get in here winter campers it's don from don's pinball podcast episode number 222 coming at you got a lot of news that dropped really just in the last 48 hours i've been watching this it's topper central we got new lighting accents for spooky games beetlejuice is on the line get in here let's warm up Hello, sweet prince. It is me. I'm here again in your ear. Pinballs, man. One box, a ton of lights, two flipper buttons. Unless you're multi-morphic. There's your multi-morphic medic. Hey-oh! And we're back with toppers, man. I'm waking up yesterday. Again, every time I have a stretch of night shifts and I get home, I fall asleep, I wake up in the afternoon to, like, pinball news happening before my eyes. And it seems like this has been a daily occurrence for the last three days here, starting with Stern, who two days ago dropped a bunch of stuff on us. We got code updates. I think code update for Kong dropped. Fall of the Empire got a big code update. Ray Day's out there talking about different stuff. He's active on the pinball show's Discord, taking requests like it's nothing, man. I passed on my request for a training mode, like a forced training mode, for Fall of the Empire for that ball save, I would like to, at home, be able to go into the settings and switch it so it's like, you know, it may be always on or fills up a lot quicker, like with 10 spins, just so I can get some practice with the thing, because I think once I have it dialed in, then it can go back to OG mode and actually know what I'm supposed to do. And he's like, yeah, wow, you should have told me yesterday. I want to put that in the code update. So hopefully that's coming soon. Love this interactivity, by the way. And boom, we got it. We got it, you guys. Somebody has turned, listen, and it sounds like we have George Gomez to thank for this. We've got the spiritual successor to the Black Knight Sword of Rage topper, long heralded as probably one of the best toppers that Stern has produced as a first-party accessory in the modern age. It was animatronic. There was like two degrees of motion, but it added so much to the game. You've got Steve Ritchie doing the call-outs, calling you a damn fool, asking for more coins, telling you to play better. All the time, the Knight's helmet is up there just looking down, mocking you, looking left and right. I dig it, man. And then you get the flames on either side, too. I mean, it was so awesome. The rest of that topper, though, aside from the Black Knight's helmet, was just LEDs and flat plastics. But it brought so much. We loved it. We loved it at $500. We loved it again at $1,500. Pinflation, what are you going to do? So now we got C-3PO, man, in his shiny bronzed form up there doing what looks like a similar motion. I can't fault this, man. When you put an animatronic on top of my pinball machine that's interacting with what I do, I'm going to be a fan of that every single time. And we've got some animatronics before. Of course, we've got the same Kong mech up on the Kong topper. It was a bit diminutive, and I've noticed this is a disturbing trend of where the topper is a little bit more narrow than the back boxes. You've got all that real estate to work with. Fill it out, even if it's just plastics. So no complaints here. I know we had some problems with the lack of innovation in shots and layout on the Star Wars Fall of the Empire game. The launch code wasn't putting us over the top or anything. This added a ton to that now. We know that the callouts are being done by C-3PO's official recognized voice actor now. And now it looks like we're getting more callouts with the topper. We're getting the same motions that we had with Black Knight Sword of Rage that we already like. And we got an illuminated background and RGB interactive stuff. plus bonuses. This topper's not $1,800. It's $1,499, so it's a $1,500 topper. And I feel a lot better paying $1,500 for this than what we got with some other ones, like with Venom or even with Foo Fighters to some extent. More degrees of freedom. Here's what else you get. You get more call-outs from that topper, from what it sounds like. Now, I don't think there's speakers up there, but because this is a first-party topper, it can tie into the speaker system you already have in your machine. So I think that's a totally fine thing to do. The fact that you buy this topper, of course, you get the animations. Your game looks more complete. It goes edge to edge in the backbox. I dig that. It's interactive one-to-one with the light shows and everything. It's got a progress bar. I almost forgot about that part. There's a progress bar in LEDs on the front of the topper that as you're playing modes or there's a timer that's counting down, they can utilize that with different colors, with different speeds as a visual reference to look up and, like, where am I at in this mode? That I love, man. Give me some instant feedback. One of the early criticisms of this game was, as I'm playing and I get into a spot where the ball does stall briefly, I look to the screen to see how many more Death Star shots do I need to lock, where am I at with this, that, or the other, and it's playing a scene or something, and by the time the scene is finally ending and the information is going to come back up, the ball is back in play, I don't have time to look up there. So being able to visually reference, hopefully, up at the top where I'm at, I dig it. I dig that. I did like on Jersey Jack games like The Godfather where there was like a little life bar in a portion of the hot rails. So any way you can visually put more of a progress bar for the player to see somewhere down the play field where I'm already looking I'm kind of into that. But as a quick reference I can glance up at the silver god king above me and see where I'm at I dig it. So not only do you get more call outs with this but you also do get a special mode. It's a best spin challenge mode. It's accessible from the games menu. I like this okay there was a lot of controversy early on very much justified you know a warning against dlc and pinball you know well they're going to take content from the game don and they're going to lock it behind a paywall that you have to purchase this accessory for i'm looking at it from this perspective first off i don't think the best been challenged mode is like a make or break for the game what i'm looking at this as if you go ahead and you do get this accessory and you do get the motion and the interactive lights and stuff you get some bonuses of extra call outs you get some bonuses of an extra mode and so to me that's adding more value to the accessory and not necessarily detracting from the value of the game itself now this is a slippery slope potentially you know if half of the modes end up being locked behind a topper that's absolutely a problem and and i'm stern's probably already had meetings about this as long as they walk this line where you're adding more fun content behind your first party accessory uh giving us you know more over the top beyond on that 1.0 or 1.2 code that something's going to eventually end up as, I'm okay with that as a way to reward these people that pay over $1,000 for these type of accessories. So a community essentially is lauding this thing. We're sitting there. When we wait for accessories, we've got money in our hand. We want to see something that makes us excited so we can go and get it. I know accessories are going to come out. I'm going to work some extra shifts. I'm going to have a bake sale. I've got my pinball money set aside. and you're sitting there and you want to be wowed and nothing's worse than a topper that comes out and it's like lackluster and you're like, really? That's what we get? I'm not excited now. I'm going to look and spend my money elsewhere. Well, fortunately, there's plenty of reasons to spend your money elsewhere when you look at the rest of the accessories. Here it comes. So again, we get the same black wrinkle coat, powder coat, premium armor, which the laser cut cut out with the reflective bits behind it. It's a small TIE fighter. It's so small. You have the laser already. You have the laser already. You've got brilliant artists there. Can you design the armor so the whole thing is a cutout of like a TIE Fighter or a TIE Fighter's cockpit or something? And then, you know, put some laser blasts up the side of the armor, and then let me put some reflective stuff behind all that so it's more of a scene. Like, oh, look, you got the cool armor. Look at that. As a reference, Munsters came out with some LE armor that looks like spider webs, and it's silver reflective foil paper behind that too. But it's architecturally different than just taking off-the-shelf slanted premium armor and putting a little laser cut in it. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? So a lot of the work that I do with Cab Custom is in iterating these designs of taking steel, cutting something cool into it, and then making it fit for armor. And then you can take these conceptual ideas and bring them in there. Put Kong's big face on there or something, or put a bunch of bananas or a Donkey Kong logo or something cool with the game where you walk up and you like yeah wow that does look pretty cool So I giving a C to the side armor there I give them a C for the shooter rod as well It's the same thing from the Star Wars 2017 machine. I have it on the 2017 Star Wars machine. Thematically, it fits into Fall of the Empire. It just seems like low effort because it's essentially the same thing. But you know what? If I'm looking at business, right, I'm going to sell these shooter rods no matter what. you know is it worth the tooling costs for a new toy and then sent to the licensor and have them tell me that they want changes then i got to make another one and then you know production and all that business when it's just as easy to say you know what we got this it's approved run with it so i'm not mad at that i wish there was a little bit more that had to do with the armor and then the expression lights i'm fine with i dig it and these are kind of the hybrid model between spike two spike three because of course i try to use my spike two foo fighter lights and put them in my Star Wars and they installed perfectly and did not work at all because I guess the computer architecture is just different. So I had to sell those, use the proceeds from that sale towards these and now we got them coming. So that's fine. I like Expression Lights. I like that they're available. I wish these were just something that was always in stock and now that the uniformity going forward where we've iterated with we, where they have iterated with Expression Lights to the point now that they sit above the Art Blades, essentially they should be standard across all Spike 3s going forward. Maybe this is something that they can just keep in stock from now on, and it's probably the plan. I also like the fact that there will be external lights available as an option as well. Fine, I'm cool with that. Still haven't seen the new speaker light kits for Spike 3 yet. I like how they look on the LEs. I do like the fact that there's the extra tweeter speakers that are in there as well. I currently have a hunt going on to find out what type of speakers aftermarket I can purchase to get the same or better effect when it comes to the Spike 3 system. I asked some friends that have some LEs of the Spike 3, some Follow the Empire, some Walking Deads. Thank you guys for sending me the photos. What I'm seeing is some aftermarket third-party custom builds from a company called Sternton, I think it's called. I looked up the model numbers and everything from the photos, and it looks like this was a custom order that they made. Now, speakers exist, and this is existing technology. I think something very similar to this already exists, already on Amazon, already on Prime. I could probably order and have them tomorrow. I just want to know, like, which ones, how many watts, you know, what can be driven. I don't understand the amplification ability of the Spike 3 board yet to know what I should be getting. But, like, going forward, once I figure it out, it should be good to go. Can I put kickers in this thing? Can I put a Boom Boom 3000? Pinball life, help me out. I got an email out to them. Haven't heard back just yet. holidays are coming up i'm sure they're busy but if anybody knows any any audio person who can look at these and say oh those are those are jbl 5027s man just go get a set of those here's what you need that's the info i need now i made that up i don't know if that's an actual speaker type or whatever but let me know what i can buy and put in and get a similar audio package to what's on the le because it was impressive when i was there at stern with george he turned the game up and it sounded great that's what i want i want to get that in my premium if you know don's pinball podcast at gmail.com is how you get at me for that. So we got great code updates. We got a heck of a topper coming out. I think it's going to be available and shipping soon. I got my order in with mad pinball already info at mad pinball.com. If you want to jump on that, they've got them, they can order them. They can hook it up. I received my a death star fix yesterday. So that'll be going in the game. And then I've got my powder coat colors picked out. I'm going to make a spectacle out of fall of the empire. It's going to look amazing. I just wish I could get my speaker lights and my speakers where I need them because these guys have a launch party next month at the 1UP Lounge in Bellingham, Washington, and I want this game to be there. I think it's on the 17th, which gives me a couple of weeks to get all this cobbled together and then get this game out there to debut. So we'll wait and see. But in the meantime, I know at some point we're going to know pretty soon what these speakers are. So, yes, we're critical on Follow the Empire's layout as being a little standard. We wanted something more like Kong or Jaws or even D&D, some more complexity back there, some more interesting mechanisms and toys and things. But thank God, this topper, keep this up there as one of the greatest of the modern stern age and look to ape that. And I'm okay with you generating additional content that was never planned to be in the game and the game is otherwise complete without it, but you can get some bonus stuff if you are a high dollar collector and you want to buy that topper. Or if you have a location, you want to put that topper on your location game to unlock that content and drive people to your location. That's how it should be used. I can dig it. So I was listening while we're on Stern, while we're on George Gomez, while we're on JBS. The JBS show has a roundtable that just came out in the last day or so where him, Kale, and Retro Ralph, the best-looking face in pinball content generation, are given another multiple-hour conversation about even more depths and issues that go into the hows, whats, wheres, and whys of Stern. And I love this. if it took this cabinet gate feedback to drive this interaction I'm okay with it because I love George coming on every now and then and just giving us the whole layout, setting us straight so we're not just iterating our own rumors ad infinitum out into the weirdo sphere, so that's cool I'm glad content's back, JBS is killing it love the round table, who doesn't listen to those three gravelly, hushed tones, it's like listening to the way that like a nice musk cologne smells like it's either it's ear musk for me um we'll move along to our next topic here now spooky pinball this video in the midst of everything else people are like hey beetlejuice is on the line and i'm like what are you talking about dude these guys are my neighbors i think i would know if beetlejuice was on the line and then they released a video showing like i don't know 20 beetlejuice cabinets on the line being put together So that was phenomenal. So as of, like, yesterday, and I'm assuming today because it's only one day old, we've got Evil Dead cabinets making up the majority of what's on the production line. We've got Looney Tunes. We've got Texas Chainsaw Massacres. Don't sleep on this game, dude. Go get it. And Beetlejuice, yeah. And at first I was like, okay, okay, sure. They've got two cabinets there. They're probably just, you know, doing the production samples. It's all part of the process. And then they turn the corner and it's like, here's another 25 more with components in them. I'm seeing grounding braids. I'm seeing electronics. So, like, these things are getting, like, par-cooked right now. So, you know, when they come back, they can do the big training on the play field itself, integrating all these things, the lights, sandworms, under sandworms, stand-up targets, and all that business, and then get the playfields made, QC'd properly, and then dropped in the game. So it doesn't look like that process has started yet, which I would think would be absolutely abnormal because they want everybody to come back fresh, Evil Bed completed. Now let's do this layout, and we're going to go full-born to making the best Beetlejuice as we can. But the cabinets, yeah, man, you got the cabinet guys back there. Does that mean all the Evil Dead cabinets have already been built? I know they're in the late 800s now. There's only 888 of these things going on. No additional show games. So, yeah, like somebody just got 820, I think, is being delivered. So that leaves us about 60. So, yeah, I guess we're just weeks away from the final games being done here. That's super fun. I got a message out to Luke there. He just texted me back. Let's do this live. Okay, okay. He didn't quite answer my question. I asked him. He answered my question without answering the real question. I asked if they had a date scheduled for, like, when The Last Evil Dead was going to be. You know, it's like December 20th. Is that, like, the final one going out? Are you guys going to come back after the holiday and do some more? Are we talking January 8th? So I asked him, like, do you guys have a date scheduled? And he gave me yes, lol, and I can't be mad because he answered my question. Well, in addition to that, and seeing all the Beetlejuices on the line, which has Mike Hockles pre-fired, like what a birthday present for the Lord, they also dropped the Dead Bar, which is a lighting accessory upgrade for Evil Dead. One of the complaints people have had, this game is a little bit dark in certain places, particularly the back left corner. The back left corner has an orbit that goes to one of the best 180 ramps, like as far as not rejecting, I've played recently, drops into the pop bumper nest. It the one underneath that ramp where the bridge is and the claw comes up and like grabs the car and all that business So back in that area was a little bit dark So now they have like retinal melting LEDs and an RGB panel that going to go up underneath there and illuminate that whole back area, and it's tied into the GI. And you know what? I saw the video. I saw the before and after photos, but I had some more questions, so I figured why not let's just call Corwin real quick, and we'll see what he has to say. Spooky Pinball Tech Support this is Buggy oh dang I thought I was going to get I thought I was going to get Mike Tori again hey it's Don from Don's Pinball Podcast how you doing? good good hey listen good luck on selling out all those dead bars too bad you guys aren't making any more I'm so afraid to even post that we've sold them out this was great I was just recording a show and I noticed that those 150 you put up today sold out of the first run I'm sure there's more in development I just had a couple questions on them though if you don't mind Hit me. Yeah, so I'm looking at this thing. I see it installs into the back plate on the game, and it really highlights that area in the back on Evil Dead. I know you were doing something similar in Beetlejuice. Is this the same thing that Beetlejuice is? It's exactly the same thing, yeah. It's mounted a little bit differently because this is kind of an after-the-fact thing with Evil Dead, of course, but it's the same exact lighting system that is in Beetlejuice and all of the games going forward past that. Okay, and because I'm lazy, I haven't watched all the videos. Is this RGB? Yeah, so it's RGB. It's fully integrated with the code, so it'll interact with your light shows and the ambient lightings in each of the modes, your GI, everything. So this is plugged into kind of whatever the GI is doing in other parts of the game, and it'll just like splash all that color in the back now, too. Yep, exactly. Yep. I saw the before and after pictures, though, on the video. They looked awesome. And so, yeah, I'm here for it. yeah it fixes like the number one physical complaint that there was with evil dead which was that that back left area was so dark nobody could see anything so it fixes uh one of the only complaints that there was out there so now now you guys got to find a new one nice how does this thing plug in uh so there's a light board on the the back board and you're just going to install a cable from that backboard light board into the dead bar and then it just works that's it all right no solder or nothing no no i already have a i have a youtube video up uh explaining how to install it takes less than five minutes all right now i can solder so that's not a big deal i'm just thinking for the average consumer plus the average joe plus i will spill solder all over the bottom of my cabinet when i try to do that so that's cool all right so it looks like a pretty straightforward install i love that it's a way to add light back there and instead of just being kind of something you plug in and have to use a remote control like it already ties in with the the gi of the game Yeah, fully integrated with everything that's going on in the game. So it's very interactive. How is this under $100? That's crazy. Magic. Spooky magic. F the B-O-M. Okay. But I saw the $100 shipping charge, so I knew that something was up. I'm just kidding. Oh, yeah. No. That was funny. All right. So people listening now, of course, they would want these. Number one, is this available for other games going forward, do you think? Like, can I put one in my TCM if I want? we might be looking into how we could incorporate it into some other games. Uh, I think TCM and Looney Tunes would both be really great. Scooby-Doo would be really great. So we'll, we'll look into it. And, uh, if we get it figured out, you'll hear about it. Perfect. Probably sooner than later. Are you going to have them on the site, uh, for pre-ordering backordered ones now, or are you going to wait until you have them made and then just dump a bunch? We're going to wait until we have more and then we'll, we'll list them back up for sale. Um, as we get the batches, cause the thing we, you know, we had these on order for Beetlejuice and then we made this mod and everything. So now we have to kind of determine how many are going to be for what. So as we get them in, we will determine what's going to go up for Evil Dead versus what we need in the production line. Perfect. And just ballpark, you're thinking like August for a restock? No, no, we'll have January. Dude, that's awesome. That's awesome. All right. I don't want to hold you up anymore. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me on the show. You've been good now. All right. Yeah. Listen to him on Thursday nights, man. His stream's awesome. Bug stream is dream. scream and stream spray and pray whatever it's called thanks guy what a guy be sure to check out his streams they're on YouTube and I believe Twitch still bugs scream in stream go check that out always fun to be up there so he did a whole stream last night it was Thursday they're coming up with one of the wizard modes and he's taking community involvement and writing the mode right there so that may have happened I missed part of it but then he also talked about the dead bar So this is cool, okay? It's an accessory that's not $1,000. It's $100. It looks simple to install. No solder is required. And then automatically just washes the back of your game with light. This has been an ongoing thing that you can do with pinball machines. Underneath the backbox there, in the back of the game, there's been people putting aftermarket LED strips, you know, forever. My Rick and Morty came to me with one. And, you know, the wires are routed kind of down the side of the cabinet. When you lean the backbox forward, you have to be careful you don't rip something out, you know, because it's congested back there. Pulling the play field in and out, you can snag. So you always have to be a little careful, which while I enjoy the effect that something like pin stadiums brings to the pinball machine, it is frustrating every time you need to lift a play field and get somewhere to carefully take these things down. Don't rip the magnetic tape off and then make sure the wires aren't too taut, that something's getting pulled and destroyed. And plus these things are $700. so to have the same effect be tied into the game's actual GI by the actual coders and manufacturers of the game as a first party accessory for $100 that plugs into the back and you don't have to worry about wires or blowing boards or things because they've already done the QC on it I love this and it sounds like this is something we can then add to other games like my TCM I can throw it in there cabinet lighting has become a thing that finally manufacturers are addressing of course we've got Hot Rails with Jersey Jack. We've got expression lights with Stern as an upgradable accessory. We have Horizon Lightings that are coming from the Relic editions from Barrels of Fun. And so Spooky is taking their own approach, which is actually just to find a way to put in LED lights in unobtrusive areas that will then flood the game with that light and then match it with awesome code. The next step, I hope, is for under cabinet and back cabinet lighting strips that can then plug into the game's GI and then just illuminate the whole area around the game and then i was joking on the discord i was thinking well heck for that matter uh give me some give me some lights i can put under the cabinets in my kitchen and have them like wirelessly connect to my game so when someone's playing the game downstairs my kitchen is showing off fancy modes and things and and wizard awards and stuff and like my kitchen can have jackpots i think we're gonna get there that may be a 2037 upgrade but that's like you know we'll be in spike 5 by then so spike 5 what if it what if you can hook it up to those interactive eve lighting for like your entire home on the exterior you know like you get those permanent lights installed so you can change you know red for valentine's day green for uh uh march is uh st patrick's day or whatever and then christmas it's already ready to go uh what if it hooked up to there so like as you're playing a game like your entire house on your block is like showing off jackpots and stuff and counting down timers for modes and crap uh i think i think 2037 pinball is going to be something that's pretty fun so looking forward to that so spooky's iterating as you heard from him the initial allotment sold out in just a couple hours they put $150 up there but you're not going to have to wait too soon or too long for something else to fill up the store there and go ahead and get you some mine is all over the place now which brings us to Houston Texas for barrels of fun perennial favorite of the collectors hobbyists David David Van Es' Dream Child which he's bringing to fruition in the form of dune It's sand. It's hot. It's brown, and it gets everywhere. Remember that? So Dune recently had its last call, basically, that's gone out, and people are deriding that. People. Maybe it's two people, but they're loud. Deriding this as, like, a last-ditch sales tactic for a failed game or whatever. I think Dune, when it launched, we didn't really know how to take it. The layout was interesting. I saw the ideas of what was going on, but playing that pre-launch code, you know, We got assets and things that weren there Essentially no call It was hard to call it a win This wasn a game that I feel came together strictly on shots and layout alone You really had to be into that theme And while I was aware of Dune and I've seen the old movie from the 80s, I've now watched the more recent one, so I kind of get what they're taking. But this wasn't like jumping on a truck with Jack and going through Chinatown or something. So the code really needed to elevate it. I guess that's happen now from a lot of people that have not been able to play this game so this is a game that seemed to have launched stumbled a little bit out of the launch getting into locations now people are coming back to discover it and i can tell you this uh with winchester coming up winchester being a hit selling out 525 they need to go into production immediately uh they're going to call dune you know uh essentially they're getting caught up with orders i think by february there were going to be eclipsed so they said you know what let's do the predator thing although We're way ahead of Predator in sales. Let's just put it out there that, look, if you want to get a Dune, order it now, because at the end of January, we're going to cut off sales. We're going to finish what we got. Focus on Winchester, because by the time those are built, we're going to be in the fall again, and they're going to have another title to put out. And so people were like, well, obviously, Dune's not selling, so this is just the last gasp for sales. And maybe, maybe, however, I can say that based on my discussions with distributors I've had in the last 24 hours, it's definitely worked. Dune orders are up this is a game that while if you missed out on a Winchester but your eyes are on the prize of barrels of fun there's a Dune right there at least you can get yourself in the meantime and play a game that's got that LED display and the back plate of the game all this lighting, it's got the great decals on the side, the new back glass that they've released, the $299 back glass which is cheaper than it would have cost me to get one made, looks phenomenal John Bergeron Johnny Crap to you and me did a great job on that new Backglass, man. That's the one. That's the one I want. That one looks amazing. I want that and I don't even have the game. I'd love to have that on my wall if anyone from Barrels is listening. But yeah, that will be unlimited. Go ahead and get that. They did reveal the topper, which we knew was coming from them. We knew it was going to be animatronic of some sort. We knew it was going to have the worm in there, the Shia LaBeouf or the Shia LaLode or whatever the in-universe name for the giant tapeworm that goes to the desert is. So that came out. And there's a bit of an animation, too, that's on the Collect Fun website. If you go check out Barrels of Fun, maybe I can find a way to link to it. So this topper is animated in at least three different ways, which I'm here for. First off, I think it matches the look of the game, you know, which is a giant sun back there and moons and worm and sand. I think that's everything that's in there. What are you going to have, like an animatronic Timothee Chalamet looking around the room, you know? So I like that they went with this way instead. But I wish I had more of that, like, back glass look to it, like some blues in there I think it needs. It is pretty brown and yellow. I think a little bit of blue coming out there, like some blue shining lights in the dune of, like, somebody. What are they called? I know in Waterworld they were mariners or smokers. But if you could put one of the dudes, one of the sand people, you know, one of the Tusken Raiders from Dune, if you could put them modeled into the sand dune with, like, just some blue LEDs there that would come on, you know, maybe when the game is changing color you get some blue up there. I did see where it looks like the sky will illuminate to a blue during night modes, which is cool all of this is concept by the way but if this concept comes to fruition, I think it works so you have a gesticulating worm that looks like one of those fidget toys but it's on a rotating cam mechanism to make it kind of go up and down like a caterpillar that's kind of neat, it will have a reveal because the actual sculpted dunes in the front are on this lift table that will then drop, allowing the worm to be more in view and then it can come up to hide it so we've got a moving worm We've got moving dunes, and then the two moons move as well across the horizon. When they said there was rotating moons, I was thinking, oh, they put these things on a little stepper motor, and the moons are just going to sit there and spin in a circle. But no, they actually track along the horizon, moving at two different speeds, which is kind of cool. So I like that extra motion. I think if it was just a flat plastic with static moons, I don't know that we would have necessarily complained too much, although this does add more value to it. I like that they put this feature in there. I do. I like that that's in there. I don't know that there's any extra content that comes with it, but as a design, I think it's kind of cool that it does at least three different things with four different moving parts, and then you put the light show with it as well. And, yeah, I think it's fine. I think it's fine. The price of $1,675 is steep for this. That's a bit steep. I don't like shelling out tons and tons of cash, but at this point, for the home collector, which is probably what this is squarely aimed at, I think they're going to sell plenty, and from talking to distributors, the orders are coming in, like, barely briskly. So, yeah, I think Dune finally is finding its footing in the shifting sands of the market, and that's where it is. I'm very much looking forward to Winchester because I got an order in on one. I want to get my Winchester. I don't know when it's going to be. I haven't heard about a number or anything yet. That one actually was able to track down Kingpin and grab myself one. and famously when it dropped I said this looks great it's not something I need right now I'm moving I shouldn't be spending money on pinball and then at the 11th hour I was talking to some folks just pre-expo and I was able to find a spot that it opened up and against my logical side of my brain and against the fight with the wife I was picturing in my head I went ahead and did it hoping it was a good decision and actually she was fine with it she was fine when I talked to her about it So that was cool. Now the game's super in demand. I picked right for once. Now, if only I could have done this with crypto back in the day. But here we are. I got myself in on a Winchester. So I'm looking greatly forward to that. That's what I know is going on in pinball right now. Holy crap. Like, you know, I'm sitting here moving. I was about ready to pack up the audio equipment and say, you know, we'll just get caught up in a week or so. And then, boom, this is dropping. And things are happening quickly. I love this, man. I love being surprised by things that I want. I don't want to be surprised by things that are then a little bit lacking in luster, right? When they come out, it's like, really? That much for that? It's hard to get excited about that. But new pinball things that come out and look amazing, I'll happily purchase them every time. I'm getting a topper for Fall of the Empire, which I absolutely was not anticipating doing at all. But I looked at it, and there's cool stuff that comes with it. And it's backwards compatible to 2017, yo. So, yes, I did buy myself. We'll give them a shout-out here. the electric playground is making their uh it's not star wars uh due to legal reasons it's the dual deck topper but it it looks it's got a spacey station kind of background and two spacey laser swords there that will battle and have interactive lights and things um i think i've had just about every one of their toppers that have come out now for modern machines this one included is pre-ordered i think i'm getting it in a couple of months here but i'm happy to get this and i think what i'll do given that my game room does have ample ceiling space, I'll probably end up putting this Fall of the Empire topper on my 2017 Star Wars game and then mount it on some brackets just above that will be a dual deck up there with the giant laser swords. And then there's going to be a whole Star Wars thing going on in this corner of my room. And I love it. I'm making myself my own Star Wars battle pod. And if it was just up to me and I had infinite time, I'd probably make my entire game room look like I'm standing on a Star Destroyer or something. I love that aesthetic of the Star Wars panels and the lattice cut in the side walls with the backlit glow coming from behind it. I dig it. I've seen hobbyists that have remade the entire bridge of the Millennium Falcon in their downstairs. I think I could take a crack at that, but it's going to require a substantial time investment. Either way, I'm going to start working on my battle pod. And if it's just two toppers stacked on each other, I think we'll start with that as a way to go. Speaking of a way to go, way to go, pinball manufacturers, for making stuff late in the game that I didn't know I wanted until I saw it. Do you want some too? Did you order? Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com is a way to get at me. Patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast. I've got so much stuff to give away, guys. It's amazing. I'll check you later on the next one. This was 222. Don out. Time to get some lunch. Talk to you later.