All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed with syrup and honey Almost a laugh with his family in a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 656 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, although I've got a bit of a cold, I'm sorry you can hear it in my voice, I am still as excited as hell, or should I say the underworld, to bring you my top five rad and one bad for Spooky Pinball's newest masterpiece, Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. alright guys I am a tiny bit under the Carl Weathers and I also have two big Christmas shows this weekend, two of our last shows unfortunately for Angry Alpaca but the good news is I am going to be able to get the Patreons out all of their coffee at least this last time I'm going to probably put a cut off date for this Monday so if you're listening right now and you're one of the seven Patreons that is at the super nerd level the one level up and you're going to be getting yourself some coffee, please make sure you DM me ideally under the Patreon so I keep them all in one place in my email. Email would also be acceptable. Just hopefully if you haven't emailed before, hopefully it doesn't go to the junk mail filter, which is why I recommended Patreon. But let's just get into this. It's new pinball day. Who doesn't love new pinball day? I know I do. And today especially, wow, something new we're going to see here this isn't even officially part of my top five rat okay but something new we've never seen before and i think i like it i i think i like it maybe it's a bit much at the same time but we saw an incredible featurette uh by zach and greg over there at straight down the middle pinball showed up to them and a great trailer and there was not just one trailer there was also the spooky trailer and i love both of them i'm not sure which one i love better at the time of recording they were both very close both of them had a little over 3,000 listens I think the straight down the middle one had slightly more but I believe straight down the middle might have more YouTube subscribers so that kind of makes sense but they're both very well done and then at the same time Kerry Hardy was doing a live stream and then at the same time Loser Kid dropped a pinball podcast about it and then at the same time there's a behind the scenes interview with the Spooky Dudes or doing a review at least on WAP with Don and Cengiz so it was like oh my god it was almost like too much at once i have not got to listen to any of the loser kids stuff unfortunately um i did watch a lot of the carrie hardy live stream and wow we really got to see some more gameplay there which was great and just see more of the animations and so make sure you go watch that oh and then i i can't forget about bug scream and stream uh bug himself does actually two different he plays two full games one narrated and one unnarrated and then At the very end, he actually, I thought they did a really good job showing in some clips from just some special moments that they wanted to make sure were put in the game and in the gameplay. And so, wow, for, I mean, they are sold out and maybe that's why they did this all at once or maybe they're just going to do this moving forward. I do like it because rather than just seeing, you know, a trailer with a tiny bit of gameplay and then having to wait two or three weeks sometimes. I mean, when did Walking Dead come out? It seems like two weeks ago now, but at least a week and a half ago. And we still didn't see the live stream. That wasn't today. Hopefully we get to see that soon. Please, Stern, don't do it tomorrow. I have to work all day. I'm going to be just too cooked and exhausted when I get home from a 14-hour day to possibly come home and do a five-rat and one batter, at least the first impressions, after seeing the live stream. I mean, that being said, we did see the, you know, we know most of the gameplay. I'm still excited to see all the new animations. I'm still excited to hear the new sounds. I don't know what they've done with the music, but I'm interested to see that as well. I'm really excited to see how the artwork looks in real life, like through the live stream. I guess not in real life. You know what I mean? As opposed to, as most people are saying, oversaturated on the CERN website. My big issue was I didn't really like all that red on red. It didn't really make, you know, the background stand out. I do actually have the 48-minute, I believe, featurette on in the background right now. And I'm just looking at this stunning artwork from Franchi. But, no, I've jumped too far ahead. Let's start with number one on the rad list. I just wanted to take a second to thank all the content creators. You know, Don himself, I just finished talking to him, and he did, like, he had a – well, he actually – I didn't talk to him. I finished messaging him. He did call me. Thanks for calling, Don. I was so busy getting stuff done for work. I think I was actually in the shower at the time that you called, or I would have answered. I'd love to talk to you for a minute. But you know what, Doug – or Doug. Don and I – Doug. This is my brother Doug, my other brother Doug. No, Don and I are going to get to talk on the phone, probably recording and or maybe not recording. next week sometime I'd love to have him on the show and kind of pick his brain I've had the pleasure of going on Don's show he's came on my show at least twice maybe even three times now before one time just very quickly while he was going through airport security that was hilarious that was last year's Christmas episode I'm sorry to use the dirty C word I apologize okay I'm sorry about the C word I'm going to try not to use it but we are coming into the holiday season how about that a little bit less abrupt right am I right or am I right or am I right all right but i did want to shout out to all the media that were part of this and spooky next time listen i don't want to be a spooky show i want to be uh you know halfway between i want to try to be a spookies uh a big fan of spookies but also at the same time a little bit critical and i'm definitely going to do that excuse me i'm definitely going to do that on that one bad but let's just let's let's start by being positive here because it's new pinball day baby all right so number one and i this just popped into my head this is not in order of like ranked of how rad they are but number one by far is that dancing sandworm okay listen it's not dancing in all the modes when you're fighting it i counted at least three different modes where you're having to do different sorts of things the one mode you had to hit the the drop target that was lit up like it was strobing back and forth that was really cool another mode you have to hit all the drop targets then i believe you even had to hit the drop targets that are underneath the freaking sandworm we've i know uh bug mentioned that's never happened before i can't think of any pinball machine that has you know you got to go downstairs in the basement to hit the drop targets honestly those two little drop targets there might be more exciting and interesting than both lower playfields on avatar it might be it's crazy it's just it's yeah anyways then on top of that there's at least one other mode that you have to hit the freaking ball i think it's possibly the deo mode the sandworm actually eats the ball or you get extra points if you can time it properly and hit it through its mouth you either it's either very similar to the iron maiden bullseye where you get more points if you hit it through its mouth or you know when you get slightly less if it goes underneath its mouth and you don't time it quite right and it goes down and hits those stand-ups i'm not quite sure at this point okay i have seen all the gameplay video so far as much of it I could possibly watch today with a day when I was so busy running around trying to get stuff done for tomorrow. And as busy as I am, I'm not going to lie, my wife's been twice as busy. I've been helping with the kids, helping with the dogs, helping with dinner, well, making all of dinner. Shout out to that. It was incredible. What did we have? Chipotle sausage Alfredo? Jalapeno cheddar with some Alfredo sauce. It was incredible. I chopped up a couple peppers in there. I felt like I was Italian eating a little bit of peppers and sausage, and it was so good, a little bit of onion and garlic, and yeah, chef's kiss. I'm sorry I went off topic. I'm sorry. Okay, let's get back into this. It's too important of a day for me to be going off topic. Come on, no rambling man today. All right, so that worm, it kind of reminded me, I'm not going to lie, it did remind me a little bit of the dragon in Dungeons and Dragons. It reminded me even maybe slightly more of the T-Rex, because the T-Rex can go back and forth and left and right and can put the ball into its mouth. It can't swallow it, of course. That's obviously even cooler. But the T-Rex from Jurassic Park can't do this. It can't dance. Oh, my God. People talk about it being a pinball moment, and I'm going to bring up another mech into this one only because they dance together. The Beetlejuice mech. Not only is it a magnet that moves the ball up and down, which I believe is another first, or as much as I can think of it, I don't know, I guess, was that a magnet that's used maybe in, shout out to Stephen Silver over there at P3 Multimorphic, the Princess Bride, is that a magnet that makes it go up like the waterfall or the cliffs, sorry, the cliffs of insanity, I believe. I think that is a magnet. I'm not sure. It might not be. But anyways, at the same time, when the Deo song begins, I'm not going to sing today. It was bad enough yesterday. I'm sorry for breaking your eardrums and causing your ears to bleed there. But yesterday's show, I thought it would be a good idea to not warm up my vocal cords at all and just start by singing Deo. And that was a very poor decision. Usually when I'm singing on the show, I'm singing with a backup mic so that you can barely hear me. And you can mostly hear the actual singer who's a good singer. But I had a great time doing it. And, you know, the second half of the song I sang wasn't nearly as bad. Now, I know what you might be saying. Orby, what are you talking about yesterday's episode? I don't see anything all the way back to Craft Beer Sally and Foghorn Leghorn's Pinball Junk Drawer. Well, that is true. I decided today to take it down, not just because I talked about a couple kind of controversial things, but I realized the whole reason why I made the paywall Patreon for Pinball Nerds podcast, say that five times fast if you pickled some peppers, Peter, John. The whole reason I made it is so if I did kind of a more controversial episode or something that just was a little bit more about the drama or spilling the tea, that I would have it there. but at the same time there were some important issues regarding Walt Wood and possibly quitting and just talking about how burnout comes quickly when you're in the public eye and I'll sum it up for you guys you don't have to go over there to patreon and pay for it but I you still should it's a good 45 minute episode but I will sum it up for you guys in that especially the Walt Wood part because I think this is important I just said that you know dude if you're finding it's it's it's being a negative on your mental health as opposed to a positive outlet, just don't do it. And when and if you have the hunger to come back and do it again, do it under your own terms. Don't feel obligated to record a podcast just because there's a new show or just because someone's asked you to. And if you don't want to go into other people's chat because they're being mean or rude to you or banning you, I mean, I don't think the banning actually happened. But if for any reason, you're just not feeling welcome in those spaces, just don't go to them. I know I don't feel welcome in a lot of those spaces so i don't say boo anymore i might still watch the live streams from time to time i might still listen to even the podcast but uh i just for a long time have not talked because i honestly have also the same way walt has been ridiculed and kind of made fun of in the chat there lots of people said nice things as well not not lots of people said nice things about me which is totally fine i've been the public eye a lot longer than walt and i certainly have done a lot more negative Nancy Debbie Downer type rude stuff to really, really be called out on a lot more than Walt Wood. So Walt Wood, for the most part, has been pretty positive other than maybe that time he kind of went after Glenn a little and now, you know, crashed out. He crashed out a bit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Walt. You crashed out a little bit yesterday, but it's all good. My point is I waited until I saw it had around 170. It had 172 listens in about 20 hours, which is fine for me. It's not great. Probably would end up getting around 400 or maybe a little more listens overall. But I also know I have 26 patrons, including two free, three free ones now, three free people who aren't paid, but 23 paid. And if all 26 people listen to that podcast, which I'm sure some of them already heard it on, you know, right here on the Poor Man's Pitbull Network, my non-payable one, they would absolutely know that they wouldn't have to listen to it over there. But I want to put it behind the paywall because, well, I did, you know, Don had a very, very hot take about Beetlejuice, which many of you know now is probably true. I was most likely right or I was most likely wrong. So that's a little embarrassing. That's part of the reason why I want it behind the paywall. The other part is I was just talking about the Zombie Yeti issue and I just, I don't want that out there publicly. I think Zombie Yeti would like to forget about it. I know I would like to forget about it. I'm sure other pinball podcasters and content creators involved in it would probably prefer to move on and I want to be part of the solution not part of the problem so I put it behind the paywall I also put 45 minutes into my life into it and I spent a lot of time actually responding back and forth with zombie yeti uh I was hoping to get him for an interview we both agreed we don't think it's the right time for him to come on right now but in the future that door is open now today is spookies day so let's get back to that number two on my top five rad and I was a little harsh. That's part of the thing I did say in my, I gave a little mini apology yesterday. I gave some flowers to Spooky and said I was probably a bit harsh when I talked about the five reasons why I not a spooky show yet Well today the day I here to admit it I officially now a bit of a spooky shill So bias be known FOMO got me This is the first pinball machine. If I had that much money just sitting in my account, which I don't, not even in Canadian dollars, but if I had that amount of money sitting in any account, even in my home equity line of credit, I probably would have been tempted to at least put down the deposit and say to Spooky Luke and Bug and Don and Franchi and everyone over there, guys, just take my money, put me at the very, very, very end of the list and get me one of those beautiful show games. No, we're going to talk about that later. No, I wouldn't say that. But what I would say is put me at the end of the list, take my deposit for now, and I would hope to God I would come up with the money. Like, I should have called this morning. I'm such a nimrod. I was a little bit tired. I was, you know, enjoying watching the Kerry Hardy thing and talking in the chat there. And honestly, like, I'm pretty sure that even if my wife came home today and I had spent even $1,000 US or whatever it is on the deposit, she would be like, WTF? We didn't talk about that? So I decided to have a nice first Christmas show weekend this weekend, getting ready with two and a half weeks until I'm heading to Maple Pinball for the second largest tournament in Canada. I just booked my hotel about a kilometer and a half away, so that way it's a nice good short walking distance or quick Uber or taxi cab ride. uh melvis megaphone my best buddy in the world is coming with me since grade seven so that's going to be fun i can't wait to see you know joe chervino the dote of the dotist uh jeff teolis is going to be there of course i know sean russell um mike dimus mike dimus of pinball shenanigans go over to pinball shenanigans on youtube and take a look at a video he put up i believe yesterday or the day before entitled uh pinball documentary about collectors something like that and don't jump to nine minutes in just watch the whole thing but i believe around eight or nine minutes i'm actually uh on the video once or twice they're playing pinball but it was a doc it was a crew that did docs all about people with like obscure or weird or strange and we are weird and strange and this pinball uh showed how weird and strange we are because wow i love it it is weird and strange and it's awesome but go over there and watch that video i'm in that as well it's also just a really cool well done doc from about five years ago they did it on like people who collect like, I don't know, like other collectible stuff, but Mike's was the only one about pinball, and it was really well done, so go check that out there, but I'm also excited to see Mike. So, on my show a couple weeks ago about Spooky, I did say so far, leading up until Walking Dead, oh geez, until The Evil Dead, that the flow was kind of questionable. Now, what I did hear from Pat's Arcade, one of my Patreon fans, or possibly X1's after that show, sorry Pat, I'm sorry, but Pat did let me know that he thought that TCM had some of the best flow of any pinball machine out there I don't want to quote him because I'm sure that wasn't it exactly but he also said the designer Mr. Ben Heck himself is an incredible designer and I would agree with you although I would say even Ben Heck would agree that the design I'm pretty sure I've heard him say this for say America's Most Haunted wasn't exactly revolutionary interesting or fun this design i don't even care who designed it i don't know if it was spooky luke i think that it was primarily spooky luke with all you know the creative director being bug but i'm telling you right now this machine has better flow than any spooky machine has ever had in its life a lot of the shots very if you look at those habit trails they ain't they ain't effing around They don't go for a little whimsical, like, you know, this isn't Tales of the Arabian Nights or something, and they take 30 seconds to get back to the flippers. Oh, my God. Even the magnet on the belly button of Beetlejuice, who dances so eloquently, by the way, which I was talking about before, he dances, like, literally, you know, when the Harry Belafonte song starts with Deo, cheers on them for getting that as well. the sandworm starts dancing first as you would expect because that's how you probably had to start it but then the Beetlejuice jumps back in and is going up and down with the song and then your flippers start flipping on their own and that is a pinball moment. That's probably the coolest moment. That's why I put it as number one. Number two is the flow. So many of these shots do return very, very quickly including that shot if you hit him right in the gut like a little Pillsbury like whoo if you hit him well he'd say like whoo hey hey whoo okay sorry uh Don Don's uh Don's Beetlejuice voice was way better than mine last night by the way go over to Don's Pitbull podcast on Facebook and take a look he did about I think like just a minute and a half teaser where he was doing Beetlejuice's voice pretty much nailed it I'm not gonna give him like a 10 out of 10 but like a solid 8 there out of 10 Don on that he's wearing the hat and everything else so funny it sounds like that was a blast. Don was even kind enough. I kept saying, Hey, it's midnight here in Nova Scotia. Can you send me a picture? And then he'd send me like a picture of like the cake they were all eating. And I was like, Oh, thanks. It wasn't really the picture I was wanting. And then, and then I was like, Oh, it's now it's midnight here. What do you got now? And then he sent me another picture of like all the people sitting in the viewing room, watching the trailer, making sure to not show me any parts of the trailer. So good on you, Don, because you were, I'm sure you were very busy. I was probably one of 100 other pinball nerds messaging you and bugging you and sending you stuff. So I appreciate the time and energy that you took to at least write me back. Look, I didn't get a special teaser, but I do have some access to Don, and he's working there with them. He's going to be their top forklift driver in no time, I heard. And then he'll move on to designing pinball machines. No, I'm just kidding. I'm excited for Don and whatever his role is there. I think the best thing he did, and I did give him his flowers for this, was I told him that midnight launch really got the community talking, and what it did is it poured extra gasoline on the FOMO fire. So if by chance, the next time that Spooky comes out with a pinball machine, if for some reason, and I think it will be as sought after as Beetlejuice, as long as the theme is at least decent, and the reliability, of course, is good on this machine, if the reliability on this is nearly as good as Evil Dead, They have a massive, massive, massive hit on their hands here. I do agree that this thing will never, ever, ever come under 10K. Not 10 years from now, not 20 years from now. I don't know. Maybe if there's like a nuclear fallout or something like that. Fallout. Maybe if there's something like that, possibly. But short of economic world collapse, I'll say. Short of a zombie apocalypse from The Walking Dead, okay? Oh, geez. Yeah, so flow. And Evil Dead did have flow. I will agree that there was some decent flow probably. I don't think, to me personally, Halloween had any flow. Halloween was one of the, still to this day, one of my, I will not even play one game of it when I'm at the arcade, even though it's by far the most modern pinball machine at that arcade. So I'm sorry, Spooky, don't get mad at me. Okay, I'm sure there's like pinball adventure games with way worse flow than that. I'm sure there's even Stern games from back in the day that had worse flow than, and you know, not all games have to have flow. You can have a great game that's stop and go, right? A lot of great Pat Lawler games are stop and go, okay? So anyways, my point is this particular machine, and I don't know if it was Luke or Bug, but one of them mentioned it, that they also agree this machine has a hell of a lot of flow, a lot of repeatable shots, and there is a lot of combos that are included that you can actually, like, by doing the combos, it's actually worth points. because there's so many easy combos in this. The one area that maybe slows down the flow a little, and not even for long, is that it's not an upper play field, but it's in the upper left of the play field. It's the little area with the third flipper. I believe that's where you lock the balls on the couch, because you're not up there too long, but you could be up there like 15 seconds. So that might slow your flow down a tiny, tiny bit. Listen, nobody expected the spooky dudes, and no matter how high our expectations were, even if Don said it was game of the year after playing it, okay, his hottest take of the day, which I disagreed and I said, no, I think no matter what, Potter's still going to be game of the year. I'm here to say I'm wrong. I think there's a chance, and I don't know. I don't know. I haven't played Potter, and I have not played this machine. I've always said play before you pay, but I've never said, I've never, ever, ever said don't put a deposit down before you play. So there you go. There's my loophole. In this one particular case, I think that on the very low end, unless you sell this game in the first two weeks, you'd be crazy because it's such an incredible game. But unless you sold your spot or sold this game in the first few weeks to maybe a month and a half or two months until they start coming out, yes, you might make a couple grand. But I honestly believe three to six months down the road, or at least even a year once they've been out for a while, the prices will be closer to new in box i don't think they'll ever be 10k i would like to think they'll get down to 12 12 and a half maybe 13 probably 14 or 15 if you have a butter cab i'm not gonna lie not gonna lie but the the the flow is something that i you know have it's just something that i personally really love on a lot of Keith Elwin machines and nobody was expecting spookies to be as good as Keith Elwin and i don't think it is but it still does have a lot of flow It is possible there is quite a few stand-up targets. Stand-up targets are kind of known to prevent flow because they send the ball in every which way, and they don't actually, you know, it's got the most flow of any spooky. I'm willing to say that. I'm willing to go on record. It does look like a very flowy game, but there is some stop-and-go moments, of course, where you have to, where you have to have a big moment like that, and that's when there should be stop-and-go. You know, it can't just be go, go, go, go. So, I mean, the biggest moments in Jurassic Park, another flow monster, I would say. They are stop and go, right? So, anyways. All right, let's move on to number three. I don't think, it's kind of ironic, Mr. Christopher Franchi happens to be on the screen right now with that beautiful Spooky Shill t-shirt that I will get one someday, maybe, or maybe not. Who knows? But number three on my list is the artwork. Franchi says in the featurette, and I quote, this pinball machine art is a love letter to Beetlejuice and a love letter for the Beetlejuice fans. Hun, can I have a sip of a pop or seven up here? Thank you. Guys, sorry, I have a little bit of a cold. I should have grabbed a drink before I sat down or maybe a Ricola. Did they even have those in the States? I don't know if they have those. Okay, sorry, I should have grabbed a Halls or a Eucalyptus gumdrop. Wait, that's the way UK say it. And what do they say? You know, they have Hungry Jacks instead of Burger King in Australia. What do they have there? Do they have Halls? Do they have Fisherman's Friend? Maybe Enzo's listening or Ryan Barry or one of my other Aussie friends over there. Shout out to all of you. Yeah, I think Ryan's still traveling. Ryan and Kim are still traveling. I think I saw like a really cool video with them, like helicoptering over New York City. You guys have been here for like a month, man. what a lifelong trip it sounds like a great time they've been here since before Expo so good for them so happy for them I know Ryan and Kim both worked their butts off back there in Australia so if they get to have a couple weeks off to go for a life changing trip I'm so happy for them and I love just seeing all the pictures and videos and living through their eyes but let's get back to this artwork okay there's been a lot of talk recently and Jeremy Backer himself did even just say okay something you know he wrote something I believe on Retro Ralphs page about what are your thoughts on the art. Thank you. Something to the extent of I guess we all like bright colors and saturation now. It's not nearly as saturated as The Walking Dead, I don't think. But it is very bright and it is very colorful, but the color palette matches. It's like, it's the perfect palette. Okay? It is the perfect color palette. I'm looking at it right now without the inserts. It is a gorgeous play field. It is the perfect color palette it is exactly what you would want i mean it's even better i was going to say it's exactly what you would expect but it's better than you would expect even from franchi it's better than what you would expect um i like the left hand side of the cab quite a bit better with winona rider on there maybe just because i'm a huge winona rider fan and i had a bit of a bit of a crush on her when i was younger and maybe even still do a little bit in stranger things okay possibly maybe possibly maybe no I was no I'm just kidding my wife maybe glanced over at me there it's okay it's a celebrity crush it's allowed right um but the artwork and I don't know how many of the sculpts I'm guessing quite a few of at least the coloring of the sculpts but I don't know how many of the sculpts were actually designed and the artwork of the sculpts were designed by Franchi as well but hell if he did any of those as even if he just did the art it's still spectacular, but the sculpts are just gorgeous as well, and give me a sip here, I meant to say give me a second here, but, so the artwork is just incredible, the right hand side of the cab is gorgeous as well, but I like the left hand side better, the play field is perfect, with the mansion in the middle, pretty much every single character you would want, you You know, you've got kind of the grass at the bottom, and then it's going into Beetlejuice in the middle. It's just the colors, the colors pop. The colors just feel like they put you in that world, and the colors make sense. It's the best lighting. I don't even have this on here. This is kind of a side note, okay, little asterisk. The lighting is by far the best lighting. I not going to say it like Jersey Jack level but it Jersey Jack If that makes sense it going that direction There like one mode where it goes all like blood red Maybe when you die go to the underworld But there's also like, there's a really, really, really nice mode where it all kind of goes green as well. There's other modes where all the lights turn off. And then there's just one light. There's this new lighting system that they have. They're explaining at the very back of the cabinet. So I think they're right up there probably with Stern or darn tootin' close with the expression lighting. Again, I need to see a little bit more gameplay, but I would say by far, by far, the best mechs we've ever seen in any Spooky. By far the best flow. And I'm willing to admit that other people who have said this first, whether it be on a live stream or whether it be on Pinside, this is indefinitely Christopher Franchi's piece de resistance this is his masterpiece this is his I don't know Franchi how are you gonna do any better than this ever I don't think you can it you can tell that he has a deep deep love uh for Beetlejuice and Franchi was even talking about something really interesting he didn't follow any of the known art guides or art styles per se he used a little bit of this position and a little bit of this pose and a little bit of this style guide and you know even bug was like i don't you know i don't know if i want to take this to warner brothers you know it's a little bit and and basically franchi said you got to like it's incredible and they ended up loving it so you're not going to see this artwork on like anywhere else this is all unique interesting artwork that just looks the part and is i think it's near perfect in every single way i i'm trying really hard and i would say maybe maybe maybe uh you know i did carrie hardy shout out to carrie hardy quickly carrie hardy said hey everybody send a message to franchi and tell them how much you like this artwork and uh franchi and i from time to time. You know, we're both very strong-willed people who can easily get offended from time to time. I think you'd be willing to admit that. And it is possible, it is possible that at some point in the previous past, I may have said something that may have annoyed Franchi. So I haven't heard from him for quite some while. But after sending him a couple nice messages today and apologized for my strident takes in the past, he was kind enough to write me back quickly on a day when I'm sure he probably is getting not just like a hundred messages like Don but probably hundreds of messages from hundreds of people between emails and text messages and everything else I am sure oh I'm talking about Franchi and Franchi must have heard me talking about Franchi either that or Little Orby Jr's home I'm not really sure let's Franchi I love you I love your art hopefully in the future I'm still very very very excited to meet Franchi someday and I'm even more excited to see what future artworks he's working on like wow if Franchi has half the passion that he has for Beetlejuice for his upcoming artwork designs I think they're going to continue to be revolutionary exciting fun push the boundaries it's full without seem crowded I don't know how to explain that like it seems like he used every square inch of the playfield art without it seeming crowded. I don't know how you do that. And the color palette changes enough from the bottom to the top that you never really get used to it, whereas there is some color palettes like The Walking Dead where it's all the same two to maybe three colors with a minor accent the whole time. Franchise has green in some areas. The right-hand side of the cab is a lot more green. The bottom part of the playfield is a lot more green. Then you've got that really cool sculpt over the left ramp that's completely red and yellow. with that color scheme and then you've got mostly purples and and then there's the whole black and white scheme which just goes with you know beetle juices jacket that whole aesthetic that way so just take a bow franchi if if you need some time off to recharge your batteries and because you gotta put up with uh big loud mouse like me talking smack from time to time you go have yourself a vacation you go recharge your batteries please give yourself a couple days off spend some nice time with Barlow, and just enjoy your honeymoon phase, buddy, because, like, this is, this is, you're kind of, I don't like to say it like this, but you used to work with a different pinball company or two, in fact, you used to work with the two biggest ones, and I don't know why you don't work with them anymore, I kind of do, but I don't want to get into it, and I'll just say this, your new artwork is by far, I think, better than anything you produce for them, and that's saying something because you made some incredible art for those other two pinball companies but i think as a whole package this is hands down your best so standing oh bro chef's kiss getting her done uh i don't you know yeah i'm just gonna leave it at that great job mr christopher franchi all All right, number four on the top five rad before we get to that one bad. All right, unmodible, unforgettable, only you. See, I can't sing when I have a cold because I will get a frog in my throat. And I might be a fan of Christopher Franchi, but I'm not a fan of the French because they smoke too many cigarettes, they eat all my poutine, and they raise the prices of my maple syrup, and they say tabernacle too much. But number four on the list, and this might be the one thing that Don is a little upset about, this machine is 100% unmoddable. It's not unforgettable. It is unforgettable, but it's also unmoddable. There's not a single solitary sculpt or flat plastic here that you would ever want to move or change or do anything to. Like, it even has the flipper covers. It even has the speaker covers custom art. It even has, like, I was trying to add up how many different custom sculpts are on the game, and I can't think of how many. And I'm sorry, Walking Dead. My one bad for Walking Dead, as many of you will remember, was how much I just really did not like those two sculpts, the two custom sculpts, that they put on, like, down by the flippers there. I just really don't like those. They look scary. They look weird. They look like they're getting in the way of you seeing shots. They just don't look like they fit the aesthetic overall. They're much too big for what size the barn is. The heads are basically as big as the barn. I absolutely love all. I can't say enough about the sculpts in this machine. They did great with the sculpts before, but this is next level. I think from a sculpt perspective, especially being on the lowest model, i.e. the $9,999 model, from a value perspective, this is the most packed loaded machine I've ever seen under $10. I just saw the funny part where Spooky DJ notices his shirt says Pooh Shill instead of Spooky Show because the S is covered and the KY was covered. Imagine if the other part was covered, it'd just say KY Show. I'd be like, why are you into KY jelly, bro? It's a little weird. Pooh Shill sounds a lot better, especially right here on the Poor Man's Pinball Network because we're all a bunch of buttholes in the tribe. All right, little inside joke there. But number four on the list, I'm not even joking. Whether it be Don or anyone else with a 3D printer or any other high-end sculpt maker, you're like the electric playground, you make really cool toppers. Oops, you can't make a cool topper. They already topped the coolest topper out there. This topper is actually legitimately scary. That's a wild, weird-looking face. it's not like just, it's not only is it a big giant scalp, not only is it animatronic and it moves its head back and forth left to right, not only do the eyes light up, not only does the tail rattle and make a sound, but the topper also has spooky speak in it. I'm probably on the verge of saying this is the greatest topper of all time, even better than the Walking Dead aquarium topper. Even better than the X-Men topper we just saw that's like a billboard and it has like those triangles that spin around so there's three different signs in the topper now did i saw the nap arcade i get where nap is coming from shout out jason nap i did see that jason said that uh like they accidentally put it up today i don't know does stern accidentally do that or did they try to maybe steal the world's tiniest smallest amount of thunder from beetle juice i don't know conspiracy theories with orby or as franchi calls me albie and i do love that i do love he has his own pet name for me so shout out to franchi moving forward i hope we get to have a mutual respect and i'm going to go out of my way to just give all spooky pinball machines a fair shake in the future because yeah after years of covering the pinball industry and seeing a lot of other pinball machines and playing a lot of other spookies that i didn't necessarily love and having some questions about the reliability, which seems like so far Evil Dead has taken care of. Having some questions about the flow, seeing like that, unless I'm completely tricked by all the gameplay video and, you know, watching the Kerry Hardy video, you know, and these people are just playing the game for the first time. They're not necessarily tournament players. They're not necessarily tournament players who are so good they could win their province or state like me. so I think there's going to be a shat's ton of I really do think there's going to be I think the amount of flow in this game is going to surprise people I think it actually maybe even surprised Bug and Luke when they were talking about it but let's go back to the sculpts you've got so many sculpts that it fills up this entire the game looks full the game actually leads this leads me right into my number 5 That's right. The Woogie. The Woogie. And you can do it for the Woogie. Okay. The Woogie. I just added the E at the end because it's fun. We like to do that with words to kind of make it cute, like a cutie. Okay. The Woogie. What is Woog? What is Woog? Baby, don't hurt me. Woog is world under glass. So it's not just the sculpts, though. It's not just the incredible Danny Danny Elfman, Orfman. I don't know. It's not just the music. it's not just the awesome sound effects like the sound effects of that polaroid camera there's another sculpt i didn't talk about the polaroid camera so the sound of like that sound effect freaks me out like it's the sound of like a picture just being taken or be or it's it's actually i believe it's the sound of the battery on the polaroid like fully charging like it goes like like i can't do it i can't do it all right listen i don't have an air horn i'm not don over here with my sound effects okay but the sound of that polaroid charging up is incredible the spinner sounds really good uh the music just is like it the music is weird because you think you'd get sick of it but i watched like two and a half hours of it today and it just changes just enough you know like it's kind of like it's always weaving and bopping just enough that you don't quite know where it's going and of course you can't mention the music without talking about Deo. I'm not going to sing it today. But that song, if they did not get that song, you know people would have complained about that to the end of days. I don't think it would have been the difference if it's selling out or not because I think it sold out before we even knew if it had it. But they didn't just get that song. They made it an important multiball in the game. They made it so that freaking Worm dances and dancing with the Worm in perfect choreography is Beetlejuice going up and down. with the taleman okay no no we're not allowed all right number five is the woogie i had to include and i would say this any think about this any other pinball machine even whether it's from jersey jack or stern if it had that couch that locks all three balls and dumps them it would have been on the top five but it's just not quite as cool as the dancing worm the dancing sandworm sorry okay To me, the woogie that you're seeing here, the woogie factor, I believe Joe Cervino calls it the TEMA, thematically integrated mechanical assets or something. I'm probably off a little bit, but I'm in a bit of an asset myself, so you never know. But I look at Waz and people said, well, the flow in Waz isn't good, but the world under glass is incredible. The sculpts are great. Just every little bit of it is incredible. I would say this reminds me of that, but it has better flow. It seems so far to have much better rules and better code. The rules and the code are the two things we don't know too much about yet, but from everything we've heard from the featurette, from watching the gameplay video, the one thing that I really like is these codes, the codes. The modes seem very distinct and different and unique from each other, especially with the different lighting effects, you know, with the one where you've got to hit the strobing light on the sandworm, the other one where the whole thing goes blood red, the other part where it goes all green, the other part where, like, the whole machine pauses and the flippers go by itself and Beetlejuice jumps up and down. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. So what else is there? They've got that cool spinner on the left. That reminds me of, like, Wheel of Fortune has kind of something like that. And with the spinner, now, of course, like, you're interacting directly with the mech by shooting up the middle of the spinner with the light going around it, and then you use your hand for the action button, actually making the action button worthwhile in something, so you have to hit the action button. And even Bug himself wasn't able to quite get it. So you can tell it will be pretty hard even for tournament players. So I think that some people might say that randomness or whatever might ruin it, but I mean if Bug, who's been playing this longer than anyone else, had a problem in the video even getting the right one, I think that will still be a challenge for tournament players I assuming and hopefully they do more of a like maybe there a tournament mode or something on there that could turn that off if not But I like that you have to use the action button for that this world under glass has the best light show we've ever seen which obviously goes to it they got the Harry Belafonte song you got this incredible music from the gentleman who actually designed the music in it you've got that number counter in the back left side it kind of reminds me of TNA like between the flippers when it told you how many seconds were left when it was counting down on TNA they have that in the top left corner that's obviously in the waiting room I forget what it does exactly what did they have here I'm trying to read the bottom part here it's always good when oh the strong man it's basically called a very target back in the day we called a very target it doesn't seem to work the same as a very target I believe that this is another thing that's revolutionary new but on the right hand side there's this shot that you it's called the strong man shot depending on how hard you hit the shot is how far you know like the strong man with the big hammer when you hit it and it goes up in the air well on the video we'll show you and I believe even maybe on the mecca we'll show you with a light or something how far up you actually got and whether or not you were able to ring my bell ring my bell go to hell you sure do smell okay so i love this it's basically a modernized very target why have we never seen anything like this in pinball before again on most top five lists this would be one of the top five rad but there's just so much going on in this pin And there's so much to brag about. There's so much to talk about that, like, it doesn't even make a top five list. Same with the couch. Same with the thing that spins, like, the wheel, right? So there is so much cool stuff in here. But maybe the coolest thing, maybe the coolest thing of all, and I'll tie this all together. Don't worry. This isn't really a feature, so I didn't want to include it. But I think you now have, and why people are going wild about this. Again, if this was as expensive as the Potter CE at like 15 grand US, people just wouldn't be as stoked. It's 50% less than that at $9,999. And I'm not going to tell you to go butter or not, but I mean, it seems like that would be a smart choice collectively. A, I think that money might just hold. It might be one of the rare mods that will hold in the aftermarket, unlike color DMD or like a shaker motor where you're never going to get 100% of your money back. the butter cab on this particular machine because of how much people are loving it i think will hold its value so it might be the one time excuse me that if i could actually afford it now if i was buying it used for myself i probably wouldn't want to spend that extra thousand so the arguments could be made for both it definitely if you're going to have it as an end cap or you're going to have it so an end cap is like at the end of your line or you're going to have it in a pinball arcade is your end cap which we know from shout out to rachel and kale we know that uh end caps make quite a bit more money so if you are going to have it as an end cap in arcade i i probably would splurge the extra but i mean that's again totally up to you i think that is one of the rare mods you get your money back for the other mod you're going to get your money back for is that 1700 i believe uh topper the topper scares the crap out of me between the butter and that you're adding an extra 2700 you're getting real close to 13 grand there i probably wouldn't add those, it'd be so hard. If there was a chance in hell my Beetlejuice would be going on location, yes. And if I could afford it, if I could afford it, if that wasn't so much money for me, if I couldn't buy two or three solid states with the money I'd be spending on the topper and the butter, then I probably would consider doing it. If I won the lottery or when my wife and I sell the farm in a year or two and I get to have Orby's own pinball arcade back again, hopefully, I'll just say it right here, I think this is the best value proposition in pinball. For years and years and years on this show, you've heard me say that a Stern Pro is the best value proposition. You can buy it for $6,000 or $7,000, play 1,000 plays on it and sell it for $4,500 to $5,500. This, I think you can buy it for $10,000. You could probably put 1,000 plays on it and have it for a year and sell it and still flip. I don't know if you're going to make $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000. grand i'm not going to even try to guess how much i don't think it's going to hold five grand above for that long but i didn't think evil dead would and this is a way better theme than evil dead like evil dead's like a you know a b minus for a theme or a c plus okay it's no looney tunes or even texas chainsaw massacre i would argue it's close though but this is like an a tier theme maybe not quite s tier like pokemon or something like that but this is an a tier theme and the demographic is perfect for pinball and they have knocked it out of the park i'm sorry franchi there's no other words that i can use they have killed every single aspect of this game that i'm aware of the only part i don't know if they've like knocked the part out on knocked it out of the park on is the reliability and nobody could know that yet now with this many mechs in there it is a little scary and i guess one of the arguments i've heard is that they're still using servos i don't even know what a servo is i'm sorry i don't work on pinball machines i'm more of a player than a maintainer that's just how i roll but apparently servos don't work as good or they aren't as i don't know reliable as some of the other things used in other pinball machines again i don't know that to be true for sure i just know that even including up to especially looney tunes and scooby-doo there was still some major reliability issues with spookies especially on location being played for hours so I'm very happy to hear that Evil Dead cleaned those up but that just because you did one in 14 of your pinball machines was reliable it doesn't mean that that carries over to the next one I'd say there's a very very good chance it's more reliable than any of the ones from before Evil Dead but we don't know yet we just don't know so that's the one thing I'm excited to see and hear about and shout out to all the operators that share that information with us or I guess players that play at home a lot, which I think a lot of people will be. I don't think you're going to be seeing, and please don't be a collector who like buys Beetlejuice and has it for a year and plays like two games. This game was meant to be played. It's got a shat's ton of love in it. Every single mech, every single mode, all the flow, the incredible art it's meant to be played. Sure. It is an art piece just sitting there by itself. And you can just be in a dark room and say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Sure. It's a bit of a parlor trick, with the spooky speak but it's a friggin incredible parlor trick like to your neighbors for them to see something like that for a neighbor for hell if a jehovah's witness came to my door i'd be like oh you want to share the gospel with me i want to share some beetle juice with you watch me raise the dead in my dark room no i'm just kidding but that would be funny but like just even kids in the neighborhood on halloween imagine next halloween for the number of people most people should have theirs by next Halloween. Imagine just having like a dimly lit, we don't want to scare the kids that bad, these shots through drawers, right? But I mean, imagine having a dimly lit Beetlejuice in there and just telling like one of the kids to say Beetlejuice three times slowly. And they say it and it lights up and they jump back and they say it again and they're like, and then like, you know, this pinball machine is just being built out of the darkness, right? Coming from the abyss is the most beautiful, spectacular art package they've ever seen. wow oh man i this is the first time i've had fomo maybe ever maybe ever in pinball the first time i've ever had pinball i actually told my wife uh that someday that we are going to be when we sell the house that this is going to be have to be one of the pins that i get and i already love uh you know who uh who is the creator who did edward scissorhands i'd love to see edward scissorhands as well even though i think because there's much more humor in this it makes it better and i'm always asking for humor and pinball but um i don't think we're ever going to see the nightmare before christmas even though shout out to mark and city who made the homebrew i'd of course love to see that uh i don't i doubt we'll ever see edward scissorhands um but i think beetlejuice is perfect because it's a little bit creepy a little bit scary it has just such out there incredible uh fun aesthetics, just the cinematography of how it's shot and just the colors and the vibrancy of that whole world is brought to life perfectly by Spooky and the entire team there. Take a bow, each and every one of you. I think the best value proposition in all pinball is now the $9,999 Spooky pin because you can sell them for $10, $12, or you can sell them for $11, $12, $13, $14, 15 grand hell even more now will we maybe see evil deads come down a little bit more as more and more beetlejuices flee the uh you know flow if you will into the market flood the market possibly uh probably not because they release pinball machines so slowly it's only they only make like x number of weeks like it takes them about a year to make 800 right so even if they go a bit faster it's going to take them almost a year to make the 999 plus the 80 show games let's not forget about the 80 show games um and i do want to talk about the one bad for a second because i don't want people to say that i you know i'm i'm not critical enough and such uh i still do think and they have made they have made a nearly flawless victory release of this pinball machine so i don't want to take anything away from that because they've done exceptionally well especially considering i don't even know if they necessarily have like a marketing dude uh i think i know they just hired another coding and rules guy which is great uh and programmer but like the animations are on point as well i wouldn't say they're in my top five rad but the animations are on point as well so good for them for them being a little tiny company in benton wisconsin cinderella story uh no but these guys they're doing it right they you know i was talking on my podcast from yesterday uh about how stern kind of needs to get its groove back you've got to get your groove back stella You know what I mean? How Stern got its groove back. I think I'm going to do a show about that. That would be fun. But the one thing I will say is the one minor marketing misstep that they did, or whoever you want to put this on, was the show games. I understand, though, as being someone in marketing, why you would do this, because Spooky is a bunch of people pleasers, which is good. That's what you want. You want good customer service. You want them to want us to be impressed by everything they do, which we are. the only thing i wasn't impressed by was after after everyone had got their hard-earned deposits in they then found out they could have got their deposits in possibly on a show game and i don't care what any other pinball podcasters or content creators tell you these show games will always be worth far more because they're not just like slightly rare more rare it's not like a two to one ratio like stern like uh premiums to to le's or something like that this is a 10 to 1 ratio there is only 80 there's more than 10 times that there's more than 800 right so it's more like a 12 to 1 ratio and it doesn't matter if you're talking about watches or sports cards or comics or like a signed autographed uh uh a pitcher or any memorabilia a baseball bat from vladimir Guerrero or Shohei Otani, that exact same baseball bat not signed, if it's 10 to 12 times more rare to get it signed or that particular rookie card or that anything, if it's far, far, far more rare for it to be signed, then it's going to be worth a lot more. I could be wrong. It could take two, three, four years for this to happen. But what I'm not wrong about is the fact that at some point they will be worth $30 to $50, potentially 100%. I said it right here. They could potentially be worth twice as much. So I see a world in like 2030. I don't think it will take until 2030, but I see a world where like these, you know, the non-show Beetlejuice games could be worth like $14 to $18, and I honestly think that the show games, a really well-kept show game with not too, too many plays on it, with not too much damage, that's never been on location, home use only, yada, yada, yada, Seinfeld reference of the day, let's get it going, you're going to actually see that those specific show games are going to sell for up to twice as much, I think, like anywhere from $26 to $38. Now, it could take years for that to happen. In fact, they might be priced slightly less at the start for one reason or multiple different reasons or another. They'll probably be priced more. I don't even know where they'll be priced. I'm excited to see where they're going to be priced. I'm going to leave it at that. I probably went a little bit overboard with saying the SLEs, calling them SLEs. I get their show games are not SLEs. I will say this. Kaneda did mention today that he really wants to get number 1079. And you know Kaneda. If he can get the most rare and it's going to be worth the most money, he's going to go for it. So it doesn't matter if he tells you if it's the SLE or not. You watch which game Kaneda gets and keeps for himself. That's probably going to be the SLE. I'll just leave it at that. Anyways, Pinball Nerds, make sure you go over to Patreon, listen to the last episode. I'm going to get it up probably before I even get up this episode. So you can go over there and kind of listen to Don's hot take that I disagreed with that I'm now very wrong and embarrassed about. You can listen to Zombie Eddie's response to me and my response to some of his criticism that he's had as well as his. And you can also hear me talking all about the Walt Wood situation, which was extremely unfortunate. And I do personally hope Walt Wood comes back for my own self. But for his own mental health, you know, if it's going to be a net negative, don't come back, Walt. All right, just keep playing pinball and being a rad dude. All right, pinball nerds, until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Beetlejuice pinball. Shout out, Franchi.