Scott! I'm the Scott man! Oh, happy Friday everybody. Welcome to Canada's Pinball Podcast. Oh yeah, we're still here. We're not cancelled, even though I took down my Facebook for a little bit because I just need a break, and clearly people need a break from Canada. I mean, I'm that terrible person. I just want to say this. If you think I'm a terrible person, you've never met a terrible person. We're going to keep on talking about pinball on this podcast. And look, I do so much free stuff on Facebook, you know, and I'm not allowed to get upset at people. I'm not allowed to curse people off. That's how it is in the modern world. Everyone's a saint on Facebook. And if I had one epiphany this week, I'll tell you what it is. It's that your real friends and your good friends, when they see you do something that they're not proud of, guess what they do? They call you up and they say, hey man, is everything all right? I saw this and I just want to talk to you. You know what everybody else does? Everyone else just turns into a saint immediately and gives you advice on Facebook. So everybody can see how smart they are and how enlightened they are and how much they know what's going on in my world. I'll tell you what's going on in my world, Jaws pinball people. It's about to come out. I spoke to someone who's seen the game. We are now getting the first unofficial official reports about what What's going to be in Keith Elwin's Jaws pinball machine? Can we talk about this? The drama's gone. The drama's gone. We're going to talk about pinball. So here's what I'm hearing. This game is going to have three yellow barrels that will disappear below the playfield. Super cool. Super awesome. I don't know where they are on the playfield. But if you think about the Jaws movie, this is good. Because this means this is most likely going to be a game that is based on Jaws 1. Now, we're still all very curious whether or not this game is going to have all of the assets from the movie. Is it going to have the theme song from the movie? You're going to need to have at least the song. And I hope they have the assets from the movie or at least the call-outs from the actors. Remember a little game called Lord of the Rings? You know that pinball experience, which to this day is still one of the best theme-integrated pinball machines of all time. Now, while they did not have the clips from the movie, they had the callouts from the actors and it worked so well. So I think for Jaws to really work, I really hope if they don't have the movie clips, they get the callouts from the actors to really bring those scenes to life. And they don't just hire like voice actors to try to recreate the movies and the callouts that we love. So three barrels disappearing below the playfield. Where do we think these barrels are going to be in the game? I was just thinking about it too. So apparently the barrels, they disappear below the playfield. I'm not sure if you bash them or not. And then you get access to Jaws the shark. So does that make sense with the Jaws storyline? They harpoon the barrels to Jaws so they can track him as he's moving through the water. So when the barrels go under, that means Jaws is using all of his strength and he's about to reappear. Now the only thing is this. I think in the movie, I need to go watch it again, I think the barrels start to pop up when Jaws is heading back towards the surface. Now, I have full confidence in Keith Elwin and the team over at Stern Pinball that they are going to do this game right. They are going to do this game justice. There is so much enthusiasm for this game. I think there's more enthusiasm for this game than anything else coming out next year. I think this is the big hit game that Stern has been working on for a very long time. I do not think Back to the Future is coming out. I do not think there's going to be a surprise Back to the Future pinball announcement in November. The Back to the Future anniversary is in 2025. So I think if Stern's going to come out with Back to the Future, they are most likely going to do it sometime maybe at the end of next year. But I am almost with 100% certainty going to tell you right now, the next major cornerstone game from Stern Pinball is going to be Jaws. I don't think it's going to be anything else other than Jaws. And I would be shocked if it was something else. Now look, Stern Pinball has got a big factory. They've got lots of designers. They've got a lot of games in development. And they could always shuffle up the deck a little bit. But I think it's going to be Jaws. I think everyone's in the same small boat. No pun intended. Is that we're all looking at this game as a game that will hopefully justify where all of these pinball prices are at. Stern needs a hit. Everybody knows this. Stern needs a hit. they're going to need hit games if they are going to keep the line moving. Stern's not going to be able to go back and remake all of these older games at these modern prices. It's not going to work. Everyone's not going to run and go buy $10,000 premiums now, and you're not going to be able to do what you did with Jurassic Park LE and just remake more LEs of everything of yesteryear and then charge $13,000 for them. I think that's going to run thin. I've been in that pin side thread. What do you think the future of the new in box market is? It's a really interesting thread. There's nothing new. Nobody knows for sure. The truth is this. Everyone's new in box future is personal to them. You're going to do what you want to do with your money. I'm going to do what I want to do with my money. I don't want to buy pinball machines at this much money unless it's a dream theme and unless the game is magical. For me, it's an easy conversation. If a game doesn't deliver that, I'll enjoy it elsewhere. I'll enjoy it at arcades, at pinball shows, but I'm not going to write a check for a game where I'm going to lose $2,000 to $3,000 instantly. And speaking of that you know I know in my last episode the epiphany I talked about Pinball Mania emailed to me and now it quite clear that that was clearly like either a distributor or some super rich collector that doesn't really get where most people are at in this hobby. I think it's really easy to get a little bit tone deaf when you're super rich. I think 95% of the pinball buying community does not wanna lose $3,000 on a new in-box purchase. I don't know many people that would just shrug off losing $3,000 on every pinball machine they buy or $1,000 or $2,000 on every pinball machine they buy. And the other thing is this, like why would somebody tell me not to tell you to wait and see? Who doesn't want you to wait and see? Manufacturers and distributors. And what have more and more people been doing in the pinball space? They've been waiting and seeing. And if you waited and saw on Scooby-Doo, you would have saved yourself a lot of money. If you waited on games like Venom, you would have saved yourself a lot of money. If you waited on games like Foo Fighters, you would have saved yourself a lot of money. We're gonna start to see more and more Foo Fighters LEs in boxes just all of a sudden pop up. You know how many distributors hold back LEs because they wanna speculate on the market? We talk about scalpers as if they're only consumers like me and you, but there are many distributors that hold back allotment because they've seen what's been happening in pinball. There used to be a time when a distributor could hold back. Think about it. A distributor used to be able to hold back a Godzilla LE. Remember those days? Godzilla LE was $10,500 for a Godzilla LE. Now, the cost to a distributor was not $10,500. It was probably more like $8,500. And what happened, right? Some distributors held on to that game for a year. Then COVID hit. And then what happened, right? We started to see distributors with new in box games for $18,000. So just think about that for a minute. A dealer who decides not to sell on day one to a customer held product back and made a $10,000 profit on a single pinball sale. Now, if every game were as good as Godzilla, you could probably get away with that more frequently. Then what happened, right? Then the prices kept going up and up and up. And then LEs were $13,000. and then the games weren't as good as Godzilla. So people were like, all right, like James Bond looks interesting, but it's not going to go up in value. And it hasn't. Foo Fighters, really interesting pin. People are having a lot of fun with it, but it didn't go up in value. Venom is a game that seemingly nobody really wants, and it's never going to go up in value. And so what's sad is like if you went in on Venom LE day one and you're spending $13,000 on that game, congratulations. By the end of the year, we will see a plethora of Venom LEs, new in box for like 10, 5, 11, maybe even less. Because as we get to the end of the year, all of the excitement is going to shift to Keith Elwin's Jaws. Now, I'm super excited to see this game. I'm also really excited after this Keith Elwin game. I'm really excited for us to eventually, and I know it's going to happen sometime at the end of the year, eventually to start to see Pulp Fictions get made. Because I have a Pulp Fiction on order. Many of you do. And Pulp Fiction LE has been this game where like it's going to make its way into a lot of your game rooms. There are a thousand people out there that have committed to a $10,000 Pulp Fiction LE and I think you made a really wise decision. I think for obvious reasons the game is really cool, the game is really fun. The main question around Pulp Fiction and we're not going to know this until people actually get this game into their homes and it is a legitimate concern. Is Pulp Fiction a game that is going to have staying power in a home environment. I am curious about this. It definitely doesn't have the very deep rule set like other modern pins. There's no LCD screen in the game. It's more straightforward of a game like Total Nuclear Annihilation. I think why Pulp Fiction is going to have staying power is A, the theme itself. It is super cool. It is a gorgeous pinball machine. It is the first ever Quentin Tarantino pinball machine ever in the world. And I also think the game is going to be challenging. Because a game doesn't have to be deep or complex to be challenging. And I think it's not going to be easy when you walk up to a Pulp Fiction machine to beat it time and time again. I think the game, in its simplicity, is still going to be hard enough to keep you reaching for stuff when you play the game. I did get to play the game a bunch at Texas and my only concern for you home guys who are good at pinball, Pulp Fiction might be a little easy for you. So you might have to do something with the outlanes because I think there can be very long ball times on Pulp Fiction because the game's not as fast as like a Rick and Morty. It doesn't have the speed of some other games that we're used to and so I think for you guys who are really good, I think you're going to have very long ball times on Pulp Fiction. But that being said, we should start to see Pulp Fiction production sometime at the end of this year. And the Ellies are going to go on the line in January, February, right around when Jaws is coming out. So it's going to be an interesting like early 2024 battling it out for space in your game room. Now, we've heard some news over at Spooky Pinball that's not new. They have three licensed games that they are going to be working on. We now know that they are halfway through the production of Scooby-Doo. Wow, that's a long ways to go. Do you think Spooky Pinball is going to make all 1969 Scooby-Doos? I don't know. Maybe they are. They said that they only have like 11 TNAs left to sell to sell out of the remake of TNA. I think they remade an additional 250. This company is just going to be head down designing their future games and making all of these Scooby I think we all happy for the success of Spooky Pinball And as I said in my last show I just really wanna see Spooky Pinball though get some more interesting stuff happening in those games mechanically. But Scooby-Doo is a home run theme. It looks beautiful. It looks gorgeous. It looks nice in people's game rooms. You always got a little bit of quality issues with Spooky Pinball machines, but everybody knows that going into a Spooky machine. I think their quality is only gonna get better when they move into a new factory, when they stop moving these games up and downstairs. It's all going to be a single level factory. I think they're making more Scooby-Doos than freaking Godfather. So I think this company is no longer like this tiny little boutique. They are now a major player in the pinball space. Now, you know, look, there's Stern and everybody else. But I think after Stern Pinball, I think Spooky Pinball might be up there right with Chicago Gaming Company in terms of how many games they're making over a year period. It's still not a ton though. I think they make something like 23 or 28 games a week. It's not a lot. That's not a lot. Remember, Stern Pinball can do between 400 and 600 games a week when they move into their new factory. Maybe even more. Isn't that like terrifying? In like one month, Stern Pinball would be done with the Scooby-Doo build. One month. Everybody would have their Scooby-Doos. It is pretty impressive to watch how everybody else does it. All right, so that's Spooky Pinball. What's going on over at Jersey Jack? So yes, we're all waiting for Elton John. It's going to be Elton John. It's like Jaws. It's like Jaws and Elton John are the two things coming from both of these companies. So we're starting to see more Godfather collector's editions make their way into people's homes, which is nice. It's nice to see these games finally shipping. Let's count the months on my hand between the moment you ordered this game, which was mid-March, and when you got the game. So March, April, May, June, July, August. So basically like six months. I mean, that's a long window, Jersey Jack. They've got to figure this out. That is six months to the point when people just start to get the game. If they have to make a thousand of these Godfather CEs, they're not going to be done with this run until sometime in like November, it feels like. And that's only if they make all 1,000 Godfather CEs. My feeling is they did not sell 1,000. I think you're going to see a lot more distributors with all of a sudden Godfather CEs for sale, and you're going to see them go for less than $15,000. I've been popping in and out of the Godfather thread. And, you know, there's some issues with the game here and there that some new owners are experiencing. The one that's really baffling, and we've seen this before and not just this Jersey Jack game. We also saw this on Halloween and we saw it on Legends of Valhalla. For some reason, when you make the powder coating on a pinball machine a gold color, the oils from your hands will discolor that lockdown bar. The early recipients of Godfather Collector's Edition are showing this happening to the game. And it's a permanent stain. There's nothing you can do. Your lock bar is going to get discolored where your palms are resting on the edges of the lockdown bar. Look, is it a big issue? No. But for these people who want to have this beautiful, perfect pinball machine that they spent $15,000 on, and we've seen this issue now with Halloween. We've seen it with Legends of Valhalla. how many times are pinball companies going to run into this issue when they powder coat with gold? It's quite obvious they need to do a clear coat over the gold or else the oils in your hand are going to discolor the lockdown bar. Now it leads to an interesting question. If you ship a game like this and there is a cosmetic thing like this that your customers are not happy about, I don't know, imagine buying a car and the door handle on the car because of the oils in your hand starts to change color a little bit and it doesn't look right when you look at your car. The fact that we can get carguments into every single pinball analogy is quite amazing, people. What do you do if you're Jersey Jack Pinball and you notice this happening on early builds of Godfather CE? Do you do anything for your customers that are having issues? Now, look, it's not a huge item. A lockdown bar and giving someone a replacement lockdown bar is something that can easily be done. You can even have people send back their old lockdown bars, you know, strip the paint off it and use them in a future game because it's just a standard lockdown bar with an action button in the middle. The first thing Jersey Jack would have to do is figure out what the solution is. And that might take a little bit of time. See, this is why having a pinball company is really hard. So imagine if you've got hundreds of these games about to go out the door and now John Youssi this issue, what do you do knowing that potentially a few hundred people might have the same issue as what you're seeing happen on pin side? You know, this is why in the old days they used to put pinball machines out on location so people could beat on them and they could catch all of these issues. But also back in the day, remember, like nobody was powder coating the armor for home collectors. They knew those games were going to go into arcades. They knew they were going to get beat up on and they knew they weren't going to have a bunch of OCD people complaining about every little issue that they saw on the game cosmetically. You know, those were the good old days when everybody had peace of mind. You could just walk up to a game, there could be a broken plastic, there could be shooter lane wear, there could be scratches on the cabinet, and you wouldn't care. You would stand up, you would play the machine, you would enjoy it, and you wouldn't be looking for every little problem with the game. You know, I'm also seeing in the Godfather thread, people are complaining about excessive dimpling in the game. Does this game dimple more than previous Jersey Jack machines. Well, we know that this game has stronger flippers, and it's probably Jersey Jack's fastest game to date. So you know what adds dimples to a game people Speed and a metal ball hitting wood That what adds dimples to the game so i not surprised that godfather being jersey jack most open and flowing game to date having the fastest pinball jersey jack game to date is going to cause more dimples on the play field i don't know what the answer here is you'd think by now we could figure this out it seems like certain people know how to clear coat a game with less dimples others don't is it the wood is it the clear coat? Is it the water-based ink? What is the issue with pinballs and dimples? I know it's a topic that nobody wants to talk about anymore. You just have to learn to live with it. And if you're really OCD about dimples, you could put a playfield protector on a game. Like my Batman SLE has a playfield protector on it, the one I just bought. The reason I bought it, because Batman dimples really badly. When Stern stopped working with Churchill, their playfields were kind of crappy for a period of time. Go and walk up to a Batman 66 and look at the playfield on them. I mean, it looks like the crater of a moon. It looks like a golf ball. And so for this super expensive Super LE, I love the fact that the game I bought back has a playfield protector that was put on it from day one. So there's absolutely no balls played on it without a playfield protector. I know some of you hate playing pinball over playfield protectors. Does it change the gameplay a little bit? Does it change the geometry a little bit based on what the designer wanted for the game? The answer is sure it does. Absolutely. It has to change it a little bit. I think it makes the game play a little bit faster because instead of the ball rolling over the wood, it's kind of, it's skidding a little bit more over that plastic. But I love the way my Batman played. And guess what? If you have a game with a playfield protector, you're just going to adjust how you play based on how that game plays. Everybody knows this. Every pinball machine plays a little bit differently. And so you just adjust accordingly. All right, everybody. Happy Friday. How's everybody doing? Another crazy week for Canada. I'm going to take a break from Facebook, which means there's not going to be any Saturday morning spectaculars for a while. I will be back. It's a temporary break. I just need to step away from it. I love the attention. When people say, look, he loves the attention. He's not going to go away. Of course, I'm not going to go away. Of course, I love the attention. That's why I do what I do. That's why I make this show. That's why I am on Facebook Live. And I just love it. You know, sometimes I just get burnt out. I get tired. Sometimes I get tired of listening to everybody's feedback. I get tired of the insults. I'm just a single individual. I will say this. I've met some of my best friends through pinball, friends that will be with me through thick and thin. And social media and pin side brings out behavior in everybody, not just me. And it brings out bad behavior in me. It brings out bad behavior in everybody. Everybody talks to each other on social media in a way they would never talk to each other in real life. Absolutely not. Like imagine this. Imagine if you walked into a restaurant and everyone in that restaurant was talking to each other the way people talk to each other on Pinside or the way people argue with people on Facebook groups. You would walk into that place and be like, what the heck is going on in here? It looks like a wrestling match going on inside the restaurant. And then go to a pinball show and see how respectful everyone is, see how fun it is, see how energetic it is. There's absolutely no fighting. You know, look, I go to pinball shows and there's people there that absolutely hate me. You know what they do? They don't come up to my face and say, I hate you. You're a narcissistic sociopath. They just walk in the other direction. That's how life is supposed to work. But that's not how it works on social media. It's not how it works online. Everyone's a tough guy. Everyone jumps right into it. Everyone's got the best advice. Everyone's a saint. Nobody's a sinner. Only Kanae is the sinner. It's over and over and over again. I hear it. I get it. And look, do I say stupid stuff at times? Absolutely. Do I apologize when I say stupid stuff? Absolutely. Do people forgive me when I do stupid stuff? Well, that's up to them. I can't make people forgive me. But I'll say this. If you think I'm a terrible person and you don't want to be a part of Canada's Pinball Podcast, that's fine. I'm not keeping anybody here. And I think everybody's here for a reason because you've been with me for a long time. And we've been doing this show for a long time. But who amongst all of us doesn't have bad days? And that's just it. Everybody, we're here to talk pinball. We're here to get excited about what's happening in pinball. You're not here for pinball drama. And that's that. You know, I'll be back with more Saturday morning shows. You'll know first. Like when I come back on Facebook, you will know before anybody else that I'm going to turn my page back on. It's just sitting there deactivated. You know, we'll do it again one day soon. I'm looking forward to having my Saturday mornings back for a little bit. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend all of that time. I would be doing my Facebook live show. I'm going to spend all of that time at the gym. It's my birthday at the end of September. My new goal, instead of arguing with all these pinball people, is to get myself in the best shape I possibly can get in over the next month so that on my birthday I feel amazingly well. That's what I'm going to do. And I'm on my own personal journey and pursuit of happiness, people. And if you're a friend of mine and you ever feel like I say something stupid or I do something dumb, do me a favor. Talk to me like an adult. Call me up and be a real friend. don't just go on social media and talk to me in front of everybody okay that's all I ask of you and I know who my really good friends are and I love all the moments we have together and you know who you are everybody have a great Friday we'll talk to you soon Kaneda out Outro Music