The following is a Super Awesome Pinball Show special. Here's Jack Pinball and the Super Awesome Pinball Show presents... Johnson Roses The Game Designer Eric Meunier And your host, pinball artist Christopher Branchi Dr. Pin, Kristen Wein and Mrs. Penn's Fairline presented by Cointaker Pinball Distributors. I've got three pinball machines in the house, but I'm not that great at pinball. I was one of those kids that hung out in the arcade when I was in junior high. All of a sudden, I discovered pinball when I was in my 30s, and then I got hooked on it, and then I actually had the concept and helped design the Guns N' Roses pinball machine. Can you co-designers flash? in ball. Everyone's been waiting to see what's next from Eric. Now two years later, Eric is back. The man himself has done it again, overshadowing his first pin with this brand new Guns and Roses, co-designed by a dude you might have heard of, a little guy named Splash. Guns and Roses has all the kinetic thrills over the top artistic flair of a JJP game with so much more. Almost as exciting as the game itself is the story of how this game came to be and the personalities that had to join forces to give birth to one of the greatest and loudest music pin experiences of all time. So join us as Jersey Jack gives us a backstage pass to their design process and the stories behind the new Guns N' Roses pinball machine. With the man himself, Eric Meunier. Stick around at the end for a trivia contest that is going to blow your mind. The winner is going to win a signed Guns N' Roses mini play field. That's right, and here we go. Oh my God, man. We have seen some shit we have never seen before. Like everything else they've done, Jersey Jack Pinball was out to shatter expectations of what a music pin could be when they made Guns N' Roses. If you're not a fan of music pins, or even if you're not a fan of Guns N' Roses, this is probably going to be the game that's going to convert you. And if you are a fan, holy shit, this game is a perfect marriage between an epic pinball experience and a Guns N' Roses concert. Eric Meunier has been in the gaming world since he was three years old, working for Kingpin Games full-time by the time he was 12 at their 100-plus arcades. While working on his master's in mechanical engineering, he met Jack Guarnieri and joined the Jersey Jack Pinball. He's been involved in every game they've made, but really stepped up to the spotlight with his hugely popular Pirates of the Caribbean. And now he's back to reveal his second game, Guns N' Roses. Welcome to the show, Eric Meunier. Thanks for having me, everybody. So we'll get it out here. My name is French. In its original pronunciation, it is Meunier. When I've been to France, you know, people call me Eric Meunier. But the American pronunciation is Meunier. That's what I've been called my whole life. It's Eric Meunier. When I go to France, they can see my underpants. For those at home who are curious, Meunier is French for Miller. And it's one of the most common names in France. Really? That's awesome. It's like quite the tidbit there. Well, we also have my beautiful wife and host of the Mrs. Pins Pinball podcast, Sarah Line. Welcome to the show. Gee, thanks, honey. Specifically requested by Eric. because we sent him a really cool Guns N' Roses sweater for Chris. Not that we knew that this was coming out or anything, but I just, like, guessed a little bit. We took an educated guess. We took a little stab in the dark. We do something called the Pinside Secret Santa every year, and Eric is part of that. Is it Hog Bog on Pinside? Yeah. Okay, so Eric has done this for the last two years at least, and he is super generous with the gifts he gives out. It's, like, trans lights and awesome Jersey Jack swag. So when Sarah pulled his name this year, we were so freaking stoked, And we were just like, all right, we have to just spoil the shit out of this guy and send him the best stuff we can think of. So she made some awesome T-shirts, Pirates of the Caribbean, with Eric's face on them. Oh, that's some of my best work yet. They are fantastic. When the entire family got together and took a family picture, it was awesome. And you also got a Guns N' Roses sweater just as an educated shot in the dark that that was your next game. And have you rocked that at Christmas parties? I have. And in fact, I took a picture of me wearing that sweater, and I sent it to Slash. And he just sent back rock face emojis with smiley faces. That's so cool. He's cool about it. I love it that Slash uses emojis. Yeah. But of course, they're rocker emojis, right? Right. Only the coolest emojis. There's not a winky cry face for him. Thank you so much for coming on the game, man. Today was the reveal date for the game, and we are super excited that we're going to be able to talk to you about it and pick your brain a little bit. So we've had the images and the video of this game for a while, but it took forever to think about how to approach the interview because the game is so freaking packed. But congratulations on finally getting this thing out for everyone to see. How does it feel to finally show this off? It feels fantastic. I mean, it has been a work in progress, and I've been working on it since April of 2018, I think, was my first whitewood drawing. And it's been done for a long time. The problem is we moved our entire company from New Jersey to Illinois. Right. So getting manufacturing set up and running and all parts sent here and training new people and hiring new people and doing all that is an extremely involved operation. So now that we have games in boxes ready to ship, we felt comfortable unveiling the game to everyone. That's awesome. It's been a long time coming, but I'm excited to finally share it with the world. It's beautiful. It is so beautiful. It really is. I'm not going to lie. Christian has legit cried some tears of joy over this thing. He had last week off, and you had sent us the images of the new games and all the different versions. And I said, oh, man, what did you do today? Like, I'm at work all day long and, like, you know, sleeping away. And he said, oh, man, I sat for four hours in my massage chair and just scoured over pictures of something. And I was like. So she hadn't seen them yet. So by the time she got home, I had everything printed off. I had a Spotify playlist with all the music from the game that I listened to like three times at that point. I think you had a list of pros and cons. Like all pros for why we should buy this game and pros and cons for which version. That's right. Oh my gosh, it was hysterical. But, you know, I just wondered when this actually hit the public, what do you do with yourself? I mean, you've been working on this for over two years and it's obviously a labor of love anytime anyone creates a game. But Jersey Jack just does everything a lot extra, which I personally love. But what do you do? Like, are you out there talking to people? Do you go on Pinside to look and see what people think about it? Or do you just bask in the glory that is a fully released game? Let's see. Do I give the answer people want to hear or the real answer? Oh, we want to know, man. If you literally kickback with a beer and just, like, turn off all media, that's cool, too. There are certain threads that I will look at on Pinside, mostly the if the game has an issue thread. I love to help out, but when people are just talking about the game and reviewing the game, people will like the game, people will hate the game. That's just the way that this industry is. You have to have thick skin. If you don't have thick skin, you cannot be in the pinball industry. Something that, Chris, I'm sure you appreciate and understand. Definitely. So I, for the most part, will come on podcasts, talk to people, but what I'm really doing, I'm working on my next game. Wow. And what's that title? Why not? I mean, take the shot. I mean, listen, you can't fault a girl for trying. That's crazy. That's so awesome. Because, you know, you're going to hear pros and cons no matter what. I don't think I would need to go out searching for anything. This game especially, I just feel like it's got to be so overwhelming. And Pinside is not quiet. Yeah, but I think the benefit for Eric especially is that this game, I don't see how people are going to not just rave about it. I mean, there's so many awesome things that we're going to talk about here that if I was releasing this, I would be okay going on those sites because I would be thinking, this can't go wrong. You'd think that, but that's true. I went in with that same mentality and went, oh. Yeah, let me limp away after that. Oh, no. Your Pirates game is often mentioned as the benchmark of modern games, and I was wondering, do you find that to be inspiring or just added pressure when you've designed Guns N' Roses and as you go forward? Pirates was an absolute labor of love and we did things in that game like the mechs and stuff were all in my head from the beginning and things that we wanted to do. That game evolved in software so much because of how limited we were on the asset usage. So a lot of what makes that game a mainstay in people's homes has to do with how awesome the code has turned out and how much pressure we were under to make a great game with a lack of assets. With GNR, it was like a complete 180. I mean, Derek has, and I feel pretty confident in saying this, I don't think there's ever been a licensor this involved and this passionate about the game. At least none that I've ever worked with, and even from other companies. It's hard to imagine anyone being as involved as Slash was with this game. I mean, literally every day, him and I would talk, and I would show him the current progress on stuff like, you know, art and video and layout and things like that. It's probably tough for him to be subjective in something that's based on himself, but I'd have to imagine he'd look at the final version of this game and was like, God damn, that's a good pinball machine. Yeah, I agree. I don't feel a great amount of pressure to try to top Pirates or to match Pirates. Pirates is, in my opinion, a perfect game, and I make the games that I want to play. And so in the way that GNR is designed, it's a perfect music game. It's what I want in a music game. It's songs. It's the concert. It's the video assets. And it's not hammed together with bad animations or just little sound snippets. We've got every song, full length. The objective of the game is you get in, you start a song, and you play that song. And you are on stage rocking. And if you don't rock well enough, and this goes back to my college days playing rock band and guitar hero with my college roommates, if you don't play well enough during the song, you're getting booed off stage. that's cool so there's like a rocket meter and if you're not rocking it you're gonna get booed and you're going to drain out your ball won't end but it will end your song and the flippers turn off and then you have to go back in and restart a new song how does the game judge this rocking so if you're playing there's a whole bunch of things to do in songs and a whole bunch of things to do outside of songs and so if you're doing the right things shooting the mode shots in the song and You've gotten the pre-qualifiers built up well, and we can go over intimate details on all of these rules. You've done all the things, and you're playing well, you're going to rock. And the rocket meter's got like a skull at the top of it, and it will bob up and down like it's rocking out. And if you fail out and start to get booed, it's going to shake its head at you. All right, so we don't have to do the actual snake dance then while we're playing pinball. It's all going to do with gameplay. Okay. Right. I mean, there is the fan cam that's built in as you're playing on the main screen. That's cool. Cool. Well, we're going to get into the rules and the features, but taking us kind of way back to the beginning of you getting into this license, were you a fan of Guns N' Roses? I mean, this game has been done before, so how did it come about that this license was brought to Jersey Jack, and then were you a huge fan of Guns N' Roses and you jumped in, or did you kind of learn about Guns N' Roses as you went? The license was brought to us because Slash is a friend of Jack Guarnieri. Back in the days before everyone and their brother was selling pinball machines online, Jack was one of the first people who ever did that. Started pinballsales.com, and he had a long Rolodex full of clients, and Slash was one of those clients. So they became friends, because he sold Slash most of his games. About seven years ago, maybe it was nine years ago, Slash approached Jack and said, I really want to do a pinball machine with you guys, because you're the best, and you're going to represent Guns N' Roses in the best possible way. and Splash really wanted to make a new game and you really wanted to be involved with the design process. So we had a license agreement and worked it out and it was based around the Not In This Lifetime concert and I was given the game as my next design after Pirates. Before I started working on this project, my music I tend to listen to is generally heavy metal or old rock, which there's a pretty significant difference there, but, you know, that's what Spotify, I have up on Spotify. That's right. Obviously, I know a bunch, most of the Guns N' Roses songs that are popular, but I didn't have GNR albums before I started working on this game. And I absolutely put my foot in my mouth the first time I met Slash. And that's a fun story. Slash was talking about something like the popularity and the rising of Guns N' Roses. And he said something along the lines of, Eric, you remember back in like 87, 86 when we were playing these shows at like the Troubadour in LA? And without even thinking about it, I was like, sorry, man, I wasn't born yet. Oh. And he was just like, oh, my God, you made me feel so old. And I'm like, oh, shit. Oh. You don't look it. Oh, you don't look it, sir. Yeah. But he still loves you, I'm sure. We're definitely good friends. Absolutely. You made it up to him by making a kick-ass game. Right? That's totally true. Redemption right there. Yes. So when you were working with Slash, I just have to know, I mean, you say that he was involved every step of the way. Was it like a helpful involvement or was it something where you felt like you were being pushed in certain directions and you had to go that way? Or was it more of like teamwork makes the dream work? Do you know what I mean? Definitely teamwork makes the dream work. Slash came to us with a play field sketch. Wow. With concepts for mechs and stuff like that in the game. Who does that? Slash. Yeah. Love this guy. And, you know, I looked at the sketch and I'm like, okay, there's some cool stuff we can do here. There's some cool ideas for mechs. Let's work with this together. So then we would show him kind of my concepts, how we were evolving, what the different concepts were in the game. And I came up with a whole bunch of stuff that he didn't originally have, right? But he is one of the very few people I've ever worked with. And professionally, even like outside of pinball, you can understand the vision of what the final project is going to look like, as opposed to here's the white wood, and that's all I see, right? There's a lot of people, even in the industry, who it's hard for them to picture what a game is going to be with, you know, I can't really understand and have fun playing at Whitewood because it doesn't have any rules on it. Or yes, that shot is really cool, but okay, I made that shot, now what? You have to picture, okay, you build that shot and combo it into here, and now you've qualified such and such. And Slash is just like all on board the entire time. I get it, I understand where you're going with this. I love the concept you have for the rules, and the idea of the upper play field with my guitar is fantastic, but we've got to make sure that my bandmates are taken care of. Axl's got to be in the game, and Duff has to be in the game, and I have to be in the game. As the founding members of the band, we all wanted a big feature. So having him there to course-correct on certain aspects of the license and aspects of the elements that the Guns N' Roses fans are going to love, but also be so excited about the pinball aspects of the game, it was fantastic. There was never a me questioning, oh is this going to be something that I should put in the game or not and then like losing sleep over it's like no I would literally send him a message and he'd get back to me within 10 minutes this was while he was on tour you know doing the not in his lifetime tour he's like yeah man I'm in New Zealand right now um you know like some of the times we would do video checks I'd want to show him something on the screen and he's like laying in his hotel room bed and he's like yeah it's four in the morning here we just finished up the show but let's chat what do you got going on It was so cool, man. Okay. Did you have like surreal moments? Like I would, wicked fangirl. Yeah. I would totally just be like, hi. Did you have like fanboy moments? Because I don't know if I could make a pin with a celebrity and not have at least a couple holy shit moments. Yeah, surreal moments where you're like, is this real? I mean, Slash is so down to earth and cool that he, yes, he is probably the most famous guitar player in the world. Most recognizable, right? But he's so down to earth and cool that it was never difficult to talk to him about anything. He would always listen to exactly what I would say without interrupting, tell me to continue if he wanted clarity on something. And then the couple times he came to visit, he would, I wouldn't say introduce himself, because obviously he doesn't need to introduce himself to anybody, but he met every single member of the team and asked what they did on the game, how they are involved with the company. So mechanical engineers, electrical engineers shook all their hands and just sat down and had dinner with us all. He's just so down to earth and cool. It wasn't hard working with him. Did you have a splash mask on? This was pre-COVID. It also had to be one of those things that motivates the team, right? Because you've got somebody that you're working with that's kind of the inspiration for the game. And not only is he an icon in his own right, but then in real life, he's just bomb.com. And talk about a license that is like the best possible licensor you can deal with because they're giving you all of the assets you could possibly want. They're huge pinball fans and they're willing to be involved in every step. So, yeah, that's a huge win. Man, this must have been a piece of cake. The licensing aspect of it was easier than anything I've ever dealt with before. Before we dive into the game itself, let's talk about the band Assets because, you know, it kind of ties into Slash being involved. He had complete buy-in, you had access to the band, and it had to be kind of hard to choose what to include because they have so much. They have a huge discography, they've got so much history of the band, and Jersey Jack is kind of known for adding everything in the kitchen sink into their games. So you've got 21 full-length songs, you've got new exclusive music for the game from the band, all of the voices from the band and the band's announcer are in the game, and you have exclusive call-outs from the band members. So how did you even choose? So let's start there. You have 21 songs. They've got a bunch of different albums, some of which are some of the biggest albums of all time. How do you pick the songs? So the song list was picked by Flash from the Not In This Lifetime tour. This was 21 of the 40 songs that they played during that concert, and so 25 or something to pick from. And then per licensing agreements and costs on individual songs and all that, we settled on 20. and there was one extra song in there that I really, really pushed for, and we got it in the game, but it required a special favor from Snob. Which one was that? That was Live and Let Die. It was a Paul McCartney song. We were getting nowhere with Sony Entertainment, who had one of the rights. There's two sets of rights for all music. There's publishing rights, and there's all the other licensing rights. So Paul McCartney owned the licensing rights, and Sony Music owns publishing rights, and we were getting nowhere with either. I mean, we reached out to Paul McCartney's agent, you know, five times, got nowhere. Sony just told us no and then we were on the call it was me and Jack and Slash on the call and we were talking about you know yeah kind of a sob story like yeah we can't get anywhere with Live and Let Die so it's going to have to be pulled from the game and Slash literally says well guys let me call Paul we'll work it out wait what get him on speed dial yeah shut the fuck door 15 minutes later we had the song wow it's good to know people right and I'm just like wait Paul you mean sir literally the night of the server McCartney, yes. Oh my. 15 minutes later, we had the song. That is bonkers. It was surreal, right? Because like, Paul McCartney is, I mean... It's Paul McCartney. It's Paul McCartney, right? Yeah. And he's like, yeah, let me just call Paul. We'll work it out. And then as far as the rest of the assets, to be clear, the original music in the game is from Slash, not from Guns N' Roses. Right. All right. There's a difference there, and I just want to make sure that's understood. Slash made original music for the game. Instrumentation stuff for all of our album modes and wizard notes, which is really cool stuff. I mean, he... Like, did he do it head to toe, or did he have musicians, you know, help him out? So he did all of the guitar, and then we provided, like, a backtrack for bass and drums. So in the flyer, there was some discussion about original instrumental tracks done by Slash, Duff, and Richard. Yes. Okay, so they were involved a little bit. Absolutely. And that's a different thing altogether. Okay. So we have sound effects and instrumentation that was performed by Duff and Slash and Richard. And so that is like when you're in, and I am a music nerd. If anyone had any doubt about that, look at my, you know, in 2006, I joined the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, and I marched a collegiate band for six years. In the end of my first year of my master's degree, I was part of the Wisconsin band. I'm a huge music nerd. I played trumpet, and I got to go to two Rose Bowls. It was awesome. That's so cool. So the music in this game is extremely important to me, and not just the fact that it's cool Guns N' Roses music, but the fact that the pinball aspect of the game has to fit with the music. So what that means is I got my request, and they obliged. Slash, Duff, and Richard all played riffs and licks and short tunes in the right key at the right tempo for every song in the game so that when you hit a switch or you do something important during Live and Let Die, it's in the right key at the right time. Wow. And same with November Rain, and same with Welcome to the Jungle, and Sweet Child of Mine. So they all did five to ten different instrumentation licks for every song in the game. How do you direct the band, especially one of the greatest, if not the greatest guitarists of all time? I mean, how do you call him and say, hey, I want you to do this a little differently? I think you would understand, right? But that's where I feel like being a pinhead at heart has to help this, because all you would have to do with Slash is be like, hey, dude, we need this a little bit at a different tempo to work with the speed of the ball. And I can just imagine Slash being like, all right, let's do it. Yep. So when I explained to him what we were looking for and why, he got it immediately. He's like, okay, so I'll do 10 of these for each song. And I'll do 10 of these for each song. And then I'll do 10 of these. And he's like, okay, we've got half a second. We've got one second. And we've got two and a half second licks in every key signature at every tempo for each song. That's cool. And then you could just choose which one worked well with what you wanted. Yep. And if you train a duff bass slide. and duff did that yep that's cool did you really for the drain is that did french you just call that i told him we want one of those for the drain um so we've got keyboard slide and i think we've also got the duff the bass wow that was impressive one of the reasons that people love denise's tna so much is because the sound system just kicks you in the face the second you hit the start button and when i was listening to songs like you could be mine and the instrumental portion of live and let die it's like super high energy and i can just imagine the game just rocking out when you're playing that. So the speaker systems on Jersey Jacks have always been great. And then on the CE of this game, you're going to have an extra soundbar. Have you cranked this game up to 11 in the studio and just blown the place up? Do your neighbors hate you because I'm sure you have a game at your house? How much do you rock out on this thing? So we have fine-tuned the audio board to improve it even beyond what we have in the past. So it's clearer mids and better lows than we've ever had in the past. and then the CE soundbar adds another 50% extra power to the sound system. So I think they have, what is it, a 120-watt sound system to begin with, and then the soundbar is an extra 60 watts. Oh, my God, you're just so extra, and I love it. I mean, Jersey Jack, just like you guys, don't you anything half-ass? No, they don't. You go all the way. Yes, that's their new slogan. We're so extra. Carson is, like, seriously sleuthing. Edit that shit out, you rancher. The L, E, and C model have analog hookups, but you also have Bluetooth headphone connections in this game now. I don't know, did you have that before in any of your other games? And I can imagine that this game would be perfect for the headphones because you don't have to, you know, shake the windows when you're rocking out. Right. It's got a shaker motor. It's still going to shake the windows. Yeah, that's true. The Bluetooth connectivity and Wi-Fi connectivity is something that we are proud to present for the first time in full featured form here with Guns N' Roses. We had limited Bluetooth access with dialed in. Right. when we were doing, like, control your game on your phone sort of thing. It was a fun gimmick, but didn't get a lot of use in real life. The Bluetooth headphones, you need to play a JJP game with Bluetooth headphones on. You will hear things that you didn't know were in a game until this point. Even with regular headphones, too. Like, plug in headphones to your Wonka, and you'll hear sounds that you didn't know were there. You'll hear the fact that they are channel separated left and right. You know, like the Oompa Loompas are singing, like, in your head instead of just coming at your face. It's a really cool experience. That is cool. That's exciting. especially for a game like this. I mean, so, you know, Jersey Jack having a music pin is something that you really haven't had in the arsenal before. So was that part of it intimidating for you, just doing the music thing, like the very first music pin Jersey Jack has ever done? Or were you excited because of your music history? Right. I was definitely excited. You know, music pins are something that every company does, it seems like. And I'm one of the most musical people on the team. So I was very happy to take it and run with it. And I think the music here is represented the way that a musician will appreciate, right? Nice. Pinball people will appreciate it as well, but when a musician steps up to this thing and they hear it and they hear the sound effects and they'll feel it in the way that it's supposed to be felt. Barlow says he's feeling it. Oh, is that Barlow? Yeah. Speaking of music, a lot of the Guns N' Roses songs are quite lengthy, probably more lengthy than your average game of pinball. The Time Song feature, was that initiated to kind of sort of help you control the length of the songs and make the music work with the length of the balls? So the time song feature, and I'll be clear here, it's not implemented in 1.0. It's something that we want to add, but basically we wanted to add it as a jukebox mode to play in a bar or at home. Something that is a completely different way of playing. It's not about stacking up a multiball and getting the most points. It's what can I do to get the most points the fastest with this preset of conditions, right? So I know I'm going to play Live and Let Die, which is a three and a half minute song. What can I do in three and a half minutes that will be faster and better than what you can do in three and a half minutes? So it's not necessarily having the most epic strategy on how to build up and get the best multiplier going and that sort of stuff. It's what can you do in the limited time you have in order to play and do your timed-based play, which is a successful, in my opinion, time-based play in pinball. It doesn't really... You know, you've got games like Safe Cracker, which is an interesting take, but it didn't get a lot of mass appeal in the public, in bars and in arcades. I think this will have the appeal because it's you, one, listening to an entire track, an entire length of a song, which is something you want to do in a bar anyways, right? You get the jukebox up and you play whatever song you want. But then also the idea of scoring the best and the highest in that amount of time. It's just an added, like, I'm a gamer or I wish I had time to be a gamer is probably a better way of saying it. And time-based objectives, doing things like speed runs of video games and stuff like that, it's an aspect of gaming that a lot of people are interested in. And I think a time-based, you know, two and a half, three and a half minutes, or if you're playing November Rain, nine and a half minutes of focusing on one mode where you're not going to, you know, if you lose the ball, it doesn't matter. The ball keeps coming right back out. And how you can score and use the time to your advantage. That's really interesting. So you're taking this as an entirely different game mode. So it's not incorporated into the main game. So you're going to use these. And every song, I imagine, you could potentially make a different mode. Something that you're going to challenge yourself and say, okay, for November Rain, I'm going to try and hit the spinner X number of times. Or is it going to be this song has got this set of objectives? The latter. Every song is right now its own unique mode with its own unique rules and objectives. That is the way it's played in the main game and also the way it's going to be played in time-based play. That's very cool. That's very cool. All right, so let's talk about the game because we've kind of done the music thing. Let's jump into the gameplay and the game design. It's gorgeous. There's so much freaking going on. So let's kind of dive into that. Can you start by telling us about your design process? I mean, you told us earlier that Slash came in and showed you a sketch of what he thought the game might entail. How close to that was what you ended up with, and how did you kind of start the process of designing the game? See, Slash original drawing looks nothing like what the final game was. But, like I said, he was there every step of the way to make it fun. The thing that I pride myself on is making the theme integration. that's just something that I really enjoy doing. Pinball machines have been around for 100 years at this point. Making the best shots is, of course, what you want to do in a game, but what's new that will embrace this theme in a way that's never been done before? And the first thing that I can remember wanting to do is, like, okay, I'm taking two drumsticks and I'm turning them into a ramp. I don't care what it takes. I'll figure it out. And we did, but I really wanted to have the ball roll on a physical set of drumsticks. The next thing was because we were using the setlist from Not In This Lifetime, their tour, I wanted to have a stage in the game. And a stage has moving spotlights, and a stage has big overhead lights that light up everything. It has a screen, a jumbotron over it that you can see all of the band members and stuff when you're sitting in the nosebleeds. So I wanted to incorporate the stage in the game as well. And then another aspect that I really wanted to try was an interesting take on the wireform ramps. I wanted to have return ramps that weren't wireforms, because those don't really sing to me as part of the stage. I wanted to have catwalks, so I designed the return ramps to look like a catwalk, where the crew walks around and mans the lighting and stuff like that. The last aspect that I recall really wanting to do was to incorporate a really weird and interesting wireform, which is the base ramp. So it took me a while because I had other iterations, a lot of things I had wanted to do with the base. But this is what we came up with in the end was the base wire form ramp. So it's four wires like the strings of a base, and the ball can roll down those four wires. So those four wires create three paths for the ball to roll on, and we shaped it to look like Janos Kiss' fender. Coming up with how the ball can get to those three different sets of paths from one entry point and then wind up back in put it at two exit points on the two left inlanes It was a really fun concept And getting it to work out was a I loved it because I a nerdy engineer I really liked creating that wire form. It was a trip to go through. That is really cool. I kind of want to pick your brain about how that works in the gameplay. So this is your first standard body game. You did Pirates, your last go-round. Why did you go this route on guns versus a wide body? So I designed a wide body, and it was fun. and I hadn't designed a standard yet. And I wanted to see what I could do with a standard body. It wasn't some dictate or mandate that I needed to make a standard body. Obviously, it's easier from a production point of view if we have one style of cabinets, you know, sitting in inventory as we're making stuff instead of having wide bodies and standard bodies sitting here. It was a fun challenge, right? I wanted to do just as much stuff as I did on Pirates, but now I have, you know, two and a half inches left to work with. And it plays like a very different game. It seems a lot faster flowing and shooting than Pirates is. Pirates is more of a stop-and-go pinball machine instead of a super-fast flow machine. I think GNR is quite a bit faster. I feel like I read this, and I was like, this is totally his bucket list right here. He's done the wide-body trick for time for the standard body. That's right. I feel like you've got to do it all, right? It just flushes out your resume in all the right directions. Is Jersey Jack moving away from wide-body, or is that still an option? Or are they basically saying, hey, we've got to go standard from this point forward? That's not a mandate by any means. Okay. There's just, you know, wide-body games are bigger. You're using an extra 15% more stuff, right? The wood itself is 15% bigger. The cabinet is 15% bigger. So all that stuff adds up, and then you've got to fill it with stuff too. So if there is the requirement or the request from the designer, it's not off the table by any means. Just in your eyes. We're a real company. We need to have a bill of material. and if you can get a wide body in in the bill of material, then there's no reason that it can't happen. We're going to do a deep dive on the cabinet art later, but let's talk about the play field because it immediately draws you in when you look at this game and there's a lot to see. Dayne Henry Jr. did the artwork on the play field, and Dane has done a lot of work for a lot of bands in the past. How was it working with him and being his rookie outing on pinball, and what were your goals for the play field art to be? Did he meet those goals? Dane was awesome to work with. It was his first game, and Chris, you know better than most how difficult it can be to design a pinball machine's art package. Yes. Dane definitely got in over his head to begin with and was struggling to encompass the entire project. The way he's done art in the past is, all right, I've got a tour poster. I'm going to draw the entire thing. Here we go. And he draws the entire thing. So he started doing playfield art that way, right? Okay, I'm going to draw everything all at once. And so it took a little teaching and training, and thankfully I had J.P. DeWin at my side as art director for the game to help teach Dane how to draw individual elements and blend them together at a later date. Because, you know, you draw Axel, and if the way Dane originally drew it was like he was drawing everything all at once, it's like, well, we like Axel here, but we'd like to do something else over there. You'd have to redraw the entire thing. So when he got his head wrapped around drawing smaller individual elements instead of doing entire pieces and then encompassing it all together, that was when it really clicked for him. And when we really got the art package that we have now and how it turned out so well. His art style is what drew me in originally. And just seeing some of the stuff he's done for 311 and for Foo Fighters and for Metallica. I'm like, this guy knows how to do rock and roll art. I really want him to come on the game. And when I reached out to him, I mean, it was basically a cold call. Like, I never met the guy. I had no contact info for him. I reached out through his website, and I'm like, hey, I want you to do a pinball machine for me. And he responded with, you know, yeah, sure, buddy, whatever. They still make those? Exactly. They still make those. And so got him on a phone call, and he still kind of thought I was screwing around until I got him to sign the NDA. And even after that, I got him to sign the nondisclosure and told him that it was Guns N' Roses. He didn't really believe it until I got him on Skype with Slash. Wow. And he was just like deer in the headlights. It was 45 minutes of like, he was sketching some stuff out, you know, like the first versions of Slash and Axl. And like, I think Dane said two words in 45 minutes because he was like, holy shit, it's really Slash. I'm really doing this. And that was like a conversation we had later. He's like, Eric, I can't believe this is real that I'm actually doing. You know, these are the guys that I grew up listening to. This is the music that I grew up listening to. And it's sort of surreal to be working with him. And so he definitely had a fangirl moment. Nice, nice. I love a good fangirl. I'm telling you. And he did such a great job on the play field, too. I mean, clearly he got over the fangirling and got down to business. Yes. We can share the loss of a fangirl moment in that. Eric, if you recall, we had a conversation, I think it was last February, where you had reached out to me and asked me if I was interested in doing the artwork for this game. And I was still in a holding pattern with Stern. So I had to say no. And then I ended up not doing anything for Stern and not doing anything for a year. And then seeing this video and just wanting to cry myself to sleep. So this could have been you, man. This could have been your package. Yeah. Take nothing away from what Dane and the other guys did for artwork on this. That's not my point at all. It's just that, damn it, I wish I would have said yes. Live and learn, Franchise. That's right. Live and let cry. That was horrible, Jack. That was good. So Eric, now that we've kind of talked about the play field art, give us an idea of what you're doing in the game. So give us a brief overview. I know the rules are probably crazy deep, but what is your general objective in the game and what are you trying to do? What he's asking is how do I play this game? That's right. I need like a five goal objective when I play a pinball machine. You know what I mean? So when you start the game, what are you aiming to do? You are aiming to get these seven band members on stage. That's clear. I love that. Each band member is represented in a different way on the play field. Slash, there is a platinum record that you hit that, and you spin it around, and it fills up some music notes, and that's how you get Slash. Duff is by hitting the bass on the far left side. Axl is by completing the lanes at the top. Richard, there is a guitar pick spinner up the center that you hit. Frank, the drummer, is collected by hitting the right ramp. Target is a target at the back of the right ramp. Drumsticks, the drumstick ramp. or by hitting the pop bumpers, I think, 20 times, which are also drum-themed. And awesome. And then Melissa and Dizzy are on the keyboard insert. Yes, right in the middle. Right in the middle, yeah. There's a big keyboard there. You know, they both play keys. Melissa does a whole bunch of, like, other synth work as they're on stage. So they're both there in the middle. So you collect all seven band members, and there's ways to spot band members. You know, Mystery, and there's a target called Jam that's up to the left. you complete jam by going through your right in lane three times if you hit the jam target in a couple of different ways either immediately after you complete the left in lane or off of a loop and then hit the jam target it does different things but basically you can spot band members that way if you get all seven band members you can shoot it into the center scoop and you will start a song and that is the objective of the game is to get into the concert and start a song so get the band members start a song obviously those are very much more involved than i just put them into words. However, I feel like that is an objective that I can remember. And do you have to do that 21 times for you to get to the wizard mode? So the wizard mode is qualified by playing before album modes, by playing slash solo, and by playing tour multiball. The album modes are something that I find very interesting on how they're qualified, because they're not qualified based on a set of objectives or a set of rules. They're qualified based on how long you've played songs from that album. Oh. That's cool. So if you play... So it keeps track of your song play. Yes, it does. So the idea is you have to play songs from a specific album for three minutes. So if you play Welcome to the Jungle for two and a half minutes, and then the next song you play is Sweet Child of Mine, you only have to play for 30 seconds before your album mode is qualified. But if you somehow are good at playing only songs from one album, you're kind of screwed in the way of getting to the wizard mode because then you've already qualified that album, correct? Kind of. You can choose whichever song you want to play when you shoot it into the center scoop. Oh, okay. You can actually manually pick. I got you. Now, there are point advantages to not picking a song. Basically, there are four stand-up targets, two in front of the left ramp, two in front of the right ramp, and those each will select songs from their respective albums. Each one of them is signified as an album. So you've got Chinese Democracy on the left, and then you've got Aptitude for Destruction, and then Illusion 1 and Illusion 2, in that order from left to right across the playfield. If you hit one of those stand-up targets, it will qualify a song from that album. If you hit it again, it qualifies the next song from that album. But most people are not going to be concerned about the 15-point bonus to not picking a song, but tournament players probably will. Right. So you play your song, and if you survive for three minutes, you have unlocked the album mode for that song. at the silver level, silver record. If you play for longer, you can qualify a gold record or a platinum record or a diamond record. The longer you play songs from that album, the more points your album mode is going to be worth. Very cool. You can start it at silver if you want, but you can go all the way up to platinum. The rules, as all Jersey Jack games, are going to be incredibly deep. And just the modes itself, the album modes, are just one part of it. You've got concert boosters, and you have the rocket beater and a bunch of other stuff, which we definitely want to talk about. But let's talk about the basic core play field because you've got three or four flippers. You've got, depending on the model, you've got three pop bumpers. You've got the lockdown bar, action button, exposed play field magnet. And when you look at the play field, the first thing you see, at least what jumped out at me initially, was that you've incorporated all of the band's instruments into the game. And they're really cool and unique ways. So let's start by talking about those a little bit. So the pop bumpers have drums and cymbals on them. You have a drumstick ramp, which is freaking insane. How did that awesomeness come about? It was just drumsticks, to me, look like two big wire forms side by side. And I did the math on the radius of the ball and the radius of the drumsticks and just made it work. That was something that I wanted to do. The first thought of doing a music pin was like, okay, let's get real drumsticks in there. That's so cool. Not just any drumsticks, but real Vader brand, who is the sponsor for Frank Ferrer. Vader brand Frank Ferrer Thunder Chukers. So Frank has his own line of sticks. They're called Thunder Chuckers, because he is like this big, old black dude who beats on the drums, and he's awesome at it. And they're like extra thick, extra strong sticks, because the dude is so built. So we put Thunder Chuckers in the game. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, I've played drums, so I've broken a lot of different drumsticks before. How do you guys make sure that they're able to handle a pinball game? I mean, with repeated... With Thunder Chuckers. Yeah, I guess Thunder Chuckers is the way to go. And that's one of the call-outs that Frank has in the game. He's like, Thunder Chucker, mother******. No way. He does not hold back. This is just getting better and better. Hell yeah. I'll take a little aside here. The game ships in family-friendly content settings. Thank you. The game will ship by default in family-friendly settings. There is a big 8.5 by 11 note that I am taping to the inside of the game, so you have to pull the glass off to take this note out that says, you are missing out on content in the game if you do not change it to adult. So there are, I think, five or six songs. I did not want to edit music at all. I wanted the band's original music to be in this game. So there are, I think, six songs that are explicit. They're explicit lyrics and explicit content. And if you do not enable adult settings, you do not get to play those songs. They're just not there. They're not an option. No Walmart versions here. No. You do not get to hear the band-exclusive explicit content voice recordings or see the content from their concerts. that is considered explicit. So we have all of their concert contents that's played on the Jumbotrons at the concert venue as the songs are being played. There's really cool, sick animations that they came up with that are played throughout the concert. One of those videos for one of their songs, like the title on the file that was sent to us, is called Kama Sutra Skeletons. That's totally family-friendly, I'm sure. But the video that plays is two skeletons going through the Kama Sutra. in explicit detail. But let's be real here. There are no genitalia on skeletons. So is it really explicit? I mean, that was a line I had to cross, actually. I had to look at it. Is this considered explicit or not? There are no genitals. Honey, they're just exercising. No, they're not. I like that there are options because as a mom, I do worry about these things. And you know I love a good fucking swear word. You know it. You know I do. But I also feel like you have to protect my kids who are down in our pit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all cave all the time. How easy is it to toggle this on and off? It's in the game settings. I mean, if your kid can read and your game has a key sitting in it, they will be able to turn it on and off. Right. So parents hide your keys, then the kids can't do anything. Exactly. So besides the drumstick ramps, there are some incredibly cool ramps and wire forms in the game. There's a three-path diverted four-string base wire form ramp. What can you tell us about that, and how is the diverter used in the game? So we went over why I wanted to make that ramp. I really wanted there to be a cool bass feature in the game and four strings on a bass and turn it into three ball pads. The three different pads that it goes up is determined by the kinetic ball diverters. So there is no actual mechanism that changes it from one lane to the next. It's all done with old school kinetic diverters, which the first game I ever saw it on was Bride of Pinbot. When you separate between her two eyes, there's little kinetic diverters that shape like a weird little triangular star thing. So I took apart my brother's ride of Pinbot, and I took that little thing out of there, and I looked at it, and then I made my own, which was a lot smaller, actually. So I could cram three of them into approximately 10 square inches of play field so that I can get three distinct paths from one initial entry point by using those three diverters. Just kind of like a Plinko. Yes. Okay. For those who are confused, yeah, kind of like a Pachinko or a Plinko. It drops down. It's sort of random. It's going to bounce around, and that'll... You can't control it. You get what you get. Right. But as you look at it, you know which path it's going to go down. And it winds up in two places. At the bottom of the playfield, you have the left most in lane or the right left in lane. And so you can hit your footer buttons to set up your lane completion goals based on what you see on the playfield up there at the top. That was really clever. You know, the base ramp reminds me to ask you, when we were working on the Beatles, we had to put on a knee pad and get down quite a bit with Gretsch and with Rickenbacker and Vox and all these companies to get these brands on the game. And I noticed that you've got Gibson and you've got Fender and obviously you've got the Vader drumsticks and all that. Was that something that Slash had all worked out for you? Yes. What a great partner to have. I know, right? Right. I said, Slash, it'd be great if we could use your Gibson, your signature Gibson. He's like, of course, no problem. Let me just send my guy a note quick and we got permission. Fender, you know, Duffy's is a Fender. And then Frank's sticks, like who sponsors him? And they said, well, specifically the drum, the cymbals and stuff probably aren't a big deal to get that. but I know Frank is sponsored by Vader. Why don't we reach out to them? And I got in touch with the head of marketing and brand development at Vader, and he's like, dude, a fucking pinball machine. I'm like, is there a way that I could, like, use your stick? He's like, for cost. You could have them for cost. Happy to put them in there, man. I'm like, all right. You're awesome, dude. He blew it. Could have worked out a deal. He got a game. Well, he wants to, whenever there is a convention again, there's a big music convention that we were going to do back in February called the NAMM, the North American Music something. NAMM. Yeah, like 100,000 people that go to this convention. And Chad Brandolini from Vader was just like, Eric, your pin is coming into our booth, dude. Let's make it happen. We're like, all right, and then go with it. That's huge, and tons of rock stars go there too, so I bet you'd sell tons of games. It must be handy having Slash like that. I've got to imagine that your meetings when you're sitting around tossing out ideas for putting this game together, at least once or twice you had to shout out, Better call Saul. For those who don't know. I was told to never address him by that name. Is he married? Does his wife call him Slash? Mr. Slash? Is Slash? Everyone calls him Slash? He's known to everyone by Slash, yeah. He's not married anymore. His girlfriend, Mal, they're like long-lost loves, and they met back in like 1988 or something and reconnected after 30 years. She's awesome, but she calls him Slash. Like, that's his name. So, Eric, the LENC versions have an upper play field. It's the Fender-based mini playfield. So how does it add to or change the gameplay of the game? There's a mini playfield and an upper playfield. A mini playfield is a playfield that's... Oh, shit, I don't remember which one's which. One of them has an actual functioning flipper that can interact with the ball. An upper playfield does not have a flipper that interacts with the ball. A mini playfield does have a flipper that interacts with the ball. So this game has a mini playfield and an upper playfield. So the base headstock playfield feeds into that four-wire base wire form. The Gibson headstock playfield has a whole bunch of stuff on it that interacts. There's like a physical ball lock. There's a moving spotlight on it. The lights target. So those features that are not there in the standard game are well represented in software only to the best of our abilities. How does the ball lock work? It's listed as a six-ball lock on the upper playfield. That's craziness. Do you have a six ball multiball or do you have the option to lock up to six balls? You have the option to lock up to six balls for every song that you play. Okay. After you've qualified a band member, you as the player can choose to shoot the left ramp and then lock a ball. And so if you lock a ball at the start of the song, it will release those balls in play. And for every ball you have locked, it adds a multiplier, a bonus scoring opportunity to the song modes. so the more balls up there the better the higher your score is going to be and then there are other features and this was fun this is something we came up with not too long ago within the last 30 days i would say with slash we had a mode a feature in the game in the le's and the c's that have the physical ball lock where if you're playing a song mode and you have multiple balls in play you can re-lock those balls on the upper play field in the gibson lock and if you re-lock all of them, every ball that's in play, you get it back up there in the guitar. We wanted to give you an award, and we wanted to call it something, right? Didn't just want to call it jackpot, because jackpot is not as cool a term as it could be. Double super jackpot? Oh, right. Well, and we've got all that stuff in there, but we've got song jackpots already. So if you complete a stage of the song, meaning you hit four or five of these song mode shots, you have the option to cash out. Here's a bigger story. Let me start with the songs. The songs are played in stages. You have the option, so when you play and you hit all the shots in a song, that usually starts at like three or four, you have the option to shoot it into the center scoop. Shoot it into the center scoop, you can cash out. You can end your song and you can cash out your jackpot. If you choose to press on, you know, no whammy, no whammy, press your luck, it shoots the ball back out of the scoop. You continue to build your jackpot and you get another ball put into play. So you get an add a ball, keep going, and you keep trying to play the song and keep trying to progress it and it gets more and more valuable. I mean, you're talking the first value for your first round of song completion is like 8,000 points. Right. And then it goes up to a level higher, 30,000 points, and then 80,000 points. And, I mean, Joe Katz cashed out a November Rain jackpot at 17 million. And we're talking a JJP game. Right. You don't get scores into the crazy numbers, you know, like a million-point game on any JJP is a damn good game. Right. So he cashed out a 17 million point November rain jackpot because he played it for nine and a half minutes and kept pressing his luck and continuing. There's some attack from Mars numbers right there. Right. So it's a cool way of playing the game. It's very much a fun tournament style setting. It's all about risk and reward. So that is the song jackpot. You cash that out, you get your song jackpot. We got this really cool animation that JP did. We wanted another term to describe what is called when you lock all of the active balls during a song. What can we call that? And I actually got Slash on Skype, and I got him in front of the game. And I'm like, here's the rule. It sounds convoluted, but let me talk you through it. And he got it, right? And, like, here's what we're doing, and we're re-locking all these balls. And what should we call it? I want a musical term that describes an awesome part of a song that, you know, is just, like, grandstanding or light show or something. And we sat on it for a minute or two, and Slash was like, how about power chord? Nice. And I'm just like, dude, that's it. That's the perfect word to describe what this is. It's the power chord. And so now it's called the power chord award. When you lock your balls up in there and you lock the last ball into play, you get a percentage of your jackpot award by hitting the power chord. I love it. That's cool. That is cool. Noise. Noise. From Jersey Jack and the most dangerous band on the planet. Pong's Their next chart-topping hit And the greatest rock and roll experience under glass Witness the birth of a new classic And become the rock star you were born to be Rock out to 21 full-length Dungeon Rose's favorites On a playfield paradise Locked and loaded with features Play my front row seat To mind-blowing custom light shows and live the tour on a full 27-inch high-definition backflash display. Also featuring original pinball music by Splash. Pinball this dangerous? Not in this lifetime. Interested in a new and boxed Jersey Jack, Guns N' Roses pin? Call the world's largest pinball distributors, Coinsacre. or visit their massive showroom. Great prices, great selection, and great service. Cointaker.com. Official Jersey Jack pinball distributors. Cointaker. So how do you incorporate the action button, which is loved by many and bemoaned by many, the biggest proponent that I know of is Jeff Teolas he freaking loves the button I don't want to mention his name, he's overexposed but some other people do you know, some other people don't like it so how do you use it in this game? the action button has a couple uses in the game, the first being when you're not in a song you are using the action button to select your current patch award, so we, like all awesome 80's rockers, have a denim jacket in the game that you can trick out with patches. Nice. And there are 39 patches in the game, and each of them add a different award, or bonus, or multiplier, or make something easier to do in the game, etc. So, 39 different things that you can achieve by completing the right most left in lane. Okay? It spells G-N-R, and you complete it with three letters, and it awards your currently lit patch. So, using the action button allows you to change your currently lit patch. When you are playing one of the four booster modes, and we'll get into what those are. It is used in a timing effect, and I believe there's another use that is in implementation, but might not be in there in 1.0 code. Okay, I mean, you've said 1.0 a few times, so you guys are putting this game out basically with complete code, you know, with few exceptions. Right, this game is coming out at 1.0. That means every mode in gameplay, normal gameplay, is achievable. All the alpha modes, all the wizard modes, all the songs are fully programmed with their light shows, with their modes, with their rules, everything. If you never update your game again, you will have a complete gameplay experience. That's awesome. How much did the quarantine and the delay of the release of the game help you with that? Jersey Jack games usually come out with relatively complete code, but is this really fleshed out compared to where it could have been? Definitely. I mean, you will be satisfied with this game if you never update your code again. You're not going to be missing anything. Further updates are things just like tweaking and bug fixing and adding like the time to play, for example. Something that we want to get in there, but we didn't have time to do it right now. While we're talking about super cool things on the play field, I do not know the nitty gritty rules stuff that Christian and Christopher Franchi understand. However, I do love a good mech, right? So the first thing that I noticed, obviously, I noticed the art right away. And then the second thing that I noticed, all the cool shit on the play field. That's very eloquently put, obviously. But, you know, one of the things that I really love is the hat. I don't know a ton about Guns N' Roses, but recognize that iconic hat. I also love the record. Yes. So how do those things play into the gameplay? The hat is a sculpted toy. It has a light inside of it that shines down on the platinum record. Of course it does. I put that there because early on in the design aspects of the game, Slash was requesting some feature for Axel, some feature for me, and some feature for Duff. And this is an aspect of Slash that I was not expecting, is how cool he is about making sure his band is taken care of. Making sure Axel and Duff and the rest of the band members are represented in the game. You know, he really wants Axel to be there. You know, he's like, Axel is the heart and soul of this band, and he needs to be well represented. So we got a really cool sculpture designed by Matt Reisterer from Back One of our sponsors. Screaming Axel Rose skeleton. It's such a badass sculpt. And, you know, it's not an easy sculpt to have manufactured, but it was well worth the pain that it took to get it manufactured because of just how cool it turned out. That's one of the coolest things about all JJP games are the toys, right? On Wonka, it's the gobstopper. On Dildon, it's the super cool cell phone. On Pirates, I mean, it's everything, let's be real. But the ship is the coolest part, I think. But I just feel like these are the things that I get the most excited about. I just like to see really pretty things on the play field. And the hat and the record are so amazing. The record, Eric, you just saw the Avengers game get released, and Keith had Toten Stiles spinning Doctor Strange portal on there. Were you like, holy shit, I can't believe this guy did this because I did something similar on my game? I mean, this is something that hasn't come out in a really long time. And now you both, you know, two of the latest and greatest developers have thought of the same kind of concept for a mech. I find it hilarious that they both did the same style mech there. It really made me laugh. I looked at it like, oh, really? Did that just happen? Right. It happened. All right. Well, we both went in development with it for, you know, forever. If it makes you feel any better, I feel like even though they are essentially the same thing, they look so different and they're used in such different contexts that I wouldn't even associate one with the other. How do you incorporate that into gameplay? Because I know it can sense what direction it's spinning. Yes. So what we do there is there's a crazy amount of lights in this game. A let's yell at Eric for how many lights he's used in this game amount of lights. Over 600 RGB LEDs, I'm told. Is that true? Yeah, we have to go into that. We can jump into that next. The record detects motion left or right, and it plays sound bites from classic GNR songs on pace with the speed that the record is spinning. So you'll hear like, as it's slowing down. The music notes are filling up. There's 16 music notes there, 16 LEDs. And again, my music nerd boner is showing. I went through and I looked up the sheet music for Sweet Child of Mine, and I transposed it down onto the staff because Slash plays, you know, like three octaves above any normal staff where you would see music. but I transposed it down so the artwork you see there is very small music notes on a staff, and it is the first 16 bars of Sweet Child of Mine. And those LED music notes are designed for, like, the last eight bars of Sweet Child of Mine. So those lights are spaced, and if you can read music, you'll see that those are Sweet Child of Mine. That's so cool. The record itself, Guns N' Roses had six albums, studio-recorded albums, that went platinum. So, fun thing that I'm sure people are going to hate me for, or maybe not. I don't know. It's random. Which album you will have on your platinum record. It will be one of the six albums that went to Studio Platinum. Rad. And it's totally random? So, like, if I bought a game and Christian bought a game, we could get different records? You could get different records. Yep. Huh. Wow. And it's not based on, like, the model at all? It's just totally random? Nope. Oh, my God. I fucking love that. It's a blind bag. Some people will hate me and some people will think it's funny. Can you request which one you want? Is that not? I don't know. We might have them for sale at our store at some point. There was a discussion that when someone gets mad, they didn't get the spaghetti incident. They're a problem solved. For $999, you can get the seat of stickers. Right, exactly. I love that. When people walk over or go to their friend's house and have the same game, like, oh, shit, you have appetite for destruction. Mine's illusion, too. That's cool. It is super cool. I have a mod suggestion for you. I feel that the Guns N' Roses pinball machine needs a stomp box power switch. that's awesome for those of you who don't know what a stompbox is it's an effects pedal you know that all the guitars have up on the stage you know it's gonna look like a cool rock pedal you know all kind of aged and like tape on and all that whatever it's just your power switches you know and the game comes on that would be actually super cool for a music pen that's a great idea Frenchy strong work Frenchy this is my resume somebody fucking hire me there you go you're an engineer I am an engineer so you're an engineer so how much of the mech component of a game do you actually get involved in? Is that something you do in addition to the game design? It kind of depends where you're coming from. I'm not the person who physically draws the SolidWorks drawings. Trick question! Trick question, because I am doing that now. I taught myself SolidWorks while I was in COVID lockdown, so I am more intimately involved. With the mechs themselves, they are my concepts, and generally I'll sketch something out on paper for the mechanical engineers. We'll have the discussion. It's not me mandating anything by any means, but I wanted to do the six-ball lock-up mech. I'm like, okay, well, here's what I think. I really want to have them release independently of one another, so we need two coils. They need to be this long because they need to go through the main playfield and the mini playfield because they don have room underneath the mini to mount these things so here kind of my concept sketch and take it from there and let reconvene in a week and see what you have and then generally most of our mechanical engineers all of our mechanical engineers will go in and make their own parts and you know if i have downtime i'll go in and make the parts too and we'll like make the first prototype see if it works tear it all apart and change it and do something again. So all of the mechs are something that I generally am 100% involved in the entire time, but I'm just not the person physically modeling them in SolidWorks in full detail. But you have a lot of the ideas behind them. Every single one of these mechs I have sketched on paper first. It's, again, another case of where teamwork makes the dream work, right? Because even you knowing the software, I can imagine that you have enough on your plate that at some point you do have to delegate things. If you are an avid user of SolidWorks, you probably use about 5% to 7% of what the program can do. It is a massively powerful tool. I can draw in it, and I can make mechs, and I can make them move and stuff. But to say that I know how to use SolidWorks completely, it would be a complete overstatement. There's just so much stuff in there that I haven't had to use. Pirates obviously went through a little bit of a weird phase at the end of its design where you had to kind of take out some of the features, like the triple spinning disc and that sort of thing. Did that make you approach this game a little differently? Did you make mechs that were a little less, you know, involved? Or did you change anything in terms of your process? I tried to be more open with everyone about what I was doing so there were no surprises, right? Made sure everyone was on the same page, everyone was good with how the mechs worked and all that stuff. So I wasn't trying to, you know, design in a box, so to say. There were no secrets on mech design. All that stuff was looked at and reviewed by upper management, because that's an experience I want to not live twice in a lifetime. Right. Yeah, I mean, was anything modified in this one, or did you have to change anything? There were things that were modified, for sure. I had other ideas for certain mechs, bigger things, you know, more, more, more, more. But at the end of the day, we are a business that needs to make money and pay our employees. So there's only so much room you have on a bill of material. Generally, you shoot for the stars and you set it. Tear down from there. Exactly. Well, the one thing that I need to know as a novice player is how the heck do you get multiball? And what are the different multiball options? You have five modes in there, right? Five multiball modes. And all the songs can be multiball, apparently. Right. Because you can lock them, as you spoke about. But, you know, are there other things besides that? Is that how you trigger every multiball is to lock them up in the... Oh, that would be way too easy, Sarah. I mean, well, listen, you know, I am like your next-door neighbor who comes over to play your games. Like, this is not like Christian whatever trophies he's winning pinball, you know? I come in like 400th place out of 400 people. Sarah, are you trying to say you're one of those people that say they still make these? Not anymore. I mean, we have come a long way in two years, but I do need to know about multiball, because I feel like that, for me, is the most fun part of any pinball game. All right, so we went over songs. Any song can turn into a multiball if the user chooses to lock balls first. They don't have to by any means, but they can choose to make it a multiball. So I'm going to find this multiball. Options for multiball. Yep, the other ways to play multiball in this game, there are four of what I call booster modes. And I just came up with that term because I wanted something that encompassed what can make a stage performance better. Right. Four things that make a stage performance better. You've got the crowd, right? You get the crowd amped up, excited to see the show. It just makes the whole environment more exciting. Energized, yeah. You've got lights. You know, the more lights just whipping around and flashing and sparkling, it just makes it great. You've got pyrotechnics, right? What's a good rock show without pyrotechnics? And then you've just got amplifiers. You know, the more sound, the better. So those four things grew into unique multiball modes in the game. You've got make some noise, which is what is used for the crowd. You've got turn it up, which is what's for amplifiers. You've got throw the lights, and you've got ignite the flames. Yes, ignite the flames is the pyrotechnics multiball. So these are two-ball multiballs, and they each have their own little objectives. in them. You can start them all independently. So, Make Some Noise is the crowd-based multiball. It is qualified by one, getting skill shots and super skill shots, and two, making the shot under the upper right flipper, which brings it back into the shooter lane. So you do that a couple times, and you get to play Make Some Noise. There's a target on the upper playfield, the lights target. You hit that twice on the LE and the CE in order to start the lights multiball, throw the lights multiball, or you make two ramp combos on the standard to start Throw the Lights. Amps is qualified by completing the leftmost left-hand lane. So complete those three lights. It actually spells out A-M-P, amp. And then Ignite the Flames is qualified by hitting the pyro stand-up, which is right behind the record, kind of underneath Slash hat. There's a target back there. So they're each independent two-ball multiballs that have small objectives, but in true J.J.P. fashion, they can all be stacked together. Yes. And what's really interesting about them is they each have one of the stems, a stem being a unique, separated audio track from the background music that we've created for the game. So you start it, play Throw the Lights, it's your... But then if you bring in Pyro, you kick in the bass. And then if you bring in Throw the Lights, or make some noise, you bring in the synth. and then you bring in the guitar so you can get the sound builds up as you add more of these tuba multiballs into the game. It really makes the player feel like they're accomplishing something when they stack more than one. You know, the sound comes a little better understandable, right? Because you're not just hearing the low bass sound, you're hearing more of the music and stuff like that. So it's cool to have them back together. That is super cool. If I could ever learn how to stack multiballs, I do watch Christian a lot and I learn from him a lot. I don't even know how to do that. Yeah. I mean, I'm lucky I can do it. I can make that happen. Yeah. He's way better than I am. It's awesome to me how much thought goes into every single little detail of these games, from how the game actually looks to how it plays to the rules. You know, it is the true teamwork makes the dream work. This is why it must take you freaking forever to make a pinball machine. And why you need an engineer to kind of make this happen. So, like, Eric, are you working, you know, with the coder to kind of make the rule set, or are you creating the game and saying, you know, take over and figure out the rules? I'm sure you have a say in it, but how much of a say? I've never told anyone to take over. Okay. I do not check out at any point in the project. I live and breathe this. It's your baby. Yeah, absolutely. Right. 100%. Now, the head programmer in both of these instances in the games that I've made has been Keith, and he has a concept for how he wants the game to play, and Keith is awesome, so I've agreed with him. You know, push back on some things here and there, but it's always like Keith has the concept of what he wants the gameplay to be, and then I jump in and say, well, what if we did this? What if we had this? How about we go this way on here? It's a very synergistic group. We both are putting our ideas out there and then, of course, we're working with the rest of the programming team. Joe Katz is a really good player, a really good tournament player, really into rules. So he has so much that he brings to the table as well on what makes the game fun to play. It's really great to work with both of them. As far as, I don't want to sound like a jackass by saying this, but we're probably the best three players in the company. Nice. So it's cool to be able to bounce ideas off of them on what really good players enjoy and then seeing the players who are more casual, what they get out of the game and what they enjoy playing. I think that it's awesome to know your strengths. I just think it's amazing that you guys work so well together and that you can make such an amazing product and have that trust that you can go to Keith and say, hey, what do you think of this? Then Keith can do the same thing for you and you make the magic happen. Right. I mean, I think I've told this story. Maybe it's not widely known public knowledge, But the idea for the cannon that fires the ball across the game in Pirates, Keith walked into my office one day and said, you should fire a ball across the game. And that was it. That was his suggestion. And I was like, oh, shit, yes, I can make that happen because I've got the rocking ship. And so it was just an off-the-cuff thing that he said. He's like, a shower saw. I was thinking about firing a ball across the game. Can you make it happen? Yes, I can make that happen. Cool. Cool that he pushes back on the designer and I push back on the software and we work very well together. That's awesome. It really is. So the next thing that I'm curious about is the big screen itself is kind of where I was going. What is the video screen like on this sucker? A 27-inch LCD, right? I mean, we're going to go into a bunch of questions about the wow factor of the game, right? Because we talked a little about the game, but this game is so much more than just pinball. There's so much additional stuff on this game that is just going to blow people away. And one of them is the concert footage and what's shown on the LCD and John Paul DeWin's art and design. So talk us through a little bit about that. Sure. So the main user interface that you see was designed by JP, and he is awesome at designing UI. It shows what you need to get the song started. So it shows the band members in their current state. It also shows the poster modes. It also shows the current city that you're in with their tour poster. I think that's one of the aspects of the rules we haven't quite covered yet. Maybe we can come to that later, is touring. But as you're playing the non-song aspect of the game, that's what's shown on the main display up there. You're getting animated instruments that are coming in. You're seeing live footage of the band members as they're being collected, etc. Once you kick it into a song, it's basically you've entered the concert experience. And we have all the assets that they used during their concerts. So the footage they would play on their big screens in the concert. We also have all of the live footage from their concerts that we play at the same time. So in working with Guns N' Roses and their management team, I got two hard drives sent to me for a total of about six terabytes with a T. Oh, my gosh. Worth of concert footage. I got 18 concerts, and each of them is three hours long. Wow. Live concert footage that they sent us. And they're like, use this, use what you want out of it for the game. Oh my God, that's awesome. It had audio and video in it, and it wasn't cleaned up audio by any means. It was like raw audio. And so we, since the beginning, wanted to use the Studio Master recordings. To me, that's what people, when they play a rock in, what they want to hear. It's a song that I know, and going to a concert, it's fun to go to a concert, but when I'm in my home, I want to hear the song that has been professionally mixed and all that stuff. Right. So we're using the Studio Master recordings, but we went through the effort. We actually got John Paul's brother, hired him for hundreds of hours, to go through and edit the live footage to sync it up to Studio Master recording audio. Wow. He did a great job. He did an awesome job. I mean, if you're staring hard at it, you can probably tell. But as a casual observer, when you're watching this, you can't tell that it's synced up. So I think it's the best of both worlds because we have the song that you know and that you'll sing along with at the same timing, at the same tempo, etc. but then also the concert footage of them in Chicago or them in Nijmegen, Netherlands or in Berlin. You know, we just had 18 different concerts, and we took what we thought was the best video example of each of our 21 songs and synced that up to the master recordings. Some of them, we actually have two versions, because in one of them, Slash is wearing a shirt that says, Fuck you. Oh! That's in the kid-friendly version? So that blurred out in one of the songs on the kid-friendly version, and it's not blurred out in the adult version. And then we use a different concert, I think, for the family-friendly version. That's wild. That's so crazy. There's so much that you have to do to make those two versions of the game, but we appreciate the effort as parents because that is definitely a factor. Yeah, we don't want to, like, totally scar our children. I mean, I feel like with us as parents, they're already scarred. Like, you know, Flash might put them over the edge. I had the game here for all of COVID lockdown, and my kids were playing it, and I had to set the family-friendly mode as they were playing it, and they loved it. That's awesome. Are they into it? Is this a game that kids can come up to and really appreciate? Are you seeing that with your own kids? Definitely, because they liked the music, and obviously I have a different relationship with GNR than most people, but my kids refer to Slash as Mr. Slash. Oh, my gosh. Aw. Yes, because I've been talking to him, you know, while my kids are around and that sort of thing. And he signed a poster for them. That's up in my kid's room now. Oh, my God. This is the sweetest thing. They call him Mr. Slash. They call him Mr. Slash. Oh, my God. I'm going to send you the video, Sarah, because one of the aspects of the game, so we've had a camera in our game since Tiled In, right? It's your high score picture. When you get a high score on this game, you get to take a Slash selfie. Oh, my God. So when Slash was in our office a couple months ago, we got him to stand in front of a green screen and hold, I'm doing air quotes that you can't see, hold the camera so it looks like he's taking a selfie. And then we superimpose you next to him as your high score screen. No way. That is so cool. So I have a little video that I'll send you that is my two-year-old getting his high score picture taken. And it is the cutest melt-your-heart thing you'll ever see. Oh, my God. I love it. And you know what? I feel like I have a picture taken all the time from Wonka, and just knowing that I could potentially have my picture with Flash is so cool. There's going to be a lot of Facebook posts, I think, of high-score pictures in this game. Yes. You're a cool one, Mr. Flash. Right? Is the camera used in any other way? Are you in the concert in any moment? Yes. So as the game is switching between live concert footage and the footage they use in their displays, There's another feature that will show the fan cam, which is you, and it looks like you're on the Jumbotron as you're playing, right? And it lights you up and that sort of stuff. Let's cut to the chase. Let's talk about lighting because this game has the most insane amount of lights, even on the standard edition. So the lights get progressively crazier to blow your eyeballs out at the CE level, but you have something like 200 RGB LEDs in the SE, 350 RGB LEDs in the LE, and then 600 in the Collector's Edition. So the light show, hands down, is going to be legendary. I know one of the taglines for the game is bring the concert home, and so this is going to do that probably, you know, just like the music in the sense of just blowing you out of the water and feeling like you're at the concert. So what was the thought with the lighting? and talk us through the light shows and everything you can about it. So the lighting is something that I really wanted to have in this game as part of the wow factor, right? It's a concert. You're bringing the concert home. You want to have these crazy light shows going in your face. And then it allowed the freedom for all six of the programmers that worked on the game to develop light shows in their own cool, unique way. They each chose songs and got to develop their own light shows. So you'll see as you're playing the game and going through the different songs, there's different feels for each of them on how their rules play out and how the light shows look and all that stuff. So there's another thing that is in the game that's never been done before, which is something that I have personally patented. Oh, wow. Which are called the Hot Rails. Hot Rails! Hot Rails are a new device that I think are pretty innovative. So in most pinball machines, you have what's called a wood rail that supports the sides of the playfield. And it runs all the way up the right side and one all the way down the left side. And it's there for rigidity to hold the playfield stable and prevent it from warping. So I came up with a concept where I turned those into features that could be lit. And through some creative engineering, developed them to be structurally sound and stable, but have LEDs inside and have non-destructibly mounting screws that can screw into the top. And you screw something down to a wood rail, and then you realize it's in the wrong spot, and you've got to move it. Well, you need to get a new wood rail because it's destroyed. With the Hot Rails, you can move something around, or you can add a mod to it, and you can do whatever you want to them, and they're not going to be damaged or scarred up in any way. And they can be fully illuminated with individually controllable LEDs. Wow. And they're pretty cool. I'm pretty excited about them. That's hot. That is so cool. Yeah, for sure. I mean, people have complained about lights and not being able to see playfields. That is not going to be an issue with this game, I think. No, I'm going to go blind. Do you feel like these lights are in any way going to be distracting to the player? Are you going to be able to follow the ball with 600 freaking lights going off? It shouldn't be a problem. These act as general illumination more often than not. They are used in light shows, but I also have put in some very special RGB spotlighting in the game that keeps the game to play fairly well lit, even when the light shows are going crazy. The jump from 350 to 600 plus happens a lot with the exterior cabinet lighting on the CE. So the collector's edition game isn't just an experience under the glass, it's an experience outside the glass as well. There are, like I said, over 200 LEDs outside the game that are all individually controllable. So you've got under cabinet lighting, but you also have rear cabinet lighting. So this is in a room. It makes the entire room light up. The wall behind it, the floor underneath it, and each one of them is individually controllable. So we're doing, like, flame patterns, water patterns, things that are, you know, color swirls in the room, and it just makes the entire environment get more sucked into the game. Has there ever been a cooler attract mode for a game? I can't imagine that there is. It's out of this world. We've just sat there in the dark and watched this thing run, and it's crazy. That's so cool. Can't wait to see this. You've shown us a promo video that was far and above beyond anything I've ever seen for a pinball company in terms of the wow factor and just the quality of the marketing material. So are you going to show us other videos where you're going to show off these light shows and what it's capable of? Yes. Okay, cool. Yes. Probably not with that production value, but we'll be shooting videos probably locally that discuss the different features of the games, different models, and show off the features like cut on the CE. Nice. Franchi, get in here, man. we're just getting to the point where i was the guy who interjected with the inappropriate shit that gets cut out let's talk wizard modes shall we not in this lifetime wizard mode is there any clues you can throw us on that and what can we expect from that special bonus feature that wizard mode the end of the game has to do with my original concept for that mode is pretty well received and that's what we went with i think dueling banjos devil went down to georgia cool you versus the devil where you're playing as one of the band members and then you're fighting against the devil and then it's switching instruments and again going against him so that is one of the modes that has original slash music performed for it which is pretty rocking and lots of cool animations in there that jp did yeah it's a fun mode do you have any wizard modes in there i would consider the album modes to be mini wizard modes we specifically call them album modes instead of mini wizard modes because they're pretty achievable. I mean, if you survive for three minutes playing a song or a combination of songs from an album, you're going to see these album modes, and like I said, they're not insurmountable by any means. And with all JGP games, you can adjust the settings. If you want to see an album mode after 30 seconds, you can set your game up that way. If you want to take 15 minutes because you're a masochist, you could make it that way too. You can make the game play however you want to play. Cool. And each of the album modes has very cool rules and animations and I mean, the guys really did go above and beyond with the different concepts. Each of them is themed after the album that it's based on. So like, Appetite for Destruction's mode is called Thirst for Carnage, right? Appetite for Destruction Thirst for Carnage. You get it? Okay. Yeah. And it takes the two members from the cover art of Appetite for Destruction, the non-US released cover art. There's a painting by Robert Koop. Yes, exactly. Thank you! It's called Appetite for Destruction, which has a pretty interesting backstory and some pretty risqué and graphic artwork in it. I did not take the graphic or risqué aspect of that artwork and include it in the game, because it is not something that I wanted to show, but I took the two characters in there, the dirty robot and the angel of justice? Angel of something. He's referred to as something. I don't quite remember what he's referred to as, but they're fighting like the album mode is almost a mortal combat-esque fight between those two guys and you're playing as the big beast guy fighting the dirty robot cool and then each of the other albums is you know based off of the album that is named after and i don't want to give away the whole farm but they're all yeah yeah yeah can you tell us about the game performance assessment rocket meter and how that works yes so that is loosely based off of rock band and guitar hero performance-based evaluation on how you're playing your mode, your song mode. If you come into the song with a whole bunch of prerequisites done, like playing booster modes and successfully achieving your jackpots in those booster modes and getting the patches lined up and accomplished and traveling to enough cities, your rocket meter will decay slower. So you can affect it before you come into the song by saving off some of its decay. You can also earn ball save time before you get into a song. But basically it comes down to playing well. If you're not playing well during the song, it's dropping and it's dropping and it's dropping. And because Keith is, what's the polite way of saying, brutally mean. Deliciously cruel. Yes. Your meter will decay faster. if you're holding up a flipper. Oh. Yes. That's brutal. That is brutal, because you've got to control, right? I mean, to be good, you've got to control. And that's tough. Sorry, you've got to fly off the cuff like me. You can't handle the heat, then get out the flames. It's interesting. Like, you are not allowed to trap up and hold the ball during a song mode, because your meter will just decay. All right, so you've told us, though, that this game rewards you for playing longer in a song, and it's going to punish you for trapping up. So is this a relatively generous game in terms of being kind to you, or are there some brutal shots that will just brick and go out the out lane? I mean, is this a fast player, or is this a Lord of the Rings? It is definitely not a Lord of the Rings. Okay. No one who's played this game would describe it as gentle and kind. It's fair. I say it's fair. If you brick a shot, you're in trouble. You know, like, it can eat you alive. But we work every game to give an average of three-minute games for the people that we have to test with, right? It's a little harder in COVID America right now to get a game out in the populace and test it. But with internal testing, you know, we average over three minutes per game. For example, Wonka's average time is like 256 seconds. Unless you crank that left out lane post way up like I have so that there's a millimeter of drain space. Right, so the posts are adjusted now on the game. on GNR to provide about an average of three minute game time. All right. Let's talk about the call outs because we've covered a lot of the music details, but let's talk about the call outs because they're pretty special for this game because you have Duff, you have Melissa, you have a few of the other members involved and Duff and Melissa did the game narration, but everyone did some voice work. Yes. So how are they included and how do they pop up in the game? Basically, I wanted to get the game as living as possible with the current band members. I wanted all of them to be involved as much as they were willing to be. So we got everyone to record small snippets of voice work, but I got Melissa and Slash and Duff to do more than anyone else. Melissa was awesome. I mean, she sat with me for like four hours doing voice recording. Cool. She is very animated, very excitable. Bubbly is how I would describe her personality. She is one of the coolest ladies I've ever met in my life, and she's so good at what she does. I mean, if you look up Alyssa James Rees's resume, it's unbelievable. I mean, very, very talented individual. This is probably one of the favorite things I've ever experienced. And that's not a joke. She was recording with us and she stopped the recording session and she said, Eric, you have one of the coolest jobs in the world. This is coming from a literal rock star. Yes. Who said, I have the coolest job in the world. And it was just like mind blowing. Right. She's awesome. Duff and Slash both did a lot of voice work as well, but both of those guys are pretty low-key when it comes to speaking. So they went the extra mile. They pushed themselves to give out the jackpot call-outs and the super jackpot call-outs and stuff like that. But Alyssa's bubbly personality really shines through when she does the voice work. So it was really cool to have her come in and make the exciting sound call-outs that we were really looking for. Cool. Each of the band members can introduce themselves with some of the random sound calls we use. So, like, you'll hear, this is Frank on drums, and this is Richard Fortis on guitar. Like, it's their voices, and they recorded it for us. And, you know, they all have their own little, like, taglines, you know, like, Thunder Trucker Mother. And them getting the band members to say, like, the ridiculous stuff was really fun. The session I had with Duff was so memorable, because it's sent in the script like three days ahead of time or whatever, and he read through it, and he's like, okay, this is all cool. And he gets to the studio, and he's like, hey, Eric, the printer was down here or whatever. I didn't print off a script, so are you able to just read me the line, and I'll repeat it back to you? I'm like, yeah, man, no problem. Not a big deal. But when I have in the script things, so we have a group of sound calls called idle speech, and idle speech is what happens when you hit the start button, but you don't plunge your ball. You know, like in The Hobbit, you hear Gandalf say, get ready for your adventure or whatever you know like it's just standing there floating this is a rock and roll themed game and this is you know one of the most badass bands to ever walk the planet right so i can't just have them say hey can you guys please hurry up or something like that you know i got i got the ball right i got duff to say things like and maybe we'll have to edit these out i don't know there's a no all right yeah it's like a Stuff to say things like, quit pounding your pud and plunge a fucking ball. Just like a whole slew of things. And then I got Melissa to say the same things, and it was just, oh my God, it was fantastic. She sold this game to Frangie. He's going to buy it. She was, she sounded so like innocent when she asked. She's like, can I say like asshole, Eric? Is that cool? I'm like, Melissa, you're a fucking rock star at Guns N' Roses. You can say whatever you want, because she was like coming up with stuff off the cuff, right? Melissa is obsessed with candy. It's her thing. She's on stage. She's always eating candy because she's maybe 100 pounds soaking wet. She flies around like a rag doll when she's performing, so she just needs 3,000 calories worth of chocolate for every concert. Come to Hershey. It's a problem I'd like to have. One of the lines that we have in the game, each of the band members has a unique item that you can collect while they're on tour, and her item is candy. so one of the lines that she says is give me back my candy asshole and she's like hearing her just yell that was just so fantastic all the lines from like the explicit adult content settings are hilarious and the ones that are on family friendly are also fun right there's jokes in there that aren't too crass that gets said so it'll be appreciated by people who don't have it on the adult settings as well any chance you could get Slash to say who let this sweaty fuck backstage I mean, we stay shit along those lines. Like if you tilt, for example, like you fuck up like that again, you're off the tour, jackass. Oh, that's so amazing. Yeah, that's cool. Tell me, please, that you took advantage of the situation and you have them doing like your voicemail message or something. Because slash telling someone to leave a message on your phone is the ultimate. I may have requested a specific voice call-off or two when, say, the designer's initials get put in as a high score. Oh, very cool. I like it. A little, like, Easter egg? That's an exclusive. We've got a couple of those. I think we need a S-A-P-S, Super Awesome Pinball Show. If you put those in, you're going to hear Mrs. Pin say something raunchy. What is it going to be? Oh, man, now you're really putting me on the spot. Shit, I don't know. It's too late for this. No original thoughts at this time of night. Who left a sweaty fuck backstage? Oh, no. It's got to be. I'm going to be sitting here thinking of this, and then just randomly I'm going to come out with it. Just screaming out. It's a killer. How about, hey, that girl in the lingerie backstage, she's my next womp. Oh, that's true. I should make Melissa a womp. That's what I should do. Oh, fuck yeah, you should make Melissa a womp. That would be so awesome. That would be. All right, well, let's jump into franchise realm here. So let's talk about the play field, art. and the game art. So if you've noticed that the art on the play field and the three different backbox designs seem a little bit different in style, that's because there were four different artists who worked on this game. I'm crying. Oh, Fran, it could have been you. It could have been you. So Mark Molitor, the Jersey Jack in-house artist, Arian Bueller, Dayne Henry Jr., and Jesper Jesper Abels have been the four artists who were involved in these packages. So tell us a little bit about them and why you chose those artists to be involved. And who does what? Sure. So we'll start with Playfield Art, and that was done by Dayne Henry Jr. His art style is fantastic. I really liked what I saw when I was searching around online and came across him. Really liked what he brought to the game. He was new, but he really knocked it out of the park with what he did. He's also responsible for the LE back glass, so he did that as well. We hired Arjen Buehler to do artwork because he is one of the most prolific GNR tour poster artists that's out there. He's done, I don't know, 60 of their tour posters. So I got a hold of GNR management and they gave me his contact info And I reached out to him and said we doing a pinball machine Love your art for GNR Would love to use it in a way that would well represent the game I have this concept of a collage of like in a bar or in a dive bar sort of red brick wall collage of tour posters And Aryan is great because he is so in touch with the GNR tour poster collector market. Yep, Pinel isn't the only super niche market that exists. He knows what each of these posters, what their values are, what they're worth, how much they're sought after. So having his input on what posters to use. I searched through the collection of posters and I'm like, oh, that one looks cool. That one looks cool. That one looks cool. And he's like, yeah, those are all mine. I don't want to just use my posters. If we can use some of the other artists, that'd be cool too. I'm like, dude. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, he was very humble about it. But we were able to put in some cool, I don't know if they're Easter eggs. I don't consider them Easter eggs. But there is a poster for Chicago. There is a poster for Nijmegen, the Netherlands, which is the town that Sean Paul lives in, because they performed there. There's a poster for New Jersey. Those are all in there on one side of the cabinet art. And then there's also other top-rated posters, according to GNR fans, including one that is unobtainable. There was this poster made for Dubai when they performed there once, and the poster didn't make it to the show. They just fell through the cracks. The printer didn't get it to them on time. So no one was ever able to actually buy this poster from Dubai, which is like an image of a hawk. Because hawking is a thing that you do in Dubai when you're super rich and have shit tons of money and free time. Sounds like a really, really tough problem to have. Right. Let's go hawking. So this poster never made it to the show, but the artwork exists. And Aryan was just like, Eric, if you can get this on the game, This is one of those things that will show a G&R diehard that you mean business because this is a poster that no one can get and everyone will love that. So that's one of the posters that's there on the side of the game. I would never have come up with that without his input on what makes it a cool tour posters. Everyone who hasn't seen this, which I imagine is a good chunk of people, go to www.lithorati, it's L-I-T-H-O-R-A-T-I.com and see Ari and Bueller's stuff because it is phenomenal. And he's done concert artwork for pretty much all of their shows on the tour. Every location has its own unique poster, and it's really, really cool. And he ties in the stuff that's local to the area into the poster. So I went on just because I freaking love the fact that we're doing this interview with Eric for this game. I went on and I bought the poster from Hershey, Pennsylvania, when Guns N' Roses came in and did their tour stop here. And it's a giant chocolate bar with the little chocolate foil around it. It's super cool, but all of his posters are cool. So the fact that this guy is involved in the game and that he did the cabinet art for the LE and has all of his posters on the side is just so cool. It wasn't just his posters. There were dozens of artists who did posters for GNR, and Arian chose the ones that are rated the best from the fans, not just his posters. Okay. In my opinion, it kind of put him up a notch in respect for me because he has some integrity that not a lot of people have. Most people would just put their art out there and, like, that's it. But he really wanted to do the fans justice and put the highest-rated posters out there. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, so next, Aryan, we got him to do an original art piece. I mean, the collage was an original art piece because it had some, you know, shading and effects and stuff like that. But it wasn't an intense art piece like he did for the collector's edition. So the collector's art that he did was themed Appetite for Destruction. And that, Collector's Edition, because Appetite is their best-selling album, it's what the GNR fans flock to. Anything Appetite is just gobbled up by their fan base immediately. So it's Flash, for his suggestions, to make the Collector's Edition themed after Appetite. So we've got a scene on the Collector's Edition cabinet artwork that is the Dirty Robot versus the Angel of Vengeance. That's his nickname, Vengeance. And so Vengeance is shooting his little squiggly guys at the robot, and the robot's throwing a knife at the vengeance guy and there's more little robots and there's flames in the background. So he really knocked this piece out of the park. Thought it was really cool. And then we took it one step further and we made the entire thing mirrored. So the entire CE cabinet has mirror artwork on the Radcals. What does that even mean? Layman art piece person. I'll explain this from an artist's point of view so the layman can understand it. Thank you. The material being printed on is completely metallic. however you put down a white base a solid white ink underneath certain areas and then when you print your full color art on that material wherever the white base was underneath does not reflect i got so you could have like a character in like solid you know colors but then the background like the sky is all mirrored in chromium and whatever thank you for that layman version that i totally understood glad i can contribute something to this interview so much so much and then the backbox sides of the head. There's a pretty famous depiction of a cross with the original five members on it, like their skulls. We got Arian with band approval to do the seven-member cross with all the new members' skulls on there. So it was the first time that it was ever officially drawn with the Not In This Lifetime Tour band members' skulls set up in that Appetite for Destruction cross depiction. It's got really cool Celtic line work in that cross, and we actually took that and used it in the armor as well. The armor is all laser cut with the Celtic line art all the way up and down the side of the game as well. Let's go through each model and talk about it a little bit. So the SE or the standard edition model is all Mark Molitor, right? Yes. That's what I'd say, right? Yep. So he did the, it's kind of like a, I don't know, zombies or monsters in Hot Rods, which is apparently something that is very, you know, native to Guns N' Roses. They've done this, this kind of art style on some of their artwork in the past. this was a something from Slash again when we were discussing I want three different versions of the cabinet artwork what do you suggest you know I've got an idea for the CE I've got an idea for the LE I'm looking for ideas for the standard and he's just like yeah how about hot rods and us driving and stuff like that and so Mark who's our in-house artist he joined us last year and drew something up and Slash loved it and we got all the guys and gal on board they all saw their images and they were all just over the moon about him and they all signed off on him first thing the only feedback that i got from slash is that he wanted to be purple and have a pink tongue instead of purple oh my god that's terrible i love this man yeah he's like such a cool guy yes he's super cool so mark did that art package and the backlash for that as well and it's just a really cool colors. It was actually a very difficult decision internally to decide which art package we wanted to put on the Ellie versus the Essie because they both turned out so great. But I couldn't tell you which one I prefer. It's just the Ellie and more artists and probably more appeal to the GNR core fan base because it had all their tour posters on it. And that's why we went with that on the Ellie art. I got to say the Ellie art is what draws me in. I mean, just seeing all of it's like a million different art packages on one machine because you have all the different posters from the different concerts which is so freaking cool it's also the only machine where you have the the kind of skeletons in the background of the back glass just like you have on the play field um how did that come about like did guns and roses want to be drawn in like on the se you have them as kind of zombie monsters in the le you have them in skeletons it's only until the ce where you have them as themselves on the back glass. So how did you make that delineation? Was there a reason why you chose to kind of represent them as something other than humans on the art? Definitely. I mean, these are guys that have been in the spotlight for the past, what, 40 years, 35 years? And what era would be the best era to represent the band? You know, late 80s, early 90s is what they're best known for for their albums, but the Not In This Lifetime tour is one of the highest grossing tours of all time. And that's what the game is based off of. So which version of them would we want to show that shows them in the best light, that shows them rocking and awesome? So we came up with the idea of making them timeless, making them like this undead, and I have to use the super nerdy term, which is a lich, which is an undead monster from fantasy worlds. It's not quite a skeleton, not quite a zombie, but super powerful and like the cryptkeeper. basically. Black Knight fans would know this term well. Sure. You're a Dungeons and Dragons nerd, aren't you? I absolutely am. I've seen the core, man. So I wanted them to be drawn up like Lich and Dane did a great job on drawing them that way and what that did for us is allow them to be represented as timeless. Not setting them in any specific decade when they were in the limelight. It's just they are timely. You can see them and it just kind of shows how good an artist Dane is, that even with skeleton features and decayed flesh features, you can tell Axel, you can tell Slash, and you can see that it is all these people because they have these cool accents and their faces were very well drawn and he just did a great job to make them all timeless. Let's talk toppers. The CM comes with a topper, which is a cool version of the band's logo, with a pinball and flippers worked in, surrounded by fire. Who designed this and what are the features that you can tell us about? Because I've noticed that there's also something going on behind it in sort of a black box situation that's not on the other two. So maybe you can explain what's going on up there. The CE topper, the front of it has the GNRJJP logo, which was a cool thing that we were able to work together with them on. They are known for having a really cool logo, and they change it up a lot. Actually, they've got like 30 or 40 of their logo with different guns or knives or katanas. based on where they're playing as the logo they'll use. So we came up with a Guns N' Roses JJP logo, which is their traditional logo, but with flippers and a pinball instead of guns. And so that is their front and center with the flames. And underneath that is 36 individually controlled RGB LEDs, so we can make cool flame effects, we can do light patterns, we can do cool shows with that. But the real meat and potatoes of the topper is the fact that it has an auxiliary amplifier board with an extra 60 watts of speaker hooked up to it so he will blow your hair back if you still have some unlike me. Blow your hair back as you're playing the game. Blow our hats off, right Eric? There you go. I wouldn't consider them copper but kind of in the same genre or venue is the backers and bottom lighting. So they also add to the environment outside the game, right? All these other 250 or so LEDs that are part of that package. You guys are not shying with the light. No. Is there anything unique to the topper in terms of gameplay? Do you integrate the gameplay with the topper at all? Yes. So when you're playing things like they ignite the flames, like those flames up there are in time with what's going on in the music. And there's different lighting effects and pulsing effects that happen with not only the main light behind the sign, but also the lights that affect the flames and all that. So there's light integration. But then, of course, I would say it's integrated with the game because it's playing the game's music, and it's just adding a whole other level of audio experience to the game. Right. Well, we've got to move on to Price because one of the most exciting things about this game that we haven't even touched on yet is something we saved towards the end because it's so freaking awesome. The LE and CE are kind of in line with the previous releases, So $9.5K for the LE and $12.5K for the CE. But the standard edition is where you guys are kind of going for the jugular with your strategy on this one. And it's $6,750 for the SE, which is about $500 more than a Stern Pro. So not a ton more and significantly cheaper than a Stern Premium at $7,800. So that's really a game changer for Jersey Jack. And it's an amazing kind of release for pinheads because, you know, people want these games in their homes, but people have been priced out of these in the past. So what was the biggest push for a less expensive SE? I mean, you hit it on the head. We really wanted more JGP games to be out on location. And for operators, most operators don't care what the game play is, what the game theme is. It's the newest thing, and how much does it cost? And for an operator, we wanted to provide a JGP game that was at a value comparable to, you know, in the neighborhood of what they're paying now from other vendors. And so we have a game that's lower priced than we've ever priced something out before, but it's still a full-featured game. It still has all of the great music and sound effects and lights and call-outs and all that stuff. But it's a game that I think will be put on route and in locations all over the world. It's awesome. It's so awesome. Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously there are big differences between all three of the models. We talked about the art. We talked about some of the fun toys. But what else is different from a gameplay standpoint? Did you have to change the game drastically because there are features that have been removed from certain models and are obviously present in others? Right. The gameplay should not feel dramatically different to anyone who plays all three different models. I mean, the main difference is obviously the upper play field is not present in the standard edition, but it's compensated for in the software. You can still do the lights, multiball, you can still lock balls. They're virtual locks for your song modes. And then there's a playfield feature on the collector's edition called the infirmary, which is in the left out lane, that is replicated in software on the other two modes. So if you qualify the coma mode in order to go into the infirmary. On the CE, it's a physical ball lock in the left out lane, but on the SE and the LE, it's a virtual ball lock feature. Kind of like some of our other games where we have a feature to potentially save your ball after you drain, you can successfully complete this coma mode. You can continue to play. And so it's a physical feature in the CE and a virtual feature that you can play and still achieve in the other two models. Cool. That is cool. Eric, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to cover? For example, I know one of the things that's toted on in this game is the new non-mechanical ball sensors. What kind of sorcery is this? Is this something that you engineered? Yes. I worked with our electrical engineer, Tony Tomenaro, Guy who replaced me, right, in my old role at JGP was the electrical engineer. And I'm very, very glad I found Tony and that he works for us because he cares deeply about what he does. And he's awesome and makes all the crazy shit that I come up with a reality. But I'm actually somebody you can talk to about it as well, right? It's not just like make the ball magnetically float in the air because both him and I know that that's bullshit. But I'm like, hey, I really want to do this. And this is how I think we could do it. and we'll go back and forth on ideas, and then he'll do the implementation. So we came up with an idea that we wanted to use, which was a non-magnetic ball sensor. I don't know how much more I want to go into it than that, but it's a cool way of detecting a ball without physical interaction of the ball. There's no switch adjusting, and it's non-magnetic based, and it works. And we've got, let's see, 6, 12, 15 of them, I think, in the game. Patent pending? Patent pending, I believe so. Are you hesitant to talk about this because it's proprietary, or are you just... Okay, all right. Because it's on your flyer, so people are going to look into this. Oh, I'm sure they will. If Deeper would like to license these amazing creatures, they can contact Eric. Exactly. So when can we expect to see this game ship? I mean, everybody wants to see it, and the push in the past has been, don't reveal a game until you're ready to ship it. You told me earlier that this game is in box, so when this game goes out, which is today, and in terms of reveal, are you ready to send these out? Yes. Wow. There are many games in boxes, and a distributor near you will have one on their floor within days of this airing. That's awesome. If they don't already have one, to be honest. Really? Yes. Including the one taker. How long ago did you send these out? Because there were rumors as of two weeks ago from this airing that these were shipping to Australia in a boat. Have you already sent them to locations? Yes. Wow. Okay. So they're out there. You heard it here last, people. All of our major distributors around the world should have a game on their floor. Wow, that's really cool. With Pat Lawler taking a larger role in JJP now, how much was he involved, if any, in what you had done on this game? Did he have any say or did he just let you loose? Actually, people really don't know what his role is other than he just has a larger role than a game designer. So could you clarify that at all? Pat's role at the company is head of game design. So what that means is he oversees all of the projects and has, I wouldn't say direct input, like he's not drawing lines and circles on my game by any means, but he will play it and give feedback. And so that was his contribution to the game. And I made changes based on vast recommendations in the design process. So he's like a George Gomez of Jersey Jack, basically. Yes. We don't have that title per se, but head of game design is, I think, pretty equivalent to what George does. Well, that's actually, contrary to some people's opinions, That's actually an asset to have with his background and experience. Right. I mean, Pat has literally made games as long as I've been alive. Banzai Run came out the year I was born. So Pat is a vast wealth of knowledge. Well, there you go making other people feel old again too. I have Pat's first prototype of that game, for the record. I have a prototype number seven, Banzai Run. That is so cool. How did you get that? Before Pat ever joined the company, I took possession of it because Ted Estes had it in his possession, and he was looking to sell it, and Pons at Run was one of those games that was on my, that was my grail game for the longest time, because I just loved the engineering behind it and the design behind it. So I got prototype number seven, and it has a perfect cabinet, clear-coated playfield, like all this stuff from the factory. It had the XR7 playfield diamond coat before it was called diamond coat. So just a mint condition, perfect game. Very nice, man. So how has it been at the new factory? Like, has the atmosphere changed at all since the move? What's it like having everybody under the same roof now? That is the best thing that, that's what this company needed. I mean, it's been difficult challenging what I would consider working remotely, right? When Pirates was on the line in Jersey, I literally had to fly out there once a month for like six months straight to spend time with them. And, you know, in a young family, I don't like being away from my family for days at a time. It's a week at a time, right? It's a difficult thing to do. My wife works as well, so who picks up the kids from school and how that all works out. So it's tough being away for so long. Having everyone here, like, as my game was being built on the line, I mean, in the past five weeks, I don't think I've sat down at my desk for anything besides something to immediately help the production line do their job better. So, like, I'm always out there. There's no one in the world who knows this game like I do. And I'm trying my best to pass that knowledge on to our assembly line workers and our line leads and our head of production. And they're all awesome to work with. They get it. They care. And they want to make the game the best as possible. and having me there side by side with them, showing them the best way to assemble something or the order in which it should be assembled and all the things that make a pinball machine actually go together, it's been awesome. You know, I don't feel like I'm out of the loop at all, which is how I kind of felt on Pirates. Yeah, I feel like you being there obviously just is the icing and the cherry on the cake. Probably the sprinkles too. I feel like having everybody in one place, it has to be like a whole new world. It feels like a completely new company. It really does. We've got a lot of new talent that's here that's looking to make the company as great as possible. And it's showing. I mean, we're making awesome leaps and bounds in improvements every day. And it's great to be here in the center of it all. Well, you know, COVID aside, Eric, let's just say that it's a perfect world again. And I'm always the one that asks the questions out of the box. And I've learned how to ask them so that people can actually answer them now. So I'm going to say this, excluding the extremely talented people that you work with at JJP right now, being such a collaborative creator, if you could create from the present and past pinball industry, all the game designers and artists and engineers and everything, if you could create a dream team, and again, you're not allowed to use JJP employees, create a dream team to work on a single one-off project, who would you pick and why? My artist would of course be Christopher Franchi. Oh yeah, hell yeah. All right, that's bullshit. No, that's not bullshit. I was thinking in my head, that's total truth, and he's a brown noser all at the same time. Well, we'll just pretend that's true, and we'll pass that. Sounds pretty awesome. No pretending, no pretending. Am I the game designer, or am I picking a game designer? Well, let's say you're picking someone to co-design with you, and then fill all the other spots. He's thinking hard about this one. He is. This is a brain bender. I'm going to leave all the silence in. I really like what Kamek did on some of those late 70s and early 80s games. Like, I've got a hard one, Globetrotters. Yeah, buddy. Oh, I love that game. You know, he did some really cool games. It'd be really fun, too. He's a guy who really understood easy to learn, difficult to master when it comes to a game. So that would be really fun to work with. Sound. I never actually got to work with Granner on Wizard of Oz. Chris had finished his job before I started mine before I started working for JJP so I never really actually got to work with Chris but I've met with him a couple times and he seems like a really fun guy to work with so I really like him for his sound and then John Krutsch is and maybe it's just because he's Pat's engineer and worked with Pat forever but even from other people that I've heard John Krutsch is one of the most competent mechanical engineers who's ever been in pinball and I think it'd be great to work with him on a set of mechs It seems like he could design his way out of anything. Really competent engineer. Software, that's difficult. That's very difficult because I've worked with heaps. There's a lot to choose from. Yeah. Yeah. You've got the Lyman Chiefs. You've got the Keith Johnsons. You've got many people to choose from. Dwight Sullivan. Hell yeah. I don't know either that well, but I like him. I'm staring at Tron, right? And Tron is probably one of my favorite journeys ever made. I'm pretty sure Lyman did code on this, right? I was just like wandering around my basement. I don't know how well my mic works. I'm pretty sure Lyman did code on Tron. I think he could be interesting to work with. His mind works a lot like Keith's does. They're both very good at what they do and can come up with unique and fun rules, not just the same fun rules, right? There's a distinct difference. Animation. Top creator. Oh, top creator. That would be terrible. Oh, nice. Yes, dude. We just fist bumped. I don't know if you can see that, but we just fist bumped. Like, for the time. I mean, I see what you've done for Wonka, and it's just, like, out of this world. Dude, it is amazing. Yeah, but I mean, it's totally, like, homemade version, so. Yeah, but honestly, anyone would buy that shit. No. If you posted that shit, it would be a thousand dollar topper. But the best thing about it is the Wonka vision that we actually got from Jack himself. That's true. And then I, like, pimped it out a little bit. Yes, but we have fucking Charlie and Grandpa floating in the bubbles. The soda machine. We have Haruka as our blueberry. We've got the gummy bear tree. We've got the full Monty. I love it, but... Yes. Well, before, you know, I can sense it better and tougher than all I ever... That is undoubtedly true. Yeah. So, all right. So, to close this interview, Eric, you have been ridiculously generous with your time, man. So, the last thing we want to do is just cover a few little-known facts about Eric Meunier. So I'm going to throw this out to Sarah, and I don't want you to look at the notes because I know you've got these in front of you. I'm not looking. But only one of these Eric Meunier facts is false. The rest of them are true. Okay, here we go. One, he's a huge Dungeons & Dragons fan. He loves science fiction and fantasy novels. That's one. Two, he was really into band in college. Now he already answered that question earlier in the interview. Yeah. Three, if you've flown a 787 Boeing Dreamliner safely, you have Eric to thank as he's worked on some of the engineering behind it. Four, he had at one point pursued work in engineering for prosthetic limbs that could be controlled with your mind. Five, he's received a super sweet Guns N' Roses Christmas sweater from his pin-sized Secret Santa last year. And six, he has hidden a super awesome pinball show flipper code into the Guns N' Roses pinball machine. Which of these is false? Okay, well, right off the bat, I have to think it's the Super Awesome Pinball Show, because that would be ridiculous. Obviously, he would hide a super secret Mrs. Pincoat in the floor. Just saying. If it wasn't that, though, I would have to go. So I think the plane one is true. I know the band one is true. He's definitely into Dungeons & Dragons, because, well, duh. And what were the other ones? I totally forgot. You pretty much already have beaten the quiz. He has not hidden a super awesome pinball show flipper code into the game, but he totally should. Yeah, I mean, that's like a little shameless plug right there. I like it. I can get behind that shameless plug. I like it. All right. Well, Eric, it's obvious you poured your heart and your freaking soul into this game, and you have absolutely done justice to the license. I know Guns N' Roses and pretty much pinheads everywhere are going to be really happy that you were behind this game and can't wait to play it. Thanks, guys. It's been fun. Fun game. And it's an absolute pleasure to finally be able to talk to some friends about the game. You know, that's one of the things that people don't really seem to understand. You know, most people can go home and hang out with their friends and talk about their jobs. And nearly all of my friends are pinball people. So, like, I can't tell anyone about what I work on ever. That's got to be so tough. Especially because it's been so long that you've been working on this. And it's been longer than the average lifespan of a pinball machine development. Well, we're so super psyched that you gave us the honor of divulging your deepest Guns N' Roses secrets to all of us. And we can't thank you enough. And to, of course, JJP, because without them, where would Guns N' Roses be right now? That's right. I mean, they'd probably still be making billions. But really, they would not have a fucking pinball machine. With Guns N' Roses on it. Of course. Of course. So thank you so much. Yes, thank you. We had a great time. Just so that you know, I still regret saying no. I still regret saying no. And like I said, that's not to say that you didn't turn out a fantastic product. It just could have been me. God damn it. But anyway, congratulations on an amazing game. You've conquered the sophomore jinx, and that's difficult to do. You know, any band that's come out with their first album, they've had four or five years to come out with the songs on that, and then the pressure's on for the second album. And this is your second album, and it's the fucking greatest hits. It's amazing. Great work. Thanks, man. Take care, man. And there you have it. The Super Awesome Pinball Show's exclusive interview with Jersey Jack Pinball's Guns and Roses pinball designer, Eric Meunier. What an awesome interview. And a great guy as well. And now we're going to give away a crew-signed mini play field from Guns and Roses to one of you lucky and sexy listeners. Just listen to Eric's trivia question and email your answer to superawesomepinball at gmail.com. The first correct answer or the closest guess by October 11th at midnight Eastern time wins the signed play field. Here's Eric with your question. Your trivia question is, how many LEDs are there actually in the collector's edition of Guns N' Roses? And that's going to wrap up this super awesome Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses special. Thanks to everybody for joining us for our first special event episode. Remember to email your guests at thesuperawesomepinball at gmail.com. And good luck to you guys. And thanks to Eric for giving us his valuable time. Thanks to everyone at Jersey Jack Pinball. A special thanks to Ken Cromwell for his assistance in putting this all together. And thanks to the lovely Mrs. Pin for joining us. Have a great day, everybody. We love you. Peace. Thanks, everybody. Good night. All original content contained in this show is copyright Asshat Radio Productions. From Jersey Jack and the most dangerous band on the planet. Poms. Jeanette's sharp, popping head. And the greatest rock and roll experience under glass. Witness the birth of a new classic and become the rock star you were born to be. Rock out to 21 full-length Dungeon Rose's favorites on our Playfield Paradise, locked and loaded with features. Play from front-load seats to mind-blowing custom lectures. And live the tour on a full 27-inch high-definition back-flash with sledge. Also featuring original pinball music by Slash. Pinball is dangerous? not even this last time interested in a new and boxed Jersey Jack Guns and Roses pin call the world's largest pinball distributors Cointaker or visit their massive Midwest showroom great prices, great selection, and great service Cointaker.com official Jersey Jack pinball distributors Cointaker Okay, okay, show's over. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hey, you fucking chalupa suck, kid! Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here? It was very satisfying.