't do all of them. And some of them really don't make a pinball machine. You can't make a pinball machine out of something that they're asking me to make a pinball machine. because there's no story. There's no story to tell. You know, you've got to develop a story and you might as well do something. You know, it's not a strong license. Let me just say that.
    61:40
    I mean it's interesting what you're saying about people sending you play-thru drawings and because I don't know if this is a popular story or not but it always used to be said that
    61:51
    Williams, for instance, would never open any drawings that were sent to them in case those ideas in those drawings ended up in their games and people claimed that they were stolen from
    62:05
    from submissions. Yeah, well, you know That's true or not, I don't know. You don't know what you're opening when you're opening it. You know, and the funny thing is that
    62:15
    when we had we have people visit the factory all the time and I found some drawings of the Harry Potter game drawn by like 6 year old, 8 year old, 10 year old, 12 year old kids from years ago from New Jersey when they visited the factory and I put a bunch of them up on Facebook, social media like a few weeks ago and I said you know these people wanted a Harry Potter game the idea is none of the ideas were used but it's kind of cute you want to encourage young people to love pinball and to get to know pinball and to play pinball and what better way is there for a kid to make a drawing with different characters and lines and circles that could make a play field kind of thing. It's very cute. But two weeks ago we were fortunate enough to have an interview with Daniel Jansen of Bimble Brothers and we were talking about their Predator game and the fact that they had a previous working relationship with, well, Fox, as it was before and is now Disney, of course, and how that impacted on their relationship when it came to negotiating or working with the company for Predator. You obviously got a very strong working relationship with Warner Brothers from your previous titles. Is that something which helps you when it comes time to start working on it or start talking to them about the next game you want to make? Well, I'm going to be strong and say it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. It's good. You know, as I've said before, I make friends, and I just say friends, I say acquaintance, business acquaintance. But you develop relationships with people in the company, and I developed those relationships on a lot of different levels. And people that were not senior vice presidents or executive vice presidents or presidents or people like that, you know, years ago, they were down a few rungs on the ladder, and now they're higher up in the company. So it doesn't hurt to have those relationships. And sometimes they leave a company and they go somewhere else, and you pick up business right with them at the other place they go to. So, you know, I don't want to say it's like playing a game, but you've got to keep your relationships in good order, and I don't burn any bridges and you're able to leverage those relationships and the experience. People hear about what you did at another company and they call you up and they say, hi, I know you did XYZ with ABC and we'd like to work with you. And sometimes the opportunity's there and sometimes you have to put it off until you can execute on it because I don want to be holding on to 20 licenses and paying minimum guarantees just to sit on something I want to whatever I have we want to be working on or close to working on, and go from there. If you got a license for three years, and your minimum guarantee was half a million dollars, and you didn't produce a game, you paid half a million dollars for nothing. Well, you don't want to do that. That's not a good thing to do.
    65:46
    No, it seems to me, and I almost hate myself for even suggesting this, that because you, as a company, invest so much into each of your new releases, that's why it takes a year plus to bring them to market. but they are so packed full of, I don't want to say assets, but effort, I suppose, and skill.
    66:16
    Almost think, couldn't you do like a sub-brand where you can, those titles where you can't justify investing that amount of time and effort into a year or two years even, development time, into producing a big title. Can you do a smaller title? Well, Martin, thank you for saying that. I do appreciate that. And the simple answer to the question, even though it's a great question, is that there are people already doing those kind of games now. I mean, there are people making those kind of games. and they're being welcomed in a certain way by the customer base. So you really need to define who you are and what you're doing. You can't be everything to everybody. Even though I'm trying to be everything to everybody with three models of Harry Potter. So if we were to make a game that would be a simple game with no ramps on it and try to develop that, We have to have a different platform than what we have now, and you have to invest in the time and the people and the energy to do that, to make the game like a retro kind of game, take the monitor out of it and do some different things, do alpha numeric and everything. It wasn't my original idea when I started the company. I could have gotten the license to do Medieval Madness and done remakes. I mean, I helped Rick. Rick didn't know anybody at Midway I introduced him to Roger Sharp and Roger Sharp helped him get the license and everything for to do those games so it could have been me doing it instead of him I didn't want to make something and there wasn't anything wrong with it I didn't want to make what was already made I wanted to Ralph Waldo Emerson go where there is no road go where there is no path go where there is no road and leave a path I could have gone down the easier road that traveled and done a remake or I could have just said well why am I going to do that if we were making washing machines you design engineer the best washing machine you can make and then you build that for the next 10 years we're in an industry where we take about 60% of the gain and we make a new gain every time and our games are expensive because of what is in them and what took us to make them and the time and the labor to build it and put it together and yeah you know what we have to make some kind of profit because we have a lot of people to pay and bills like every other company so we try to be fair uh we're trying to be uh um you know over where we are you know peace to me though when harry Potter I was going to pay like $20,000 for a CE and I expected a team to rally and you know, we're not going to do that. We're not about that. We're trying to make the greatest game we could possibly make at a price that we could stay in business. That's where we are.
    69:37
    Okay, well I'll say that. I hated myself for even asking, even suggesting we produce a lesser game in any way. I will say this more.
    69:48
    we get a lot of people that want to do two or three games. You know, a big company will call, they're doing a trade show, and somebody gets a crazy idea, can you make us five games of this, you know, our brand? And we can't. We can't. I mean, a guy like Joe DeRusso can do that. You know, he's got a printer, and he'll take an electromechanical game that doesn't have any speech or any animation or video, and they'll cover the whole game with beautiful graphics and you'll have a Jaguar pinball machine or something like that. You could do that. But when you bring in a monitor and you bring in speech and you bring in all the crazy stuff that we have in a game to do five games, yeah, I guess we can do it for about $2 million a game. Yeah, give us about a year or so and I'll hire a whole other crew of people to do it.
    70:45
    Yes, well you were talking about the costs that go into producing a game, and I guess this wouldn't be a pin cast unless we bring up the thorny issue of tariffs on imported items into the US, and how that has impacted on your business plan I suppose, or indeed whether you haven't been that impacted by the vagaries of how much parts are going to cost you when you import them. No, it's affected us greatly.
    71:21
    And it's painful. You can't raise your prices even though things run up and you have to eat it and it's going to come off the bottom line. And we'll see what happens in the next few weeks. July 9th is one of those days, I think, who knows what's going to happen. You know,
    71:43
    we're going to see how it goes. We'll act accordingly. We don't have, there's no plan to raise prices or anything like that. We're certainly, we're in the same boat as a lot of companies around the world. So we'll have to see how it goes.
    72:01
    Okay. Well, play your games now, you know. What I say in Texas, I said, don't spend any money. Yeah, don't buy any games. Don't buy any games until you, you know. And the people listened to me for some, some people listened to me, but they kept buying Jersey Jack games, I can tell you that. They bought Avatar, they bought Elton John, they bought whatever we have in stock and I distributed. Distributors didn't get mad at me for saying that. So some of our competitors got mad at me for saying that. Oh well, that's all right. Yeah, you're livid. I probably got mad because I didn't think of it first.
    72:40
    Well, at least what I said was true. I think it was true. I mean, you know, I didn't say something that I didn't believe. Listen, you know, once in a while I'm entitled to my own opinion, too. And I would say it. You know, it's my opinion. So.
    72:58
    Right. Well, it's good to see that you. Sorry? Do you have any more questions for Jack? No, I was just going to say that it's good to see that you have such a hit game on your hands and you will be making it for a long, long time. There will be hopefully many coming off the line as well. I haven't played it yet, so I'm still looking forward to it. Martin played it. He's been beating it up a little bit. I'm looking forward to playing it again and find out where it's available to play well we're going to be delivering one to a couple of Mena Lima stores in London so by the end of July there will be a Mena Lima stores in my office well I know what you'll be doing on your lunch hour then well I think put something into a lunch too well.
    74:00
    With the games you play, yeah. And you still haven't eaten lunch. Yes, that's true. Eduardo and his wife are on social media today. Yes, I know. Yeah. Very nice.
    74:16
    Been watching that earlier. Yeah, I saw the little video you published. Very nice. I know. when you think about all the different people involved and all the different talents and you know it's just it's just amazing i think about when i started repairing pinball machines so many years ago it was just um not much you know you look at a game like jumping jacks or uh all the games uh that i worked on magnetron and duotron and space lab and all those games like that, and they were great. They're still great. And you look at what we're doing today, it's just I wonder what those guys and girls would say if they were here today to see what pinball developed into. I wonder if they would just think I was crazy to begin what I began, or they would just be cheering us on. I'd like to think they'd be cheering us on.
    75:17
    Yeah, I'm sure. even back then competition was the driver of innovation how many companies were there at one time? how many were there? you guys are just telling me how many were there well, in the 50s and 60s there were quite a few actually if you're talking 100 years ago there were hundreds of them they were talking about people building back-and-forth type of games or pre-war games that didn't require electricity.
    75:51
    You'd be surprised how many companies were building pinball machines and ripping off each other's games as well, but it was way easier, of course.
    75:58
    I still laugh at what the first tilt mechanism was that Harry Williams made. Yeah, the spikes through the bottom. Yeah, he drove nails through the bottom of the cabinet. So when you hit the bottom of the cabinet, you got a handful of nails. Simple but effective I guess Alright guys Thank you very much Jack Granieri, thank you for joining us here on Bimble Interviews There was a very well, far more lengthy interview than we anticipated Isn't that always the way? Well, yeah, indeed So, um, uh, but you know, all good stuff, I think, and give you a good insight into what's going on over at Jersey Jack pinball. Right. And remember where you heard it at the pinball magazine and pinball news pin cast. So, uh, yeah. And also, um, it was one of the things I mentioned on there, um, in that interview was the Jersey Jack pinball had been, um, on their social media The fees have been to have an interview or a short featurette with the couple who are behind Mina Lima. It is Mira for Mina and Eduardo Lima.
    77:24
    So that couple, together with their surnames, make Mina and Lima. Right. And talk about their involvement in the Harry Potter Collected Edition cabinet and back box artwork. and how the idea was put to them originally, and how they came to embrace it and create the artwork for the game. Okay. Yeah. Very nice. Well, do check that out.
    77:52
    And, well, since we just had one interview, we might as well throw in another one. This one is not particularly related to Jersey Jack Pinball.
    78:07
    So you might wonder. No, not at all. No, no. So you might be wondering, what is it about? Well, we wonder, what's cooking with? What's cooking with? Jeff Teolis. Jeff Teolis of Pinball Profile fame. Jeff was over at the European Pinball Championships in Austria last month, where he was both interviewing people and also playing, because if you don't know, Jeff is also a very talented pinball player. He's also a radio personality. He has a great voice. He has a great interview technique. So he was talking to all kinds of people. In fact, he even interviewed me first time in all these years. And I turned the tables on him and got a chance to sit down and talk with Jeff and find out what's cooking with Jeff Teolis. So we're joined by Pitbull Profile's Jeff Teolis. And what's cooking with you, Jeff? The dream thing to cook, but you can't do it all the time. You get like a big tong. It's a big, big kettle. I know them. It's a deep-fryer turkey, but then you've got to get rid of the oil. It's messy and stuff. So here's a better one for you, Martin. Okay. Put away the air fryer. I know it's easy, but you're going to do this. I was inspired by a Mongolian grill. A wonderful little restaurant. It's super, super hot food. So what you do is you can do it on a barbecue. And what you do is you take a nice flank steak, thin being the key here. Slice it really thin. Then you heat up a wok, extremely hot. You don't have to put the meat in right away. What you're going to be doing is putting in some of your vegetables. For me, it's shredded carrots, it's celery. I like white mushrooms and stuff. This is sprinkled with a little bit of ginger.
    79:52
    Garlic, whether it be powder or actually shaved garlic. Teriyaki sauce. Get that a little nice and hot. Then you can throw in the meat. And you top it off right when it's kind of nice and hot and cooked a little bit. Throw in some beansprouts. You don't want to own the beansprouts. You put that in a nice soft tortilla shell or maybe on top of a white rice. Delicious. My wife loves it. Does that have a name? Yes. It's the only thing I know how to cook. It's about Jeff.
    80:21
    Excellent. Well, that's what's cooking with Jeff Jellis. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thanks, Martin. Thank you very much indeed, Jeff. Yes. Fantastic. I'm definitely going to try that. Sounds very, very, very, very nice. You might take your life in your hands if you do that. But, yeah, make sure you use appropriate protective wear when doing that. But, yeah, thanks for Jeff. And those, of course, anybody who was watching the IFPA World Pinball Championships that just finished last weekend will have seen Jeff commentating on the final on the JGL Pinball Team. his remote contributor. He was in his home in Canada, but he was thanks to the new JDL pinball facility, they can now have people call in, via Zoom or Teams or whatever, and be part of the commentary team even if they're not actually at the venue by watching the stream. So, very nice feature there. So, congratulations to everybody involved in the JDL pinball stream coverage of the IPA World Championship last weekend and thanks again to Jeff for doing our latest What's Cooking with. Yes, thank you very much Jeff.
    81:39
    And we're moving on with back to the news of June last month, pinball industry news that is. Barrels of Fun is of course promoting June, their latest title which was revealed two months ago.
    81:57
    David Van Es, the CEO of the company, or Chief Mischief Behavior, or whatever it is. Mischief Maker? Yeah, that's the one.
    82:08
    Was a special guest at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show and the Southern Pride Gaming Expo. And at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show, We also did a seminar with Butch Bill on the making of Dune.
    82:29
    Yeah, indeed. And I believe those seminars are also available to watch on YouTube. Don't have a URL, but just look at a Northwest Pinball and Arcade show, and then you'll probably find them quick enough.
    82:47
    Yeah, they do a very professional streaming operation there for the seminars. Yes. And we're recording. I'm not on the screen. I'll record it. Right. And then, well, there's some code news from Barrels of Fun as well.
    83:02
    Yes, that's right. They've added some new prophecy modes to Dune in a most recent software update. This was demonstrated by Carl DeAngelo over at IE Pinball in a comprehensive stream where he threw the rules of Dune and demoed these new modes. And they certainly had a huge impact to it. So I would encourage you, if you're watching recordings of the seminar at Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show, to also go to IE Pinball, either on YouTube or on their Twitch channel, and have a look at Carl demoing the new prophecy modes in Dune. And that rounds it up already for our call. Obviously they are building Dune, the game is being sent to locations, so if you are near an arcade that has a new Dune, go out and play it because it's a really fun game to play and it definitely deserves a shot or two, I would say. Yes, pretty intense gameplay at the moment, with all the lighting effects that are going on and the amazing mechanisms in the game. Yes, absolutely. Definitely, definitely play it. Right, okay. So, moving on then. So, both Sparrow and Pimble.
    84:25
    Yes, they're still there. Yes, that's right. Only the biggest Pimble manufacturer. Yes. Yes, been very busy this month, actually. Lots of code we'll get to a bit later. but also some new products and a bit of a celebration. So let's start with their new topper, which is a sort of... At the moment, it can be a non-game-specific Stern pinball logo, or it can be more game-specific, but it's a very... not very basic. It's a more basic topper, which is really just a flat plate, acrylic plate, or the game name printed on it, and some RGB expression lighting from the bottom, which is tied into the game. Now, this is only available so far for the Star Wars game, which can either have the Star Wars game name plate in it, or it can have Stern pinball plate. Right, with the Stern logo on it. Yes, that's all, yeah. So that could fit on any game, but obviously because it's RGB controlled lighting, expression lighting, it needs to be supported in the code. And so far Star Wars is the only game which has it supported. Right. Because it also has its own plate. We're used to toppers costing in the region of, you know, $1,500 to even $2,000. Well, I still remember the days that they were like $200. Yes, well that's true. Stern have been milking topper markets for sure.
    86:07
    And... Be careful today, I got in trouble for suggesting they were milking anything. So, but not... They are off making the most of it, shall we say, but the opportunity. Right. And these new, more basic toppers. They come in two parts. There's the lid part, which is the base bit which holds the plate, and then you can buy the plate separately. Which also, I guess, means that you can buy the base and add your own plate to it. So you can have your own logo, or you could have an entire different game logo on it, if you wanted to really confuse people. Right. The Star Wars topper on Star Trek. Yeah, exactly. And vice versa.
    86:55
    So it also opens up a whole new aftermarket of topper mods that fit this system. Yes, that's right. The base with the lighting in it, which is tied in, I guess it has an expression lighting system and a node board, probably, or it plugs into an existing node board. But that costs $400. The actual plate with the name on it, or the Stern logo on it, that's another $100. So if you want to get the whole thing, it's $500. If you only want to get the base, you can do that and get, as you were saying, Jonathan, get a third-party plate that fits it once they start to be produced, which they haven't been yet. But as I said, it's because it's got RGB illumination effects, it needs to have code, new code for that game to work with it so it lights up appropriate to the what's going on in the game and indeed turns it dark at key points for the game as well um so at the moment uh only one game star wars but expect to see as we saw with um various other add-ons like expression lighting things and um uh trying to think the well entirely connected when that first came out New code comes out for a whole raft of new games which incorporate this new topper system. So look out for that later when we have to update you with 27 different code updates, just to add the topper support.
    88:28
    So, that's the new topper. There is, well, Stern, as we know, have been putting some games into the vault, which means that they are basically out of circulation, out of production for at least two years. Yeah, which doesn't mean that Stern don't have any in stock, but they're not building. Absolutely not. That's right. Yeah, it probably means that the license is running out. But that's speculation.
    88:56
    But one of the games that's going into the vault very soon is Iron Maiden, and of course Stern have been promoting that game in order to clear existing stock. rather oddly they kind of call it a celebration that the game is going into the vault not sure I'd agree with that celebrating not making the game anymore seems a mournful thing really that you won't be able to make them anymore at least not for two more years at least but anyway celebrating that fact that it goes into the vault and promoting Iron Maiden and basically telling you if you want one get it now because if you plug any more around, which may or may not be true, that distributors probably will have them for some time to come. But hey, it gives them a chance to push the game a bit more. Right. And then last month we reported on a sweepstake promotion that Stern was running where you could win a Metallica remastered pinball game. Apparently that was very successful for them. while the Metallica remastered sweepstake is coming to an end, CERN already announced your chance to win a Dungeons & Dragons Pro Pinball Machine.
    90:13
    Basically the same concept. You have to subscribe to the CERN Pinball newsletter or the Insider Connected, whatever it's called. And even if you're an existing or already registered, you have to apparently re-register yourself or confirm that you are registered in order to make or have a chance to win a Dungeons & Dragons Pro pinball machine. So, just so you know. And again, this is for U.S. residents only.
    90:53
    No, it's not. What are you going to do? And I'm curious whether they are doing this because they didn't register the previous owners who registered for this newsletter in such a way that they can actually send their newsletters or some legal stuff that people might get confused about, or I don't know. But apparently it pays off.
    91:30
    So if you're interested in a Pimble machine or a newsletter, then you know what to do. Good luck if you enter into the sweepstake. Yes, and then there were two milestone birthdays at Stern Pindle celebrated last month. Not Cornerstone? Sorry? Not Cornerstone, then? No, no, no, no, milestone, yes, yes, yes. Ah, right, okay. So, Gary Stern, founder of the company, celebrated his 80th birthday, and I remember that we well congratulations first of all to Gary I still remember we recorded quite an in-depth and unusual interview with Gary Stern when he turned 75 and that seems like it was yesterday it does yeah five years ago wow it means we've been doing this that long oh my god don't remind me And the other birthday that was celebrated simultaneously, I have to say, because Stern tried to turn it into some sort of a media event. I think they had distributors invited in the factory and a video edit was posted on social media. The other person celebrating a birthday was George Gomez, vice president of game design. And he celebrated his 70th birthday.
    93:08
    Wow. And congratulations. Sorry? He doesn't look a day over 60. No. Congratulations to George as well, of course.
    93:20
    Absolutely. Congratulations to both of them. Yeah. So, oddly enough, in the video edit that was published, Seth Davis was talking as well as Gary Stern. I don't know what George said because everything he said was cut or never made the video. So, oh well, I'm sure they had both great birthdays. And nice looking cake as well. Yeah. Congratulations again. Okay.
    93:59
    Well, to celebrate both their birthdays and also the Iron Maiden going into the vault, we'll do some new code. Ooh. I've been loving this. I've been waiting for it all week. Well, all month, in fact. I may have some code-related news as well.
    94:19
    Oh. Okay. There's a rumor going around that Wayson Chang has left Stern Pimble and is now working at Raw Thrills. And while we are recording this, I did check Wayson's LinkedIn page.
    94:38
    It still says he's working at Stern, so this is just a rumor. but if true, then he would be the second programmer to be learned and have put a role through his family, so to speak, because Tim Sexton left a couple of months ago, and he's working at Flame Dynamics.
    94:56
    Yes, and we understood previously that Waston would be taking over some of Tim's work on John Wick. Maybe, I'm not going to speculate on any of that, because John Wick is one of the updates we have this month. Right. So we'll start off with Kick On, of course, the current title. It actually had two code updates on the 19th and the 24th. Lots of rule changes and bug fixes in the first of those, but unfortunately there's a couple of ball lock bugs which were fixed in the hotfix version of 8.4 which came out just a few days later. Dungeons & Dragons, previous game, is at version 0.92. That had an update, a fairly moderate update with lots of fixes, the main one being making the dragon letters easier to spell out than they were after the last update. When we first saw the game, Jonathan was very keen to point out exactly how easy it was to start Dragon Multiwards by shooting the dragon a few times. Well, that was made a lot harder, but apparently made too hard. So this most recent update makes it a bit easier to get those dragon letters and start dragging multiple.
    96:16
    John Wick, which we were just talking about, had an update. It was actually a big update this time with lots of rule changes, some new faction perks for completing some of the job modes, and lots of bug fixes, because apparently there were a lot of bugs that needed fixing. That was a long-awaited update. Another long-awaited update was for the Uncanny X-Men, which came out in version 0.91. A large update with many new and changed rules, and they added a whole future mode, which people have been speculating how that was going to work. Well now when completing a mode in the past you can travel to the future for a timed mode which allows you to destroy a certain number of, or what the card uses, destroy a certain number of sentinels and escape to go back to the past. If you don't do it then you get sent back to the past anyway but without affecting a perk to your current character which is a sort of a power up feature. There are also quite a few bug fixes in this version as well. Star Wars, we were just talking about that, had a new version, 1.28, as far as we can see, pretty much just adds support for this new more basic topper, the expression lighting topper. Yeah, that would just as well.
    97:37
    Yep. And finally, one that came out literally just as I was making these notes, well, finishing these notes, I should say, about an hour ago, Metallica Remastered got a an update version 1 which added a few new adjustment settings several gameplay bug fixes and some fixes for things that are in the service menu
    98:04
    Curiously, it doesn't include anything to do with this new topper. Well, that might help with future updates.
    98:11
    Yeah, but they just brought it out, you know, almost the same time as they're announcing the new topper, you think, having a Metallica one. particularly for a game like Metallica Remastered, where neither version of the game actually has a topper at the moment. So it didn't come with one, shall we say. You can buy one, but it wasn't included with even the limited edition. So hopefully we'll see that soon. If not, there'll probably be plenty of people making aftermarket ones. And that's the code updates for Stone Pimble for June. Right. Okay. Next up is Dutch Pinball, also operating under the brand of Dutch Pinball Exclusive, or DPS in short.
    99:01
    A little bit of news. The current game in production is, of course, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is a project that Melvin Brower-Williams brought into the company.
    99:17
    And, well, for them, the big news last month was that, if you've seen the game, you know that all the plastics, the 3D plastics, are designed by the art of pinball. and that collaboration apparently turned out so well that Milton Williams teamed up with Lior, who owns the Art of Pinball, to become a co-owner of the Art of Pinball.
    99:56
    And right after that news, they also announced a new agreement with Planetary, which is the license for Valley Williams games from, well, basically from up to 2000s.
    100:14
    And they will be allowed to produce mods and parts for, well, classic Valley Williams titles. And it could be anything from that massive catalog. So, it could be the 90s games of course that we all know and love so much, especially Popeye comes to mind and... Oh, who doesn't? Bugs Bunny's birthday ball... Oh, hang on, this is overloading. Too excited, yeah? Taking all the good ones. Yeah. I kid, I kid of course. But yeah, so anyway, what they also mentioned is some of the parts that the Art of Pinball is creating under this new agreement will include lolly boards from Davey Price's Tumblr pinball. I forgot to look up what that exactly means. but it's an old microcontroller board which, for instance, if you have like a pop bumper,
    101:22
    then you're using the stumbler illumination LEDs like around the top. Well, this lolly ball allows you to be reactive, so it ties into the switch closures as well. so the animations of the LEDs tie in with when the pop bumper is activated and how often, so it does different patterns. Not just that, but it can be all different parts of the play field. It can all have that, like slingshot posts, for instance, taking out multiple LEDs under them which animate when the slingshot fires. Right. And if it's firing a lot, then they can speed up and go faster. It's a clever little bit of tech and it would be nice to see that more widely available. Right. Well, and to make them available, these new products will be sold through distributor Cointaker and Planetary Pinball. And in Australia by Mr. Pinball Australia.
    102:28
    And the art of pinball is that in Europe. Well, the Art of Pinball is going to announce additional new partnerships in the coming months. So, it could be European distributors, it also could be that Dutch Pinball or DPX will be a distributor for those parts, for at least the Netherlands. But that hasn't been confirmed, that's just pure speculation on my end. We look forward to seeing what these products are and when we can get them and where we can get them. Right. And there was some more news regarding the production of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which have been confirmed by DPX. Issues with quality, quantity and timing of certain parts resulted in Dutch Bimble Exclusives switching to a new supplier. Well, you know what that means, a month of delay.
    103:30
    A sample topper from the new supplier is on its way to, or was on its way to, DPX for approval. And to avoid the games being held up that were ready already, DPX will ship a batch of 19 games by boat and six games I think by air without toppers and the toppers will be sent out at a later date once all the parts are in. So that's mostly topper related debates.
    104:10
    As we were talking about before getting games to the US at the moment is problematic and the timing could be critical, especially if tariffs, if tariffs are imposed on imports from the European Union. That would include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. So, yes, if they want to get the games over in a timely manner, then being held up by not having a topper could be an expensive issue. So, of course, whether this is just toppers or whether there's other things as well, as we don't know, but you may remember that when the game was launched, Melbourne sort of had a self-imposed deadline to deliver games to buyers by the end of the year or offer them a refund of their deposits and give them the chance to back out without losing their deposit, which previously the deposit paid was non-refundable. So, it would be interesting to see whether they get all those games made and shipped to buyers by the end of the year, given these delays. As you said, it could be weeks or months. Yeah, well, if you're basically sacking one supplier and you have to find a new one, and they have to make samples to see if their quality is up to par, If they're not next door, it could take months before you get a product that you're satisfied with. Yeah, and you have to fit in with their existing production schedule. They're not going to drop everything just to produce, I don't know, 300 toppers. Right. If they're a company that makes tens of thousands of products normally. Right. Yeah. Oh well, that's all the news for Dutch Pinball for now.
    106:19
    But we, of course, keep a close eye on new developers. And we'll report on that in the future. Yes, and wish them the best of luck. Yes, exactly. In their difficulties and delays. Okay.
    106:33
    But Dutch Pinball are, and DPX, are producing games, at least. American Pinball we don't know what they're making at the moment or whether they are just selling stock but you may remember a while ago they had a sale on various titles I can't remember, was that I can't remember what the event was I think it was Wednesday yeah, yeah it's Wednesday, let's roll out some offers Well, the 4th of July sale is on at this very moment, if you're listening to this around about the 4th of July. Right. Actually, the sale runs from the 20th of June through to the 7th of July, so a little bit longer. You've got a couple of weeks at least to get these deals, if you want. Those deals are eerily familiar, the ones we've reported on before. Galactic Tank 4 Signature Edition is available for US$7,995.
    107:38
    Which is a bargain. Compared to the list price when it was first launched. Yes. In fact, it's now US$7,000 less than that, so virtually half price.
    107:52
    So a good price for a good game, I think. Right. Also, Legends of Valhalla, the classic edition, which is the cost-reduced version that has plastics rather than moulds on the playfield, that is now available for $5,495, which is nearly $2,000 off the original price.
    108:18
    And I think for the first time, I don't remember, Hot Wheels, a classic edition of that is also available. Not such a big saving this time. It's US$6,895, which is only a $500 saving on the original price. Now, not every distributor is going to be offering this, so if you're thinking of buying one and your distributor isn't in there, American Pinball suggests you contact another distributor who is offering that deal. So, on the other hand, if you're not quite ready, hold on for next Wednesday.
    108:57
    Or Tuesday. Oh, my God. Yeah, and also there will be Black Friday, there will be Thanksgiving, there will be Christmas coming up.
    109:10
    It's a Tuesday. Pet Animal Day. I think we get the idea. Okay, I think we can pretty much say these are the standard prices here. Right, yeah. I can't see anybody buying them at the regular prices if these promotions come by so often as they do. But, oh well. Yeah, as I say, we don't know whether these are newly manufactured games or getting in stock. So, either way, I think the classic models are recent, sorry to say, recent production, because they weren't available before. Classic Tank Force, Signature Edition, probably they made all those at the start. Right, so that means that there's still people running their production line.
    110:07
    Well, I can't say at this precise moment, but... It's a plan, yes. Okay, let's not speculate then, because we don't know. So if you want that, you've got until the 7th of July to get those deals, before the next set of deals kicks in. Right, okay. Then we have this new company called Wonderland Amusements, who are working on another Alice game. Yeah, Alice Goes to Wonderland. Yeah, which makes me wonder, by the way, I mean, we were talking about import tariffs, but what if you say that the game is not built in China, it's built in Wonderland? I don't think there's a tax imposed on Wonderland.
    110:53
    Not yet. Don't put the idea in people's minds. Yes, anyway. The whole thing was funded through a Kickstarter program, which they are vastly oversubscribed and they reach their target very, very quickly. And they have been providing monthly updates on the progress of the game. This first latest monthly update, the June one, didn't actually include that much in the way of news. There is new game code, but they didn't have any videos of it yet. and the new code apparently has lots more call-outs, more display animations and additional rules, but there were ways that it hasn't been tested and wasn't available to show yet. So hopefully next month they'll be able to show you the latest version. Despite some delays in getting things done, they have slipped on their timeline, which was published at the start, but not a great surprise there. and of course the game is being built in Hong Kong which may make it subject to as you get unknown tariffs when it's brought into the US which is where Wonderland Amusements are and where all the sales take place so they're also kind of waiting to see what's going to happen about tariffs but in the meantime getting on and developing the game out in Hong Kong and And hopefully next month we'll be able to see exactly what they've been doing. Right. Because this month there wasn't an awful lot of news. Right. So, same goes for Spooky Pinball, although they did quite, well, try to make an impact.
    112:51
    First of all, they introduced composer and sound designer Brady Hearn on social media. Brady is working on the music and sound package for the company's next two titles.
    113:05
    So you might be wondering, like, okay, who is this Brady Hearn? Well, as a composer, Brady has had music features in over 120 television shows, including Dateline, NBC, 2020, Impractical Jokers, NFL and UFC broadcasts.
    113:29
    And in sound design, he worked closely with companies like NBC, Paramount, MTV and VH1. Okay, yeah. And, well, the tunes that he has created for the upcoming two games are called Top Notch. So, well, very interesting. Come on, release those games. Oh, no, that's going to take a while, I suppose. Yes, I'm afraid so. And, oh, yeah, go on, go on. I was just going to say, congratulations to Spooky and to Brady in their collaboration. Looking forward to, as you say, hearing what he's produced for the next two titles. Right. So, and, well, we mentioned the sweepstakes from Star Wars earlier on. Yeah, but, well, Spooky had a different approach. They just gave away an Ultraman film machine on BuzzStream and Scream. Yeah, all you had to do was be watching it. Right. Apparently around 1200 people were watching it. Hmm, yeah. And the winner was a chap called JB, not John Borg. Caleb Brown? No, didn't look like that either. They did have a picture of the lucky winner in his game room. So congratulations JB, and on your new Ultraman pinball machine. machine that you get to enjoy. Right. And that's not all, because there was also new code for Evil Dead.
    115:13
    Yes, Evil Dead, new code came out on the 16th of June, which added the Hero from the Sky Wizard mode and Mirror, Mirror Sanity mode. Also a couple of bug fixes as well. So having the Wizard mode in the game is a nice thing to see. It's getting pretty well developed now. and it's already a great game. I think we both really enjoyed playing it and I got to play it a bit more at the EBC and enjoyed it just as much there as well. So it wasn't just the one game that we played. It is, as a lot of people have been saying, a great game and certainly from my perspective, Swiggy's best game to date. Yeah, but they've got two more coming up at least with Brady's music in. So looking forward to seeing what happens there. And, of course, Chris Franchi on art as well on those. Yes. And then we have Hexa Pinball in France, who we know for their Space Hunt pinball machine that was released last year.
    116:25
    It's currently their only title. and well we also mentioned that you visited Pinball Heaven for the Harry Potter reveal as it turns out Pinball Heaven has been appointed as a UK distributor for Hexafinble so that means more chances of playing Space Hunt in the UK yes that's right Yep. They didn't have one at the show. It's a new appointment, but maybe they'll bring it to other shows. We look forward to seeing it in the UK anyway, because it's another game which has been very well received by those who played it, and it deserves a wider audience. So let's hope it gets it in the UK. So, and well, speaking of Hexa Pinball, they were a special guest at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo last year. And the organizer, well, the main organizer of that show, Marcel, good friend from us both,
    117:40
    was on holiday in France and decided to visit the Hexa Pinball factory in Matillac, France. and well that was shared on social media as well, as well as confirmed that Hexhout Pinball will be coming back to the Dutch Pinball Open Expo in November this year.
    118:03
    Very good. They of course did a seminar last year, two seminars, one on Saturday and one on Sunday I believe. Yeah.
    118:12
    For all the visitors because the way the ticketing works you can buy a ticket for one day or the other. so if you want to watch their seminars go over to the Pinball News either the report from last year's show DPO Expo 2024 or go to our YouTube channel yeah that's the one where you can actually watch all the seminars from DPO Expo last year right yes so then we got the hope in Taiwan Mike Kalinowski's company. Their current title is, as you might know, Blues Brothers. There was a lunch, launch party, I should say, not a lunch party, but a launch party, in Adelaide, Australia, for that game, which is a bit odd because it's been out for months. But then again, well, it might have taken a while for the game to actually get delivered there. It looked like there was a streaming rig over the game, so it looks like they had a live stream as well. I'm not sure whether that's available anywhere, but if you're interested, then I'd say see if you can find it on Google. It would be nice to see what people have done with the open source aspect of it, and added their own music and anything else. If they did that, yes. If anybody attempted that so far. And that's all the news we got from Homewind for now. So hopefully there's work in progress and they're building more games. And we look forward to hearing from them soon. Yes, let's move over to the US, back to the US, I suppose, after visiting France and Taiwan, and go to Texas and Turner Pinball, who, as you may know, their first game, Ninja Eclipse, well, they've wrapped up production on that now, and are moving on to production of Merlin's Arcade, the second title, except it's not actually starting just yet. it's expected to start production either next month or the month after so July or August and I think it just said it could be in late summer or in summer of this year so fairly vague but I guess that means they're going to have a month or two when they're not making games but working on developing them so yeah we're looking forward to seeing World End Arcade because that was another game that we enjoyed playing yeah it was a very fun game I highly recommend that if you can play it at a show or someone's personal collection. But I guess it will take a couple of months before people have it in their possession or collection. I think so. Yeah. And then apparently Turner Logic, which is I think the parent company of Turner Kimball, tried to register the term Arcade Edition as a trademark.
    121:40
    And that would be that no other pinball manufacturer, if awarded, no other pinball manufacturer could be using the term Arcade Edition, but many have already in the So, I doubt whether this will get awarded. Yes, it was applied for on, I'm going to look at the application now, on the 8th of April 2025, there were numerous uses of Arcade Edition in relation to arcade games, like Street Fighter is a popular one as well, but, and of course Jersey Jack Fimble, We were just talking about the arcade edition of Harry Potter, which has been announced for quite some time.
    122:33
    So whether this predates that or not, I don't know. But it would be nice to think that such a generic term as arcade edition would not be restricted in that way. But hey. Well, strange things have happened. There we go. Oh, yeah. A bunch of strange things have happened. I knew. um yeah so no uh we'll report on that if either it gets rejected or it gets granted and let you know what's going on there but now we come to our favorite section of the show yes it's the very very popular no news and for june 2025 we have no news from Chicago Gaming and these are from Pinball Adventures in Canada Can you tell we've practiced this can't we?
    123:34
    Also no news from Rams No news from Vector Pinball in Australia Also no news from Hackers Pinball and I think we'll drop them from the list because there's nothing happening there and Damien is There's not going to be any news. Yeah. So, and there's also no news from Bittronic in Spain.
    123:59
    Also no news from Cardona Pinball in the US. No news from SPR Pinball in Spain, again. Or no news from Quetzal Pinball in Spain. Yeah, slightly related to Bittronic. I can see a pattern here. And we're also dropping Circus Maximus as... Well, that looks like... They don't exist really. And haven't done anything for many years and probably never going to. If they do, we can always bring them back. We won't expect any news or we won't... If you were hoping for that Kingpin remake, I hate to tell you, but... You're right. Oh, any day now. Oh, okay.
    124:48
    Okay. Well, what is happening, though, is a new pinball show in France. Yes. The VIF. The Biennale International du Pippa.
    125:00
    Yes, exactly. That sounded a bit Spanish, that Pippa. On the end. Yeah. Anyway, the PIF show is taking place from the 3rd, 4th and 5th of October in Nantes. you can go to salonbiff s-a-l-o-n-b-i-f dot f-r to find out more details and they have a special guest in fact they're two special guests for their very first show in the form of Roger and Ellen Sharp yes that's right they will be special guests at the Biff show they will be present at a dinner there will be a screening of the film, The Man Who Saved Pinball, and they'll be interviewed afterwards. So if you haven't seen the movie, if you have and want to see it again, it's your chance to get up close and personal with Roger and Ellen Sharp and ask them the questions that you always wanted to ask about the making of the movie and about Roger's career in pinball and about Roger and Ellen's family. And, of course, they're two sons who work in the pinball business. Right.
    126:11
    And then, well, this is you, Cain. You saw that you handled this. Well, okay. And another show, rather than being a new show, this is the last show.
    126:21
    This coming month, on the 11th to 13th of July, it will be the 20th and final Swayze show. I think it's called the East Anglia Pinball Show, otherwise known as the Swayze Show. It takes place in the little village of Swayze in the pub there, the White Horse. great time had by everybody I will be running the UK Pinball Cup on the Sunday the whole thing is free to enter free to play there will be a grand prize draw charity donations and raffle tickets raised money for the Chesham charity which this year is the Alzheimer's Society so if you are at all able to come along to Swayze come on in come to the Whitehorse Club play some pinball buy some raffle tickets take part in the UK Pinball Cup and help celebrate this 20th and last Swayze Pinball Show. And why is it the last? Why is it stopping? Well, because the organiser, Mr Mark Squires, otherwise known as Dr Pinball, has, well, he was going to call it a day a few years ago, but he persuaded to keep going for another couple of shows, so he thought, OK, I'll take up to 20, and then he feels as if he's done everything. And also the pinball scene has changed a lot in the 20 years that that show's been running. When he started it, there were very, very few events around, and now there's a lot more going on in the UK pinball scene. So he doesn't feel the need, and to be honest, he's earned a break. He's done 20 years of fantastic shows and raised a ton of money for charity, every single one of them. So, yeah, if he wants to call it a day, good luck to him, and we'll be there to celebrate the 20th show. Right, okay. And then finally... Ah, yes, finally. Yes, just a little note on the ongoing saga of the Deep Root, Robert Mueller legal issues. If you may remember, for those who haven't been paying attention, or indeed those who nodded off in the past, there was a civil case against Robert Mueller or bought by the liquidator of the deep-root investment companies. Well, that's put on hold while there's now a criminal case against him, so the US versus Royal River.
    128:52
    That has been pushed back by another 90 days at his request. So we keep speculating there will be some kind of plea bargain. Well, the deadline for that is now 7th November this year. So you've got all the way until then to find out whether or not a deal has been worked out. And if not, then jury selection and trial should all begin on the 1st of December, if there isn't a big bargain.
    129:21
    Or a new lawyer. Yes, I'm assuming there are no more delays to push it into 2026, which is very very possible but at the moment the next date to look out for is the 7th of November and of course we will keep you updated as and when that changes right and that rounds it up for our pin cast looking back at the month of June 2025 it does, we will be back at the start of August with our next pin cast where we look back again at all the events in the pinball world with excitement throughout this month of July. So until then, from me, Martin Eyre of Pinball News, and me, Jonathan Euston of Pinball Magazine,
    130:15
    we wish you a very jovial July and look forward to joining you again next month for the next edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast. Bye for now. Bye-bye. you