Episode 1090: "Potter This Week and Pokemon News!"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·18m 42s·analyzed·May 12, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Kaneda anxiously awaits Harry Potter reveal while previewing Star Wars and Pokemon Stern pipelines.

Summary

Kaneda expresses anxiety about the imminent Harry Potter pinball reveal, speculating on game features and quality while criticizing Jersey Jack's historical underdelivery relative to hype. He also discusses upcoming Stern releases including Star Wars Episode I-III and Pokemon (with four different LE variants and exclusive card mechanics), alongside broader industry criticism of King Kong's lack of assets and Spooky's Evil Dead gaining positive momentum.

Key Claims

Harry Potter reveal is happening this week (as of May 12), with dealer/distro calls scheduled and units already shipped to Europe.
medium confidence · Kaneda stated he heard the dealer/distro call is this week and that units have been shipped globally
The $5,000 price difference between Harry Potter editions ($10k vs $15k) with nothing removed is a negative signal about overall game content.
high confidence · Kaneda's direct comparison: 'If there's nothing to remove in those different versions for $5,000 between the two, then it makes me nervous that the game isn't going to be loaded.'
King Kong will drop to $10,000 in value within six months due to poor reception and lack of assets.
high confidence · Kaneda's explicit prediction: 'King Kong, Ali, like I predicted, will be $10,000 within six months, if not sooner than that.'
Star Wars Episode I-III is the next Stern release after John Borg's current game (likely September 2025).
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'What are my thoughts on that? Look, if they make Star Wars episode one through three, do I think it will be successful? Yes, it will.'
Pokemon will be a Stern pinball game with four different LE variants (250 units each) featuring different Pokemon characters.
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'they're going to do a thousand LEs of Pokemon. They're going to do four different LEs. Each will be a run of 250 that will feature a different Pokemon character'
Pokemon LE machines will include exclusive Pokemon trading cards available only on the machine's apron.
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'they're working with the license holder to have each of these LEs have a special Pokemon card that is only available on the apron of the machine'
Pokemon is coming out in Q1 2026.
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'Pokemon, which again, I think is going to be by Jack Danger, is going to come out in Q1 of 2026'
Evil Dead is the current game of the year and beating King Kong in positive sentiment.

Notable Quotes

“Now, historically, historically, Jersey Jack never delivers when the expectations are this high. I mean it. They've never done it.”
Kaneda @ ~4:30 — Core anxiety about Harry Potter's quality; establishes Kaneda's historical skepticism of JJP
“If there's nothing to remove in those different versions for $5,000 between the two, then it makes me nervous that the game isn't going to be loaded.”
Kaneda @ ~5:45 — Key signal interpretation suggesting Harry Potter may lack mechanical content despite high price
“King Kong, Ali, like I predicted, will be $10,000 within six months, if not sooner than that.”
Kaneda @ ~11:20 — Explicit prediction about King Kong's secondary market collapse due to assetless design
“Evil Dead is the game of the year. And I think it would be voted that by the pinball voting people I think it would beat Keith Elwin and that is amazing.”
Kaneda @ ~24:30 — Significant sentiment shift; Spooky gaining ground on Stern's John Borg despite historical perception
“They're going to do a thousand LEs of Pokemon. They're going to do four different LEs. Each will be a run of 250 that will feature a different Pokemon character on the LE.”
Kaneda @ ~37:00 — Details of Pokemon LE strategy; introduces blind-box mechanics for FOMO
“There's never been a great Star Wars pinball machine. Never. It's just never been one.”
Kaneda @ ~45:45 — Sets high stakes for potential Star Wars Episode I-III; identifies franchise as underexecuted IP
“Stern has all the assets for Star Wars. All the syncing up of clips, all the actors, all the voices. And they have zero assets for King Kong.”
Kaneda @ ~47:30 — Damning comparison of Stern's licensing priorities; underscores King Kong criticism
“You spend $5 and I save you $3,000 by telling you not to buy a Stern LE. That's a great partnership.”

Entities

Kanedaperson Kim Mitchellperson Jersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyHarry Pottergame King Konggame

Signals

?
announcement: Kaneda reports Harry Potter reveal expected this week (week of May 12); dealer/distro calls scheduled with global units in circulation
medium · Kaneda: 'Now, what I'm hearing is that the dealer and distro call is this week. So I think it's like out there in the world. I think they've already shipped units to Europe.'
?
product_concern: Edition pricing with no mechanical differentiation ($5k gap but nothing removed) interpreted as signal that Harry Potter lacks substantial feature depth
high · Kaneda's extended reasoning: if a $5k price difference exists between editions, mechanical content should justify it; absence suggests limited mechanics overall
~
sentiment_shift: Spooky Pinball gaining momentum over Stern; Evil Dead positioned above King Kong in player preference and engagement
high · Kaneda: 'Spooky Pinball went from making the worst games in pinball years ago... to now making a game that has more positive energy around it than a Keith Elwin machine'
$
market_signal: King Kong LE expected to drop from $13k MSRP to $10k within 6 months, then to $3k secondary; investors warned to sell immediately
high · Kaneda's repeated predictions: 'You just lost $3,000 and you joined the chump club' and advice to sell now before further losses
?
product_strategy: Pokemon blind-box LE strategy (4 variants, 250 units each, unknown character at purchase) designed to create collectibility FOMO
medium · Kaneda: 'When you order an LE, you don't know what Pokemon character you're going to get... That is awesome... creates FOMO'

Topics

Harry Potter reveal timing and expectationsprimaryGame feature and mechanical quality concernsprimaryStern's upcoming release pipeline (Star Wars, Pokemon, Predator)primaryKing Kong commercial failure and secondary market depreciationprimaryPokemon LE blind-box strategy and FOMO mechanicsprimarySpooky Pinball vs Stern competitive positioningsecondaryPricing tiers and value assessment across editionssecondaryLicensed assets availability and cost vs gameplay impactsecondary

Sentiment

mixed(-0.25)— Kaneda is excited about the Harry Potter reveal and upcoming pipeline but deeply anxious about quality and skeptical of manufacturer execution. Positive sentiment toward Spooky's Evil Dead and upcoming content; strongly negative toward Stern's King Kong and historical JJP delivery. Overall tone is critical but invested.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.056

Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong. Welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast. Hopefully everybody had an amazing Mother's Day. It is a beautiful sunny day here in Connecticut and I am wondering, is this the week we are going to get Harry Potter pinball, you would think after all of this time we know it's Potter, that they would at least let us know the exact date we can expect the reveal of the game. It is Monday, May 12th. Is it going to be this Friday? Is it going to be tomorrow? Is it going to be Thursday? Nobody knows. I have in my phone a tentative invite from the folks over at Jersey Jack to go to Chicago and see the game. That was like a month ago. I haven't heard anything. What's going on, people? I just want this game to come out. All the speculation, it's all gonna end. Is the game gonna be empty? Is it gonna be loaded? Is it gonna have an upper play field and a lower play field? We know there's three levels of play. What does that mean? Is it gonna be speedy? Is it going to be floaty? Is it going to have toys and mechs that wow us? Is it going to have a magnet that grabs the ball? How are they going to fit eight movies, eight people, eight movies into one pinball machine? Are the clips going to be muted? We are going to know all of this when this game reveals and this time the expectations are high. There's not going to be fooling anybody anymore. We now know when we walk up to a Jersey Jack machine, if we're seeing magic or if we're seeing cost cutting, we know if they've got all the assets or if they don't. This is it. This is going to be the moment. I'm so excited. Now, historically, historically, Jersey Jack never delivers when the expectations are this high. I mean it. They've never done it. And if the rumor what I'm hearing is true, this is going to be more like the last four releases. I'm worried. I'm worried that they're not going to put everything in the kitchen sink into this game. They paid so much money for the license that they might have cut back on the mechanical wow. And I just wanted to come out. I know you're sick of waiting. I know you're sick of hearing Kaneda being sick of waiting. I know we're all sick of like trying to guess what's going to be in this game. I hope it's amazing. I really do because I love pinball and you love pinball. And if this game's amazing, it's going to put everybody in a good mood. It really is. And if this game's amazing, it's going to hopefully justify the high price. I'm nervous, though. I'm nervous because if the $10,000 edition doesn't have anything removed from the $15,000 edition, that makes me so nervous. It makes me nervous that there's nothing to remove. Think about it. If there's nothing to remove in those different versions for $5,000 between the two, then Yeah, it makes me nervous that the game isn't going to be loaded. Heck, even King Kong removed stuff between the Pro and the LE and the Premium. And this game's got a $5,000 difference and nothing removed. What's the artwork going to be like? Christopher Franchi has raised the bar with Evil Dead artwork. The Dune machine looks pretty damn good. Who's doing the Harry Potter artwork? Is Miracle going to make the playfields? Or is Bader going to make the playfields for the CEs like they did with Avatar? So many questions. So many questions. And hopefully all of them are answered. Now, what I'm hearing is that the dealer and distro call is this week. So I think it's like out there in the world. I think they've already shipped units to Europe. I think there's going to be a global launch. And I think it's going to be this week. Or it's not going to be this week. and you going to hear me complaining next Monday about not knowing what day Harry Potter is going to be released All right So outside of Potter what going on in the world King Kong at least not selling We know it You sick of me making fun of King Kong Ali, Carrie Hardy's got a bunch of exclusive videos of King Kong. Ali, he's not impressed. Most people are not impressed. King Kong, Ali, like I predicted, will be $10,000 within six months, if not sooner than that. OK, now we're all thinking about what's next from Stern. Is it going to be John Borg, Star Wars, episode one through three? What are my thoughts on that? Look, if they make Star Wars episode one through three, do I think it will be successful? Yes, it will. Star Wars, when you hear that theme song, even if the movies were not the iconic ones we all love, it doesn't matter. pod racing we got darth maul we've got jedis we've got obi-wan kenobi obi-wan kenobi how are you saying his name kaneda it's gonna do well that duel of fates song if you have that in a modern pinball experience and you see darth maul's lightsaber now think about it people if stern's going to release Spike 3 with a bigger, wider screen that takes up more of the speaker area on the backbox. What better theme to put the big screen into it than Star Wars and having Darth Maul's lightsaber sort of ignite across that new big screen? I think it would be perfect. They've eventually got to get Spike 3 out, right? They keep holding back because they know there's a price increase, but man, oh man, oh man, Star Wars would be a good game. Now, the other thing I'm hearing, if it's not Star Wars, it might be Suicide Squad. What? If they make Suicide Squad and not Star Wars, game over instantly on that game. You know the one everyone's missing? There's a new Superman movie coming out this summer. It's like the summer of Superman. And what a missed opportunity for nobody to have. Like the Christopher Reeve Superman pinball machine ready to go. Launch it to pay homage, homage, homage to the Superman property. And it would have been gangbusters for anybody that made the original Superman movie. There was a great Christopher Franchi treatment about what that pin could look like. And yet, what do we get? A King Kong with no assets. King Kong got nothing on me. Got nothing on Kaneda. Nobody wants King Kong, Ellie. If you have one right now, congratulations. You just lost $3,000 and you joined the chump club. You told everybody that $13,000 is chump change or you're just a chump. It's one or the other, people. Who wants to lose money? Not you. That's why you're only spending five bucks on Canada. Well, if you spend more, I really do appreciate it. Thank you for all your great donations, people. I really do appreciate it. I want to welcome back to the show because I heard he just joined again. I saw it. I want to welcome back to Canada's Pinball Podcast, one of my best friends in pinball who sometimes just has enough of me and then he has to come back. He always comes back, though. So welcome back to the party, Mr. Kim Mitchell. Thank you for being a member of Canada's Pinball Podcast again. For those of you who don't remember, Kim Mitchell is the great gentleman who I bought my Magic Girl from years ago, and we still laugh about that game today. He also just sold his Ninja Eclipse for $10,000, people. I've seen the pictures. The money was on the table. Great sale by Kim Mitchell. All right, what else is going on in pinball? So Suicide Squad. All right, whatever, whatever. You know, John Borg is next. And I think everyone's moved on from Kong already. I don't care what Keith Owen and team are planning over the next six months. Nobody cares, guys. You get one chance to make a first impression. I'm not going to get on these rides anymore and wait six to eight months until a game finally gets good. It's over with that kind of mentality. These companies need to give us more finished product. I was talking to Retro Ralph. He's got King Kong L.E. and Evil Dead. Which game did he want to talk about? Which game did he say kept bringing him back for more and more? Evil Dead. I here to tell you right now as it stands Evil Dead is the game of the year And I think it would be voted that by the pinball voting people I think it would beat Keith Elwin and that is amazing Spooky Pinball went from making the worst games in pinball years ago well, they weren't the worst, but they were pretty damn bad, to now making a game that has more positive energy around it than a Keith Elwin machine. Damn, the Elwin Army, man, they tried to get at us. Have you noticed the amount of Elwynn Army influencers and content creators trying to force us to celebrate this game? Assetless King Kong. I don't even think that's the Empire State Building. I don't even think Stern licensed the Empire State Building. It looks like a generic skyscraper. That's how cheap they are. They couldn't even get you a Jeep in Jurassic Park. All right, but speaking of Stern, I've got some news for you guys. after the next John Boer game is going to be Pokemon. And I heard this about Pokemon. I heard they have full assets to Pokemon. Good, because it's a damn cartoon. You don't need any live actors. I know people are doing the voices, but yeah, wow, Stern, you locked up the animations of an animated show, which is good. So I think we're going to see clips from the Pokemon TV show. Now, raise of hands, all of you out there, how many of you have caught episodes of Pokemon? zero. None of us. Who the heck in this hobby has watched Pokemon? Have any of you? Nope. So it's funny. They're going to go get the assets for a property that you've never seen the assets. And then a property that you've seen all the assets, King Kong, they got zero assets. Stern Pinball, great marketing guys. All right. So here's what they're going to do. They're going to do a thousand LEs of Pokemon. They're going to do four different LEs. Each will be a run of 250 that will feature a different Pokemon character on the LE. That is really smart and that is fun, but here's what they should do. And I think they might do this. When you order an LE, you don't know what Pokemon character you're going to get. They need to do it like that. So it's like unwrapping or unboxing a pack of Pokemon cards and you don't know which one you're going to get. That is awesome. And if Stern does it this way, this makes sense because then there's only going to be 250 Pikachus, 250 Jigglypuffs, you know, whatever it is. I think it's so much smarter to do it this way because it will create FOMO and also for the diehard. This is nuts to say this. But for the diehard Pokemon fan, they might want to collect all of the LEs. And like I said on my other show, if you buy four Stern LEs, $52,000. But heck, there's Pokemon cards out there where a single card is worth millions of dollars. There are many cards out there that are worth $100,000 for one card. But the reason those cards have value is because there are so many more people who want those cards than can get them. It's not the same with these pinball machines. So, you know, don't expect these Pokemon LEs to go skyrocketing in value. It's not going to happen. I'm also hearing about Pokemon is they're working with the license holder to have each of these LEs have a special Pokemon card that is only available on the apron of the machine. Now, I think that's a smart marketing move because if you think about it, that's how you're going to bring in the Pokemon fan base who collect the cards. Imagine if there are just 1,000 of a new Pokemon card and the only way to get it is to buy the pinball machine. See, that's good. That's smart. And I think that's the way you cross over the pinball buying demo and the Pokemon card collectors. I'm also hearing that Pokemon, which again, I think is going to be by Jack Danger, is going to come out in Q1 of 2026. So let's think about this for a minute now, how the timeline is shaking out. We just got King Kong and it's May. Let's count four months from now. May, June, July, August, September. So we're looking August, September, most likely September will be the next game from John Borg. Will it be Star Wars episode one through three? Everybody wants it to be a Tron remastered because the new Tron movie is coming out. I don't think it's going to be that. Here what I think is going to happen I think they going to do Star Wars one through three and then September then October November I think we going to get a remastered Walking Dead This is my prediction. John Borg, new game, Star Wars 1 through 3. Then they're going to bring back a remastered version of The Walking Dead. Because remember when they brought out X-Men? They brought out X-Men in August, September. And then what did they do? They brought out Metallica Remastered right after that to have that game at Chicago Expo. So I fully expect the same timeline. And then Stern usually does their next Cornerstone sometime in February, March. And I think that's when we're going to see Pokemon. I saw people say like, well, when Harry Potter comes out, there's nothing new to look forward to. What are you talking about? There's all this stuff that Stern's going to do. We got Predator coming out sometime in the summer. We're also going to get Beetlejuice from freaking Spooky Pinball in December. Evil Dead is sold out. This Dune game is going to start to get more assets. I think Dune is going to need to have a second life when they put more into the game. So that's coming. As far as I can tell, like, Pedretti Gaming is still going to bring back Toten. We're going to see these Merlin editions of Medieval Madness hit people pretty soon. And then what's next from Chicago Gaming Company, right? Is it going to be Halo? There's a lot of stuff happening in the pinball development world. I don't think we're ever going to go like four months with nothing. I don't think we're going to go three months with nothing. Heck, I don't think we're going to go two months with nothing new in the pinball world. There's a lot happening. Now, I don't think there's a lot of sales to be had. I don't think people are going to be paying these prices unless it's like dream theme done right. But Star Wars will always sell. It will. That theme song, it is like an intoxicating thing to hear as a 40 to 60 year old man. Here's what sucks about Star Wars. There's never been a great Star Wars pinball machine. Never. It's just never been one. And if they make this game great and John Borg nails it, I think everyone's going to want one because there isn't a truly satisfying Star Wars game. Now, you know me, the smart move would be to make a pin for each of the original trilogies. they're not doing that I don't think anyone wants skeleton crew so hopefully that's not what's their option if they bring out skeleton crew it's dead on arrival Mandalorian was that a great machine the assets were there but the gameplay was never that good that upper play field is horrible and there's no real using of the force powers that whole game when I see Mando it's just a miss on every level it's just a miss for me you know owners always defend Star Wars games the amount the times I hear people with the Steve Ritchie game being like, it's a great game. Every time I stand over one, I just want to fall over backwards and play dead. It's that boring to me as a Star Wars fan. I love Star Wars and that game with that TIE fighter on a spring. It's too hard to get the ball into the hyperdrive. Everything about it, the artwork is bad. The shots are uninspired. There's no magical mechs in the entire game. You think about the source material, It's just such a miss. And they have all the assets. Think about it. Stern has all the assets for Star Wars. All the syncing up of clips, all the actors, all the voices. And they have zero assets for King Kong. And how much was Star Wars LE? Like $9,000? And now you're going to spend $4,000 more on an assetless King Kong? Kaneda, stop. You're ruining the value of all these Kong LEs. Guys, if you have one, just put it up for sale now. Take your $1,000 loss and move on. because it's about to be a $3,000 loss in just a few weeks. All right, so Monday after Mother's Day, are we going to see Harry Potter this week? Is John Borg going to do Star Wars 1 through 3 or Suicide Squad? Pokemon, four different versions of the LE. Which one are you going to get? You're not going to know until you unbox the game. I think that's super smart. Look, and I just can't wait to see if Harry Potter is going to bring the magic. That's it, everybody. Have a great Monday. We will be back more this week with the world's self-proclaimed most entertaining place to spend $5 to save $3,000 every month. It's amazing. You spend $5 and I save you $3,000 by telling you not to buy a Stern LE. That's a great partnership. Kim Mitchell, welcome back. We out. you