thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast it is episode 92 i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott we have such a unusual week of news here yeah it's well it's it's certainly been interesting but do you know what's not unusual ordering a new pinball machine. Yes. And we know that Stern has officially announced Bond is coming. We just haven't officially seen stuff. Right. So anyway. So if you want that new Bond, who do you hit up, Scott? So I contact Zach and Nicole Mini at Flip N Out Pinball. And even if you have one of the newer ones, Godzilla is great. Mandalorian is great. And Rush is great. Rush is actually, since I've had it up, is a lot of fun, and it's a good shooter. So I'm really excited about that one. If you want to get that pre-order in for Bond, definitely go ahead and reach out to them. They can certainly get you on a list. They also have some, I guess, museum-quality pieces they're trying to sell, and you can definitely see that on their website too. So at least that section anyway. I don't know if it's necessarily on the website or on their Facebook update, But either way, you can figure it out. Also, Zach's kind of turning into the accessory king. I mean, if you want those toppers, he's got those toppers, along with side blades, art blades, all the stuff. If you want any of that, go ahead, hit up Zach. He'll get it for you. And if you do, tell him Loser Kid sent you and say happy anniversary. It was his 16th year being married to his wonderful wife, Nicole. So congratulations to them. Okay, so let's start off. I actually have a quick update for those of you who got the Iron Maiden mod. We talked to Steve Govea about and his mass production of the Sarcophagus as the replacement for the plastic. He's not doing these for a mass release, but he did take the Cyborg Eddie, and he updated it and put some lights on his lasers. but he also modified the mouth to be more in keeping with how that cyborg Getty has been portrayed. So that looks really cool. I did ask him if he was planning on doing this for mass production, but he said it's way too much work to actually do that. Cause he's modifying the existing mod or the existing sculpt, but it does look really cool. It looks, I guess it looks thematically consistent with his sarcophagus mod. So that looks great. Maybe if you throw enough money at him, he'll make one for you. Yeah, exactly. Say, Steve, I know you're not making this publicly, but hey. On the slide. No, but it's been super nice. And seeing his game progress, it looks really cool. Yeah, definitely. And then speaking of mods, I received a mod last night. And you know me, I'm not huge on mods. You're not a huge modder, yeah. I don't mind if they come with the pinball machine, but I'm not usually the guy that's going to buy one outside and install it myself. But we were hanging out in the Triple Drain chat. We've made one with them. And I think it was Joel that sent us this picture of the Tokyo Sign mod that was being made by Stumblr. And it was a limited run. And it's just watching it in action in the video and the pictures. It's quite the eye-catching mod. and uh i decided let's give this a try uh i ordered it what's it been it's been a couple months now and finally it dropped uh i got it last night in the mail installed it this morning only took about 15 20 minutes not very long and that's including with kids bothering me and and running in and out and i didn't want their hands inside the pinball machine really really simple to install i think there's three screws total it's it's really not that bad and some zip ties you got to run the wiring through some wiring harnesses but it's not bad uh overall i am very impressed with this mod from the packaging uh very official showing up a box inside of a box so you pull out the box inside of a box it's a black beautiful box pink neon lettering godzilla tokyo sign mod you open that up it's all like even the feeling it's not like packing peanuts it's like this color-coded oh wow feeling that matches the box and then you pull out your sign and stuff like that all of its pre-packaged and ziplocs um i wish they would stick like a post-it note or something in there though saying hey this is where you find the instructions because i opened it up and i'm like this is very intimidating with a couple wiring harnesses right yeah and this mod but even like the mod itself what impresses me is when i think mod sometimes i think homebrew right i think a lot of us think that like unless you're talking like a flat-out company like Mezel Mods so i was half expecting this to be kind of like homebrew ish i've seen stumbler stuff in the past and it's really impressive but pulling this out it felt official it felt like a company which it probably is a company made has been making these for years i mean even stumblers printed on the circuit boards it's printed on the stickers that were holding together the boxes i mean it's crazy that like this little thing is just it just looks so official so like i said you take the two screws off you pop out your old sign you put the new sign in you run the wiring harness down into the cab zip tie into place you're pretty much good to go the instructions those like 25 points or whatever really it's not too bad because there's extra optional stuff because of like a power splitter if you have one of those in your game or anything like that but honestly i can't wait to see the other two signs because he's talked about making the two signs in the back that go on the buildings yeah to kind of match the neon tokyo up front it is eye-catching like as soon as you turn on this machine because it's receiving power it's it's totally black when you turn on the game except for the sign you got this hot pink neon sign it's gorgeous i don't know it's it definitely adds to the game and makes it feel i mean this game already feels packed as is right and that's one thing i dislike about mods is sometimes to clutter them up yeah yes like i met a guy when i bought my first pinball machine he used astroturf to cover the apron on his no good gophers yeah that just seems i don't know how to put it nicely like it just doesn't seem very professional okay it looks very much like a well okay you know those dioramas you made in junior high yes again yes that's that's a perfect that's always that that's always that fine line that you have to walk when you're putting stuff in a game because if it looks closer to something that would have come in the game from a professional company then it certainly integrates a lot better if it looks i'm not a big fan of taking like a toy and just throwing in a like a car or something and just throwing in an led light in it and then just connect it to the bottom that it it feels like oh well you You just kind of grab something off your kid's dresser and put it in there. But if it looks like it should be integrated, then I think it's awesome. I totally agree. And this does. It feels like it is part of the machine. Which number were you, by the way, on the list? Do you remember? 253. No, 230. I was in below the 250. So I think I was 235. Because you're just right. You're right like 10 past me. So you should be getting yours. Yeah, I actually paid for mine. And so I should be getting mine soon. So that's why I was like looking for – oh, I wonder where Josh is. Oh, I'm 240. Oh, actually, you're 239. I'm 240. Oh, nice. So you should be getting yours any day now. I should be getting mine any day. Beautiful, beautiful mod. Since Vernal is a little closer to Robert Englunds, then it should – that's probably why it came to you first. You would think that, but the weird part is they ship everything to Salt Lake. So they ship it past me and then they ship it back towards me. So unless if it went through Denver, but I highly doubt it. FedEx usually goes through Salt Lake. Right. But go check out his website, StumblerPinball.com. Davey is awesome. He was great to work with. I can't speak highly enough of this man. The mods are so professional, so well done. and if you haven't looked at his creature from the black lagoon snack bar mod go check this out as well it really yeah that's really impressive too is that the one they eat at like the diner mod yep and even each letter lights up and it looks it looks like a a sign you'd see out on the street going to to a cafe or whatever you know yeah okay well i i am looking forward to getting my mod in then for uh for that so uh yeah it's it's always that fine line too because and you could legitimately dump in a two thousand dollars worth of mods into games yes and so it can this wasn't a cheap mod no so it can get expensive really quickly yeah i think that's the only reason i did switch out this one because i even though the flat plastic works i think that this adds more depth to the visualization of the game sure well and that's why you see a difference between like well i'll go back to iron maiden um an easy way of making it of bringing down the build of material is to pull out 3d items and replace them with a 2d plastic printed item yep and so and that's because that's super cheap. It's super cheap to manufacture. But actually, if you have something that's 3D sculpted, it has to be manufactured, which if you're doing a volume run, it's not as big of a deal. But most of them, you know, that's the reason why you're paying more for a premium or an LE. And that's an easy way for them to scale it back. But it is eye-catching when you see it to say, oh yeah, that does make a difference. And like I said, where it kind of integrates with the game, like where it's already replacing something uh it makes it look a lot better in my opinion and godzilla is a beautiful game i think that's the other thing too i don't see i don't foresee godzilla ever leaving my collection i love this game it is right it has officially went to the top of my favorite game of all time i think that having any elwynn game is actually like i will always have at least one but currently i have all four yeah and i i don't really see me moving any out anytime soon. Probably the next one to go for me would be Led Zeppelin just because even my wife's like, I don't really like playing this game and the theme's great, but it's, I don't have a lot of fun shooting it. Um, I, I'm also considering like Mandalorian, but I haven't had enough time on it, but it's very similar to, um, well, I wouldn't say similar, but it, it doesn't engage me as much and since i am not a huge fan of a a gimmick taking up a huge portion of real estate that uh that little tilty upper play field i it feels like it shuts the game off a lot more than having a more open play field uh i did end up selling earthshaker speaking of okay getting ripped games yeah so i'm just kind of waiting i'm waiting to see what comes out yeah but but before we move on to that because we do have we do have some stuff to go off with bond i guess we want to talk to you about expo right go ahead i was gonna say a lot of people a lot of people this is their first time going to pinball expo in chicago some of the highlights we'd recommend um and obviously people want to know about this stuff because one of our top listened episodes episodes is pinball expo recapped from last year really like the one i went around with like my voice recorder no that was i was like that that was okay that would have surprised me no i'm talking about the one after we came back it has me and you playing pinball olympics is our picture oh yeah yeah pinball expo is great uh the free play area we hope is a little different than it was last year but really the main focal point of expo is the the manufacturer's area place is beautiful i mean it's very well i wish this is the one problem i have with it too is they only have it open from like five to ten okay i i will say i i did look because of that i did look at because i actually talked to um one of our listeners uh her name is julie and she is she was asking about going to um going to expo. And so I talked to her and I said, well, okay, so here are the things. There are a lot of seminars that go during the day, but the event hall is more limited. However, I pulled up to see when the event hall is open and Thursday it is open at noon. Oh, wow. And it goes till midnight friday it is open at 10 a.m and then goes till midnight and saturday it opens at 10 a.m so that is a change from last time but wait is that specifically just the free play area or is that says event hall i'm not sure what the event hall uh does that include the free play and the vendor area or just the fleet free play area i'm not sure i'm not sure either but that would be exciting if that's the case because that is my one problem i had with that area is not only was the manufacturer area closed off from like five to ten but they also put all the homebrews back in there it was kind of strange it was and that was one thing i walked away kind of regretting this i didn't get to play i saw sonic but everyone was always playing it i didn't have time and even even Saturday night when I'm like Scott I've got to go to bed I know it's only 10 but I have to be out of here at 3 in the morning to get on my flight and you like well just come play at least just a round or two I like but with the line the way it is it insane you know But if that the case if the whole thing open for 10 plus hours It'll be nice to see. It'll be nice to see. The other thing, too, is know that if you're playing pinball right at midnight when it does all shut down, they will turn off the game. Yes. Yeah, you'll be in the middle of the game. They won't even say anything. They'll just like, you're done, and click. Yeah. I was like, oh, well, I guess we're done. There was no negotiating. It was like, I'm on my last ball. Let's finish this up. No, they were just like, you're done. Yeah. Seminars were great. I do recommend hanging out for, I hope Dwight does, Family Without the Feud again. Yeah, that was fun. That was awesome. I'd highly recommend that one. Any of the manufacturer's seminars are fantastic as well. yeah you get a lot of good information there plus they give away they give away prizes and stuff that like that there's another seminar too but i'm not allowed to talk about yet so oh done done done um there's uh okay are they doing the uh the pinball olympics um again this year do you know i don't know i was gonna actually look that up really quick if you do want to do i seem they're gonna do pinball olympics it's just kind of has been going on for years now and I don't see why they wouldn't do it unless a banger J says hey I'm not doing it this year right but they've had repeated things on it let me hurry I'm doing the Googles okay I saw J announced last okay actually the last update I see on their Facebook is from 2021 yeah same here so we'll just have to keep a close eye on that we are a month and a half out from Expo yeah so we'll kind of try to update as if you can get in on this it's usually a limited number of tickets usually about 100 they sell it quick yeah but if you can go do pinball olympics it's definitely experience that is like none other i'd say in the whole world yeah and you will have a great time it was a blast it is you are committing that saturday though yeah because it's about a 45 minute drive so you need a combination of a ride and the ability to stick around for four hours yeah four hours plus yeah but they feed you they have refreshments oh yeah i it was it was totally worth it it was totally worth it i'm actually kind of surprised the tickets when we first paid from there were 100 bucks a ticket which that might go up but there was a lot that they gave you for your ticket money. Yeah, it was an event. So you played all the games and they had even brought in extra games for they had a head-to-head Metallica, which was kind of fun because if you went and hit the cross target, it would immediately tilt out the other machine. So you're not going to have that set up just all the time. But they pulled in extra games, pulled in a friend to do that. So I hope they do it again because it was a blast. I agree. Also, Expo, it's the same area. There's not a ton of food there, so you will have to probably find some kind of travel. The hotel does have a shuttle, if I remember correctly, and there are some places close by that weren't too bad. Yeah, it seems like you'll probably be doing a rideshare app and finding a location that's close. It is not in downtown Chicago. I mean, it is kind of in the like industrial area where it's not, you know, there's a lot of, I guess, event centers, but it really isn't centered around like a place that people gather. Yeah. It almost feels like a suburb to me. It's totally a suburb. Yeah. And it's also like a suburb, but okay, just imagine your town and then driving like 25 minutes out of town, out of the center of town, because there's always some convention center because the land is cheaper out there. But it's not really next to any major restaurants because there's not as much traffic out there. So that's how that happens. It's a great location, though, and there's some really great food nearby. we recommend the chicago deep dish pizza it's always a fight though so i don't know you want to get the recommendation from but we hear illuminati's which i had while we were there was delicious it was really good and girardonos which is i think's better in my opinion and i think gino's east like i uh i think that's another one um but okay i will say i think they're all pretty good but realize it is thick and so it's like eating a big slice of lasagna so you are you're going to have one maybe two slices if you go for three then you're you're probably going to bust your belly how many did we we had i want to say about 10 people at our booth maybe a little less we only had three pizzas and there was plenty of leftovers there was yeah um which is impressive in my opinion you always do pizza math right you go to the party they open up the boxes you count out the people you're like eight slices per pizza that gives me about two slices at how many people's here sure keep an eye on you know what i'm saying everyone does the pizza math if you don't you're lying i promised you that you didn't do the pizza math correctly at texas pinball when we had rando dude who walked up and just opened up our pizza box and grabbed three slices and walked away just folded into like a massive sandwich and was like thanks Yeah, no, he didn't say anything. Just picked it up and walked. Yeah. But at the dish places, realize your time's going to be longer. It's going to be 45 minutes to cook it. So sometimes people call in and place the order before they even get there. It didn't feel that long because we had a lot of great people there. We had Jeff Teelis. He had Tim Lee. We had Joel with Triple Jam. Triple Drain. Triple Jam. Yeah. Triple Dram. We were just surrounded by all these wonderful people. Tim Lee's wife was there, Amy. It was great to meet her and get to know her as well. So there is that. And then we went and hit lunch with Eclectic Gamers at Portillo's. If you want to try Italian beef, this is the place to go. Fantastic. Weren't you the only one who, like, there was something about your order that was completely different than Tony and Dennis and mine? I didn't know you could put a sausage inside the sandwich along with your Italian beef. So there was that, and then I got the hot peppers, which were not hot. Yeah. They were good. They had a lot of flavor, but they were not hot. I think I just got the standard. You know when you walk up and there's always that one thing? It's like you go into McDonald's and you're getting a Big Mac. Yeah. And so I just went and got whatever standard thing they had. Well, I wish I would have gotten the Italian beef with the sausage in the middle. Yeah. But if you like French dips, it's very similar. They take the beef. It's got a lot of good flavor. They soak it in like an au jus, and then they put it on your bun. I went with the hot peppers. I recommend the hot peppers. I think I ended up just eating the meat and leaving the soggy bun. But other than that, if you have any more questions, we're more than happy to tell you about Expo. We're really excited. Flipping the script is good to go. I think we've got the schedule pretty well set. We're doing a little adjustments here and there. Some of the guests, Eric Meunier, Keith Owen, Robert Sharp has agreed. his movie premiere does not conflict with expo so he will be there and he's on the schedule we're excited for that may we'll use this as an opportunity if there's some product there we'll get it signed as well for the auction uh we're going to be doing 12 hours 10 a.m to 10 p.m on thursday and with this going till did you say midnight on thursday so it well it says Thursday is, yeah, it goes to midnight. There's also the, well, finish up what you're talking about, flipping the script. Well, I was just going to say, we're going to be open the whole time, but it sounds like we'll wrap up a little bit before Expo's done. So if you want to come over and hang out with us afterwards, we're going to have the poor men there. We're going to have Zach Menny with Pinball Show, slash Straight Down the Middle, slash Flip N Out Pinball, whatever you want to talk about. Amanda Hamilton, Bill Webb's going to be there. We've got Craig Bobby is going to do some of the uh interview as well he's excited for his guest jan ruper of no coin drop added which congratulations on the new job jan hope the move goes well that's awesome that you got that job over there at joanne's um but other than that you know we're gonna have so much going on with this we've got so much product i'm gonna i want to talk about one of the items donated i don't know if i can officially talk about yet but this is a one of a kind product donated to us i will tell you it is a play field but it's a play field like nothing you've ever seen and you're gonna want this i want this everyone i showed in the group that's part of the flipping out group yeah i i looked at that and i said i i may have to bid on that yeah i'm just like uh i really want this and uh yeah it's gonna be awesome so when we get the opportunity we'll show it probably on the Facebook. Right. On the Facebook. On the book of face. Yeah. So looking at the schedule of events, a couple of things that people may be interested in. Jersey Jack has an in tour option. It looks like it says nine, nine, forty five, ten, thirty, eleven, fifteen, twelve, twelve, forty. So that's on Thursday. Stern is doing a virtual tour on Friday at ten thirty. So, Josh, what what is your thought on a virtual tour versus a group tour i enjoyed the virtual tour i felt like we got to see more in depth behind stern and you kind of get the best of both worlds with this one because you do have the virtual tours for stern but they will have an in-person jjp tour right so you if you want to physically go uh to a pinball manufacturer you can definitely go to jjp and i guarantee it's going to be a similar uh production line that what stern has and with stern i i agree with you that having the you know it was a jack danger who did it last year where he went around with a camera he walked into a lot of places that there's no way a tour could go into yeah so it was it was quite nice to see that and just a little behind the scenes no i totally agree and i i highly recommend it if you got opportunity that's on thursday too so and also there are and there's also tournaments too so if you're looking for tournaments uh there's definitely something about something for almost everybody there's main a and b there's women's classics kids there's an atari pinball expo tournament so just keep that in mind if you're looking for some sort of tournament for your skill level there will be something yeah and the tournament is fun i just recommend if you're going for expo and you want to see the vendor stuff and you want to see what expo has to offer i would recommend maybe not playing in the tournament on last year thursday was really not packed with anything and so after the stern tour and with the vendor hall being shut down till five in the afternoon i'm like well i'll just do the tournament then and so it was nice to do the tournament on thursday but then friday rolled around and it really cut into my schedule because of, well, just the way that the tournament's set up. So I recommend if you're going to go for tournament, play in tournament. If you're going to go for the show, go for the show. Other than that, that's my biggest recommendation. I think that's enough about Expo and flipping the script. We're excited for it. Things are ramping up. We're getting so close. Let's talk about what everyone wants to talk about right now. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Is that your James Bond? Yeah. I thought you were going to. Oh, yeah. Great. He's doing his own theme music. Yeah, exactly. No, James Bond. So it was supposed to be revealed today. We're recording at 1154 on Tuesday. It was officially announced by Stern last week that they would be revealing today, but they did not. Yeah. um but the interesting part is is they were supposed to be doing it in conjunction with iapa out in Robert Englunds so they were setting up the game yesterday and someone took plenty of photos of it unbeknownst to i guess the guy setting it up yeah who knows i i guess i won't get too much into the origin of those photos but i think everybody who's interested in pinball has seen them yep i think though let's start and hit the official notes so gomez was on marco's tech stream last week if you aren't watching that you should scott's always been talking about this like we need someone to teach us how to fix pinball machines marco's picked this up and they're doing fantastic with it yeah and they're all recorded so if you want to go back and look at go look at them but gomez was on and he was talking about yes i'm doing bond yes it's uh was originally Steve Ritchie's design but i started it was so early in the process i decided to rebuild it from the ground up he showed off the scuba diver toy it was really he did it so quickly you had to kind of take a screen grab of it and figure out what he was holding up um we're thinking that's under the play field somewhere he also talked about the astin martin car which is very famous from goldfinger uh and having the injector seat from that in the game as well uh and that's kind of what we officially know about bond now unofficially what are your thoughts of these pictures scott this does look to be a premium because i'm looking at the lower scoop and it looks like it has the illuminated uh cutout on the left side so and that's that that's at least all i can see on that the game is not powered on it it obviously has insider connected On one side, it has what I don't know if these are directly from the movie posters, but they look very much like they were made in 1960. Yeah, they're directly from the movie posters. Yeah. And then on the right side, the art has other movie posters. Then you get into the play field. You have a looks like a rocket with a looks like a horseshoe ramp in the upper left. On the right you have a couple of wire forms You also have what looks like the pop bumper nest that looks in the upper right part of the play field A lot of wire form ramps in this one. Yes. So there's a lot of stuff. And it looks like you have Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, Thunderball, Goldfinger. It's all the Connery movies, yes. It is the – well, it also has – yeah, it also has You Only Live Twice because wasn't there like another Bond that – like Roger Moore had already started being Bond and then didn't Sean Connery come out with like one more movie? Yeah, they brought him back. Yeah, it was kind of a weird – So there was actually two Bonds. There was one that – George Lazenby. Yeah. Yeah, he brought him from one movie and then they did Roger Moore. No, they had like a spoof, like Casino Royale, which was originally kind of like a spoof movie. And then they brought back Connery to – Yeah, but I think there was some sort of issues with the licensing at that time in that it was – even though it was Bond, it wasn't really officially released through the Bond network. Yeah, something like that. There was something very weird about that because Roger Moore had already done one or two movies. Yeah. so yeah and uh looks like they're bringing back the crane or something similar because it looks like an arm with uh with a guy in a tux and a jet pack and it looks like it moves out on the playfield yep uh the rumor has it that this is uh gomez which has a shot that's quite similar to the katana shot in deadpool so that actually he did officially confirm okay all right yeah yeah so that's uh so it does feel like a gomez game and uh i don't know i on a on a scale of excitement josh given the limited amount that we have how excited are you and right now we're also going to get into more of the weirdness of this week but i'm just i'm going off your initial impression so on monday the photos were leaked and you saw them what did you think uh just looking at artwork alone wolf it's rough it's weird to me yeah it's weird to me like typically you look at a pinball machine they're pretty symmetrical on the artwork which is fine you can use the excuse well slides into my lineup yada yada yada but like the idea of putting movie posters on one side and then having like a firefight action scene on the other side with connery who for some odd reasons not holding the airplane controls he's doing his classic bond pose with the the gun up in the air which you know everyone does in the middle of a firefight when an airplane it just it's weird to me it almost looks caricature-ish and so it was really weird and then digging into the play field after looking at these pictures it's definitely unique i don't feel like there's a Gomez game that has been made like this before. There are similar shots, our classic signatures from Gomez, but I feel like it's kind of a fresh take from Gomez versus what we've seen in the past. I mean, Batman 66 was a remake of dark night. Deadpool was pretty fresh. Beatles was a rehash of sea, which was just an updated version. So in terms of seeing something new from Gomez, I feel like that is it. I want to see the video on this because looking at the play field, it looks like it could be a lot of fun. I'm concerned at some of the shots. Cause like that, there's like a double ramp on the right side of that. You got the ramp, the curves in, and then it's almost T bones into the side of it. I want to see how that works in action. I'm concerned though of rejects. You shoot that shot and it doesn't actually like hit the metal and turn, do the one 80 and go down the ramp. I'm nervous. It'll hit the metal and bounce back. down towards you yeah we'll see um and it's hard too because there's like foam in the picture holding the missile into place okay that's obviously what it shipped with because definitely anytime you're you know when when we got mandalorian the razor crest was all you know packaged up so it doesn't get banged up but there's a lot of vertical up kickers in this it looks like that's the only way to get to bond that's on uh the jet pack but it's cool that there's a, there's a target from above. So it'd be interesting if you can control bond on the arm and then you have to line it up to drop it on the target. Um, has that ever been done before? I'm not for sure. I know like I'm getting rescue nine one, one vibes with, with bond on. Okay. We had Mick on a stick, right? Yeah. This is bond up bond on a wand. Yes. There you go. So with the bond on a wand, is it gonna, Are you going to be able to control Bond, or is it just going to come out and you just hit the action button when you think it's close enough? I don't know. I feel like Gomez is really known for his mechs, so I feel like this does have some cool mechs in it between the rocket, the jetpack, the ejector seat from the Aston Martin, which appears to be a lid on the car that the ball comes up through, assuming through another vertical up kicker. I don't know. It looks fun. and it's hard to so we don't know exactly who's doing code but based off of the shots of the play field from the leaks you're able to move your multiplier and lock it in with your lockdown bar button and the only person I can think of that's ever done that before is Dwight with Star Wars so I'm half wondering if Dwight's on this that's who I'm leaning towards yeah and Tanya did Deadpool it wasn't a deep rule set but it's been very popular because of the balanced nature of it. But Tanya has been really busy with doing Insider Connected from what I understand. And so I don't know if he has time to do something like this, but it could be another Dwight. And since there was enough time between Rush and this one, I think you could probably put anybody in there that you wanted. I don't know. Sexton and Rady, I think, would still be too tied up. Okay, that would be a little tight. I think those are the ones that are out just because they just released Rush, but I think the other options are there. Well, and Rick Nagel's always with Elwin, and that was on Godzilla. Right. Really, what does that leave you with? You've got Dwight, maybe Lonnie D. Ropp. I'm trying to think who else is there. Dwight, Lonnie, Tanya. And those are the three that typically come up. But let's get – can we get into the weirdness of this? Okay. Yeah. So this is the elephant in the room. They announced that, oh, we're going to have this big announcement on – so the teaser came out, what, like Thursday or Friday, something like that? It came out Tuesday of last week. Tuesday of last week. Okay. Yes. And then in the meantime, we had the death of the Queen of Robert Englunds. Yes. And OK, it's not too much of a shock. She was 96 years old and she had some some health issues associated with age, obviously, in the last couple of years. And so she passed away. Now, it was still announced and set up at the the expo or whatever they're calling it, the IAPA, IAPA. and that's where the the pictures came from it looked like they were setting up the game and that's where the pictures showed up however after that stern put an announcement out that oh well in respect for the queen we are delaying the launch for a week okay which is even weirder Because that was followed by a statement from IAPA saying that nothing's happened. Nothing's changing. Yes. Yes. And so so it seems like, you know, when there's an there's a statement that is released that it doesn't seem to line up. Something smells funny. Something smells odd. Yeah, because it seems like, OK, I I don't really care why they delayed something. I mean, things get delayed all the time. but it seems like a false flag to say it was because of the queen when nothing else was delayed well there's nothing honestly let's say let's be realistic here this has to either come down to a licensor or there has to be something like they forgot to convert these over to uk voltage like there's there's gonna be some kind of major thing there's zero chance that they forgot to to convert it to uk voltage they've been doing they've been doing games for Europe forever. But my point being is if people saw the leaked photos and then Stern, for some odd reason, got a bunch of backlash from this, it's not like they're changing the artwork in a week. They're not dumping the game. No. Okay, this is what I suspect. I suspect that they were waiting on full approval from the licensor. And the licensor dragged their feet on giving it. Now, we've seen that before. We saw the leaked photos of the Star Wars R2-D2 topper, and then that was in in no man's land forever. And then eventually it came out and guess what? It was exactly the same. So are they going to change a game based on a leaked photo? No way. No, no way. Well, it's if the licensor saw it and was like, what the crap? okay if the licensor only saw the game from a leaked photo and they hadn't been previewed on it then that's a major problem yeah but i don't i don't think that's the case like and that here's the other hard part too like the queen is a fine excuse i guess that's a convenient excuse it's a convenient excuse but it really puts stern in a hard spot when it comes to licensors because it's not like they can come out and flat out say hey, we're pushing it out because people at Bond said we had to. Because we don't have approval. Yes. Yeah. And so it really puts them in a rock and a hard spot when it comes to licensors because these are the people they're dealing with, and they have to be very – Well, you have to play nice with licensors. You can't come in hardball because the bottom line is it's their intellectual property that you are licensing from them to make the game. You don't know the relationships. Well, we don't. They do. They know what other relationships will be involved in future titles with a licensor. It's not just James Bond. MGM owns part of this licensing or most of it. MGM owns a bunch of licenses, especially from the 60s, 70s, 80s, which seems to be Stern's wheelhouse of pulling from. So you can't upset the licensor now without making waves for what could be future problems. So that's where we're at with this. Yeah, it's so OK. What's your initial thought on this? The delay. What do you think? I've already stated that I think this is just pending licensor approval and they anticipated they were getting it and they didn't have it. Yeah, I think that's what it is, too, because all the other things don't sound like there's a lot. And the rumor mill is going wild, insanely wild right now. Like they're pulling that or Elwin's releasing his own version of the game. Okay, can we talk about that right now? Okay, go ahead. Okay. So it was posted this morning by Canada's Pinball Podcast that Elwin – because Gomez last week – this is coming from some factual evidence. Gomez last week on Marco says, we're making a pro, a premium, an LE, and then we have a fourth edition. that's or we have no i don't think they said they had a fourth edition we have a fourth surprise right involved with this sure so a lot of people have been speculating well we're going batman style we're going to do a super le right there's right well but canada then released a post on his facebook page stating that l1 is actually making the fourth game that it's not going to be limited so it's going to be readily available for whoever wants it and the distributor gets to set the price That seems super unlikely to me because when – and again, we are – we don't have any inside information. We are speculating on someone's speculation. Yeah. Right? Right. Okay, so we are on – we are indefinitely – there is nothing that is concrete about our opinions here. However, let's look at this factually though. how much resources go into producing a single game a ton okay how many and this is obviously calculated into the building materials how many do they have to sell to break even i don't know obviously i don't know either but stern has a reputation of making their money off volume sales yes they have you know 80 you know whatever gary's claiming it is like 85 percent of the market share right now yeah and so it is a crazy amount of of stuff and the reason why they're doing it we saw this with toy story when toy story was released and it was a ultra premium price the first day it was gangbusters and then ghosts yeah because everyone's like well $12,000. Is that what I want to pay my money for? So you have to say that JJP at least had the model. I'm not going to make it in volume. I'm going to make it in maximizing my profit per each game. Okay. So that would seem completely different than Stern's model. And it makes a lot more sense to have a super limited premium edition, the double O's edition, maybe. Yeah. Because that would actually say okay it the same play field We not we not investing any more resources into it but we are putting a like a special art package in it or or something like like they did with the sle batmans some sort of special gimmick that sets that aside however the play is exactly the same so that is a complete marketing slash money decision which i think is smart i mean it's not i'm not i'm not the whale i'm not the target but there are whales and targets out there who say, I want to pay for the exclusivity of my super. So that is my thought process on that. I also think it's super unlikely that Stern would compete against themselves with competing designers. Yeah, that's so weird. This has never been done in the history of pinball, right? We've been doing this almost, pinball has been around since the 1930s. We're almost at 100 years of pinball yeah and i don't think ever once have they ever had the same theme designed by two different people it just seems kind of weird to me the only difference you could you could say is yeah well okay there actually have been but it has been gomez doing the the home pin version or the home version of spider-man or gomez doing the home version of star wars or jack danger doing the home version of jurassic park so yes it has been done but not simultaneously released and not something that i would say like aggressively competes with the other product it's just so weird to me what realistic let's be realistic here gomez spends 13 plus months on bond right designing this with his team say it is dwight uh they've dumped everything into this game Why would you have L1, which is arguably the best designer? He is the best designer right now. He's currently your golden goose, yes. Yes. Out of any of the corporations, any of the manufacturers out there. Yes. Why would you release an L1 versus a Gomez? The only thing I could come up with, they want a barometer test. they want to gauge what keith and one does against someone that isn't 100 always a designer because gomez only does designs when when the occasion arrives right right it was never like he did deadpool because uh we know the story about why uh the original designer of that was yes yeah and then but but look at batman 66 and c it's not c which beatles they're both remakes they're not They're tweaking. They're not 100% committed. And it's tweaking an older design. Yes. And so, really, the last Gomez game, besides Deadpool, has been six plus years ago. Right. Six, seven years ago. Gomez just isn't designing. That's not his job. He's creative chief officer. But why would you even bother having Gomez and Elwin simultaneously designing the same play field? like i said unless if it's a barometer test to see what they can get out of an l1 because it does make sense if a distributor sets the price yeah so they're trying to find the ceiling but they usually do that they did that for beetles right they did that for the the platinum or the diamond edition i think so the diamond edition because my understanding is with beetles you got 10 you had to buy 13 of them you got 10 golds you had two diamonds and or three diamonds and one sorry, three platinums and one diamond or something like that. So it was like you bought 14 games for all the same price and you could sell the other two at whatever markup you wanted. But the difference in this case, though, is those weren't Elwins. Well, this is they also weren't a competing design. Like you didn't have the Gomez design Beatles. And it was like, oh, and by the way, here's the Richie design Beatles. I think if this is true, it's because they're trying to figure out what they can get for L1 versus everyone else. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it could be a good idea. It could be a terrible idea. But if this really is the case that L1 has made a totally separate game and done his own spin on it and Rick Nagel's on code or whoever's on code, I mean, there's some things that line up that would make sense. I mean, they push back Eddie's title. If you push it back, that gives you Danger and Eddie in between the next L1. Are we really – is Stern really going to wait another year? They're going to wait two years between L1 releases? That's quite the vacation for L1, especially for a man that's been proven to design games in less than 12 months. Yeah. And multiple games. So do you let your golden goose not make you anything for two years? It doesn't sound right to me. Yeah. So I will say there is a sliver of possibility on this. Okay. Being competing design. I'm looking at it from a business standpoint to think I don't understand the resource allocation that would be required to do two competing games. And then you are also competing with yourself. yeah so i would if that is their decision i would disagree with it from an amateur business standpoint like it doesn't make sense i say yes and no and the reason being is is i think it makes sense because ellen sells games and they know that and so making a fourth game like that's just one standard model where you only have to buy those parts for one model versus across three or two but and then it's it's smart in a way that like ellen's your biggest seller if you can narrow it down to one path and and maybe this bond is when they want to keep on the line line for a long time it's hard to keep three models or at least two models on the line at all times you chop it down to one you you focus that that energy on that one i i just don't know i I think it is wise in a couple ways. I think it's bad in a couple ways. I think if you release a competing L1, Gomez Games is dead on arrival. Maybe, but Deadpool was dead on arrival, and now it's become a very popular game. No, Deadpool was not dead on arrival. People liked that game. No, they didn't. They just didn't like the clunkiness. No, they didn't like the game. They thought it was a miss because people weren't buying the Deadpool, so they cut the production short. And then it became a desired thing, kind of like Stranger Things. That was not a big hit when it first came out. And then people decided they really liked the game. Yeah. I don't. But with that, it just seems like, again, I'm just saying that's not. Do you think the name James Bond sells more games or do you think the designer sells more games? I think the designer right now. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree because people are still buying games based on theme alone. We have – Data East won that war. That theme was king. like people are paying crazy money for back to the future because it is back to the future and it's not a great game but the game has been elevated for the over the last 30 years yes i agree that theme i i think once you're getting into the hobby and for the person that is very casual enjoys pinball wants one or two in their basement because there are i know people like you get the one you get the bite no there is a whole different market out there that you don't know about that it's literally like oh toy story's coming out i'll get one of those but and that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying is like we are talking to a very small demographic people who listen to pinball podcasts they know who the designers are they know the game flow they know the different games the vast majority of people who playing pinball out there are not in this category they they just look at a theme but theme speaking of recognizability in this day and age if theme was king then toy story would have sold gangbusters over godzilla well okay i would say that theme so people bought toy story mainly because of the theme and not the designer okay um but the price was the limiting factor on that one the the price really way outshot the market when we're starting to see a slowdown in inflate in a economy and so i i that definitely affected the toy story sales well i just think though saying that theme is what drives everything i think that's just too simplistic of an answer now after us diving into this hobby for like just the podcast and we've been doing this for almost four years now i think saying theme alone just i I didn't say theme alone, but I said the the primary driver in sales. Yeah, it's the primary driver. Yes. Everything else, the art package, because we always talk about the art package. We talk about the designer, but it really comes down to the theme is the most important thing in a design, which is why Stern doesn't do unlicensed themes. Yeah. But and they even Black Knight was it was a recognizable theme for pinball, but it wasn't a licensed theme and it didn't sell as well. I bet the Black Knight sold better than Led Zeppelin, though. It may be. Maybe. My point being is, is theme is theme is the candy wrapper, right? Yeah. But the actual gameplay, the code is the taste of the chocolate bar. I agree, but most people are not – the vast majority of players are hacks. They are not your top 100 players. Yeah, but like a game like Godzilla, even if you're a hack, you feel like you've accomplished something even if you don't leave Tokyo. Yeah. If you destroy a building and maybe defeat a monster, you still feel accomplished versus Whitewater, which is – it's very woodchoppy. It's getting the rafts down the river. people still love it but do you really feel accomplished at the end of that game versus godzilla yeah it's also a 30 plus year old game which is different okay uh i i'm not gonna get comparisons right now because my mind's totally far from that and it's honestly it's time for us to get wrapping up yeah um but okay so your gut feeling yes or no one game two designers My gut feeling? Yes. Okay. My gut feeling is no. I figured as much. So we'll see who's right in two weeks. Not even that because it'll be Tuesday. Well, I guess, yeah, two weeks. In two weeks, yeah. Maybe we'll record sooner. Who knows? Okay. So where are we on the scoreboard? So you think it's just Gomez. I think it's Gomez, and I think it's a variety art package like an SLA thing. Okay. And I think that they were delayed because of just licensing pending approval. I agree. It has something to do with the license or not the death of the queen, but we'll go with that. And I really think it makes sense. I'm sorry. I'm a puzzle person. So the fact that they pushed back to title, blamed it on production, and then pushing, I mean, pushing L1's game out for two years versus one, it doesn't make sense. have your golden goose not laying eggs right so i i think i think it's a possibility i think it's an interesting market marketing challenge and i don't know we'll know in a week yeah we'll know in a week but um so yeah i guess that wraps it up for us do you have anything else scott no i think it's good i'll be really interested to see i i'm a wait and see on this thing it's not an instant buy for me I've never been a huge Bond fan I've seen probably half the movies and I appreciate them but they're it's okay Austin Powers kind of ruined Bond for me because it just made a lot of the older Bonds look kind of ridiculous and the last five James Bonds have been basically they have retooled as the Bourne identity well it's worked for them it's worked more serious tone yeah uh if you want to get a hold of us we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com we're also on socials facebook twitter twitch and instagram at loser kid pinball if you'd like to get a hold of us the easiest way to do it is on facebook through messenger and we hope to see you soon we hope to see you at expo yeah it'd be great uh want to send us off scott yeah i i actually even curious to see what the listeners are thinking so if you have a take on what uh well one what the delay was and two do you think two designers are one uh just send us an email or message us because i'm really curious to find out what the general market feels i agree all right see you in two okay see you We'll be right back. Shut up and sit down. Bye.